This morning I realized something important. I needed to have more forgiveness toward my partner about their reaction when I came out as nonbinary to them. I thought I had already forgiven them. But what I really did was reconcile with their reaction with a veil of forgiveness.
I say “reconcile” because looking back, whenever I’ve said or done something that is really important or vital for me and it causes a strong, negative-leaning reaction in the person who needs to hear it (romantic partners, parents, siblings, etc.), I feel, immediately, the responsibility and the guilt of having caused that reaction. As in, I’ve done something to them. And automatically, in my mind and conditioned emotional state, their reaction takes precedence over whatever it was that I needed to say or do for myself.
All of these reactions-to-reactions-to-reactions are all internal for me, by the way. On the surface, in response to causing a strong reaction, I’ll say I understand, I’ll say I’m sorry. I never want to cause anyone any pain. But unfortunately, there’s a thin line between trying to never cause pain and choosing attachment over authenticity.
When I came out to my partner as nonbinary, I didn’t start with the conclusion I’d reached; the label and concept I felt like I understood myself with so clearly for the first time. I started with the beginning of the whole process of what led me to questioning. As if I were an audiobook reciting a brief chapter in my impromptu memoir.
This meant I began by explaining the curiosities, catalysts, and various tipping points of what led me to this conclusion. Such as r/egg_irl; to reading about cisgender being the “null hypothesis” when it comes to questioning one’s gender; to reading a wiki all about gender dysphoria; to the secretive, self-abusive route many trans women take unknowingly at the start of their journey, and more. I had also joined a discord server just for questioning and talked to other trans people one-on-one about what I was struggling to realize. All of these points, one after the other, leading up to me experiencing a paradigm shift in myself where things finally made sense.
I caused my partner to panic about halfway through what I was telling them. Because I was mentioning so many experiences by trans women, they thought I was coming out as a trans woman myself. The rest of the evening was me explaining myself more while quelling their fears about something arising that would cause us to separate.
I understood why they panicked. We’ve been together for two years, and we fell in love after two weeks of talking to each other. No red flags, no sense of settling or compromising. What we felt was so strong and so out of the ordinary that for a good part of our first year together we’d both live in fear that some awful disaster would happen that would take us away from each other. After our first year, those fears calmed down. But coming out caused that particular deep fear to rise up again in them.
I have some reconciling to do with myself as well, though I think that will take some time and is part of the whole gender journey as it is. Once I had begun questioning (and felt the weight of a lifetime’s worth of anxieties and confusion removed from me) I, as I tend to do, went from one side of the pendulum to the complete other side. Meaning, for a couple days I sat with the idea of possibly being a trans woman. I was so absorbed at the effect questioning had had on me that when my partner and I went camping, I completely forgot everything I was responsible for bringing: the lanterns, the beer, the batteries. I even forgot to bring extra clothes and somehow only packed one shirt. In my imagination I pictured myself and my life as a “fully developed” woman, especially when I was alone. I don’t know if I had felt such an overwhelmingly positive escape in my daydreaming before.
But the minute I began to consider the effect it would have on my partner (much less family), I felt the guilt of betrayal. A week or so later when I would come out, in their panic they questioned how I knew what I knew and emphasized the reasonable doubt behind what other people say and suggest online, especially redditors. As I kept reassuring them that I did not feel that I was completely a woman, they said tearfully, “How do I know you won’t change your mind later? You can’t promise me that. I know it’s selfish but if you decided to, there would be a certain point where I would try and stop you, because I’m not attracted to women at all and I don’t want you to change.”
I wasn’t expecting to cause that kind of reaction. Their reaction went from panic to guilt and back and forth, because they were needing to get out their fears while also feeling terrible that they were taking this moment away from me and making it about them. My impulse to reconcile kicked in. It wasn’t until two months later, after coming out to two friends of ours via Zoom, that I accepted their second apology for their first reaction instead of deflecting it as not an issue. It did hurt to be met with so much visceral fear when coming out to someone with whom I’ve experienced a love that I didn’t think was possible in this world. But I felt too guilty to be fully honest with myself about how hurt I was. It meant that when they would tell me positive things about my exploration of gender — like how excited and proud of me they are — I would feel confused. I believed them, but the memory of their panic was much larger in my mind.
About a week or two later after coming out to them, again I found myself obsessive about essentially “proving” to myself that I had actually discovered what I had about myself. I started wondering about hormones. And again I worried about causing panic in my partner and feel enormously guilty. I was trying to abate my negative feelings one night about it, but I wasn’t able to. They suggested I come over to their place so that we could talk and so that they could help calm me down. When I arrived, I broke down in tears. I kept sobbing “Please don’t leave me,” over and over and over again, before I was even able to say what was causing this reaction in me.
I never expected to feel fulfilled in any area of my life. I never expected to be loved and understood the way I am now. I never expected to be alive for this long.
When I was finally able to tell them what was on my mind about hormones, they reminded me, with a small measure of overwhelm, that it’s only been a few weeks and that I need to slow down and figure this out in a healthier way. I couldn’t deny that they were right about this. I didn’t like how obsessive and absorbed I would get when I was alone, but I wasn’t able to help it during those first few weeks. Being told that there was a way to do this with discretion and with a potentially new community of people that I could talk to and turn to for help (besides online ones) eased the desperation I had that I needed to prove something to myself.
In every crisis before this one, I had to figure it out silently and alone. Seeking out community and asking for help — a way of being and interacting that’s completely foreign to me — must also be part of the paradigm shift I’m going through.
When I had arrived at the term “nonbinary,” before coming out to anyone, I felt peaceful. I hesitate to call the first days of considering myself as a trans woman “euphoric” because I didn’t find reassurance in it. It felt like fulfilling the long dormant fantasy I had of becoming a completely different person — moving from an identity-less self to a self where identity could be created. It was a means of gloriously escaping from my life. But my experiences over the last three years were what made that fantasy dormant. I never expected to feel fulfilled in any area of my life. I never expected to be loved and understood the way I am now. I never expected to feel like I could talk and go about writing and teaching and consciousness in the way that makes sense to me. I never expected to be alive for this long. And I’ve been proven wrong.
The term “nonbinary” speaks to the common liminal thread that’s existed throughout all areas of my life. Accepting this term made me feel like my feet were placed on the ground and in reality; while allowing myself to cultivate and manifest the parts of myself that never made sense to me — that made me believe that I was simply a defective human being.
Sometimes I will still put pressure on myself for “not doing enough” or “not proving” myself enough as genderqueer. Sometimes I’ll forget that this journey has only lasted two and half months so far. Sometimes I’ll have imposter syndrome when getting the chance to talk to new people who identify as trans and/or nonbinary. But the goal for me now is to implement what I never thought was possible: to feel at home in myself and in the world around me.
