I need some help

submitted by FearfulFriend from self.GenderCritical

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[–]Comatoast 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (17 children)

Yeah, I can imagine that you feel like pure shit. Losing a part of your support system when you need them the most is going to trudge up feelings of resentment. You're going through the echoes of divorce. You need to find a more stable support to hang onto until you can get back to emotional normalcy. Most of all, watch yourself. You're vulnerable right now, so be extra careful about where you're looking for comfort. Prioritize yourself.

[–]FearfulFriend[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (16 children)

She's actually the one who physically got me out of the bad marital situation (my husband was emotionally abusive, not physically, but I still felt unsafe and needed help getting out) and took care of my child for me while I was dealing with the immediate fallout. And it was she who said the thing that made me realize I needed to STAY out of the marriage once I got out initially. Which was a big thing that she did for me that I am grateful for because the way that she said it was a way that was unique to her--you know? You have a lot of friends and you love them all but this one friend connects with you in a unique way that makes you understand things? She is that friend.

[–]BEB 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

Wow, that is sad and thanks for explaining more.

I too have that "special" friend. She lives in a country far away and we haven't seen each other physically for years. We have had major disagreements too during that time, but always manage to find each other again, which gives me hope that you and your friend, given how profound your friendship has been, will get through it.

I would just be supportive of her as a person without being actually encouraging. Given your ages (before Queer Theory threw a hand grenade at "sex", which maybe we should now refer to as Before Q.T.), I think her feelings about manhood won't last long, especially when confronted with reality.

Many posters on here have had made excellent suggestions, so please feel like you have friends on here, who you can turn to, if for nothing else than just to "talk."

[–]FearfulFriend[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

She has been wanting to be a man since we met in the nineties so I think the feelings themselves will last, but I don't know how she'll take to the real-life transition process and what that's like. It's honestly not that part that bothers me, it's that I don't know how to defend my mental boundaries in a way that isn't hurtful to her. I will say that she hangs out with much younger people quite a bit though and she does tend to be influenced by the people she hangs out with.

Thanks for offering to talk. It helps.

[–]FearfulFriend[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Having a few days to process has been vital--I appreciate everyone here and the two people IRL as well (the mutual friend who mediated between us and the friend from another social circle who privately admitted to me that he doesn't understand gender identity either).

I think separating my friendship from my views on gender, sex, and society in general is important. She's a unique person, not a representative of women with gender dysphoria. And we have a long friendship with an established pattern of interactions. Given my knowledge of her, I think there's a solid 50/50 chance she will desist. The more supportive I am of her transition, the more likely she will lose interest in it. On the other hand, if I support her transition and she doesn't lose interest and desist, it will still help both of us feel connected, and I don't actually have to change my general views just because of her. I think it's going to be okay. I hope. At least I haven't cried in 24 hours and that's something.

[–]BEB 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

That's great - glad you've been able to resolve some of this in your own head and that you have a friend who can mediate if further misunderstandings arise!

Also glad you have a friend to talk to about your misgivings regarding gender ideology.

And that you've stopped crying. You are not alone - many people (I read 1/3) are suffering from depression because of the pandemic, so I hope that you give yourself a break with all that's going on in your life!

[–]FearfulFriend[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

The friend who's mediating will, long term, side against me if negotiations break down. That is one of the reasons I was crying. She's mostly staying neutral at the moment because she's also been divorced and knows how badly it can freak a person out. But even at that, she's done me a huge favor just buying me some time, reassuring my other friend of my support and explaining that I'm too overwhelmed by other things to engage at the moment. It really is a huge favor whether it works out in the long run or not.

Anyway. The friend who's transitioning, taken as a unique individual whom I've known for a long time, likes to reinvent herself. She tends to completely take on the lifestyles and beliefs of the people she spends the most time with (in this case, it's young adults). She will completely devote herself to whatever idea/lifestyle/group she's in, then something will happen and she will break away from it and go back to "normal" for a while before reinventing herself another way. Most of the time, she retains whatever bit of the prior lifestyle she truly liked; or, sometimes, she rejects it for a while but then comes back around and re-adopts the part she truly liked. I am one of the things she always comes back to. She doesn't like when I "mother" her, which I stopped doing a long time ago anyway, but sometimes it does resemble the kind of relationship where a kid thinks something is cool until he sees his mom doing it and then nevermind. So I could totally see her going all in to the man thing and actually coming out of it sooner the more supportive of it I am. Then retaining whatever part she really liked, feeling OK about acting more assertive or whatever it is. OTOH, I've learned not to get attached to outcomes. Maybe she'll stay a man and I'll get used to the pronouns and she'll appreciate the effort and stay out of the inside of my mind. I can live with that. The worst-case scenario of being outed as gender-critical and rejected by everyone still scares me, but it's no longer the most likely scenario in my mind.

