Dd ran away to be with trans lover and refuses to return

What she said ⬆️

I can't believe your so-called 'D'H would let his only daughter down like this at such a fraught time. He has just confirmed to her that she doesn't matter. No wonder she's looking elsewhere for a family.

I'm so sorry for you, you're working so hard on this, but your dick of a DH undoes everything you do by behaving like a dick.

I'm so angry on your behalf. You need to be going ballistic on him.

Your poor son as well, learning every day that something else is always more important to his dad than family.

Oh, I am so sorry. That is grief and disappointment. It drains our energy and our will to "do" things. It's surely going to be two steps forward, one step back, or even one step forward, one step back... and that is so hard

Then Dad had to cry off - massive amount of work for Monday.

What is wrong with your husband? He didn't have to cry off at all. He chose to cry off. He chose to let his DD down. He chose to let you down. He chose to prioritise all that work. Any other father would have said "fuck it DD needs me more and so does DW". What would it take to make him put his work aside for a day?

And could there be a connection between DH dropping DD, and DD dropping the class? You are making progress but DH is undermining it. You are not a substitute for DH, he needs to find his courage and fight his own battles. They have a relationship and you can't fix it for them.

and most importantly,
‘don’t be such a dick.’

DD is not the one who most urgently needs to hear those words.

why would she prefer to be in someone else’s mums flat? Dd is giving up on her dad,

Well yes, he gave up on her first.

And aren't you grieving for the brave supportive caring loving husband you hoped for as well? Find your anger.

Hi, I haven't read everything and I'm glad you've built a bridge together but just a word of warning if it applies to you - photos that included my child were not wanted. Whether that was because it was showing the birth 'gender' or they just didn't like looking at themselves...both I suppose. So photos may be fun but be careful they don't look like 'hey, remember when you were this girl!' Hope you continue to have lovely gentle texts! X

Marvellous! Just keep going!
Find a positive, funny or wry phrase to repeat inside your head when your patience is straining, I tend to go for things like

‘I love you, you love me, we are not sworn enemies, the teenage years are just bobbins’

😬

I find old family photos are always a winner for a fun text conversation that give a little bonding-boost…
You and your DH’s teen fashion mistakes, your brother (being the cool uncle), granny and grandad in their own heyday… see if you can find some photos of you all around the same sort of age as your 2 DC are now.
DS and DD might even get a bonding opportunity- nothing like laughing at your ‘rents to bring a sibling pair together.

Don’t offer up any of your DC’s childhood pics tho (too heavy handed, like you are trying to remind her of being a little girl) but I bet she’ll ask for some once her interest is piqued - see if you can find any that look a bit gender neutral clothes-wise (or edit them to black and white images in your phone photo app, if there is too much Barbie pink!*
The aim is to help her reconcile her new teen self with her younger self in a happy and healthy way, so don’t give her anything to push back hard against.

Assuming we are a similar sort of age, if your childhood photos are anything like mine, they will feature brown and orange corduroy and identical bowl cuts for boys and girls 😅

*I didn’t know my DstepD in person until she was 8 but her dad and I had been connected for three years prior so I’d known her via his photos and stories since she was about 5. She was never particularly GNC - far more of a girly girl than my other daughter. It’s a real struggle to find a childhood photo of her that doesn’t feature a frilly dress or a pair of heart shaped sunglasses!
I think that’s one of the things I’ve found weirdest about the ROGD thing - the one transman I had known in childhood was the most extreme tomboy imaginable, and the couple of adult transmen I met over the next 30 years or so both told a similar backstory of being GNC from toddlerhood.
Whereas my stepdaughter showed no interest in masculine clothes, hairstyles or hobbies. Looking back, the earliest ROGD signs were telling us she was bisexual at 12 (and joining the school’s LGBT lunchtime club) being a bit socially awkward with peers (and then being bullied by classmates for coming out as same sex attracted) and having an interest in anime 😬

Great news moomoola

This is really positive news!! I'm so happy for you and DD!

I second the brilliant advice you've had re going to the coffee outing, OP. Realise that if you go and treat X with warm curiosity (like any DC's new partner), interest and kindness, you're building up your own defence and kudos. You're also doing your DD a favour, by giving her a nice time, and rekindling those nice mother-daughter time feelings. That can only do her good. Try not to focus on the gender identity issues when you go (naturally they're at the forefront of your mind!), but do as PPs have suggested, and demonstrate the other parts of your well rounded personality: generosity, interest, chatting about different topics, tolerance, etc. Focus on the other things, just for this event. They're real, too.

Moomoola · Today 22:08

That’s lovely mum
it IS fun leaving home. Maybe I’m a bit jealous. I want to travel and have adventures!

Moomoola, have you thought of a small adventure for you, DH and DS even for a few days? You have had so much stress.

You could tell DD she is welcome, but realise she may not want to come.

I have absolutely no advice - just wanted to say well done @Moomoola !

