{"id":35955,"date":"2017-10-06T08:00:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T15:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=35955"},"modified":"2019-07-24T11:05:12","modified_gmt":"2019-07-24T18:05:12","slug":"should-i-tell-my-partner-about-my-gender-dysphoria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/dear-gt\/should-i-tell-partner-about-gender-dysphoria","title":{"rendered":"Should I Tell My Partner About My Gender Dysphoria?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear GoodTherapy.org,<\/span><\/p>\n

I need some friendly feedback with a problem I am stuck with. I am a 60-year-old male who was diagnosed 23 years ago with gender dysphoria<\/a>. I have just “dealt” with it by staying in the closet, seeing a therapist as needed, and basically choosing not to entertain the idea of transition for family concerns. I am now single again, have met a nice cis woman, and would like to get serious\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut I am unsure if I should be totally open about this part of me. I have always been a person of integrity, honest and truthful, which sometimes hurts others but it’s who I am.<\/p>\n

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When I shared this with a woman once before, it ruined a chance for marriage. She was unable to even talk about it and chose to walk away. I never transitioned even partially or lived as the opposite gender. Is it important that I mention this now?<\/p>\n

I realize society is more supportive than ever before, but there are still plenty of folks in the world who abhor anything that does not fit into the male-female binary. I have read numerous accounts where other men in a similar situation never said anything, got married, then out of the blue would share this part of them or would start cross-dressing again and naturally the wife was taken by surprise, shocked, and confused. Usually, the marriage ends and everyone is hurt.<\/p>\n

I haven’t cross-dressed\u00c2\u00a0in 20 years\u00c2\u00a0and have no plans to start up again, but this doesn’t ease my fear at what might happen if I come clean with my new partner and prospective wife. What to do?\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u201dQuestioning<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Questioning,<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you so much for writing in with this topic.<\/p>\n

When I first sat down to reply, my inclination was to offer what I hope will be received as comfort: reassurance that you have multiple choices regarding your own communication. You are under no moral obligation to disclose any idea about gender<\/a> (or anything else) to another person if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to. Your gender is your truth, and your gender does not make up the entirety of who you are.<\/p>\n

But I imagine you are writing to a therapy website for a reason. If you were okay continuing to do what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve already done in relationships<\/a> (after at least one very powerful, very negative experience disclosing in the past), I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think you would have taken the time to construct this letter.<\/p>\n

I would like to gently challenge the narrative you have about your disclosure \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ruining a chance for marriage,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d shifting the blame away from you individually. Was it not your partner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rigidity about sex and gender that pushed you away? Can we think about this as a paradigm incompatibility rather than a mistake you yourself made?<\/p>\n

In general, if someone is looking for a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153serious\u00e2\u20ac\u009d relationship (as you say you are now), a critical part of the early stages is getting to know the other person and collecting evidence for whether you will be compatible long-term, is it not? It sounds like some of the anxiety you are experiencing is the normal anxiety of any person in a new relationship\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Will this person turn and run if I share what I really feel inside? Is it safe to trust this person?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Of course, in your case, some of the baggage also carries a gendered focus you have been painfully discouraged from sharing in the past. So far, though, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve only alluded to a sharing of ideas<\/em>, which I hope any partner would remain available for.<\/p>\n

I think deconstructing and delineating gender roles is helpful in any relationship, not just in a relationship where one partner is transgender<\/a> or gender dysphoric. It sounds like you may not decide to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153medically\u00e2\u20ac\u009d transition in a surgical or hormonal sense, but wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it be nice to break out of the confines of masculinity as they may be prescribed upon you?<\/p>\n

I imagine you have witnessed a great deal of social change regarding gender roles across your lifespan. From this, and from other life experiences, what have you come you expect from yourself, and what do you need in order to feel supported, affirmed, and loved in your relationships? If this includes permission to be fluid and expansive in your expressions of gender, then that is something you are entitled to pursue. If this includes simply the space to air what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re thinking, free of judgment, that is also completely reasonable. If the relationship is healthy, your partner should not attempt to serve as some sort of mind police for which thoughts are and aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t okay for you to have and for you to explore. In my experience, our identities, thoughts, and desires are not very good at obediently conforming to socially-sanctioned categories.<\/p>\n

When I am working with someone who has come to therapy to explore their sense of gender identity, one of my subgoals is to help them seek out affirming community outside of the therapy room. Whether you decide to formally \u00e2\u20ac\u0153transition\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or not, having folks around who will appreciate your honesty and not force you to adapt to rigid and even false categories will help you feel more liberated in all of your relationships.<\/p>\n

You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mention what region you live in, but I will acknowledge that certainly some places are friendlier than others toward those who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fit into a simple male-female binary where biological sex and expressed gender align. I also won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pretend that my own age bracket (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m 29) isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t generally more accepting of gender expansion than your generation in many cases. But that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean the resources for support and understanding aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t out there. To find in-person support, PFLAG<\/a>, a wide-ranging national organization, should be able to connect you to affirming transgender resources within an hour\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s travel or so of where you are living if you are living in the States. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve also listed some other online communities in the Resources section at the end of this article.<\/p>\n

