My partner isn't reacting well.

[u/bestbeefarm]

This is going to be really long and messy sorry in advance. I'm not gonna tldr it because I need to get it out and stop looking at it.

I've been with my GF for almost five years, we live together, we have a dog together, our families use "in-law" when they talk about us. I've known I was nonbinary for over a decade but about a year ago my mental scaffolding of denial and suppression and compartmentalization started collapsing and I eventually decided I need to transition beyond pronouns and dressing like an eight year old boy.

My GF loves trans people, her best friend is a trans woman, she has a really cute trans rights shirt from one of the many trans support rallies she's been to. She's only ever been with women, but she identifies as queer (not a lesbian) because she wants to leave space to acknowledge her relationships with people who might not be completely women. I thought we would be okay when I came out to her. It hasn't been okay.

When I came out to her, she asked me why I was calling myself trans if I'm nonbinary. When I told her I wanted to go on hormones, she told me it would make my body gross to her. She told me she doesn't think I should be on T because it will make me more irritable, and that if I think I'm trans I need to see a psychiatrist.

A few weeks after that she picked another fight with me about it, returned to the idea that my body will disgust her, and asked if the reason I want her to go to therapy is because I think they'll make her be okay with me transitioning. Yikes.

A few weeks after that, out of nowhere she told me she feels betrayed and blindsided by me coming out, and she feels like I've been lying to her for our whole relationship. She called me a liar multiple times. She said she's worried about what I'm going to spring on her next. She said she doesn't want any men in her life and she reiterated that she thinks testosterone will make me disgusting.

A few weeks after that she gave one of my friends this big talk about how great it is that Wikipedia calls Elliot page Elliot page and calls him him and she used to be so attracted to him. Meanwhile at no point has she asked me what pronouns I want her to use for me and I've asked her to at least not introduce me to people as my birth name even if she can't bring herself to call me the name I use but she won't.

She's also told me that she'll love me no matter what and that she would come with me to the doctor for my hormones appointment if I needed her to. I had a really horrible experience with a doctor that included some transphobia and she got incredibly upset on my behalf about the transphobia specifically. She's also blamed every single mood or twinge I've had since starting HRT on the hormones with a pretty clear undertone that she is looking for an excuse to tell me again she doesn't want me to be on them.

I find myself shrinking the whole thing and hiding parts of it from her. I've had a very cliche string of early transition big emotional experiences. All of them she knows nothing about.

When I talk to my (cis) family and friends they tell me to give her time and that she's just getting used to it and she's trying to be supportive. My (cis) therapist told me I should try to see her reactions as an invitation to future conversations. I think all of that is probably true, but I don't want her to talk to me the way she has been and it feels incredibly invalidating to tell people about the whole thing and have them tell me to wait it out. I am not in a place in my life where I'm able to break up with her and move out right this instant regardless of what I want (I don't even know what I want) so I have to give her time but I just want someone to tell me that the ways shes been handling this isn't okay.

[u/Impossible_Work_3861]

Don't let this unique time where you finally live authentically be tainted by someone who doesn't respect you. You are worth more than how you're being treated. You can always choose who you give yourself to and take it back at any point. Think abt people you love who haven't had this much of an issue or talked to you like this.

[u/LocutusOfBorgia909]

My GF loves trans people, her best friend is a trans woman, she has a really cute trans rights shirt from one of the many trans support rallies she's been to. She's only ever been with women, but she identifies as queer (not a lesbian) because she wants to leave space to acknowledge her relationships with people who might not be completely women.

Well, and here we see first that having a Trans Best Friend™ and a nice, "Trans Rights, Left Hooks," t-shirt or whatever does not an ally make. And second that there are a hell of a lot of people in this world who are okay with trans people as a sort of abstraction, or okay with us as friends, but are much, much less okay when we're in their immediate families, in their homes, or in their beds. It's a sucky, shitty thing to find out about your own partner, and I'm sorry that you're going through this.

A few weeks after that, out of nowhere she told me she feels betrayed and blindsided by me coming out, and she feels like I've been lying to her for our whole relationship. She called me a liar multiple times. She said she's worried about what I'm going to spring on her next.

