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Dear Dr. NerdLove: So this is going to be a weird one and I hope it’s not TMI, but considering some of the stuff you’ve gotten on here, hopefully not?
I think I’m genuinely undateable at this point.
Around ten years ago, I had my first and only real relationship experience – he turned out to be violently abusive and I was lucky to get out as soon as I did without worse happening. I didn’t even attempt to date for a long, long time after – during that time, I started pursuing something I had long thought out of reach and figured wasn’t worth trying – gender transitioning. FtM.
I went on T and did get top surgery (though that was largely due to the big C rearing its ugly head – hadn’t quite gotten to that point, but gene testing showed it was pretty much guaranteed and I was already showing worrying signs so I figured two tits one scalpel) and even got pictures and videos of the procedure from the amazing doctors, though I do have to admit doing an evil with one of the pics.
However, I noticed something about the T – I ended up being moved up to higher and higher doses until I was on the highest they could safely prescribe, and the only change that happened was a tiny, TINY deepening of my voice – just enough that I couldn’t sing anymore and it sounded foreign to me – but not enough to sound masculine, and hair. Lots and lots of hair. Visible beard line even after shaving as close as possible hair. I followed other people’s journeys and they were looking like a natural, completely different person after around six months, while I just looked like a really hairy girl.
A later medical incident and testing, and I was told that the reason I survived that incident at all – and why the T hadn’t worked – was that my body just doesn’t absorb and process things the way it’s supposed to, and there’s really nothing they can do about that. The point that I’d gotten to on T, with the body hair and a tiny tiny deepening of the voice? That was as far as I’d ever, ever get. There wasn’t anything more that could be done – it didn’t matter if I was using injections, the gel, anything, I’d never get to the point of just looking and sounding like a guy to the average person on the street, which is what I wanted.
I tried doing the ‘nonbinary’ thing for a bit, but…I just don’t have it in me. I don’t have the strength to constantly argue about my identity, to have to constantly correct people on the phone or in person, to have people double-take at my ID or my name and having to explain things every single time I apply for a job or meet new people. I have enough to deal with just surviving everything else going on in life right now, I don’t have the spare fire in me to deal with that as well.
So, I started the detransitioning process. I’m undergoing reconstructive surgery now, although that’s been taking forever and keeps getting pushed back because of how far away the only doctors insurance will cover are, and gas being insanely expensive, having to take time off work to get there, etc. They won’t put me on estrogen, said that my levels looked normal after I stopped taking T, and they won’t give me anything additional because it could cause problems.
Basically, I’m a mess of scars, a lot of hair, a voice that is just a little *off* and a constant beard line that becomes shag within a day of shaving. I wasn’t what I’d call beautiful to begin with, but now…yeah. Especially now that I’m in my thirties which, according to a lot of people, is already ‘past the sell by date’ for women who DON’T have all my issues going on.
I have no family, am below the poverty line and basically have nothing of value to offer. Before the attempted transition, I’d say I at least was pretty, but now there’s not even that. I know that a lot of people have physical problems way worse than mine and are still perfectly able to date, but I feel like with my history in particular – how I basically did it to myself – and how I still sometimes feel like I don’t even truly *want* to detransition, even if I’ve accepted it is my best option at this point and honestly feel okay with being feminine now more so than I did before – I just feel like I’d be way too much baggage and all for anyone to want to deal with.
I still feel incredibly lonely sometimes and would love to get the ACTUAL having a partner experience – watching movies while snuggling on the couch, playing games together, giving each other thoughtful gifts, just being there for each other when the other is sick (I will mother hen the HELL out of you, I love cooking and baking and will put on my bumblebee apron and spend all day in the kitchen if I have an excuse to) but I feel like there isn’t anyone who would genuinely want someone with all of what I have going on who would also be someone I’d want to be with – someone who I’d never have to be afraid of, who would never turn on me and wouldn’t just want me around to cook and clean for them and be a bang maid.
Am I being too pessimistic? I’ve been told that, but I honestly think I’m just being realistic and trying to seek out relationships terrifies me. I can never be sure who is safe to talk to or not at this point.
