My Boyfriend Says He s Transgender but Then Never Mentioned It Again
Prototype via iStock.
I believed sexuality was fluid and love knows no gender. I was incorrect.
On our first OKCupid-initiated date, Ryan* and I timidly gazed at each other across a cafe table, punctuating the silence with sips of lattes. Merely past the time the discussion escalated to our common childhood spiritual obsessions, information technology was as if we'd known each other forever.
As we got to know each other over the next few weeks — our Scrabble strategies, our opinions on Lady Gaga's merit equally an LGBT icon, and even the darkest revenge fantasies we'd e'er had — the awkward silences evaporated.
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We spent our dates laughing through inconsequential debates similar "What does information technology mean to have your cake and swallow it, too?" (He somehow got through 19 years thinking it meant "to serve dual purposes, the way cake is both food and ornamentation.")
During one of our outings, a homeless man asked Ryan for a sandwich and he bought him two.
Less than a month passed before we said, "I love you lot," and the ensuing spring was a whirlwind of covert mitt-holding at parties, waking upward to roses on my windowsill, 5-minute breakups followed past poetic apology notes, and everything else involved with being 20 years old and in dearest for the very first time.
But 1 aspect of our relationship was not typical — and was not something I'd signed up for.
Ryan had always told me he felt uncomfortable in the male gender office. At the fourth dimension, I was reading feminist and queer theory, participating in a discussion group about transgender rights, and gaining sensation of how our guild'south definition of masculinity harms both men and women. A macho homo wasn't for me.
But as time went on, Ryan began dropping hints that his discomfort was more than deep-seated than I originally understood. When I'd ask what he was going to do about that, he'd say, "I don't know," and I'd get worried, so eventually he dropped it.
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In my heed, it was no longer an effect. But in his mind, a seed had been planted that was growing larger each day.
One afternoon I got a phone call from Ryan while I was at the gym. He said he had to run into me. Thinking this was one of his romantic surprises, I rushed off the elliptical, back to my dorm, and into his arms. But I didn't get the welcoming cover I was accustomed to.
"We demand to talk."
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"Are you breaking up with me?"
"Nosotros're completely different people."
"Just you love me."
"No, I don't anymore."
The rest of that spring semester was the worst menstruation of my life.
Every morning, I woke up praying that the inexplicable breakup was just a terrible nightmare. Every waking moment was filled with an ideals lecture on which I wanted his opinion, or a talking canis familiaris video I wanted to show him, or a bloom shop where I once got him a tulip afterwards a fight because they were his favorite flower.
In early June, I sent Ryan a card for his altogether explaining how much our relationship meant to me. I hoped this letter would give me closure, forth with the physical distance between u.s.a. as I traveled to Italian republic to written report abroad that summer.
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Only shortly later on arriving, I received a Facebook message from Ryan with the following caption:
"I was always an open book with you lot. Only there was one matter I never was able to be equally honest as I wanted almost. Since I was very young, I felt uncomfortable living as a male person. I would ride my bike to Walmart to buy girls' clothing. I felt and so ashamed and confused nigh why I did this.(Post continues afterward gallery.)
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"When I was a freshman in high schoolhouse, I saw a documentary about transgender people. Information technology clicked to me that I was transgender. My parents freaked out and tried to convince me information technology was a phase. I sunk into a severe depression. In society to only be normal, I acted masculine.
"I broke up with you considering those feelings were coming support. I cared about y'all too much to tell you the truth at the time. I hope you sympathise that I need to transition to alive a happy life and that I do and ever will beloved you. I gave you all of myself when we were together and will keep to do that as long as y'all allow me."
As I read and reread this final paragraph, the cloud that had been hanging above me over the by few months lifted. The breakup wasn't my fault. He hadn't stopped loving me.
I was finally waking upward from the nightmare. I called Ryan and immediately suggested we get dorsum together.
The impending transition was an afterthought. We'd cantankerous that bridge when we got there, I figured. Subsequently all, I believed sexuality was fluid and love knows no gender. And our beloved, if anyone's, could conquer anything.
But nosotros got to that bridge sooner than I expected.
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We argued on Skype every few nights almost Ryan's transition. I pulled intellectual arguments out of gender theory books to attempt to dissuade him from going through with the identity change or hormone treatments (he wasn't planning to get surgery).
I cited scholar Janice Raymond's assertion that "a female person mind in a male person torso only makes sense every bit a concept in a society that accepts the reality of both." The very goal of making his body or manner of dress "match" his personality, I said, validated gender norms.
Why couldn't he merely be a feminine man?
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I understood that I couldn't intellectualise away someone's deep-seated identity. But I was afraid of losing him. To what, exactly, I wasn't sure.
I'd seen documentaries about people undergoing gender transitions, and they always reassured their friends and family unit that they would be the same person. Merely I felt like someone else was near to replace my boyfriend. I felt cheated out of the person I fell in love with.
Even when we tried to talk about other things, Ryan's gender identity was the elephant in the room. I'd constantly beg for reassurance that he wouldn't intermission up with me over it once more.
He'd send me letters like: "I'grand worried that I'll put a lot into this relationship right now and when y'all get home you will realise what I want to do and not want to exist with me."
The truth is, I didn't fully grasp what the transition would mean. I had tunnel vision overcast by my fear of losing the most precious person in my life.
Simply when I got dwelling house that August, it did get more real.
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Offset, there were little things like wearing nail polish. "I tin handle that," I idea. "I know cis men who practice that."
The next step was wearing women's underwear, which was his way of feeling more like himself without fright of public judgment. (It was unclear what pronoun Ryan preferred to go by. Ryan still presented every bit a man to near people, but out of necessity, rather than preference. And he preferred the characterization "genderqueer" over "human being" or "woman.")