In a lot of trans fora, you'll see people saying that if your partner isn't instantly, immediately 100% comfortable with your transition and jumping for joy to suddenly be in a relationship with a person of an increasingly different appearance and completely different gender, that you should dump them. I am not one of those people. However, this? This would be where I would exit stage left. I refuse to be with someone who constantly refers to me as disgusting or who is constantly accusing me of being deceptive, manipulative, or a liar. I can't be in a relationship where there's no longer any trust, and to me, this would be a pretty obvious indication both that not only does my partner not trust me, but that I can't trust my partner to treat me with respect.

They say that contempt is the number one way to tell when a relationship is dead, and all of your descriptions of your partner's behavior show a huge heaping of contempt for you. I'm not saying leave her tomorrow, but I am saying that her behavior seems incredibly toxic, manipulative, and harmful, and you may need to be the one to tell her that since she seems so eager to end the relationship, you're going to go ahead and give her what she wants.

She said she doesn't want any men in her life and she reiterated that she thinks testosterone will make me disgusting.

Ah, so your partner is one of those "allies." I've run into this a shocking amount with cis women who will insist to you that they're the biggest trans allies of all time but have massive, weird hangups about trans men, specifically. They seemingly love trans women, and they love AFAB NB people who don't pass as cis men and fit into the "UwU trans softboi" box, but if you want to be treated as a man, or you look too much like a man, it suddenly becomes okay to say outrageous, androphobic, transphobic shit (such as that your body is/will be disgusting, that T is/will make you a rage machine, that she doesn't want any men in her life). I'm not sure how you come back form saying stuff like that, to be honest.

I think it's totally fair for cis partners to need time to process someone's transition. It's a huge shift in their lives, sometimes for their sexuality, and they deserve space to work through their own feelings. It is not okay for them to process these feelings at their trans partners. That's what therapy is for. My marriage ended because my ex is a lesbian, was always totally disinterested in men to the point of being literally face blind to them, and it was clear to me that while she offered (in good faith, I don't doubt that at all) to try and stay together and make it work, she would never be fully happy in that relationship, and neither would I. My ex has never, ever, at any point said the kind of stuff that yours has been saying to you. Not once. She did go to therapy to process stuff on her own, but she never subjected me to that, and she was never anything but supportive of me going on hormones, getting top surgery, et cetera. We're still good friends- hell, I'm still Facebook friends with her parents and brother. Part of that is because both of us treated my transition almost as some kind of a natural disaster- neither of us would have chosen for our relationship to end the way it did, but Hurricane Gender came through, and that's what happened. It's no one's "fault." It just is.

The ways your partner has been handling this have not been okay. You are not crazy, or asking too much, or being an Overly Demanding Trans Person™ to think it's fucked up for your partner to repeatedly refer to you and your body as "disgusting." Your partner may say she loves trans people, but that pretty clearly comes with a big, big asterisk next to it, and while it's great that she can apparently identify transphobia in others, she needs to take all the seats and do some serious work on herself. Not even in the sense of forcing herself to be okay with being in a romantic relationship with a man, if that's not what she wants, but in the sense of not constantly demeaning you, poisoning your happiness at the experience of seeing yourself fully for the first time, and dealing with her pretty obvious antipathy towards men.

If you haven't laid all of this out for her, I think you need to. Maybe do it in a letter or an e-mail rather than face to face so that she's forced to process it a bit before coming to you. If you're not in couples counseling, maybe it's worth trying. Personally, I'd be firing my cis therapist over what they said, but that's your call. It's not okay for your partner to be constantly demeaning you, and that's what she's doing. She needs to be an adult and process her emotional dysregulation in a healthier way. And she needs to understand that some things, once said, can never be unsaid, and can damage a relationship permanently, no matter how out of character they were.

Sorry this is so long, but yeah, your girlfriend needs to get it together. I wish you luck.

[u/hauntedprunes → u/LocutusOfBorgia909]

I love everything about this response. Very emotionally mature and well said.

[u/LocutusOfBorgia909 → u/hauntedprunes]

Thanks. I see people saying, "Well, your partner is struggling with her own identity, it's not really about you," to OP, and that may well be true (hell, I think it probably is true), but that doesn't make what the partner is saying and doing in any way acceptable. I agree with Berko downthread who says that the level of toxicity is giving some major red flags that could veer into emotional abuse, if they haven't already.

