Good morning All. Coffees on.

[Alice_Sybilina]

@Heather NicoleI love that. Sexuality is so misunderstood. We aren't bound by it and we can choose to love however we want. Everyone has preferences, but we hold the reigns in our own minds. 

[Ivy]

1 hour ago, Alice_Sybilina said:

Sexuality is so misunderstood. We aren't bound by it and we can choose to love however we want.

I have never been attracted to guys.  But I can easily imagine a situation where I would be happy to be with one. (the whole 9 yards)

 

(ps. that might be a bit excessive)

[Ivy]

Had a really good day yesterday.   I drove up to the mountains for my first in person meeting with the VA trans support group I have been meeting with online.  It was wonderful to be with the people in physical real life for a change.

That was the first time I have (knowingly) been with people like me.  Being accepted with hugs and all…

Even now when I remember I feel like dancing.

 

It was just a good day.

[Vidanjali]

20 hours ago, Bri2020 said:

MY SURGEON JUST QUIT!

 

Dang, @Bri2020. That's incredibly frustrating. I'm so sorry and I hope it gets sorted with as little stress as possible. 

 

19 hours ago, Alice_Sybilina said:

@Bri2020

 

I always knew I was different but I saw it as alien different.

 

I actually wish I was just full trans-woman because you get so many clues as to how that is supposed to look but being in the middle is terrible for identity issues.

 

Wishing I was one of the girls, that is powerful. There's been so many times I wish I could just be with that crowd but I felt like everyone would see me as predatory.

 

...how do you protect yourself when you're the scariest thing you have ever encountered?

 

@Alice_SybilinaI relate so much to this. The alien feeling of nonbinary. So much time I've spent staring at myself in the mirror trying to make sense of what I see. Wishing I would finally figure out what I am. Feeling ashamed for my penchant for wearing masculine things I'd get from thrift shops. For years presenting as hyper femme for fear if I didn't, others would detect my monstrosity. Having learned how to be with women, still terrified they'd see me as predatory because I'm not actually a woman although I ostensibly look like one (so I'm told). At worst, and thank God this has gotten better, actually believing that I'm a shapeless blob creature who did harm to all I encountered just by existing. I am grateful I finally came across the context and syntax of nonbinary to at least come to understand that there are others like me. Just having that connection made a monumental difference for me. But still working on how I relate to people one on one. 

 

19 hours ago, Alice_Sybilina said:

And I didn't even talk about the attraction thing. I've always saw the beauty in men, but I could never admit it. 

 

I figured, like most folks, that I was straight by default. I'm actually ace and panromantic. I have been with my male partner for 8 years now. He is my soulmate. In retrospect I realize how much damage I did to myself by trying to overcompensate for not being sexual, and how much hurt and confusion I caused by my behavior when I was actually in love with people who are not men but didn't know it. Meanwhile, I hated myself so very much. Mercifully, I have learned a great deal about what love is since then. 

 

7 hours ago, Elizabeth Star said:

while I was explaining, to my wife, what they had in stock the cashier asks me what flavor nic-juices "he" might like. Wait, the cashier just assumed the person I'm calling baby and dear on the phone is a man? Really? My deductive reasoning says she only saw me as a hetero woman from the moment I entered the shop. I take it as a big win for passing but fail for guessing my sexuality. Maybe in a way they're both wins.

 

 

That's really cool. A great confidence boost. True, there's the heteronormative thing, but in the context of passing, I'd focus on win-win. 

 

6 hours ago, Shay said:

@Elizabeth Star certainly a positive day. Glad to hear it. My wife is just starting to use my name once and a while so like your wife I'm happy because she is making an effort.

 

My husband still refers to me as "lady" and "woman". He also calls me "dude" and we have this whole thing about us just being a couple of dudes. In fact, none of those are quite right. I haven't found it in my heart to contradict him, mostly because I'm trying to be sensitive to his adjustment. Also, because I'm not sure what I'd prefer to be called (he also calls me baby and sweetheart which I like). The other day I was making us nachos and he proclaimed sort of jokingly I'm a good woman. I told him: I'm just a soul wearing a lady costume. It just popped into my mind and came out of the mouth. 

