Being Un-manly Emotional

[Guest bronx]

True story Evan, I have found that since I've both aged and ahve been on T for 2yrs that I can walk away, don't like it but it is better in the long run. As far as my personal realationships are I can fall back so to say and not act on emotion as much as I did b4.

I don't blame my childhood as much as I'm an adult and know thing better now, but it is a process one in the same.

[Guest Evan_J]

(And its a heck of a process aint it? )

Of course now if you wanted to know "why " you were so reactive in those kinds of relationships.....couple of possibilities.....one is that you could be hanging a lot of "unfulfilled needs" on the relationships. With me, I finally discovered that I actually had 9000 unfillable (unfillable by a mere human woman anyway ) needs that had accumulated through a lifetime. Yep, I wanted one person to stand in for 10 different people who hurt or neglected me over the span of many years (including and maybe especially in childhood) and "fix" all the things they'd done wrong before . That made the demand on a person I was with epic in size; they needed to be mother, best friend, sex godess, ....a long list. AND NOT SCREW UP CUZ IT'D BEEN SCREWED UP BEFORE. That a hard job to pull. My emotions to screwing up were tweeked to level a million because of the previous time. Thats one possible cause of your excessive reactions, if it is you need to look at what those old situations are.

[Guest My_Genesis]

lol, i have a lot of "unfulfilled needs." my counselor/therapist person at school (she was a psych intern....just got her degree) told me maybe the reason im bad at empathizing is because my parents, rather than showing empathy, always criticized me when something was wrong. so that's my automatic reaction when other people have problems.

that's just one example....

anyways, i think its about the way you express emotions, more than emotions themselves. like you cant really say guys never get sad, they just express it differently. so ultimately you're just saying that the way your reacting tends to be a more feminine reaction?

i think i get angry and frustrated more often and more easily than most bioguys do. im also not as good at managing those emotions. i dunno what that says about anything, or if it even does (i think a lot of it has to do with NOT being a bioguy myself.) i think also, its not that guys never cry, they just arent so crazy about doing it in front of other people, and having a bunch of their friends come around and comfort them

i think guys can be outwardly stoic even if they internally feel emotional. i think were wired to be that way....at least for me, i naturally am not one to immediately have an emotional outburst expressing everything im feeling. i dont want to say repress, thats kind of too negative of a word...but my first instinct is just to let it pass, and not discuss it with anyone.

i wouldnt blame it on estrogen lol, if you want a good idea of a fairly masculine guy who can also be described as "emotional", check out the lead singer of the band in my avi.

im just curious as to why your original post was reported? or was it a mistake? lol.

oh and PS...i think a lot of it is just insecurity, i also know a lot of bioguys who are more emotional than i am, express sadness more than i do, etc., but maybe that's just because theyre secure enough to do so, simply because they already have a male body i think that it's a lot harder for us to feel secure with our masculinity since that's what we lack. i dunno, that's my theory.

oh and not sure exactly what you mean by "personal relationships"....but i do know something i see a lot is a guy who barely ever shows any emotions then bring into the picture someone they like who doesnt like them back, dumped them, or whatever else...and suddenly theyre an emotional wreck. lol

[Guest Jeannine Bean]

God help us we are so screwed up! I know we are all trans-something here or at best gender dysphoric. Emotions? Oh My Goodness do we have them, and we have all these stereotype ideas!

My dad beat the peewaddly outa me so many times that I learned never to cry when he did so because it only made it worse. I had to build a suit of armor to survive the male games at school. I couldn't cry when I wanted, so...

I just got angry...

I just got super aggressive...

I just broke things...

It was the accepted way... people understood that's how I acted out my male frustrtion... well, they never realized I was also countering my real impulses... and the tesosterone running in my body made it worse... don't cry, destroy - augggggghhhh

So I did this in relationships. When I screwed up and hurt someone - ANGER! If it was my fault (usually was) FLY INTO A RAGE. What I really wanted to say is 'I am SOOOOO sorry!" No... couldn't. Wouldn't be acceptable.

So to answer the TOPIC - was I ever un-manley emotional? YES - but internally - and secretly - sobbing my eyes out behind closed doors. How could I be like that, acting out - it wasn't me... Testosterone poisoning? Probably - didn't help.

BUT on HRT now - estrogen? It helps - but I still RAGE sometimes, old habit - I still lash out sometime - still using those male tools - powerful tools - scary power being masculine - bull your way through to a solution.

But the difference? Its diminishing now. That's good. BUT the main thing? Bad move in a relationship? Afterwards I cry for two hours, openly and unabasedly... I am soooo upset. I am soooo ready to never do it again - to hurt someone.

I know relationships are tough. I know it is soooo easy to lose it... lose your cool.... lash out... or just sob and sob!