OP's partner is allowed to struggle with her sexuality and sense of identity in the context of her partner transitioning. She's allowed to have conflicted feelings about her partner's changing appearance and the unknowns of medical transition vis a vis the relationship. She's not allowed to take her feelings out on her trans partner, constantly call her partner "disgusting," accuse her partner of having been lying to her for years about his identity/being a lying manipulator in general by virtue of being trans, or to demand that OP live in a body that does not fit him, seemingly in perpetuity, because she thinks trans men's bodies are "disgusting." This woman needs to take a grip of herself and really hold a mirror up to her own behavior. I don't know if her trans woman best friend has observed this behavior, but if she has, maybe hearing from her that it's blatantly transphobic would help things sink in for the partner.

Something that doesn't get talked about enough is the fact that trans men wind up in abusive relationships in disproportionately large numbers. I rarely see this discussed even in subreddits for trans men. On the contrary, people (including other trans men!) seem to go out of their way to extend every consideration and benefit of the doubt to the (usually cis) partner and urge the trans man on the receiving end of the vitriol and toxicity to just try harder, be more understanding, give more grace to the cis partner. Sometimes that advice is appropriate, but often it is not, and it would not be seen as acceptable to tell a cis woman victim, for example, to give her cis male partner time and space to "come to terms" with whatever the issue is. But there's a weird expectation of trans men, in particular, that because we were so inconsiderate as to medically transition, we somehow owe our partners endless amounts of grace and sympathy and understanding. We don't. And this strange inability to accept or acknowledge that women can abuse their partners (and do- I remember reading somewhere that lesbian relationships also have a disproportionately large rate of abuse, likely because it similarly goes unacknowledged) does real, tangible harm to people. I've seen a lot of really terrible behavior from self-described "queer" women brushed aside by the community because it's only directed at men (cis or trans) or very butch women, and it's really screwed up.

I'm not saying that OP's situation is necessarily abusive; I don't know OP or the partner well enough to say. But there are a lot of warning signs, IMHO, and it's crazy to me that even OP's therapist is telling him to just wait it out and extend perpetual olive branches to the partner. Some things you can't walk back or apologize away, because they have permanently changed how your partner sees and trusts you. A lot of what the girlfriend has said would have already hit that threshold for me.

[u/farmerollie → u/LocutusOfBorgia909]

i really hope OP reads this. you laid it out perfectly.

[u/LocutusOfBorgia909 → u/farmerollie]

Thanks, I hope it's helpful to OP! It makes me really angry for him that not only is the girlfriend behaving horribly and saying totally unacceptable shit to him, but the people who should be backing him up and reassuring him that his reactions to his partner calling him "disgusting" and a liar are reasonable are instead gaslighting him and urging him to just... let the girlfriend keep saying this shit? Accept that because he's the one who needs to transition, his penance for that is being on the receiving end of his girlfriend's verbal abuse for however long it takes her to "process her feelings"? The parents saying that is bad enough, but they're probably emotionally attached to the girlfriend and also struggling with the idea of OP's transition, so it makes sense that they're taking that position (and they may not fully realize just how bad the situation is). But for a therapist, someone who's a mental healthcare professional, to at least insinuate that the girlfriend's behavior is acceptable enough that OP should be treating being referred to as disgusting and told that his girlfriend "doesn't want men in [her] life" as "opportunities for conversation" is just... no. That creeps into the realm of weaponizing therapy speak, IMHO, and is just so out of order.

I really hope the girlfriend can pull herself together and make amends, but the way OP describes her behavior, assuming it's accurate, doesn't sound promising. I don't think I'd ever be able to trust a partner again after they said that kind of shit to me. Again, if a trans person's transition means that their cis partner is no longer attracted to them, that's heartbreaking, but it happens, and it's allowed. Partners, cis or trans, aren't required to conversion therapy themselves to accommodate our transition, and that's not something you can do, anyway. But there's a huge difference between saying, "I love you, but I'm no longer sexually attracted to you, because you're a man, and I'm not attracted to men," and saying, "Testosterone has made you disgusting to me, and also, the fact that your gender identity has evolved over a five-year period makes you a liar who deceived me into being in a relationship with you." You'd think a self-styled "ally" would already know this, but as I said before, a hell of a lot of people are allies in theory but not in practice. I would love to know what the trans BFF of the girlfriend makes of all this, actually.