@TheClogLady about leaving home - one of the things the family therapist did for me and my family was to help me leave home at 19 in a good way. It really helped me grow up and I had so much fun and learnt so much - earning my living, sharing a shabby flat with other girls, cooking and cleaning and Saturday afternoons at the launderette, seeing my boyfriend whenever, staying out in the evenings and enjoying our independence - and visiting my parents every couple of weeks and getting taken out for dinner by my Dad too. Rent was much cheaper in those days so I still had spare cash but even without it would have been worth it. So don't feel too put out, it just sounds as if your DS has grown up feeling secure and confident!

@TheClogLady thats lovely

@TheClogLady
Very wise words!

Here’s Ellie and Nele’s story:

www.bbc.com/news/stories-51806011

I met them at a detrans panel talk a couple of years back and had a really good chat with them both but especially with Nele.

I asked her what could her mum have done differently that could’ve altered her path and Nele said there was nothing. That her mum had loved her throughout her life and through transition but had remained skeptical and asked questions, and that her mum’s gentle, loving skepticism made it easier to ‘fess up when Nele realised she had been wrong about the trans thing and was ready to reidentify as a woman, and as a lesbian.

Ellie said that her understanding of herself changed via joining a leisure sports team, that she looked male enough that the other women & girls assumed she would play on the male team, but that Ellie herself knew on every level, physical, emotional, rational and subconsciously that she belonged on the women’s team.

The more your DD and X live their lives in the real-world, the more realistic their sense of selves will become.

I’ve said it before (under many a username!) but I was an utter shit to my wonderful, loving, mother from 14-17 and it took me until 24/25 and the birth of my first baby to really ‘get it’ in terms of what she’d done for me and how lucky I was to have her.

Thankfully, she did respond to my utter unreasonableness by pushing me away, but instead kept me on a long, almost unnoticeable elastic band. An elastic band that eventually snapped me back right beside her.
She must’ve been close to giving up hope many times, but she never gave up on me.

Your daughter is lucky to have you, and I’m telling you this now because it might be quite a while before she has the brain maturity and life context to realise it herself 💐

I know you probably want nothing more than to give your DD a good hard shake for bringing all this stress on her family but do try and bear in mind that the teenage brain IS selfish and impulsive and completely lacking in self awareness.
I’m sure there is some sort of evolutionary biological reason for it, although that doesn’t help us much in the modern world - our laws and customs have been created and changed piecemeal and left us in a weird situation where kids are expected to stay in school/Ed til 18/19 but are expected to pay full price on buses at 16 🙃

It’s difficult because OF COURSE you don’t want to be a pushover and OF COURSE you don’t want to encourage further estrangement. But the fact remains that at 16 teens can generally leave home, despite being miles off proper adulthood and not an attractive tenant for a landlord (especially with the two tier minimum wage system!)

Sitting in someone else’s bedroom while their mum works from home in another room
is my idea of hell, but perhaps it doesn’t feel too different to your DD’s experience at home with dad - feeling boxed into one small room in someone else’s property (ie the age old ‘you treat this house like a hotel!’ That is parents come out with), trying not to make too much noise in case you get told off? If X’s mum is less grumpy than your DH it might well feel like an improvement.

FWIW, I was delighted when my eldest came home back from uni (about 2 hours away and I never visited because of littlest cancer followed by covid, as she was on the extremely vulnerable list) and I actually spent some time redoing his room. He was back in town for about 4 weeks when he moved into a 4 person house share with friends he knew from high school. Turns out that no matter how much your mum loves you and accepts you and lets you bring friends home, it’s not enough for a 21 year old lad on his journey to full adulthood.

And that’s ok. Not gonna pretend I don’t find it completely batshit (and a little bit hurtful) that he spends £400 a month to live a mile and a half down the road but we don’t birth them to keep them at home forever.

Yes, your DD’s exit from the family home is on the early side and it’ll (hopefully) probably be a false start, but you did raise her to become her own person and actually, the person she is becoming has lots of positives, albeit ones it’s currently hard to see clearly under the fog of trans and an intense romantic attachment.

Try and keep an open mind re: X - I’ve personally met young detrans women who were completely convinced they were transmen & thus a gay male couple, who later on realised they were young lesbians coming of age in a lesbian-hostile era.

It’s easy to be a zealot when you are young!

@Moomoola I don't have any advice (as usual!) but it's really great to see all the posts above from various people offering insight, really wise advice and general handholds.

I hope that things improve for DH too, because working all hours when exhausted from illness isn't fun at all. I know his behaviour maladaptive coping strategies impacts you and the rest of the family, and that must be hard.

I hope you can enjoy the coffee date with DD and X. I hope you and X can find common ground (you both think DD is the bees knees, that's a decent start) and over time develop a good relationship, as you would hope to with a DD's partner. I really do.

You're doing the best you can, and that's enough.

This is such a good point. Most teenagers would not be overjoyed when their mother decides she is a man, wants to be treated as such and takes male hormones. Or their father decides he is a woman and wants make up and clothes advice from his daughter.

Added to just say, as my kids have each started working they have grown to appreciate how very hard their dad works and how he doesn’t complain about it, and what it really means to be working to support 5 people (I am not working outside the home, except a few hours a week on (one) of our family businesses.