 

[Bri2020]

4 hours ago, Jackie C. said:

 

Did he quit quit or just move hospitals? My surgeon did that to me and it means more paperwork, but I'm paying out of pocket anyway. Is he just your boob guy or is he doing something else too? Insurance is kind of a PITA by design, there might be a way to pay out of pocket and get compensated by insurance later if you can float it. Either way, best of luck either replacing or following him.

 

Hugs!

He's leaving Johns Hopkins to fo to Boston. That takes him out of Kaiser's system. Hopkins has no transgender surgeons now and is "currently looking for a suitable replacement"  He was my FFS/Vaginoplasty guy.  I'm working on getting an emergency authorization with Kaiser to go out of network and ve fully covered.  I won't know for 2 weeks but IF it's approved my case manager said she would work on getting both surgeries approved. They hadn't officially approved my FFS but paid for my CT scans in prep for it which allowed me to start the consult process with the old Dr.  Now she said she would just try and get the full approval for FFS even though they weren't going to officially submit my original request until September.  IF all this happens, I could still get my FFS by winter since this guy isn't as backed up. And, potentially my vaginoplasty shortly after that since she is going to submit that on approval request in September even though I wouldn't have even gotten my FFS consult done. They know that with Hopkins out of action, all the other surgeons in the mid-atlantic are going to get overloaded quick.

[Heather Shay]

@Vidanjali "I'm just a soul wearing a lady costume." That is certainly the artist in you coming out. Finding out what is the best or most comfortable to call you is going to take a while as I am just getting used to being a she/her now and certainly can't fault anyone making the wrong choice being most have always known me the other way. We are creatures of habit and it is easier to keep a bad habit then to break it and start another one.

[April-Showers]

i've read a lot of posts about how difficult or even almost impossible it is for some of your wives to accept you. many of you tell your wives many years later and then have a problem. i may ask a lot of questions that may seem 'well duh' to you but i do try to be objective. when you decided to marry her didn't it occur to you that maybe you should try to explain to her your feelings before the wedding to see what her acceptance would be? maybe you thought being married would somehow 'cure' you of your feelings? i am not criticizing what any of you did and would never do that because we are all different, but wouldn't it have been more fair to her if you had let her know before you married her? or was the love so strong that you had a fear that she wouldn't want to marry you if she knew and you didn't want to chance losing her? it seems to me before you marry someone, if you have something that is so important such as this you'd want to be sure your future spouse was ok with it or at least would know and then be able to decide if they wanted to marry you.  thank you.

[Jackie C.]

I can't speak for everybody, but I was thinking, "Eh, I can maintain the charade for a few more years until I manage to kill myself." I was just trying to run out the clock.

 

She was the most important person to tell when I hit the, "Not one more day." point though. Nobody else really mattered. As long as I had her support, I could do anything.

 

Hugs!

[Billie75B]

@April-Showers I think a lot of us at the time we got married we didn't know what our issue was. As for me when my late wife and I got married in 1990 I had no clue why or what I felt let alone be able to tell her. I will say though I think she understood me better than myself. She would make comments like stop acting like a girl, or I swear I think you are a girl sometimes and I always took as an insult, but now I just wonder if she could see who I really was.

 

Billie

[Alice_Sybilina]

I knew about my sexuality and was up front before I ever met my wife. But yeah, I didn't know what my problem was other than that. I was just scared and worried all the time. I only knew I didn't feel like I fit in and I was very up front with her about that too. You are right, but there's a difference between withholding information and not having grown enough to understand yourself. 

[Confused1]

2 hours ago, April-Showers said:

i've read a lot of posts about how difficult or even almost impossible it is for some of your wives to accept you. many of you tell your wives many years later and then have a problem. i may ask a lot of questions that may seem 'well duh' to you but i do try to be objective. when you decided to marry her didn't it occur to you that maybe you should try to explain to her your feelings before the wedding to see what her acceptance would be? 

 

Hi @April-ShowersLike Billie's comment, I got married in 1980 and had no clue what was going on in my head. Back then it seemed the only 2 choices were straight or gay. I didn't hear the term transgender until well over 20 years past that. I certainly never heard of non binary, so I couldn't explain myself to myself, much less to her. I didn't want to be alone and fell in love with my wife, still am. I had already learned how to "man up" pretty well and didn't have that much dysphoria most of my life. A medical condition forced me to figure out and face who I am. I didn't come out to myself until less than 2 years ago. That's when the ride started.....