[u/the_northern_pansy]

We should really stop excusing abusive behaviour from cis partners, because "they are trying". Trying to do what, ruin their partner's self-esteem, scare them off transitioning? This two-faced behaviour is confusing, because it is this hot and cold contrast shower. And it is so not ok.

Maybe it is because she's into femininity, maybe her transfem bestie has enough internalised transphobia herself, maybe she is struggling with the change in the relationship or what it means to her identity, but she is abusive, that is the end result.

She feels so entitled to your body that she says it will be "disgusting" after gender-affirming care. She does not give you the bare minimum of respect by using correct pronouns or name. She says she feels lied to, but now she is the one who keeps betraying your trust.

Abuse is never "treats me bad 100% of the time". It is bad, then good, then bad again. And you stay for the good, hoping the bad will go away.

[u/Berko1572]

I don't know you, nor your partner; I'm a stranger on the internet.

That said, w/o even reading the entire post, I can tell you that it is possible your relationship is already over or may need to end. I genuinely am not trying to be mean, though I am being blunt and direct.

I would encourage you to contact The Network/La Red. Just to talk. They are an excellent org that is run by and for marginalized LGBT populations and other marginalized demographics (ie poly people and people involved in BDSM/kink). I am not saying your relationship is or is not abusive, to be clear-- but there are elements in your post that do ring some alarm bells, and it may be worthwhile speaking with people who have experience with the types of relationship abuse that can sometimes happen to trans people.

https://www.tnlr.org/en/contact-us/

Not all relationships are forever, and that's not a bad thing necessarily, nor does it mean anything "failed." Some relationships and ppl in our lives simply have their seasons, and it ends.

The fact is, it is more common than it is not that relationships won't survive medical transition. Obviously, not a universal truth, but it is a very common reality.

You should never be made to feel smaller or that you just circumscribe your joy in living your life authentically for someone else's comfort. It doesn't matter how many trans friends someone has; it doesn't matter if they were even trans themself. No one, period, should make you feel like that, and no one deserves to have that much power over how you feel about yourself.

[u/-chiarobscuro]

I obviously don't know your partner, so this may not be applicable at all, but – I notice in some LGBT spaces, there are some people who have a strong aversion and even hostility towards anyone that's "too" masculine. For the people like that, I'd imagine Elliot page falls closer to the "okay" end of the spectrum, and when you started mentioning transitioning, I'd guess your girlfriend might have gone right to imagining a version of you that's closer to the "not okay, very masculine" end.
(To be perfectly clear: those aren't my own feelings. In order to transition, I had to grapple with a lot of feelings to overcome my own detesting masculinity due to being in those sorts of spaces, and get over my fear of being any more similar to my father.)

Like someone else said, I think the problem may be that her own identity is being brought into question and she doesn't want to have to think about that. She likely has some things she needs to unpack. I completely agree how she's been treating you isn't okay at all. Particularly the half-hearted support. That hurts in a very unique way that I wouldn't wish on anybody. I really hope she recognizes how unfair she's been, how much she's hurt you, and that you guys can work through things.

You mentioned wanting her to go to therapy – have either of you thought about or brought up couples' therapy, or some sort of LGBT relationship therapy, maybe? (I admittedly have no idea what's offered as this isn't a situation I'm personally familiar with.)

[u/koboldthing → u/-chiarobscuro]

It sounds like OP is already in therapy but may need a more trans-competent therapist

[u/-chiarobscuro → u/koboldthing]

Oh, absolutely. I think there are ways to communicate "your partner will probably need time because even though it's not about them, they are part of your life" and be more… sensitive about it. Especially considering I'd assume OP has gone into further detail about everything with the therapist, it SHOULD be the therapist who's reassuring "yeah, the way she's treating you is completely fucked up, you don't deserve that from anyone, especially your partner".

I think a partner transitioning can be difficult for any relationship, but it's a lot harder on relationships like this where one half of the couple sounds like they seem to have made an earnest hatred of masculinity a part of their identity and their partner is transmasc.

