I don't want to put too many identifying details, but several months ago my boyfriend came out as "a woman". At the time I was supportive of TRAs and the trans narrative, but I was immediately distraught for a myriad of reasons. I'm not attracted to women (or men pretending they are), I suddenly realized that after several years in this relationship I'd never see him as a woman, which truly fucked with my sense of self and morality as I was completely taken by wokeness, and I truly thought this was the man I was going to marry when suddenly everything fell out from underneath me. I already have a history of depression, but this was the worst depression I have ever fallen into.

The first few months I said as little as possible, he was still "figuring it out" and had backtracked, saying he might be a nonbinary they. I was stupidly in love with him and figured I could tolerate that. I didn't broach the subject for the first few months, praying he'd come to his senses. Then suddenly he was dropping bombs like "here's a photo of me in my girl outfits" "here's the new name I want to try out" during the middle of my work days, and would send me spiraling over and over. I tried to set boundaries on when and how we would make progress on this, begged him to understand and empathize how hard it was for me and that it felt like I was losing him. He'd get aggressive if I didn't affirm his sexist reasons for thinking he's a woman, which mostly consisted of wanting to wear makeup, skirts, and shaving his pits. I'd argue that is not what makes me a woman, and he'd get really mad.

at one point I tried communicating how depressed I was feeling, and he shut me down and basically said that he'd been noticing I was a downer recently and that he really didn't like talking to me at that moment. I was in so much fucking pain, I reached out to the only person I could have at the time, the person I had previously trusted to empathize with me completely, and he shat all over me. And the worst part looking back on it now is that I spent that entire conversation apologizing! I was sobbing and crying about being sorry for not communicating my thoughts on all of it because I was holding it all in to not hurt his feelings. By then his misogynistic reasons for wanting to transition had begun to unwind the ridiculous, regressive trans logic for me and I knew I could not 100% affirm him. I was afraid if I didn't he would kill himself or something, as the conflated suicide statistic really took hold in my brain.

I suffered for the better part of a year trying to come to terms with all of this, which in hindsight is honestly shameful to me. It embarrasses me so much that I let him treat me the way he did for so long. I eventually got him to apologize for some things, but when I brought them up again he seemed very annoyed, very much in a "this again? I apologized already move on!" kind of way. Every online advice post or forum of this situation you find calls the non-trans partners bigots for leaving and a whole slew of other terrible shit, which also fucked with me emotionally so hard in the beginning when I had no support and couldn't talk to anyone. Thankfully I eventually found Ovarit, where I would lurk every day to get a shot of sanity. I truly began peaking from there.

I finally figured out that the boyfriend I loved had either died, or had never truly been who I thought he was, and left. I've been healing and making progress, but he recently came out on social media. Someone in my family I hadn't told sent it to me and I realized a whole bunch of my friends had liked it and were celebrating him. Not one even reached out to me to ask how I'm doing, or even if the relationship is still in tact. They weren't even shared friends, they were my friends and only knew him through me. I wish I could say this wasn't devastating and it didn't completely fuck up a lot of the emotional progress I've made. But it is so painful to see somehow who hurt and tried to manipulate me for months be praised for wearing an ugly outfit and having stringy hair. The bar for these men is truly on the floor. Even though they're clearly shitty friends who should not be considered a big loss, it's really painful to know validating his fetish (he displayed a lot of AGP tendencies towards the end, big surprise) is more important to them than checking in on me. Sorry for how long this is, I never post anywhere online. I just really needed to say the truth somewhere that won't berate me or try to ruin me for it.