Too Messed Up
This is a really complicated one, TMU, and some of it is going to be outside of my pay-grade. Dr. NerdLove is not a real doctor after all, so there isn’t as much that I can say about the issues you’ve had regarding going on testosterone, nor – as a cis man – do I have a lot that I can say about transitioning, de-transitioning or dealing with the process in either direction. I hope you’ve got friends and loved ones in the trans community who can talk to you more about their experiences with transitioning – especially with passing or results from T; I strongly suspect you’ll find that you’re not the only person who’s dealt with these issues, and they can speak more to what their experiences were and how to handle things.
Now what I can say is that I think there’s a lot going on that’s wrapped up in your sense of self and self-worth, especially after having dealt with a double mastectomy, a seemingly failed transition and surviving a violently abusive relationship. I know a lot of cis women who’ve felt disconnected to their sense of sexuality and desirability after having had to get mastectomies or lumpectomies. Similarly, the after effects of a physically abusive relationship can linger for a long time; not all scars are visible after all, and sometimes the worst ones are the ones that can’t be seen.
I think part of the problem is… well, you’ve been through the fucking wringer. You’ve dealt with more life-altering crises and medical nightmares in what seems like a relatively short amount of time than most people do in a lifetime. I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to say that maybe part of the problem is that you’re still recovering from, well, all of that. You’ve had your sense of self ripped up, tossed up in the air and then basically were told “ok, try to make something out of this” before you’ve really had a chance to stop and catch your breath.
Maybe that’s the best thing you can do right now: stop and catch your breath. I realize that’s not the sort of answer that you necessarily want to hear at this juncture, but I feel that it’s rather important. Even Lucifer, first among the angels, had to stop and take a moment to say “well, fuck” after getting kicked out of Heaven and crash-landing in Hell.
Or to put it another way – and to use an awkward metaphor – it’s a little like a computer that’s had a sudden power surge or is connected to a hub that drew too much power and now some of the ports aren’t working. The solution is often to unplug everything from the power source, give it time for everything to discharge and then plug things back in, a couple at a time.
Most of what you’re feeling about yourself right now – both about yourself and your hope for the future – are just that: feelings. They’re not objective truths about how you’re irreparably fucked, they’re side effects that come from you being a reasonable person who’s trying to get through a series of really fucking unreasonable situations. The problem is that while those situations may have ended, the after effects are still lingering. It’s like you said about where you were before you decided to detransition: you’re having to devote all your energy just to keeping your head above water. With everything that’s happened, I’m entirely un-fucking-surprised that you feel like ten pounds of ass in a five pound sack. You’ve been through the wars and part of you is still there. You’re allowed to say “fuck all of this, I’m exhausted”. You’re allowed to say “Everything hurts and I don’t know where I stand on anything.” And you’re allowed to feel awful about things because shit is awful.
But the important part is to recognize that the fact that shit is awful and you feel awful doesn’t mean that you are shit. You’re not. You are just someone who hasn’t had solid, secure ground under your feet in God alone knows how long.
So I think the first thing you need is to just give yourself permission to just take dating and relationships off the table for a moment while you figure shit out and just try to get a sense of normalcy back. Obviously, the status quo has been changed and there’s no going back to who you were before you decided to transition – you can’t step in the same river twice, after all. So give yourself permission to say “Ok, I’ll deal with this part of things later, when I’m able to.”
Yes, I know that you’re feeling the time crunch. We’ll come back to the obvious fear in a moment.
This is a point where an order of operations is going to be crucial, where you need to be going through the Maslow’s Hierarchy and starting with the “I need this to survive” stages, before focusing on dating or relationships.
And to be clear, I’m including your sense of self and connection to your body and feelings about your gender as part of what you need to survive. You’ve already had that thrown into disarray, and you have more surgeries coming up that will likewise affect your sense of self and gender presentation. I think that giving yourself permission to put everything that isn’t immediately necessary on hold for now until those are out of the way is entirely reasonable. Taking the anxiety of “ok, I have to disrupt more of my life for reconstructive surgery, how do I fit everything else in” off the table, for example, will free up bandwidth that you can apply to other parts of your life and who you are now.