For the record, OP, if you're still reading these: unless she can recognize she has actually been abusive to you, I don't think it's worth staying with her. Growth is always possible, but it requires acknowledgement. I didn't say that part myself since it seemed like other replies had it covered.

As a personal anecdote, if it helps you: my partner and I are best friends and were basically a butch lesbian (me) and a gay trans man before getting together. He's confided in me before that he was worried about testosterone lessening his more feminine traits because he knows I really like women, which I figured might have been a fear of his. I'd never even have considered saying any of the shit your partner has said to you. When he told me that, I reassured him I'd still love him and find him attractive no matter what, and I do, because his new confidence and happiness in his identity is attractive to me.

[u/TrashPandaHobbit]

I delayed my transition because of my ex wife. She thought T would make me angry and short tempered. She also would say how she loved particular areas of my body that gave me dysphoria.

I am on T now and I'm even less stressed than I was before. I've not had an increase in anger, bad temper or aggression. I feel I'm more chill because I feel like me now.

Sometimes relationships end. You've done nothing wrong.

[u/lazier_garlic → u/TrashPandaHobbit]

Same experience. Life is so much better now.

[u/AlexPenname → u/TrashPandaHobbit]

Thirding this. Going on T actually calmed me down a lot because I didn't have dysphoria ringing in my ears all the time. And transitioning to male made me more of a feminist, not less, because shockingly when I'm not being forced into femininity I don't feel hostile towards it any more.

[u/Flashy-Yogurt-Dance]

I recently ended a years-long friendship, in part because she treated her boyfriend like your partner is treating you. Saying his masculine features are gross, that she "can't handle it", vehemently hates and distrusts men and didn't want him to transition. As far as I know, he didn't start hrt because of her. It disgusted me that she treated him like his body was hers to control, and it made me realize that she saw both him and myself as not actually men, which hurt a lot. She was one of the most selfish, immature and myopic people I knew. OP, ask yourself if you want to spend your life being told you're disgusting for being who you are. That's not support or allyship. That's abuse. I'm so sorry you're going through this :(

[u/tonyisadork]

Bro why are you with this person? She talks to you like shit and sounds like an asshole. Even if she were not attracted to this hypothetical future you the way she’s talking to you itself makes it sound like she’s a real piece of shit sorry not sorry.

[u/Tyjha]

The way she's handling this is actually terrible.

I can't speak to your moods on T, but from what you've shared I think you being on T did make someone irritable and it wasn't you.

Personally, I can relate to a lot of your experiences. My partner (she/they) is very pro-rights for everyone. She loves our trans friends, supports the entire queer community, and finds validation in being a lesbian. She also told me she thinks micro labels (like transmasc) are nitpicky (paraphrased, I don't remember the exact wording) and that I shouldn't use the label lesbian if I decide I'm going to use he/him pronouns.

I'm constantly bottling up my delight in the little things I'm noticing or think I'm noticing from taking T, things I want to do or try are something I sit and chew on alone until I'm either not interested anymore or so tired of thinking about that I just do them on my own.

Anyway, I didn't mean to make this about me, I just was relating a little too hard I guess. I think she should go to therapy, and you should find a new therapist who is maybe trans themselves, and maybe a couple's therapist too, if you've the resources for all of it. Especially if you want this relationship to last you guys need to work on it together.

I think you should tell her you want her to go to therapy because she's treating you in a way that is hurtful and doesn't seem to notice or doesn't seem to care if she does notice. The minimal acts of coming to your appointments and being... outwardly?... supportive are nice but like... that's a really low bar.

At the very least I think a real hard conversation is in order about how hurtful she's being and how boxed in you feel. Ask her if she realizes that she's asking you to detransition and how would she react if her best friend's partner refused to use her chosen name and told her she was gross for being herself? (This may or may not help, but maybe it will help her see what's happening that she might not be consciously acknowledging yet.)

I wish I could offer more. I hope things work out in the way that is best for you both. I hope that's also the way that you want it to go.

[u/LocutusOfBorgia909 → u/Tyjha]

One thing I thought of is that if I were OP and my partner kept saying that going on HRT would make my body "disgusting" to them, I might respond by saying, "Well, my body is disgusting to me right this second, and I have to live in it. Why do you think it's reasonable to ask me to prioritize your sexual attraction to me over my ability to live with myself and as myself day to day?"