 

Mike

[Ivy]

2 hours ago, Billie75B said:

I think you are a girl sometimes and I always took as an insult, but now I just wonder if she could see who I really was.

Sometimes those close to us see more than we realize.

[Confused1]

On 7/13/2021 at 5:56 PM, KymmieL said:

I just wrote them all down. Total I have had 50. Including 11 white, 9 blue, 7 green, 5 maroon,  4 silver,3 ea in tan, black.  2 ea gold and brown, one each in red, orange,yellow, and gray.

 

That list doesn't include the 4 Harleys, a Honda 3 wheeler. ATC and a 80cc 4 wheeler. 

 

Kymmie 

 

 

Wow Kymmie, I thought I had a lot of vehicles! You blew me out of the water. I had 20 vehicles plus some motorcycles. 6 white, 4 blue, 4 grey, 2 green, 2 yellow, 1 maroon, 1 red. Did almost all maintenance myself. Two Mercedes Diesels went over 200k, one of those over 300k. Both were high mileage when I bought them. Had 4 Ford products go well over 200k. Still driving one of them. It isn't far from 300k. Getting harder to work on them with all the changes happening?

 

Mike

[April-Showers]

1 hour ago, Confused1 said:

Wow Kymmie, I thought I had a lot of vehicles! You blew me out of the water. I had 20 vehicles plus some motorcycles. 6 white, 4 blue, 4 grey, 2 green, 2 yellow, 1 maroon, 1 red. Did almost all maintenance myself. Two Mercedes Diesels went over 200k, one of those over 300k. Both were high mileage when I bought them. Had 4 Ford products go well over 200k.

i've only had 3 cars. my dad bought me a new 2015 ford mustang for my 16th birthday. then we traded it for a 2018 ford mustang. then just a few days ago i got my new 2021 ford bronco. i love the bronco because it gives me a lot more room to transport cats & kittens for the shelter. and i like the looks of it. anyhoo....i've not had as many cars as most of you but maybe it's because i'm only 22 years old. lol i'll probably have a lot more in the future. thank you.  

[Vidanjali]

3 hours ago, Jandi said:

Sometimes those close to us see more than we realize.

 

So true. When I came out to my husband as enby & ace, he was like oh, of course you are.

 

@April-Showers when I got married I had never even heard of trans-nonbinary or asexuality. I knew that I had overcome decades of profound mental illness to become happier and higher functioning than I could have previously imagined, and assumed with continued effort my mental health would continue to improve. What I didn't understand at the time was that there were certain things about me that didn't need fixing, rather they needed to be allowed to shine forth. 

[Susan R]

5 hours ago, April-Showers said:

when you decided to marry her didn't it occur to you that maybe you should try to explain to her your feelings before the wedding

As many of us here and the others in many different threads have explained…it’s much more complex than just simply sitting down, having a coffee and telling your perspective spouse, “Oh before we plan our honeymoon, I need to tell you something… I want to transition. I’ve always been a <insert lifelong gender issue here>.”

 

Many of us are from a different time with no web to get information, no helpful support, and a society that would completely ostracize you if they knew your truth. Many of us also believed every time we purged that we could actually control it for the rest of our lives. Suppression and denial was king. It was never a temporary purge as if you just needed a break from crossdressing, cross-socializing, cross-role taking, etc… We thought it was for good. So when we finally found the person of our dreams, we actually went into it thinking we could give it all up once and for all not believing we would fail.

 

I agree honesty is almost always the best policy in any relationship (unless they’re asking you how they’re outfit looks). In some of our minds, we believed the past was the past and we turned a new leaf to make a fresh start. Many of us accepted ourselves for a time in our faux personas. As fate would have it, it was a pipe dream and eventually we desire truth and eventually full disclosure.

 

In retrospect, my wife and I have thought about what I did by not telling her outright about who I was before moving up from CA and starting a life with me. She said with 3 young girls, her life stage back then and understanding of LGBTQ issues in 1996, we would not be together today. She would’ve never moved here to WA. and we would not be in a loving caring marriage right now.

