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1 day ago
4
Estimated reading time: 18 minutes
Dear Doc,
Since I found your site I’ve read a number of your articles, especially the ones about fear of failure and rejection, the abundance mindset, your deconstruction of male beauty standards and “what women want”, and overall, I think you give good advice. My problem is this: it feels like I can’t apply any of it to my dating problems because I’m trans and only cis people have the luxury of being picky about who they want. I’ll read your and similar articles and my mind immediately goes “yeah, but that’s for ‘normal’ people who have options”.
Take height and 6 6s rule, for example. Yeah, of course it’s toxic, but the fact remains I’m 5’6 which is not gonna match anyone’s height filter on apps (I mean, why bother setting one up only to include such below average heights), but the height is the lesser of my problems next to having the “wrong” genitals for straight women and no ability to have kids. I absolutely resent not having the CHOICE to decide whether I want kids or not, it’s been decided by random biology and now it’s yet another thing to be excluded for. Sure, cishet couples can use assisted reproduction but they don’t enter into the relationship already knowing it isn’t possible to have kids with each other. I struggle to see how any woman who wants kids would choose me over the millions of single guys who can provide the goods, so to speak, so… I can’t have preferences about children either. I have to look for women who don’t want kids and just hope the body is tolerable to them.
Speaking of tolerable, I’m not as conventionally attractive as cis men who didn’t go through feminizing puberty (I came out too late for blockers to ever be in the equation), I still have a round chubby face despite literal years on testosterone, I’ve already mentioned my short height, and then there’s the unexpected surprise of what’s in my pants. Unfortunately, I’ve also put on some weight from stress which will be clear below, so I’m not even skinny anymore. I pass with clothes on, so people expect me to be cis, which in most situations doesn’t matter to me one way or the other, but when it comes to explaining to a potential partner “so about how you think I have a dick, well psyche, I don’t! Still interested?” That gives me panic attacks to even imagine.
I’ve tried doing all the commonly advised things to improve body image like going to the gym (otherwise I exercise by cycling, hiking and swimming when possible), but I always give up after a short while because even if I managed to put a bit more muscle on my body, it would still not be the “right” body for women to be attracted to in a man.
I’ve also tried some of your other mindset tips, like noticing couples in public spaces and how many of the guys aren’t textbook attractive, but then I again think yeah, but they have the right parts. For me it’s not just a question of shallow appearance points, I don’t even meet the most basic societal definition of what a man IS.
I have never used dating apps, partly for all the usual reasons you hear from men and have covered in your column, and because I don’t know whether I should put that I’m trans up front and instantly be judged on it. If I don’t, I’ll just get rejected face to face which would destroy me since it would confirm how undesirable I am because of this. If I do, probably no one will message me at all. I hear constantly about how much cis men struggle to date and then I look at myself… If the “normal” people who meet all the stats can’t find partners, what chance could I possibly have. I don’t even qualify to be judged on one of the mythical 6s, falling short would be an improvement!
My only long-term relationship happened by complete luck by meeting someone on Livejournal (yes really), and ended in a traumatic discard 10 years later (calling it a breakup would be too nice). And by the way, in the last year of the relationship my ex did triangulate me with celebrities, did blame me for not looking like Chris Hemsworth, wanted me to lose weight even when I was 62kg, blamed me for every issue that ever happened to the point I walked on eggshells, and when dumping me (out of the blue) gave a bunch more superficial reasons like not earning enough for the right “lifestyle” and made a lot of statements about how I wasn’t good enough and “every girl” wants what she wanted. So you see, it’s not men who have given me this sense of defectiveness and inadequacy, it was an apparently lovely long-term female partner. But she didn’t technically say I should be cis… So despite this trauma and what I now believe was narcissism (there’s a lot more to that story I don’t want to get into here, I’ve been in therapy for it several times), I was still devastated to lose this person I was genuinely in love with, who did accept my “dealbreaker” physical characteristics at least on the gender front.