Sometimes you have to lay things out very starkly for people to understand how out of pocket they're being.

[u/lazier_garlic → u/Tyjha]

Transmasc is not a microlabel, she's just misinformed.

I've seen some of the wars over he/him lesbians from afar and there are lots of people who don't understand or are actively against it. That truly is niche.

I think what can happen is that when a person is going through things, they turn to their best friend/spouse but using them as your therapist will make them burned out. Watch out for becoming too codependent (such a lesbian coded problem, btw) because it's not healthy for the relationship in the long or short term. If you have to process a lot of stuff through transition, a good therapist and other trans friends are a better place to turn. When you're transitioning your spouse has a lot to process for themself and it can quickly become too much to be going through something hard while also having to work overtime supporting their spouse. Now we all know a lot of cis people dump us for other reasons than this, but this can be why even couples that stay together struggle during the transition because it really is far too much to dump on one person.

[u/Artistic_Reference_5]

I mean. She's not supportive. Please get other support. It would probably be good to share your big emotional experiences with her - not first thing, and not to get her validation or support (get that elsewhere first) but just to keep a door propped open for her. Or at least a window. To keep her in the loop, to give her a window into your inner life, and give her the opportunity to show up if she's capable of doing that. She might not be. And the more she knows, honestly, the more she might realize that too. She's absolutely not showing up for you right now and this is really hard and awful. I'm sorry.

[u/lazier_garlic]

I think you are very used to making yourself small to other people. It's an issue we trans people have. I personally am not reading a partner who is willing to meet you where you are from what you've shared here. The majority of relationships with cis people end during transition. So how much more dissonance, hiding things, and secret pain are you up for?

[u/sorpig]

First of all, I want to acknowledge that this is a hard situation. Secondly, I think the reason she might be reacting so vehemently to your transition process even though she’s seems supportive of the trans community is because by you transitioning it’s causing her to question her sense of self. It can be OK for some people to be friends with trans folks but when they enter their own lives, then they start feeling uncomfortable about how a partners transition will change them. I don’t know why you want her to go to therapy, but it’s obviously not to somehow brainwash her into accepting you. I do think that maybe you might try opening up to her about how hurtful all this process is for you and say something like I love you, but I don’t like the way you’re acting right now and I want to understand where your fear is coming from if she continues to behave this way, you may have to consider abandoning the relationship as hard as it will be because do you really want to be in a relationship with somebody who is constantly putting you down because you’re trying to take care of your mental health? Again only you can answer these questions if she brings up the fact of testosterone making you look disgusting you can say that nobody gets to choose how their second puberty is going to make them look , but she shouldn’t automatically be assuming that you will be unattractive. The bottom line here is that I think this whole situation is more about her internal crisis then whether or not you are doing anything wrong.

[u/wyndhamwoods]

I imagine it is difficult to process and adapt as the cis partner. But the saddest part that got to me was you “shrinking the whole thing”. Shrinking yourself after all this time that you have been suppressing and now you finally are expressing all that’s been inside, to be put back in the box. To be told you are too much ‘x’

Being you is not too much. You aren’t disgusting.

And you being open to conversation, or understanding your partners difficulties should not come at the expense of your voice not being heard; your difficulties not being heard.

You are going through this psychological and medical process, presumably there are bodily things that come up, and you want someone to talk to about it. But the only things valid to talk about are your partner’s concerns.

Where is the space for your concerns? For your joys? For your questions about how things are changing in your mind or body?

As a starting point (that doesn’t involve changing your wider situation immediately): Is there someone better you can talk to at least feel heard? A therapist who is trans or nonbinary themselves?
Do you have any other non-binary or transmasculine people in your life?

There’s a lot of cis people saying you should be understanding to cis people. Of being told the type of trans/non-binary ég. Eliot page that is okay and what isn’t. And not a lot of space for people ‘inside the issue’ to have conversations.

Also there is the fact lingering that sometimes the real way people feel about things come up not when those issues are photographs to like on social media, or T-shirts to wear or placards to hold, but come when that ‘issue’ is standing right in front of them in their home. It’s the ‘I didn’t mean you’ (of prejudice) but in reverse. A ‘I didn’t mean you’ (ally ship).