That was when I started to experience viscerally repelled.
This repulsion brought me contiguous with my own socialisation. Whether or not sexual orientation is innate, as the "born this fashion" argument would suggest, I incertitude in that location'southward a gene for preferring masculine clothing. After all, I knew from my studies that associations between gender and way were culturally specific and arbitrary.
I hated myself for letting these arbitrary associations make me averse to my own swain's self-expression.
I was an musical instrument of the gender stereotypes I detested, and they were hurting my relationship.
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Notwithstanding, I wasn't going to give up the love of my life over a few pairs of panties, so I reminded myself he was the aforementioned person underneath and got used to it.
When Ryan started to buy women's outfits, my distaste turned to panic. I pictured myself walking downwards the street with someone others would scornfully label a transvestite. I pictured everyone wondering what we were at family gatherings. I couldn't imagine how I would explain. I couldn't image how we would exist.
I wanted my beau back instead of this stranger I'd never seen before. But Ryan reminded me that I was now getting more of the person I loved, referring to himself as Ryan 2.0. (Postal service continues after gallery)
Transgender celebrities.
The new-and-improved Ryan still made snide remarks near the religious right and listened to a baffling combination of gangster rap and state music, and bought lobsters but to fix them free in the bounding main.
More importantly, Ryan took more than intendance than always to remind me that he loved me with thoughtful gestures similar making a collage of our dearest notes for my birthday and bringing me my favorite baked goods when I was stressed out with school.
During the rare moments when we were able to take our minds off Ryan's gender identity, I caught glimpses of the untainted relationship I was drastic to preserve.
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Merely more and more alarms interrupted these sugariness dreams of how things used to be. Ryan started talking to doctors and therapists about going on hormones, which would cause him to develop wider hips and pocket-sized breasts.
I wondered: Would this make me bisexual? Pansexual? I'd never been attracted to a woman before, but I couldn't imagine my attraction to Ryan suddenly disappearing. And he didn't want surgery, so our sexual activity life wouldn't be too dissimilar.
I was braced to at least attempt to make it piece of work, as I was with the wearable and makeup and everything else that went into the transition.
These changes were even more than overwhelming for Ryan. On top of trying to effigy out who he wanted to be and how to craft a life that would adjust that person, Ryan had to deal with a partner whose desires conflicted with the person he was becoming.
Out of the blue one evening that September, Ryan sent me an uncharacteristically angry Facebook message calling me "f*cked upwardly" and blocking my Facebook and my number. With no way to contact him I fell into a state of grief for another ii months.
In November, Ryan unblocked me and sent me a message like to the i from June albeit what I already suspected: "I broke up with you because I knew romantically we could never arrive work with what I needed to do." Sadly, this was truthful.
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Even though I didn't desire to be the one to end it, having that decision made for me was a relief.
The constant arguments and uncertainty about the hereafter were causing the states both more stress than the relationship was worth. And Ryan still had to sort out a lot of confusion about his identity and discover a place to live, line of work and community that would allow for it.
Equally the dust settled over the course of the following year, nosotros met up a few times equally friends. Ryan was on hormones at that point but wore loose, gender-neutral clothing and looked pretty much similar the boyfriend I in one case had. We reminisced about our relationship and agreed that our love for each other would outlast information technology, fifty-fifty if we lost bear upon.
We did lose impact over the years, as exes often do. So now, all my data about Ryan comes from Facebook.
At 1 point, she inverse her proper name to something more feminine and her profile photograph to one in makeup, earrings, and a homemade poster in the background quoting Lady Gaga: "Baby, yous were built-in to be brave."
About a year after this personal rebranding, I was surprised to notice that Ryan had switched back to his male name and a photo with a shaved caput and masculine clothing. His Facebook wall now contains an affiliation of Playboy photos, graphic anti-abortion campaigns, and statuses similar "The friend-zone is the only place that has more than deflated assurance than a Patriots game."
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I don't sympathise. I don't try to.
But my all-time speculation is that Ryan hit the same wall I did when trying to envision his post-transition life, and bounced back in the opposite direction.
The wall I'1000 talking about is plastered together with our club'due south definitions of a man, a woman, a person, and a relationship. You've probably striking this wall, besides, perhaps without recognizing it.
Women may have hitting it when trying to assert their desires in relationships. Men may have hitting it when trying to be emotionally vulnerable with their partners.
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And while it would exist so easy to say I was but physically incapable of a romantic relationship with a cocky-identified adult female, I discover it more likely that this wall divided Ryan and I from each other and blocked my view of a futurity between united states of america.
Even now, it'south blocking my story from you lot, the reader, because the right words to draw Ryan and me and our human relationship simply don't exist.
There's no word for someone who usually lives as a human but feels more than similar a woman, but really is neither or both or somewhere in betwixt.
There's no word for the sexual orientation of someone who accidentally fell in love with a adult female in the procedure of falling in love with a man. Instead, I'm forced to exit you with a muddled mix of he's and she's and no answers.
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I can but give you questions leading to more than questions. I see in hindsight that at that place were other reasons the relationship didn't work out, including the immaturity reflected in Ryan's "f*cked up" message, and the ugly side at present axiomatic on his/her Facebook wall.
Merely if this weren't the case, would I take allow gender confusion ruin an otherwise worthwhile human relationship?
If I discover myself in this situation once again, will my increased comfort with gender nonconformity and decreased concern with others' opinions make the relationship easier? How can nosotros tear downwards the wall that makes such relationships so difficult?
All I can say for certain is that I will ever love him, her, or whomever Ryan turns out to be, not as my boyfriend or my girlfriend just every bit the person who was and all the same is my first love.
This article was originally published on Your Tango. Read the original article here.
Source: https://www.mamamia.com.au/my-boyfriend-became-transgender/
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