It is nice to have the freedom to speak difficult and complicated truths within our partnerships. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just nice: this freedom also forms the foundation of safety and trust.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have found that establishing a social support net that can \u00e2\u20ac\u0153catch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d you when the going gets tough\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhether this support comes remotely or in-person\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcan, in a sense, lower the stakes of a relationship. You have reinforcement. But that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that there isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a specially-reserved form of terror for our most intimate partnerships, particularly if we have experienced abandonment<\/a> following the decision to open up in the past.<\/p>\n

In 2007, I gave a report on what was then referred to as Gender Identity Disorder, which included a description of the legal entitlements of spouses to recipients of this diagnosis. If individuals were married, spouses used to be required to sign off on a medical decision if their partner was seeking sexual reassignment surgery. Remembering this report has me thinking now: what are the functions<\/em> of disclosing gender dysphoria to one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s partner? Is it to clear the air, or is it maybe to help them plan for some sort of action? It summons the idea that our identities<\/a> are most often formed in relation to others, and that to have a partner who challenges gender might mean we challenge our own identities, too. Marriage and intimate partnership can create a sort of collaborative identity formation, but this doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean you should sacrifice that which is precious to you.<\/p>\n

Are you interested in wearing differently-gendered clothing in the presence of your partner or in trying out different kinds of sex other than p-i-v intercourse? These are behaviors of interest to a broad range of people, including those who do not identify as trans. I do not ask these things to suggest that gender dysphoria is the same as having a cross-dressing kink, or is a kink at all. I ask because my ideas about communication<\/a> on the topic of gender dysphoria are informed by the same kind of openness and honesty I encourage when working with sexual minorities and kinksters.<\/p>\n

My concern for you continuing to maintain the status quo of past relationships is that our unrealized desires so often have a way of breeding resentment<\/a> if pushed away or neglected for too long, either by ourselves or by our partners. It seems you have more than two decades of experience with this.<\/p>\n

It is nice to have the freedom to speak difficult and complicated truths within our partnerships. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just nice: this freedom also forms the foundation of safety and trust. I am admittedly biased; as a relational therapist, I have a strong leaning to encourage others to put all their cards on the table and to keep the lines of communication open. But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not alone. For example, in his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sexpert\u00e2\u20ac\u009d blog, Reid Mihalko claims that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re NOT saying that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s damaging our relationships. He makes the following case for transparency:<\/p>\n

“If you share the things you think might end the relationship and the relationship doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t end, now you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re having a Relationship with a Capital R! Sure it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s scary to say the scary things, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bound to kick up a lot of emotional flotsam at times, but what if you and your partners could work through it? What if letting the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cat out of the bag\u00e2\u20ac\u009d built more trust and a deeper sense of security and intimacy than wondering if your partner is withholding important things from you?<\/p>\n

When you say what is not being said, especially the big, bad, hairy, scary stuff, you model for your loved ones that they can share all the things they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not saying, too. Over time, you get to know your partners more as they get to know you more, and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll realize that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re choosing to be in a relationship with the\u00c2\u00a0real you<\/em>, not some fa\u00c3\u00a7ade of who you think they need you to be.”<\/p>\n

I will admit that we do not live in a universally gender-progressive utopia, and it is certainly not often safe\u00e2\u20ac\u201demotionally or physically\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto disclose our grapplings with traditional gender roles. As an example of complex intersectional identities, Asiel Adan Sanchez shares a complex narrative about how their relationship to a Mexican cultural identity complicates their gender identity narrative and how the traditional notion of coming out\u00c2\u00a0<\/a>can lead to cultural and ethnic erasure. I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pretend these categories are simple. I also don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know your cultural context, your given family history, or how long your previous relationships lasted: certainly these factors can reasonably affect your choices about how you experience and express gender. Since you are the only one who has to live your life, only you can know what decisions are best for your specific context.<\/p>\n

Your letter brings to the surface so many ethical quandaries we all wrestle with regarding intimate disclosure! To what extent are our partners entitled to the regulation of our minds and of our bodies? No matter how you answer these questions for yourself and your new relationship, I sincerely hope you find a safe, affirming, and healthy way to explore feelings, roles, and identities\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnot just in a confidential therapy room or anonymous online forum, but in the safety of romantic partnership as well. I wish you the best!<\/p>\n

Warmly,<\/p>\n

Sharon Glassburn, LMFT<\/a><\/p>\n

References:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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  1. Adan Sanchez, A. (2017, July 7). The whiteness of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccoming out\u00e2\u20ac\u2122: culture and identity in the disclosure narrative. Archer Magazine<\/em>. Retrieved from http:\/\/archermagazine.com.au\/2017\/07\/culture-coming-out<\/li>\n
  2. Mihalko, R. (2012, March 20). Say what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not being said: Reid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s formula for difficult conversations. Reid About Sex<\/em>. Retrieved from http:\/\/reidaboutsex.com\/difficult-conversation-formula<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Resources:<\/strong><\/p>\n