I’ve been dating my girlfriend for four months now and we’ve had a great time!
But yesterday, when we were watching a movie at home, she began getting a bit emotional and told me she had something to say. I asked what it was, but she had me promise that I wouldn’t break up with her if she told me, I told her to stop being silly and just say what it was. Then she told me that she was “assigned male at birth” and transitioned into being female throughout her childhood and teen years.
I was shocked, I had absolutely no idea because she looked like any other woman (she even has a vagina and small breasts). I’ve never seen her inject any hormones when we’re together and I assumed we had to use lubricant during sex because she was shy. I feel a bit confused, perhaps it would have been nice if she told me at the start, I told her not to worry but I have a strange feeling in my stomach.
32 comments
So what advice are you looking for?
There’s a lot emotionally going on here, but I have two main concerns.
1) She didn’t disclose her status before you had sex, this feels like a lack of informed consent. While I understand that it can be scary or even dangerous for a trans person to reveal that information, I think it’s unfair to you to have sex without being upfront about it.
2) If you ever want to have biological kids, she can’t provide that for you. Not that cis/cis couples don’t try and fail to have biological kids, but you’ll need to decide if that’s a dealbreaker for you.
She should have been honest before you were intimate. That said, do you desire biological children? Do you care if others are made aware of this? The end of the day, you do what you want to do.
The queasy feeling is knowing she withheld important info from you and then was manipulative about saying you have to promise to not break up with her once she tells you. Neither would sit right with me and
I would leave over that. That’s not a small thing to keep from someone. Especially someone who is sleeping with you. This would be my deal breaker.
She deceived you first then manipulated you when revealing it. This is the part that is making you queasy. You didn’t have all the relevant information before consenting to this relationship. That makes her an untrustworthy person in my eyes. I would end this for this reason and not because she is a transgender.
Talk to her about the feeling. It can just be hurt from her leaving out important information and it will pass as you process it. But I think the best way to move past it is to work through these feelings together.
That is a pretty big deception and lie to get over.
Nope, she needed to be upfront with you a long time ago.
And as others have said, when she did tell you she was manipulative.
What else will she hold back in future years? This is a pretty big one to have not told an intimate partner about.
Hi OP! How are you feeling? What are your thoughts? This is a lot to handle and you need to take the time to think about it. It’s not cool she withheld the info from you before you guys were intimate. How you’re feeling is completely valid. Take your time to think it out. Best of luck 💕
She lied to you by omission, and even when admitting the lie she tried to guilt you into staying with her by making you promise not to break up with her after she tells you.
Honestly thats 2 MAJOR red flags right there. Its a relationship built on a lie, and a major one at that
I think you should probably take this to r/asktrangender or somewhere more knowledgeable to process this.
I’m perfectly fine with people who are transgender. I’m not overly ok with someone waiting till they’ve hooked you into feelings for them and being like hey surprise, I’m not really the person you thought I was. That alone would make me not date them.
I feel bad for them for being scared to tell people, but hell, I’ve got secrets that I have to tell within 2/4 dates and I’m not going to make them promise not to leave me when it’s fully well their decision and that’s shitty and unfair.
Feeling queasy because you found out someone been lying to you for months and trying to make you feel bad if you leave seems legit
Up to you. As long as you’re good with no bio kids. I might get downvoted for this but I would just make the decision however you feel.
“I’m not breaking up with you because you told me or because your trans, I’m breaking up with you because you didn’t tell me before having sex. Your manipulative, deceitful, and denied my ability to choose and those are deal breakers.”
Hell no. That’s a massive thing to lie about. I’d be out.
She lied and then manipulated you with the “don’t break up”
I would simply break up because of those two things. Not only that, she took your choice away. If it was the other way around you wouldn’t get the grace you’re trying to give her.
I would want to know before we have sex or start dating so then I can have a choice in whether I want to be with them or not.
The strange feeling is a betrayal in trust. 4 months is long enough to have developed quite a bond, you’ve obviously been sexually intimate and that was not with your informed consent. She has lied to you, a serious lie. Take some time to think about if you want to be with a woman who is willing to lie to you about things that are important and hide details from you about your own choices. This is a lie by omission.
I understand being confused or upset about her not telling you until 4 months into dating, but it sounds like you’ve been having a great time dating her and have been seeing and experiencing her as a woman this whole time. She is a woman. She’s still the same woman. You are still in a straight relationship.
I wanna say it’s okay if you accept it and you can be happy. Consider that option, but it’s okay to take a little time to feel/think.
If you need to break up that’s also okay. Just wanted to put in words it’s okay. And understandable if you don’t feel okay too.
Not that you asked for advice… but I would post this in one of the trans advice subs as there are bound to be people there who understand what you’re feeling and can put words to it. I know everyone here has said it’s betrayal. I suspect it’s more fear and confusion. What will people think? What does it mean for your sexuality? How will it affect your relationship compared to if you were dating a cis-woman. It’s easy to say it shouldn’t matter if you’re not transphobic. But to be suddenly in a position where it is very personally relevant means examining all your preconceived ideas about a relationship. The safest place to do that is in a community that has real understanding of what the actual differences are between dating someone who is trans vs cis, and also when the differences touted are irrelevant or aren’t differences at all. I hope you manage to work it all out!