That was several years ago and I’m only putting it for context, I don’t want to give this person any more of my time which was clearly not valued to begin with. But now that I can finally think of being with someone else conceptually, there’s no one interested at all. I don’t struggle to socialize and make friends, but that’s all it ever is, and most people are already partnered. I’ve lost all the time when people are normally looking for partners by sticking with my ex despite the issues, so now I’m 36, still single, with all these undesirable traits, watching people 10 years younger get married and feeling awful about myself. It’s all well and good if Gen Z are supposedly more open-minded but I can’t go around dating literal 20 year olds. I don’t want to be alone forever, and I’m fed up with being told to “enjoy” not having a partner. Also, despite the dysphoria (mostly social, based on being excluded from people’s attraction), I still have the sex drive of the average cis guy and having nothing but myself and fictional fantasies on that front for over 3 years is torture at this point. Especially when I can’t see anyone finding me sexually attractive
As for going outside and improving myself, like I said I go to interest-based groups, I can make friends, I have two university degrees (and working on a third since I changed careers), a stable job, just became a homeowner and actually have a supportive family unlike a lot of people in my situation. But I just feel like I have abilities, not any inherent desirability as a partner. It feels like all my accomplishments are to “make up” for this massive shortcoming of being in the “wrong” body. I can talk about that being a social construct all day long, but if most people still believe that man=penis, that doesn’t really help me find someone.
In fact, people can’t even tell I’m trans at first glance and I still haven’t had any romantic interest since my ex, so that’s less than once a decade. How can I apply any of that advice when there is nothing to “pick” from, and even if someone did become interested from say a shared hobby, it would probably go nowhere once they discovered my “secret”. (I’ve had someone I wasn’t even interested in rant at me in public about how if she found out a guy she was into had a vagina she would “freak out”, so this isn’t some hypothetical.)
And before you suggest it, I have been to many trans spaces and it always goes the same way: half the people there act as if I’m being transphobic for struggling and take offence at me presenting with this problem, the other half are as hopeless as me and can’t advise me anything, and then the occasional person tells me to change what I want and become poly (which I could not deal with emotionally) or only date other trans people (never mind that’s a tiny fraction of the population and most of the trans women I’ve met in the wild weren’t into men at all). A lot of people in the LGBTQ+ community also act like you have to be trans AND some other queer identity to “count” (even though all my discrimination has always stemmed from gender, even back when I thought I was bi). Rarely there is someone who gets it, but then I don’t believe them anyway because it feels like what you’re “supposed to” say in a trans space and what do they know about how cis women would react. I don’t identify as queer myself now, I’m just a straight guy who wants a monogamous relationship and maybe kids but doesn’t have the equipment. So I don’t fit in queer spaces or cishet spaces. Still, I’d rather have your advice as a reasonable cis person who might have more insight into “mainstream” society. Are my odds simply too bad? What do I have to do for someone to look past this glaring issue?
With best wishes,
Abnormal Normie
I’m going to be honest: this is a rough one, AN. It’s really hard to say “everything will be ok” under the best of circumstances when trans people have a rough go of things and understandably fear for their physical and emotional safety. It’s even rougher now, at a time when forces in governments in the US and the UK are doing their best to erase trans people’s rights as well as their very existence.
But as hard and scary as things are, there’s still hope. I know it feels like the darkest night is upon us, but there’s still light holding back the dark. Love and joy still exist and are part of what holds the dark at bay and that makes it all the more important to look for it, find it and nurture it, in defiance of everyone who tries to snuff it out.
So I’m going to agree with you right at the top: yeah, you’ve been dealt a shitty hand and circumstances have made it even shittier, through no fault of your own. This really is a case where a lot of the shit you’re dealing with is entirely outside of your control, and I won’t sugar coat it: it’s going to make things a lot harder for you.
But a lot is not the same as “all of it”. You’re already coming from a difficult place, especially these days.
That’s why I think it’s important that you don’t make things even harder on yourself.
I think you’re carrying around a lot of understandable pain and trauma and that’s playing into much of what you’re feeling, but I think it’s also causing you to focus so narrowly on the assumptions you’re making about folks and about yourself.
Defining yourself as abnormal is part of it; as soon as you start setting yourself apart like this, you create a mindset that ends up reinforcing the idea that there’s something inherently wrong with you. There’s a world of distinction and divergence between being “abnormal” and just being different. You may not be typical, but you’re not flawed, no matter what bigoted fuckheads say. And to be clear, I am absolutely including your shitty, shitty ex, whose opinions should be disregarded with such prejudice that you could safely assume the opposite of literally anything she believed, up to and including her opinions on cheese.