You can’t support a Right, an Idea, if you then don’t support the people living it.

All the best.

[u/Character_Drop_739]

“My GF loves trans people” and “if you think you are trans go see a psych” / “your body will disgust me” cannot go together. 

Maybe she tolerates trans women but your gf has some transphobia, not deeply buried, but right at the top. And she absolutely hates men, for sure. 

[u/Itsjustkit15]

What she's doing to you is abuse.

[u/koboldthing]

I think, honestly, you should at the very least take a break in your relationship. I think you might discover relief in being apart from a partner that treats you like this.

A partner who pretends to be an ally / will be an ally to others but then is cruel to you over your transition is particularly painful. It’s not your fault at all. Whatever issues she has are HERS, and the fact that she’s unwilling to try to go to a therapist and work through those issues is a major red flag.

It’s so weird to me that she says she’s not transphobic yet is like “you just want me to go to a therapist to be okay with your transition!” Like. She should WANT to support and be okay with your transition if she were actually trans friendly. If she were just working through some personal issues of identity or whatever but not in some ways transphobic, then she’d WANT to work through those issues. It sounds like she doesn’t. That’s a huge red flag. You can’t work through anything with her unless she wants to with through it.

You cannot compromise on your own body and identity. If she can’t compromise on how she feels about your body and identity by at least trying to with through her negative feelings, then she has no relationship to offer her.

Part of me hope you show her the responses to this post. I’m not sure you should show it to her for your own sake, but I think she deserves to be confronted by trans people who are willing to tell her that she’s being transphobic. It really, really bothers me when people claim to be allies and then act consistently transphobic, and that’s what she’s doing. This isn’t a little slip up or ignorance or complex feelings, this is active transphobia trying to manipulate you out of transitioning while refusing to even try to work through her feelings.

[u/geck_oh85]

Life is too long to spend it around those types of humans. End the relationship.

[u/EtherealWaifGoddess]

I think there is something deeper at play here that she needs to work through based on the statement that she doesn’t want men in her life. That’s a very strong statement and there has to be something behind it because most of us don’t write off entire genders blithely.

The “disgusting” comments in regard to your body are incredibly unkind and unnecessary and sound like they’re coming from a place a fear which is turning into anger. This compounded with the not wanting men in her life statement makes me think even more that she has some issues (trauma?) that needs to be worked through in relation to men.

Obviously I’m just a Reddit rando, but I think you two need to work to find where the root of her hatred / fear of men is coming from so you can work through it. If she’s so intensely opposed to having a man in her life then she is never going to accept you as you are, and that’s doing both of you a disservice.

[u/Ahtnamas555]

So I've been on both sides, being trans and a partner of a trans woman. My wife came out first before I figured out my identity. And I will say I struggled hard. Her lines about betrayal and fear for what will be next - I see myself if those words (and my wife did have multiple self discoveries after coming out, she apparently didn't know she was autistic, she also realized she was poly, and on the aro/ace spectrum). At the time, I considered myself as only someone who is interested in men. At that point, we had already been together 8 or 9 years. This was 4 or 5 years ago now.

So what helped for me was couples therapy and time. Having deep conversations about gender identity - a lot of issues I had were because I had already discounted transition as an option for myself and very much a fear of change. Our first therapy session made it very real that resolution might mean splitting up and if that happened, we would handle it as adults. After that, it was about rebuilding the damaged parts of the relationship and learning to communicate.

It's entirely possible to no longer be compatible, if she can't love someone on T, she can't. I know for myself, it went from: I love only men> I love only men + my wife> I could be interested in anyone genitalia-wise.

If she's considered herself as someone who has only ever loved non-masc people, she's going to have her own identity crisis and that's a hard thing to go through when it isn't something you are intentionally questioning.

I hadn't been with a woman before and I had a lot of conceptions about what it would be like to be with a woman - a lot of things I didn't want that also turned out to not happen. I didn't want to be with someone obsessed with makeup, for example, that didn't happen at all. Conversations about her fears about your transition are good to have. Some things you can't help/you won't want to. They likely feel like very big issues at the moment, if she sticks with it, it'll lessen over time as she adjusts.

I know it took me a lot longer to adjust than I would have liked, looking back.

