Okay but for real there’s this couple that comes into the shop to see me specifically all the time and it’s such a clear reflection of who I was and who I was with 4 years ago
He’s fresh on T this year and struggling to navigate his social and physical transition and his girlfriend.... validates his gender about 90% of the time, when she isn’t making nasty low key transphobic jokes about his body. In public. And I call her out and can tell she’s already starting to dislike me which makes me nervous cause he definitely needs support if he comes all the way to LUSH just to catch me and she might tell him he can’t come anymore and he’d probably listen.
Recently she quit her job too and is now coasting off of him financially— not even trying to get a new job— and he’s acting all chill about it because he doesn’t want to be by himself and all I want to do is tell him to fuckin run.
Trans boys, I feel, from my own personal experience, can often be so quick to settle for so little because of the intrinsic and false belief that we’re lesser men and that no one’s really gonna love us for who we are so we take whatever we can get at the beginning of our transition.
Now, I’ve been out of the relationship I had that mirrors his for two years, and am just starting out with a partner who actually supports me and treats me well. All of this after extensive cognitive restructuring, with the help of my counselor, and even then I was very reluctant to get into a relationship and I had very high bars to get past and my new partner has gone above and beyond and demonstrated clear actual goodness which is why we’re actually together. And it is such a joy and an exciting journey, I can’t even tell you. I’m glad on one hand that I went through what I did cause I needed the wake up call but I also wish I had just waited for someone who actually was invested in who I am as a human, but I’m there now, and that’s what counts.
The thing that haunts me is my mentors and friends have, immediately after the end of that relationship, expressed to me that they wanted to let me know I should get out and offer me the support to do so but didn’t for fear of me hating them for it. I honestly was so brainwashed I might have. And he probably will too but like... I’m just a fellow trans that sells soap and talked with his manager about respecting pronouns when he came in during the the trans campaign and asked for my help. But I also am keenly aware that I’m a lifeline and I don’t want to cut that for him.
I’m just so worried about this kid. He’s trying his best and I so badly want to warn him to get out because it’s so painful for me to watch another young trans guy go through what I did. But I also know that it’s 100% not my business... and so I’ll probably keep my mouth shut unless I get him alone one of these days and the subject comes up. It’s just really getting under my skin.
I could write a dissertation on how insecure transgender men choose to stay in really bad relationships because we’re socialized to be afraid (lol my counselor at the time of my coming out told me to be prepared to lose literally all of my friends and I was shocked when I didn’t) and the whole thing just makes me so sad.