It seems pretty clear to me that part of this is directly because of the abuse you endured in your previous relationship. Just because someone was accepting of your being trans doesn’t mean that everything else was hunky-dory or that the rest of the relationship was acceptable and normal. Because HOLY HOPPING SHEEP SHIT it absolutely wasn’t. Your ex may have accepted you as a trans man, but she was still more toxic than the Bhopal leak and subjected you to all kinds of emotional abuse. Everything you describe about how she treated you and the things that she blamed you for – for not being a Marvel Chris, for not making enough money to support her in the lifestyle to which she intended to become accustomed – was abusive as fuck and was very much about making you take responsibility for her bullshit. And I think, to a certain extent, you took it to heart that she had a point. Even though that point was on the knife she kept stabbing you with.
“Every girl wants this” my entire ass. You know how they say “kill the cop in your head?” Well, in this case, it’s more “evict your fucking ex like the illegal squatter she is, toss out all her shit, change the locks and hire a hazmat team to clean the place out and a priest to perform an exorcism just in case there’s any traces of her left behind.” She’s taken up far too much of your mental and emotional bandwidth and it’s far past the point where every remaining scrap of her should be tossed into the compost where it belongs.
I don’t blame you for the complex feelings you had over the end of the relationship or staying with her for as long as you did; toxic and abusive relationships fuck with your head and they can be incredibly hard to leave. But I think she’s left far deeper scars than you may realize and they’re still affecting you even after all this time. You mention that you’ve sought therapy about this relationship before, which is good. But I’m wondering if you haven’t sought therapy and treatment for what sounds like CPTSD; a lot of the way you describe yourself and the way you feel seem to hit a lot of the commonly reported symptoms. If that hasn’t been part of the discussion you’ve had with your therapist(s), then that’s one of the first places I’d suggest you start.
That, I think, would be an important starting point for you. But the next thing I think that you need to do is to start addressing what are some pretty clear self-limiting beliefs about yourself and about others. There’re a few areas where you’re buying hard into negative assumptions – about yourself and about what others would or could think or feel – that you’re clinging to in no small part because they confirm this idea that you’re flawed or not normal. The way you describe them makes it sound like you believe that they’re correct to be this way, rather than being an extension of how you’ve been made to feel about yourself. And honestly, I’m not entirely surprised; everyone has an inherent negativity bias, where negative beliefs, experiences and feelings have five times the impact of positive ones. It’s an evolutionary hold-over where recognizing negative patterns meant the difference between life and death; knowing that Krog, Grunt and Thud all died because they ate those red berries is an important survival technique.
Unfortunately, that negativity bias continues to work even when we don’t need to be on the look out for poisonous food or hidden tigers. It makes these negative, limiting beliefs and biases a lot harder to shake, especially if it gets tied up with confirmation bias about the worst things you already believe about yourself.
You leap right into this when you say “ok sure, the six sixes are toxic but…”and then miss the point entirely. The idea that you need “the six sixes” (six feet tall, six pack abs, six inch or bigger penis, six figure salary, 600 HP car) to date or find love is a toxic and restrictive belief about masculinity, but it’s also bullshit. It’s bullshit sprayed from cholera-infected bovines and it should be immediately obvious to anyone with common sense and the ability to observe objective reality. Men who are six feet tall in the or taller make up less than 15% of the US population and barely 5% of the population globally. The number of people who are both over six feet tall and make over $100k is even lower. If any of this were true, the human race would have died out generations ago. But just as importantly: all you need to do is look out the window to see it’s not true. You can go into any Costco or grocery store on any given Sunday and see dozens upon dozens of couples made up of women with men of average height, as well as women with short kings.
It’s easy to believe and use as a cudgel to beat yourself with because it just validates what you already believe, but it’s not even vaguely correct. Rejecting actual reality in order to reaffirm your supposed abnormality or hopelessness is just a form of emotional self-harm.
So, for that matter, is the idea that you’re excluded from relationships because you can’t have children the way someone who was AMAB could. Leaving aside the idea that cis people all go into relationships with the assumption or knowledge that they won’t need some sort of medical assistance to have children (demonstrably untrue), this is something that’s not relevant to you in the first place. Nor are things like “surprising people by having the wrong genitals” or the rest of it. All of this is predicated on the idea that you should be approaching dating as though you’re a cis man, when you’re not and shouldn’t.
