What have you noticed in Transition about changing sexuality or relationship alignment?
Before transitioning, I assumed that the only thing that would change about me was my gender expression and, with the help of hormones, my body.
(My own gender dysphoria is comfortable with not having bottom surgery, at least at this time. That could change, obviously, but that’s where I’m at now.)
What I did not realize was that it wasn’t just my gender identity I had pushed out of my mind; it was ALL complex questions about sexuality and relationship identity. In the world I grew up in, the only safe way to be was to be a cis-Gen individual who was super romantic
(ie soulmates who provide everything you could ever need) and super monogamous
(because you’re with someone who can provide everything you would ever need, you have no need to think about intimacy from any other people).
On the other side of my transition, I’m having to explore ALL the questions I refused to acknowledge before my transition. And I’m just now coming to terms with just how different a human being I am in girl world than I was in boy world.
Some things are just because I’m not wasting time pretending things all the time, which leaves my brain a lot less cluttered.
Other things are due to the fact that I don’t think I know many
(or any???) answers, I’m much more collaborative with others, especially my wife. My wife and I are an objectively superior lesbian couple than we ever were in cis-gen world.
But still others just seem so different that I’m kind of awestruck/terrified to see who I’m becoming.
On the positive side, I’m confident in a way that I’ve never been; I will no longer be gaslit by untruths simply because they are convenient for others. I did that for 46 years and I refuse to do it again.
(For example, I went to war with the DMV to get my gender marker when they tried to deny me despite the fact that I had all the necessary paperwork, recently! I didn’t back down until I got what I came for!)
On the negative side, I do have a lot of scary questions beyond that, though, for which I’m not willing to really share my thoughts just yet.
However, I was talking with a friend in the trans space who said I could share her words, since she’s further along and feels confident in them:
“My sexuality seems to be a lot more fluid than I’d essentially thought. I thought I was interested in only one gender, but, on the other side, it turns out I like more! I’m down with dicks, pussies, and those who cross the streams!
Whereas I was very monogamous before, it turns out I am not on the other side of all this; in fact I am very FIRMLY ethically non-monogamous. I grew up thinking polyamorous people were just selfish people who wouldn’t commit, but that’s not where this originates for me. Instead, the me that emerged on the other side of all of this believes no one can have all their needs met by a single other person. None of us believe we need only one friend in our lives; we understand that, when sex isn’t involved, we need more than one person. So why shouldn’t that be true when sex is involved?
My spouse and I had to have some long discussions about that and come up with some ground rules that are fair to both of us and to the people we play with. But it’s been incredible how amazingly supportive they are.”
I thought this was a pretty incredible take and made me feel more settled in my own time of asking a lot of uncomfortable, adolescent feeling questions. Anyone else out there that noticed more than just their gender changing in transition?