As for my friend who admitted to me that he too questions gender ideology, yeah, I realize it would be pretty cool to know people IRL who don't even have to really be GC but have just not totally swallowed QT. Maybe there are more people in my life who are afraid to question out loud.

[–]BEB 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I have friends and family who will literally do the opposite of what they think people want them to do, so your theory about going all in on the support making her pull out sooner might be right.

I must be really lucky (or just old) but there is no one I don't feel comfortable being openly GC around. I think it's the old part: as another poster on here said, 2nd Wave feminism inoculated a lot of us oldies against Queer Theory.

But I bring up the gender ideology issue constantly in interactions with strangers, now because of COVID, over the phone, and only politicians' offices seem to be supportive.

Most normal people in the US, in my experience, have just begun to notice that something is off, and, far from buying gender ideology, seem to think it's one of those crazy fads that will fade.

[–]FearfulFriend[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

When do you bring up gender ideology with strangers over the phone? Is it part of your job?

I must be caught in the middle age-wise, old enough to wonder how something that just got invented five minutes ago has suddenly become mandatory, but young enough that most of the people I know are going along with it. I mean I WANT everyone to be safe from violence and be treated fairly in housing/jobs/education/healthcare and not be discriminated against based on how they look, which was what I thought this was right up until Trump's inauguration brought the insanity out of the woodwork. Well! Time to go downtown wearing a pussy hat and waving around a copy of Harry Potter and seeing who gets more triggered, the conservatives or the liberals. :/

[–]BEB 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

No, it's not part of my job ;-) I'm just a naturally chatty person and somehow find a way to work the horrors of gender ideology into conversations.

Based on what you've said, I think you are at the age where some of your contemporaries have been swept in by gender ideology and some haven't.

I think we all want transgenders to have every human and civil right and to have an equal shot at happiness as everyone else. They just can't take ours.

I guess you didn't hear that pussy hats were banned from some Women's Marches not because of conservatives but because transgender activists said that a pink hat with cat ears were, wait for it... TRANSPHOBIC. So both your Harry Potter book and your pussy hat would trigger them, but do it anyway!

[–]FearfulFriend[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

yes, the women's march/pussy hat/transphobia thing was what peaked me. "Wait, there are people with penises telling people with vaginas what to do. Where...have I heard that before...? OMG MIND BLOWN"

[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

OP, I hope you are OK. I slept fitfully last night worrying that I was not kind enough to you, and wondering how you are.

But your most recent posts are making me think that something in your story isn't adding up.

In your original post, you said you couldn't sleep, eat or stop crying coz not over the prospect of losing your close friend who has now gone trans, but coz you were afraid all your (other) friends would cancel you if you weren't thrilled about this:

I have been crying for 2 days and can barely eat or sleep because I love her so much and I am scared that all of my friends will cancel me if I don't pretend to be happy for him.

It was you as a middle-aged woman saying that you've totally fallen apart coz you're "scared that all of my friends will cancel me" if you aren't fully on board with what they all think (or you think they all think) that didn't ring true to some of us oldsters here. That's why we expressed skepticism at first.

But from what you're now saying, it seems that the true cause of your distress is really your friend who has gone trans, yes?

Perhaps you fear her new identity - and her taking T - might change your relationship, and you won't be able to rely on her in future as in the past? Could it be you feel she's your "rock" and the "one person who really gets me" and nobody else in the world will ever make you feel the way she does/has? Are you perhaps perceiving her going trans as another loss, and having "anticipatory grief" over it?

Perhaps you're displacing some of the unresolved pain and distress you have over the end of your marriage and all the "loss of potential" divorce entails onto your friendship with this woman? And maybe you're experiencing her decision to change her identity and body as having something to do with you - and you and her? Since she helped you so much as your marriage was ending, maybe you've come to have a somewhat unrealistic, idealized and romanticized view of her in your mind, seeing her as a savior figure? Could it also be you're a little (or a lot) in love with her?

Whatever is really going on, I hope you will get professional help pronto from someone skilled helping people navigate and heal from the trauma and grief that divorce tends to cause. With telemedicine today, there are a lot of psychotherapy options online - many of them covered by insurance (dunno what country you're in though, so that might not be relevant). Sometimes even a few sessions with a dispassionate but compassionate person who is expert in divorce trauma and grief, and human psychology generally, can do wonders. Also, many therapists work on sliding scales.

If you've made it to middle-age, I imagine you have the mettle to get through this crisis in your life. It might not feel that way in the moment, but this moment will pass. Since you said you have children, do you remember what it was like going through what used to be called "transition" during labor - that incredibly painful time when the cervix expands the last bit, from 7 to 10 cm? This is another time of transition, albeit of an entirely different kind, in your life - as it is in your friend's. Again, best wishes to you.