Part of that will be coming to grips with transitioning and de-transitioning; hopefully you are talking to someone about this, especially someone who knows about trans issues. It may also involve other forms of gender confirmation – laser hair removal, for example. Or it may be recognizing that you don’t necessarily need to medically transition to be trans. Or recognizing that you don’t necessarily need to be fully able to “pass” to be your true gender.
These are, admittedly, complicated and contentious issues, and I know that there’s a lot of discourse about them in the trans community. I fully acknowledge that this is well outside my area of expertise, so I would recommend that you find people who are more conversant in these issues to talk things through and hopefully help you find your way through. Especially if you can find a therapist who works with trans people and the unique issues they face.
Another part will detoxing some of the negative shit that’s been accumulating in the corners and crevices of your mind and tainting your sense of value and self-worth.
That ‘past your sell-by date’ nonsense about being over thirty is a prime example; that’s is the sort of bullshit that’s mostly used to give women and femme-presenting people anxiety, and it’s almost always based on junk science and shitty understanding of data. I’m old enough to remember the infamous “a woman is more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to be married after 30” line of bullshit – which, incidentally, wasn’t even from a scientific study but from a news article reporting on the study, which was since debunked.
Another thing is that yes, there are other people out there who’ve had greater physical issues and still date successfully. But there’s a difference between acknowledging this as truth and using it as a reason to continue to live in hope and using it as yet another cudgel to beat yourself with.
Did you “do this to yourself”? Well… yes and no. Some things, like top surgery, were likely inevitable; you have the genetic markers for being especially prone to breast cancer after all. But others, like apparently having some form of androgen insensitivity? That’s not something you “did to yourself”, nor is it something that you could reasonably have anticipated. You would have to have divine foresight to have ever seen that being an issue before you tried to transition. That’s not a failure on your part or “something you did to yourself”, that’s just pure bad luck. Beating yourself up over that is ultimately just punishing yourself for not having cosmic awareness; if you wouldn’t blame someone for not being aware of things lurking in their genetic code, why can’t you give yourself that same grace?
And honestly, I feel like much of this may be lingering remnants of the abuse you experienced before. Being a survivor of domestic violence and relationship abuse does a number on one’s psyche. Even if, intellectually, you understand that it was their fault, not yours, that doesn’t always mean that you’ve fully accepted it emotionally. Especially when you’ve had these negative experiences afterwards that would seem to confirm that you’re “broken” in some way.
But here’s the thing: even if you’ve been shattered, that doesn’t mean that you’re broken or that you need to hide that you ever had these issues. Yeah, you’ve got scars, the hair… that all happened. You can’t make them unhappen, but neither should you not acknowledge them or hide them away. I’m reminded of the process of kintsugi – repairing broken ceramic and pottery with gold and lacquer in a way that leaves gold seams where the cracks were. In this way, it’s acknowledging that the break happened and that it’s an inherent part of the object’s history… but rather than hiding the break, it highlights them and sees them as making the object more beautiful for its flaws.
I think embracing this idea might be good for you. Scars, after all, are the sign that you survived. This mindset requires treating yourself with more compassion than you currently do, to acknowledge that having been shattered doesn’t mean that you can’t be fixed or that being fixed doesn’t mean being the exact same as you were before. Instead, it’s an acknowledgement of what makes you more unique, more special for the supposed ‘flaws’ – the cracks are what ultimately only serve to make it special.
Give yourself time to repair those cracks, TMU. Give yourself the compassion, the time and the space to do what you need to do to heal and recover and learn who you are now. As you do, I think you’ll find that you’ve got more to offer and that you won’t need to be afraid of not meeting the people who will see the beauty in you or who would see you as being too ‘flawed’.
Yes, that’s going to take time. But taking that time will be what frees up the resources you need to be able to embrace the opportunities when they come.
Be good to yourself, TMU. Love will be ready for you when you’re ready for it. And when you are ready, you may be a little anxious, a little apprehensive – the way everyone is – but you won’t need to be afraid.
You’ll be ok. I promise.
All will be well.
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