Last night my fiancée told me that she is very happy for me for figuring myself out and that she doesn’t feel that we need couples counseling relating to my transition anymore which is exciting. She did say that she has realized the main problem she was having is that she is mourning the past. She mentioned one of her favorite early memories of us was me wrapping my manly (eww) arms around her from behind. She realizes that these are just that, memories and she’ll have to get used to things being different moving forward.
Today met my mom at Starbucks and got my first ever Starbucks drink at age 28 and she asked me about my transition. I had previously come out to my whole family as non-binary and said that I may transition in the future. She is under a lot of stress from other things right now so my transition has been an extra thing on her mind recently and has been upsetting her a lot. This is fair, I understand that it’s not just a big deal for me but also for everyone around me and I have been careful because of that.
My 6 years younger brother transitioned years ago and being young he was rather aggressive about it, it was a “get used to it or get lost” kind of thing which I understand, if I figured out I was trans as a teenager I might have been like that too. My mom was worried that I might be like that so I reassured her that is not the case, I am older and more mature and we can all be adults about it but I also need to do what’s right for me.
Before I met her I wasn’t sure if I was going to bring up my transition. I like to be thorough and only update people when I am sure about it and I had been thinking of waiting until I had been on HRT for a bit and was certain about it before giving my family an update. I am glad we talked about it now though. I don’t have to worry about it aside from know how stressed my mom is in general and that I’m contributing to that. It is what it is though, I’m not slowing down for my family. I just told her that my fiancée is using she/her with me now but my mom and family can keep using they/them for now.
My partner mourned about the same past, but we realized those moments don’t have to live in a gendered vacuum. We each have our moments of vulnerability and strength that aren’t couched between masculine or feminine means.
This is something I find myself learning. When I first came out and started really living as “me,” I think I had this understandable need to be FEMME at all the time and eschew roles/activities I saw as “masculine.” I think this exacerbated my partner’s “mourning.”
As I get a bit more comfortable in my own skin, I find it easier to just do what’s natural for me. I was literally thinking this two days ago, when I found myself with my arms wrapped around my partner as I stood behind her. It still feels nice/right and it feels good to have these moments of “reclamation” of parts that I felt the need to toss aside in a drive toward “femininity.” It’s a weird thing, these boxes we create for ourselves (well, me for sure at any rate) when we’d never try to box other women in in the same way. Good ol internalized transphobia I suppose.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yup. Same thing happened when I started roller derby. I was worried about the uproar about trans women playing sports so tried making myself as small as possibly. It all went away when we started contact play and I was knocked to the rink by someone half my size.