Trust Me! You Want to Avoid Doing This When Coming Out as Trans!
Dr. Z talks to all couples out there—people in relationships (whether married, living together, or partnered together). As long as you are in intimate relationship with somebody else, she wants to address this issue she sees a lot.
What she experiences in her private practice: couple comes in and she sees a partner who identifies as trans come out to their partner. The minute they come out, a lot of times they'll put some form of what she likes to call a relational ultimatum. It'll sound something like this: "I won't really transition unless my partner is okay with me doing so." In other words: "I won't really do any kind of gender related transition steps, I won't start hormones, I won't even start planning medical or surgical transition until my partner says they're okay with that."
Let Dr. Z tell you why this never works and why it's not meant to work.
First of all, you just displaced your own responsibility onto your partner—that's not really an okay thing to do. You're struggling to make decisions for yourself, so you're putting all the decision-making onto your partner, which is really unfair.
Watch to find out why it puts your partner in double bind and why you need to take accountability.