How does being shy correlate with needing to use lube
Hey bro, even in the trans community, what she did is generally considered an asshole move. There’s a big fear factor that goes into telling someone you’re trans. Mostly on her being hurt or getting rejected. But it doesn’t give her a free pass to just lie to you. Generally speaking, she lied to you and got intimate before letting you know because she knew it might be a deal breaker for some people.
You were lied to. This really isn’t the way to start any relationship, so you’re allowed to feel weird.
As for any advice, take some time apart and ask yourself why you feel that way. See how you feel about the relationship, knowing she lied about something pretty big.
> I asked what it was, but she had me promise that I wouldn’t break up with her if she told me,
Oh hell no, that is so manipulative. That is such an unfair, bad-faith demand. It’s the part that would make me feel queasy in my stomach. If a person tries to corner someone into a relationship like that, trying to make leaving not possible/guilt them into staying, it’s a red flag. Probably not as big as having sex without disclosure, which means you had sex without your informed consent, but still very bad.
It always annoys me when people – for whatever reason – remove the agency of someone to make a decision because of their own fear.
It just ends up poisoning everything from the moment the truth is revealed. I get that this is a hard topic, but all this sort of thing does is kicks the can down the road until the topic at hand gets insurmountable and just makes it all the more worse.
Lying by omission is the issue here and I guess that’s the thing you have to address first OP. If you were entering into this relationship with a view to maybe one day getting married and maybe one day having kids, well the later is now off the table. If you were in the mind of being child-free then you’d have it your power to move past this. However, if you saw this – having bio kids – in your future then that has been taken away from you if you decide to stay with her.
We can’t tell you what to do OP, all we can do is encourage you to look at what you have with her, what the future may look like and whether you can see the relationship recovering from this.
Edit: It may help you to clarify what it is she means by “assigned male at birth.” There is a huge range of things that this could cover including up to either a transition OR having something happen to her genitals at birth that was corrected at the time by surgery. It’s such a huge range of possibilities however I suspect that the true meaning of what she meant could have been “lost” in the whole debate around being trans.
So if you want any way to navigate this, then it will help you both if you sit down with her and calmly and with as much kindness as you can, ask her to tell you the story of her life. I have a very sneaky suspicion that what you think it is is not what it appears.
The feeling you’re having is probably due to her withholding fairly important information from you than her being transgender. What she said was borderline manipulative, but you just need to have some time to yourself and think on how you really feel and then decide how to proceed after that.
If you’re uncomfortable with it you don’t have to date her. I just want to make that clear. She should have been honest from the jump and if she’s going to lie about something like that or not even mention it imagine what else she could lie about. You didn’t have informed consent when you slept with her. That in itself says what kind of person she is.
If you feel that you’ve been misled, and are afraid you’re going to get attacked because you don’t want to be with a biological man, then you need to get out of the relationship, because you are doing neither you nor them any favors…..
Ask yourself this: would you even had dated her if you knew from the start she was trans?
I just want to say I need lube I’m cisgender female. And lots of cisgender females need it. Because you mentioned it in your comment.
People get killed for that stuff she should of disclosed this to you before you here intimate
You need to be honest to her and to yourself about your feelings. If you do not want to date a transgender woman, that is your choice and nobody else’s. If you pretend to like her because you are afraid of being labeled a transphobe, then you are cheating yourself and her out of a proper relationship.
When and how to come out to a partner or potential partner is a huge challenge for trans people, especially trans women who date men. It’s genuinely a matter of life and death, and even if their partner is safe, coming out to a partner can lead to being outed to a larger group of people they don’t know as well.
I don’t know if four months into a relationship that already involves sex is the best time, but she’s young, and I can understand why she’d make the mistake of waiting too long.
She likely didn’t set out with the intent to mislead you, or have sex under false pretenses. Intent isn’t magical, and it doesn’t change that she did do those things, but intent may change how you feel about what she did.
I would suggest you take some time to really think about the situation. You’ve been dating four months, you likely have some feeling about the relationship, about whether it has the potential to be long term.
Poke at that weird feeling in your stomach, see if you can work out what it is. Upset that she waited to tell you? Uncertainty about gender/sexuality? Worry about what people might think? Could be any or all of these things, or something completely different.
Think hard about what it means to be with a trans woman. As people have said, it makes bio children difficult (not impossible – you can’t share bio kids, but surrogates are an option), but that’s a possible risk dating a cis woman, too.
Do your feelings for her make you think you’d be willing to stand by her if she’s publicly outed? If she gets sick or injured and has to deal with transphobic medical staff? Could you see yourself putting her ahead of family members?
Think about her, the person she is, the time you’ve spent together. Do you want to be with her enough to give this a try? These are the same questions I’d suggest in any relationship, btw, transness just gives you a hint in advance about which specific issues you might run into in life, it doesn’t guarantee more.
You don’t have to commit to the long haul right now, and you don’t have to dump her immediately if you’re not 100% sure, but you owe it to both of you to properly think through how you feel and whether this information changes anything before you move forward.
It would also probably be good to talk with her. Ask her questions about her experiences, about her feelings. Let her know what you’re feeling weird about. Be honest and open and ask her to do the same.
Take your time and think it over. It’ll work out better for both of you that way.
If it’s worth hiding, it’s worth disclosing.