I feel like I've lost my partner to a cult : mypartneristrans
Preface: I'm a 28 year old female, my partner of 8 years is MtF and she transitioned just over two years ago. This might be fairly long, so I apologize. I'll be calling my partner she/her and using the fake name "Beth" for her.
At first I was extremely happy for Beth, her transition and "coming out" went completely smoothly. Our respective families were very supportive and understanding, and her new found confidence in her true gender even lead to a promotion in her career. I felt as if Beth and I where connecting for the first time all over again.
We both sought therapy on an individual basis and as a couple and worked through some of our initial hurdles (I fumbled with pronouns and her new name for a while, not maliciously it was just something new to get used to). I also chose not to identify or label myself as a lesbian, which was a sticking point initially for Beth who used to constantly refer to us as a "cute couple of dykes", which I did not care for whatsoever. I have never been attracted to women and I've always considered myself straight. She eventually dropped it and it wasn't an issue (for a while).
At first I honestly didn't notice much of a difference, she was still the person I loved and had known for all of these years. She still had the same sense of humour, interests, intelligence, and sense of wonder. Her presentation was just that of a woman now, and while we bonded over new shallow things like makeup, clothing, jewellery, and hair, it felt like such a natural transition for us as a couple.
Then something changed.
About 1 year after her transition, I started noticing my partner adopting new attitudes about things and people that seemed to clash with her previous personality and her own history. She started making very judgemental comments about women when we where out in public. Beth would crack jokes at women who presented more "masculine" (to her that meant little or no makeup, jeans, tied back hair). What irks me about this? I wear light makeup, I prefer jeans and flats, and I tie my hair back all the time. That doesn't make me "masculine", it makes me a human who prefers these things. My partner nows seems to view the world (ironically) in a super binary way. She even once referred to me as "butch" (I am not, I'm petite, soft featured, and have long hair).
She also started taking hours in the bathroom doing her makeup and hair and would refuse to leave our house unless she looked "perfect". I've been told this is common with people new in transition, but she had been presenting for over a year as a woman at this point and had never been this self obsessed with her appearance previously. I had helped her with makeup and hair in the beginning and had actually got her routine down to twenty minutes. Now I would be lucky to get Beth out the door in under two hours.
We used to talk about books endlessly (we are both literature buffs) and now all that she seems interested in talking about is trans related "issues". She's glued to her phone, constantly scrolling "trans twitter" (her words) and subreddits about "egg cracking". Whenever I try to engage her in discussions about anything else, she always finds a way to steer the conversation to something trans-centric. She is constantly venting about "terfs" or telling me how jealous her female coworkers are of how she looks (I do not think she passes, but I humour her anyways).
Her personality is virtually gone, I can't have an intelligent conversation with her, and her every thought, action, and observation seems to be through a lense of perpetual persecution.
She constantly sends me trans memes and tells me about things, companies, or media that we can't support because it is "transphobic" for whatever minor infractions she thinks they have committed. Recently she threw out our copies of Harry Potter and when I reminded her that she owns an expensive Wizarding World wand she had bought, she said she won't get rid of it because JK Rowling "did not invent wands". (I had purchased the books.) Whenever I mention some new interest, she says nothing, just jumps onto her phone to google this interest and try and see if there's anything about it that conflicts with trans people.
I have several male friends from college who came over to our place for a game night once and after they left, Beth claimed she had "cracked" one of my friend's "egg" (because she had pointed out his long hair?) and that my other friend had "eye fucked her" (he is asexual). I told her that men have always had long hair and that it doesn't make them trans and that my other friend wasn't sexual at all. She huffed, went to the other room and put on her Oculus VR headset and started loudly talking to someone in a VR space about how she "had just been cis-splained".
My partner now tries to insist that my identity somehow invalidates hers if I don't refer to myself as a lesbian. She has broken down to tears when I tell her that I am straight and attracted to men but have made an exception for her (which is the truth). She has told me that she is probably more "biologically female" than I am because of her surgeries and hormones. I asked her to backup that claim with scientific articles, evidence, and hard facts. She obviously couldn't and began discussing "souls" before she said I was making her dysphoric and went back to Twitter for some sort of validation I guess.
I feel like our entire relationship is now about her, her transness, me having to validate her at every possible moment, and this truly bizarre "trans vs the world" attitude she has adopted (she hasn't run into a lick of transphobia). Part of our monthly income now goes to trans causes she picks, our bedspread is the same colours as the trans flag, and I can already see the future we had been planning evaporate in front of my eyes. Her ambition and goals are gone, replaced with hours upon hours of scrolling trans social media or watching YouTube videos about transness. We had been discussing having a child, but now the idea of me being pregnant makes her "dysphoric" (as does me mentioning my period). I can't imagine her being a good mother, she's too self-absorbed by this new identity she has chosen, which to be frank feels like something she just picked up off of a shelf.
I'm at my rope's end. The person I knew has essentially been replaced with a vapid, empty, and boring shell. I've been listening to a few podcasts about people in cults and high-control groups and definitely see the similarities when I've browsed some of the communities my partner is part of. The biggest take away is that these people have to figure it out themselves and choose to leave, they can't be forced. I do believe my partner when they say they are trans, but I believe it be a community that has gone awry.