(Aargh, writing that last passage made me aware of how difficult it is nowadays to use the word "transition" to mean what it meant before the Anglophone world got engulfed by transmania and gender ideologues started appropriating the terms used by various other groups - such as women, people with DSDs, and childbirth educators - and changing the meaning of those terms.)

[–]FearfulFriend[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

It's okay, I understand sometimes trolls come onto forums and post out of nowhere to get people riled up, and my initial post probably was overly dramatic, although overly dramatic is how I've been feeling. But I'm not hurt by you or anything.

I don't see her as a savior figure--she helped me greatly but there were also other people who helped me greatly, not JUST her.

I don't know how to give all the details without giving too much information, but word is already starting to spread that I am not 100% happy for "him," and I'm worried that I'll be branded a bigot and that she AND another close, mutual friend will cancel me. I'm a little less worried than I was when I first posted, because I talked to the other friend and she's keeping a cool head and offering to run interference until we both calm down. But only a little less worried, because it could still end badly.

And I mean, I'm not opposed to her transitioning per se, since she's old enough to know her own mind and heck, maybe it IS the right decision for her. It's more that I can't be like, oh rainbows and glitter YAY!! and I'm never going to believe she is actually male the same as a person who was born that way.

The way this connects with my divorce is that I loved my husband deeply and he rejected me and this has left me feeling too fragile to survive any more rejections.

I have a therapist but I haven't talked to her in a couple of months, because of some insurance headaches. Plus what if my therapist thinks I'm a terrible person for not being rainbows and glitter yay?

My first child came so fast that I didn't feel the transition, but the second one, I said something like "I'm not sure how much longer I can do this" and the midwives told me "It's almost over," but it actually wasn't almost over and I got kind of mad, but then I got kind of excited when they got out a bulb aspirator like they actually expected there was going to be a baby pretty soon. BOTH times I remember a sense of pressure releasing, followed by a blank spot in my memory, followed by being handed the baby. It would be pretty cool to release some pressure now!

[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Plus what if my therapist thinks I'm a terrible person for not being rainbows and glitter yay?

If your therapist judges you like that, he or she is a crap therapist. From what I understand, there are a lot of them about nowadays. I am so sorry if that's the kind of therapist you have.

Then again, in therapy, it's always been customary for clients to feel bashful and reluctant about divulging certain things for fear of the judgment they assume they will get in return. Sometimes/often this comes from clients believing that they not only can read other people's minds (including their therapists' minds), but they can do so in advance: I can't reveal my true thoughts or feelings to this person coz I already know what she or he will think and say, and that she or he will condemn and ostracize me. So why bother bringing the topic up at all?

A good therapist won't judge you, and should help you see that in fact none of us know ahead of time how others will react to our disclosures. What's more, it's perfectly possible - or it used to be - for humans to disapprove of what others believe and have done - and sometimes continue to do - but not write them off as "terrible people" overall. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said in "The Gulag Archipelago":

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart…even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an uprooted small corner of evil."

Also, what if your therapist did think you're "a terrible person for not being rainbows and glitter yay"? What is she or he going to do to you?

One of the most liberating moments in my life was when I realized in early adulthood that if I spoke up and stood my ground at work, in the classroom, or in public forums, people might say mean things about me and give me the cold shoulder, but it was highly unlikely that anyone in most work and social settings would smack me in the face or make me stand in the corner with the contents of a trash can dumped on my head the way the nuns in the RC convent school I attended as a child often did to us kids. Around the same time, I realized that never again would I have to put up with anyone in my intimate or family sphere hitting me with a paddle, punching me in the face, washing my mouth out with soap, sending me to bed without dinner, cutting off my allowance, etc - coz I was no longer powerless the way I had been as a child and teen.

OP, you're coming out of an emotionally abusive relationship. You say your husband rejected you; I imagine he probably did so in cruel ways. It's completely normal to assume and fear that the whole world is emotionally abusive and rejecting just like your husband was. And now your friend has discombobulated you by her decision to go trans.

I wish you the best. There are lots of people in the world who are not rigid gender ideologues. I hope, and trust, you will find some. Take care.

[–]FearfulFriend[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I did break down and talk to one friend from a different, but equally liberal, social circle. He's male, but he's one of the not-so-bad ones. He admitted that he also struggles with gender identity beliefs. I realized it would help a lot if I knew more people IRL who would just admit that they struggle with it. They don't have to be fully GC, just have some concerns.

[–]Comatoast 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Has your friendship changed in any way since your friend started transitioning?

[–]FearfulFriend[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's been less than a week since I found out and we haven't really talked since then. Our other friend brokered a deal where we get to still care about each other without talking until things calm down.