 

So, was it wrong not to disclose my entire previous life living part time as woman?…yes, of course! But then, was it overall the best thing for us given end result? the answer is still, yes! It’s confusing when doing the wrong thing for right reason is the best outcome in the end.

 

Susan R?

[Ivy]

3 hours ago, Jandi said:

5 hours ago, Billie75B said:

I think you are a girl sometimes and I always took as an insult, but now I just wonder if she could see who I really was.

Sometimes those close to us see more than we realize.

I was still deep in transphobic denial at the time, but my wife (at the time) came back from a visit with friends where she had met a trans woman and told me that they reminded her of me.  I wasn't actually offended, but I didn't know how to take it.  

 

[Beatriz]

6 hours ago, April-Showers said:

when you decided to marry her didn't it occur to you that maybe you should try to explain to her your feelings before the wedding to see what her acceptance would be?

Hi @April-Showers Like others, I didn't know I was transgender when I started my relationships. I thought I was a guy with issues: tendency to depression, to isolation, etc. Back then there was no trans, you were straight or gay, and I liked women. Like others, I got comments in the direction of "you behaved like a woman", "if you were a man you'd do x", but I never joined the dots or even saw any dots that needed joining.

[KathyLauren]

7 hours ago, April-Showers said:

it seems to me before you marry someone, if you have something that is so important such as this you'd want to be sure your future spouse was ok with it or at least would know and then be able to decide if they wanted to marry you.  

 

The thing is, many of us didn't know.  We didn't know what it was.  We didn't know how important it was.  We didn't know that it was who we were. 

 

I didn't figure it out until I was 61.  I had been married 12 years at that point.  And as soon as I knew, I did tell her.  Okay, maybe not "as soon as".  I had to work up the nerve to tell her, because I knew it would be a shock and that it had the potential to disrupt our marriage.  But I did work up the nerve, and I did tell her.  ANd we survived.

 

So the question isn't why did we not tell our future spouses.  The real question is how could we not have known.  Yeah, good question.  In hindsight, the signs should have been obvious.  There were enough of them.  Every now and then, I will recognize another one and do a Homer Simpson "D'oh!" 

 

Why didn't we recognize them at the time?  Denial.  The times we lived in didn't allow for that sort of thing.  You weren't allowed to ask, either.  So, to survive, we hid the truth even from ourselves.  We just couldn't know what it all meant.

[Alice_Sybilina]

Man up, sack up, grow a pair, be a real man, stop acting like a b****, you're being a p****, only f*** act like that, what's wrong with you, how messed up are you, you'll never find someone to love you if you don't change, no son of mine, get some hair on your chest, you'll grow out of it... I'm glad the newer generation doesn't always have to hear these things. These things crush children. These things crush adults. Especially when there was no where to validate that you weren't alone. 

 

I'm sorry to spit those all out in a row, I despise every single one of those phrases. 

[Alice_Sybilina]

Is still hard not to say these things to myself. It's that ingrained into some of us. 

[Alice_Sybilina]

And I'm willing to bet that every single one of us born before 1990  would have at some point chosen not to be this way of we could have chosen that before we got to this point.

 

But we all still deserve love. And I know I'm sorry I couldn't have given my wife better guidance on who I was because I so desperately needed guidance on who I was

[Alice_Sybilina]

I still don't know who I am but I gave my wife the best version of me that I knew. If I'd have known, I would have risked losing her to tell her the truth. 

[Astrid]

3 hours ago, Susan R said:

So, was it wrong not to disclose my entire previous life living part time as woman?…yes, of course! But then, was it overall the best thing for us given end result? the answer is still, yes! It’s confusing when doing the wrong thing for right reason is the best outcome in the end.

 @Susan R-- you've beautifully captured a dilemma that so many of us have faced.  Thank you for taking the time for this, and for so many other thoughtful replies here.

 

With gratitude,

 

Astrid

[Heather Nicole]

I just want to take a step back for a second and point something out. How FANTASTIC is it that there are now trans people who only learn about the self-denial stuff from talking to earlier generations because they didn't have to go through it themselves? If that isn't progress, then I don't know what is. Feeling a bit of a pride moment here.