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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

The man I fell in love with wanted to be a woman - newspaper column

25 replies

stumbledin · 14/03/2020 23:18

Just thought I would post a link to this article.

The message seems to be that a heterosexual woman who thinks she is starting a relationship with a man ends up feeling guilty for not accepting that he was in the process of transitioning.

" ... The transgender community already experiences so much fear and rejection, and I felt that I was essentially confirming that fear. I pushed him away and broke my own heart.

" ... I know she didn’t deliberately mislead me, even if it felt that way at the time. She was never more dishonest with me than she was with herself. I haven’t dated since because I don’t feel like anyone could measure up. We’re still sporadically in touch, but for now I don’t feel able to be friends. Seeing her move on without me is too painful. Tom still influences my life; I tick the ‘other’ box in solidarity when a form demands to know whether I’m a man or woman, and every trans person on the news who loses their life is Tom. "

metro.co.uk/2020/03/14/happened-man-fell-love-wanted-woman-12388150/

OP posts:
Durgasarrow · 14/03/2020 23:40

Mr. Topknot was incredibly selfish to go on a dating site to meet women and fuck with their heads.

FloralBunting · 14/03/2020 23:45

Solidarity to all transwidows for the headfuckery these men put them through.

I hope every woman who is still tortured with any guilt for this bullshit finds her way to other women and a sense of peace.

stumbledin · 15/03/2020 00:05

Its the way she's internalised all of this as somehow her fault.

And yet at each time she tried to re-engage with him, she felt unable to connect with him, or engineered an arguement.

Why cant she just accept that her honest response was that she did not response to a man saying he wanted to transition.

Ticking the other box in solidarity Shock

She seems to feel she isn't allowed her own instincts. The trans programme has been so sucessful she assumes that even though she has always been heterosexual somehow this is now a problem.

Talk about mind games.

OP posts:
TinselAngel · 15/03/2020 00:09

I'll read this in the morning as I'd like to sleep.

Lamahaha · 15/03/2020 09:49

G'night Tinselangel! Daffodil

TinselAngel · 15/03/2020 10:23

This really rings bells to me. All her instincts were telling her that this wasn't right for her but she ties herself in knots to persuade herself otherwise.

This is where women's constant socialisation to be kind gets us. Plus youve then got the immense pressure from society to be trans inclusive.

The author would be much better off thinking of it as dodging a bullet rather than as evidence of some kind of failure on her part.

Danceswithwarthogs · 15/03/2020 10:28

Why do women always think they must ‘fix’ men’s issues?

Durgasarrow · 15/03/2020 10:55

We are here to be their support horses, evidently.

PositiveVibez · 15/03/2020 11:13

She sounds absolutely brainwashed.

TinselAngel · 15/03/2020 11:17

Let's not judge her harshly. Like all of us she's a victim of patriarchy.

Danceswithwarthogs · 15/03/2020 11:28

It’s really sad to carry the problems of others (that existed before you and that are outside of your power to fix) on your conscience forever. Hopefully in time she can separate the empathy she feels for this person from any sense of personal guilt. It sounds more to me that she’s the one who has been let down and used.

Italiangreyhound · 15/03/2020 13:15

I wish women would stop feeling guilty when relationships end, full stop. It's not always their fault, sometimes it's no one's fault, sometimes it's someone's fault. But at the end of the day no one has the right to demand ANYONE be in a relationship with them!

Italiangreyhound · 15/03/2020 13:16

For 'fault' read 'reason why things end'!

Sarcelle · 15/03/2020 13:37

I want to shake the woman. She fell in love with a man, who wanted to be a woman. She was turned off by that, there should be no guilt. You fancy who you fancy, transitioning was his journey, not hers.

Thelnebriati · 15/03/2020 15:29

FOG - fear, obligation, guilt. Its a hell of a controlling mechanism, it convinces you to do all the hard work yourself.

definitelygc · 15/03/2020 16:05

I thought some of the quotes about she met this person were interesting:
it seemed impossible that coincidence had put us in the same place at the same time. It felt like the universe was saying: here’s the person you’ve been waiting for. I had the strongest sense that this was the man I was supposed to spend my life with.

After being in an abusive relationship, I realised how dangerous it is to put someone in this special soulmate box. I used to be a hopeless romantic and get into really intense relationships and, in hindsight, I realise I was a magnet for controlling, abusive men. Turns out you can excuse the most horrendous behaviour when you've convinced yourself that fate has brought you together.

Thelnebriati · 15/03/2020 16:22

I have sometimes wondered if there's a sliding scale between love and limerence.

WrathofFaeKlopp · 15/03/2020 18:29

For 'fault' read 'reason why things end'!

This is a good way of putting it into plain English.

DuLANGDuLANGDuLANG · 16/03/2020 08:21

Her inner Beryl needs stamping on, hard.

The transwidows threads would help enormously.

TheProdigalKittensReturn · 16/03/2020 20:41

I want to pick this bit of female socialization out.

I wanted to believe that love was more than skin-deep. But, if I was a good person, why was I so concerned with who Tom was on the outside?

This, frankly, is utter bollocks, and would be very unlikely to ever cross the mind of someone who has bollocks. Of course attraction is related "who someone is on the outside"! Nobody looks across a crowded room and thinks "cor, look at the deeply empathetic nature and excellent political views on him/her". Obviously personality can make or break one's decision about whether to act on an initial attraction, but the initial attraction is based on "the outside" because that's how attraction works! Why are women expected to pretend otherwise?

DuLANGDuLANGDuLANG · 16/03/2020 22:29

Even if you ARE able to put aesthetics aside, surely the knowledge that the man you fancy is considering sacrificing his sexual function to change his appearance is STILL going to be a bit of a deal breaker for most people?

And especially so if you hoping for biologically related children in the future?

I’ve gone off a hot looking chap because I just didn’t fancy him any more once he was naked. There was nothing objectively wrong with him but whatever the mammalian instinct that drives sexual attraction IS, it just vanished.
Like this 😍💨 ☹️

Obviously attraction can fade in the long term, but surely it needs to last at least long enough to get you to the settling down and becoming a proper partnership phase? 5 years plus?

TheProdigalKittensReturn · 16/03/2020 23:56

I mean, if you don't fancy someone a month or two in, when you'd normally be in the shag till you can shag no more phase, it's hardly going to improve from there.

Staffori · 17/03/2020 01:20

"Logically I knew that transitioning isn’t so much a choice as a response to the inherent knowledge that you were born in the wrong body."

Nobody is born in the wrong body, you fool. You fell for someone with an extreme form of a specific paraphilia.

Sickening that she goes along with the ideological nonsense and calls him 'she'.

yetanotherusernameAgain · 17/03/2020 05:48

What a load of tosh. It was just a holiday romance, not a long term relationship. Hardly qualifies her as a trans widow.

They met for two weeks while travelling, kept in touch for 3 months, met again for a week and then he went back to Australia. And that was 4 months ago.

I wonder if her motivation for the article is her "solidarity" with the trans cause and this is a puff piece to garner sympathy for it. Assuming it's all actually true...

DuLANGDuLANGDuLANG · 17/03/2020 08:36

It doesn’t qualify her as a trans widow, no, but reading the threads is an eye opening experience for everyone. The same pattern, over and over. They reveal the maggoty mess that writhes beneath the veneer of stunning and brave.

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