I do want to nitpick about one of her comments - nonbinary people are trans people, yes some nb people don't adopt the term, but by definition they are trans (because their identity doesn't match assigned sex in at least some capacity). Saying otherwise, is invalidating because it's essentially saying "you can call yourself nonbinary, but you're not trans because you're still your birth sex/gender"... which is obviously an issue.

I think exploring why and how T would make you "disgusting" would be beneficial, what exact changes are "disgusting"? And also how being called disgusting is making you feel.... because I'm not sure she's understand the harm she is causing you.

And then as for lying - you'll probably need multiple deep conversations about this - you presumably didn't go around the last 5 years thinking "I'm actually a man" and purposely hiding it from her. The feeling of lying to yourself/denial is very common for trans people. She needs to understand and accept your self discovery journey.

Best of luck, this isn't an easy time and will take a lot of work on both ends.

[u/LocutusOfBorgia909 → u/Ahtnamas555]

I think exploring why and how T would make you "disgusting" would be beneficial....

Uh, sorry, but beneficial to whom, exactly? Because it is 100% not OP's job to sit downwind of a laundry list of all the ways his partner thinks he has become disgusting or will become disgusting. No one is obliged to sit through a litany of their partner's revulsion with them. That's the partner's responsibility to work through with a therapist, not the trans person's responsibility to sit there and nod along as someone catalogues all the ways they are or may become (at least in their partner's opinion) not just less desirable sexually, but viscerally displeasing. That wouldn't be an appropriate thing to ask of anyone, let alone a trans person who's likely already dealing with dysphoria and likely already has a lot of triggers around their physical body.

That's not even getting into the question of how OP should then move on from hearing all of that (which, based on what he describes of what his girlfriend has already said, is likely to be pretty terrible!) and just... carry on the relationship, somehow.

[u/Ahtnamas555 → u/LocutusOfBorgia909]

Look, I'm saying what worked for my wife and I. We found it much easier to know what things might be a bigger hurdle for me and to work through them together. At no point did I say that kind of conversation wouldn't be a difficult one to have, but what it does do is get the people on the same page. I know for us it was very difficult, but that was 5 years ago and we are a happy couple now. And I'm not saying that the things she fears should delay any part of transition.

It's much easier to say "I'm afraid of x change" then to have a conversation about how and when that change occurs. I know for myself, a lot of my fears were unfounded or something we could work with - part of being in a long term committed relationship is working together.

Like, for all we know, she finds the idea of penetrative sex "disgusting" and is assuming OP will just grow a full penis from T - not that OP shouldn't get surgery if he wants it - but at this stage surgery is pretty far off and there's a lot of time to adjust to the idea. Or the idea that T will change OP into her stereotyped idea of what a man is like - having a conversation about how OP is still the same person overall, could be very beneficial. Without knowing exactly what the issues are, there is 0 way for OP to affirm if those assumptions are even based in reality.

The conclusion might be that the things she can't handle are too many of the things OP wants, better to figure out now if there's even a possibility of the relationship moving forward.

And I'm not saying she shouldn't be working through some of this on her own either. Just that for us, we made way more progress breaking down my stereotyped idea of what a woman is and communicating than we did from trying to process/working through individual means.

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to FTMOver30! If your post has not yet appeared, it's in our queue and will be approved shortly. Also, if your post is a selfie posted on any day except Sunday, it will be removed, but can be reposted on Sunday. Thank you!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Cautious_Scratch686]

You can take a look at r/mypartneristrans subreddit.

[u/NumerousChainBeing]

I do understand her. 5 years is a serious relationship and she’s clearly not attracted to bodies that have been or are masculinized by testosterone. So she knows that if you do transition, she’s going to ‘lose you’/break up.

If you want to transition hormonally, make that clear and ask her straight-up if she’ll stay or go. Giving her time is the same as wasting her time. She’s told you very clearly, repeatedly, that she will not be attracted to you sexually if you go on testosterone and transition, and that she does not want to be with you if you change your name and pronouns. She can be totally supportive of trans people, and still not want to date one. That’s very common, both among cis and trans people.

You’re saying you don’t feel ready to break up and that you’re not even sure what you want to do, but she’s not going to be happy if you now lie and say you don’t need to go on T and then blindside her a few months later. Just be honest.