A little more conversation please

Communication is key and yet even those of us who think we are good at it can lose it when emotions get involved.  If your partner has told you they are trans, from that point on, if you have decided to stay together and support one another; and yes it is a case of supporting one another, it is not just the trans person who may need support, then you have got to have absolute honestly from that point on.

I know you might be crying out, ‘but he wasn’t honest that he hid it from me for years.’  Maybe not, but that may be because he could not be honest with himself about it.  You have to move on, and to do that you have to leave things in the past.  I am not suggesting sweep them under the carpet or to forget the past, because you can learn from it.  Put yourself in the other person’s shoes, just don’t get bitter about it by spitting out some poisonous insult about his shoes not fitting you.  

I personally absolutely cannot stand, what I call ‘game play’.  Someone said to me last week, ‘I’m sure every man in history at some point has had a woman say to him, “well if you don’t know what’s wrong, I’m not going to tell you”.’ Not from me he hasn’t.  If this is your attitude don’t expect to resolve it, because no one is a mind reader and none of us are holier than thou.   It is not helpful to speculate what the other person is thinking or feeling and if you make them jump to an assumption and guess, they might not get it.  If you have something to say, spit it out and then talk about it like adults.

Depending on the specifics of your relationship, i.e. how long you have been together, when and how your partner has confessed he is trans, afterwards you are likely to both be oversensitive and maybe draw back any ‘normal’ argument to the issue being caused by the trans elephant in the room. 

Pst, here’s a secret, not everything in your relationship has now become about trans.  If it is usual for you to get pissed off at your partner forgetting to put the rubbish out, don’t make it about it him being trans; ‘he probably forgot to put the bins out because he was too busy thinking about dressing’.   It’s bitter, ridiculous and doesn’t help either of you.

I guess what I am saying is, as much as you both might not want to, give each other a break if you are in the raw stages of coming to terms with being in a trans relationship. Communicate, communicate, communicate.