The way you describe things in your letter makes it sound like you’re trying to stay under the radar until such a time when you can make your dramatic reveal. Case in point: you say “it would probably go nowhere once they discovered my ‘secret’” and “I have never used dating apps […] because I don’t know whether I should put that I’m trans up front and instantly be judged on it”. I realize that I’m saying this as a straight, cis man but… “well, there’s your problem.”
I absolutely understand why a trans person might want to stay in stealth mode in many situations, especially right as fascistic monsters are trying to eradicate trans people even as a concept. But Jesus fucknuts tapdancing CHRIST I can’t imagine a worse or more dangerous way for a trans person to try to find love – emotionally or physically. Not today, and especially not like that.
The whole “I’d freak out if I found out a guy I liked had a vagina” thing should never, ever be in the equation because the last thing you want is to be dating someone who doesn’t want to date a trans man. You especially don’t want to be making emotional investment in someone – and being invested in in return – when you’ve been concealing this crucial aspect of who you are as a person. That’s a great way to get your heart broken if you’re lucky. It’s an even better way to find someone who’s going to have an absurdly negative response – even if they don’t lash out physically, they can still do so in other ways that could be just as dangerous for you.
Even if they didn’t, the last thing you want is to date someone who’s with you despite this defining aspect of who you are; even under the best of circumstances, that’s someone who’s unwilling or unable to accept the sum totality of you and treats this foundational part of you as though it were something that could be ignored or even excised. That’s not about being abnormal or flawed, that’s just basic compatibility. Much like your abusive ex, you don’t want someone who is magnanimously “overlooking your ‘flaws’”, you want someone who is with you because they want to be with you, specifically. They are with you because they love your holistic self and understand that even parts that they may not prefer are part of what make you uniquely you.
I could keep going, honestly, but it sounds to me that the issue here is your treating your being trans as something shameful that you need to hide or make up for instead of accepting as who you are. I think this feeling may tie into the issues you’ve had trying to find acceptance and community in queer and LGTBQ spaces; it’s hard to find love and family when you refuse to listen to them or refuse to believe them when you do. And yes, I do mean refuse. That’s very much a choice on your part, in no small part because you seem to want to disbelieve them.
You ask “what do they know about how cis women would react”, but the answer is “quite a lot, from experience”. I can guarantee you that everyone in those spaces has dealt with cis women and cis women learning that they’re trans – as friends, frenemies, foes, co-workers, comrades, opponents, competitors, sisters and lovers, and their experience is no less valid for not being as relentlessly negative as you expect. Or that you seem to want to see, for that matter.
So like I said: I’m a straight cis guy, so my insight into this is going to be limited. But while there are very real challenges and limitations that you would face on the dating scene as a trans man, they’re not insurmountable, even in the “mainstream”, as it were. However, I think the question is ultimately moot because it doesn’t sound to me like you’re in a good place, emotionally, to be dating. You’re carrying around a lot of pain and self-loathing and I think you need to address that before you focus on trying to find a partner. Until you do, I think you’re going to have an exceedingly difficult time meeting people, actually forming a relationship or making it work; I honestly think there’s a better-than-average chance that the people you’d be most likely to find would be echoes of your abusive ex.
I said earlier that I hope you talk to your therapist about CPTSD from your abuse. I hope that you also talk to them – or another, LGBTQ-affirming and trauma-informed therapist about your feelings about yourself, your body and your identity. In the meantime, I think it may also help to read some more about queer and trans life, love and joy; I think it’ll help you find peace and acceptance with yourself as well as help you see that things aren’t as dire as you think.
There’re a few titles that I think might be helpful to you here: Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together by Dean Spade, Blood, Marriage, Wine & Glitter, The Nearest Exit May be Behind You, and Special Topics in Being a Human by S. Bear Bergman, Gender Outlaws by Bergman and Kate Bornstein and Gender Failure by Ivan Coyote & Rae Spoon. While it’s not necessarily about love, relationships or gender identity, I’d also suggest Charlie Jane Anders’ Never Say You Can’t Survive for how creativity and storytelling can help with emotional resilience and hope in these times.
I know the world feels dark and all seems lost right now, but I promise you: hope burns brightest, even during the darkest night.
All will be well.