I am coming from the opposite direction - MTF. I see my aggrssion turning away and becoming emotional regression into a misery that is resolved by crying my eyes out. I am losing my armor and learning how to handle a very volutile female reaction, remorse and a feeling of rejection. It's difficult to handle this change, but it works in ways that make me feel more secure in my being - as I have always really been female anyway. It's an expresion of my being now, something I need not hide anymore.

As a FTM, you will build that suit of armor. You will learn to 'suck it up." I wouldn't want it, just like you hate being 'un-manly emotional." So we pass like two trains on parallel tracks going opposite ways.

I suppose we will transition - our problems are our missing childhoods. I missed my girlhood, you missed your boyhood. It is difficult for me to go back to what I need to be - a 14 year old girl talking with my friends about relationships. It is difficult for you to go back and be on the freshman footbll team getting the snot beat out of you by upperclassmen.

But we learn. Transition will make us approximations of out true selves. I may still rage a bit as a woman, you will still cry a bit as a man. BUT if you think it out?

We are dual natured anyway - so it's no big deal.

Wow Elizabeth! You make me feel lucky. My mom was the raging abusive one who'd threaten to kill me, and my dad was the gentle one who held me and cried and cried when he found out that was going on.

And I grew up talking to girls or to boys about my relationships... I once thought about joining the football team but ended up doing theatre instead. I think I liked mom throwing the football around with me, but once I started playing, the game was boring in some ways. I can throw a football now and I LIKE watching the super bowl with friends... my last girlfriend taught me to say, "Dunjee likes the Running game but Parcell likes to Air it out." I can "pass" okay in a football discussion if everyone has had a few drinks.

LOL, none of that has much to do with sexual identity for me. But I think it's my generation or something.

Though I concur boys are so violent. I was beaten up a few times. Once I was peed on. I never learned to quite "suck it up"... and I never quite learned how not to come across as a raging case of the gay... and I ended up becoming quite the violent freak-out session person as well. I did not really learn to calibrate my reactions to most people as if they might really truly like me and want to be my friend until I was in my 20s. Until then I could only calm down and trust my closest friends. My close girlfriends ended up being basket cases in their own right, with my highschool friend and sometimes sweetie being a religious nutjob who thought self gratification was "demonic" and my and my other best friends transsexualism was also brought on by Satan.

As odd as I may be, as a transwoman, I think planet earth is sometimes the twilight zone.

Wow, I'm Ms. Rambly this morning, eh?

--Jeannine

[Guest Jeannine Bean]

(And its a heck of a process aint it? )

Of course now if you wanted to know "why " you were so reactive in those kinds of relationships.....couple of possibilities.....one is that you could be hanging a lot of "unfulfilled needs" on the relationships. With me, I finally discovered that I actually had 9000 unfillable (unfillable by a mere human woman anyway ) needs that had accumulated through a lifetime. Yep, I wanted one person to stand in for 10 different people who hurt or neglected me over the span of many years (including and maybe especially in childhood) and "fix" all the things they'd done wrong before . That made the demand on a person I was with epic in size; they needed to be mother, best friend, sex godess, ....a long list. AND NOT SCREW UP CUZ IT'D BEEN SCREWED UP BEFORE. That a hard job to pull. My emotions to screwing up were tweeked to level a million because of the previous time. Thats one possible cause of your excessive reactions, if it is you need to look at what those old situations are.

I had a girlfriend once say, wise beyond her years at 23: "We expect a lot more from lovers than we do from friends, and most of it is completely unreasonable."

I've since worked a lot to keep in mind that my lovers are just people. "She's just another woman" or "he's just another man" are tough pills to swollow when we start feeling all those mystical love feelings that no one understands but us two... but that pill keeps me sane about it. I may like the person a lot. I may even love the person dearly. I may even choose to spend years or decades with that person. But They're always just another person, a human being who can be inconsistent and have their own frames that they function within, that might not fit my own frames.. I don't expect more of them than anybody else I run into. Why should I?

And yes, I find a new depth in all that. One that's ultimately more satisfying to me because it's well grounded in reality, and I'm not working at connecting to some fantasy every time I touch the person..

To me there are no 10s... I dated a guy who looked like a model one time, I thought he was a ten. He was a complete adrenaline junkie and always wanted everything, "now now now." I couldn't deal. Then I dated a woman who was a dead ringer for Mila Jovovich. I thought she was a Ten. Then she was so full of inward turned anger, that ended up being a particularly bitter spitefulness towards anyone she didn't like. I ditched her for a cute Yoga teacher.

Anyways, I'm sure you know most of this... it's just my contribution to the public conversation because of what you said, Evan.

--Jeannine