Ok so in the past 3 years I have gotten to know many Trans guys from all corners of the world.
I found that I have many things in common with them, but also quite a few Asperger’s-related issues, that I have been dealing with whereas they do not.
Growing up I had to deal with rejection, not only based on my gender identity and gender-role related behavior, but also rejection based on my general way of thinking and behavior. I have always seen the world a bit differently than everyone else around me. I was way more advanced than my peers in my way of thought and my way of learning, yet way behind when it came to emotions and social rules.
How much behind I was (emotionally speaking) was often visible when I got overwhelmed and had a meltdown. Unlike neurotypical peers, whose meltdowns slowly decreased and mostly disappeared by their teenage years, mine have accompanied me all the way to adulthood.
As an adult, I already understood what I was feeling most of the time; however, I didn’t understand why I felt that way or what to do with those strong feelings.
The result was, that I often just locked my feelings down inside and ignored, that they ever existed!
That’s exactly what I did with all the feelings and thoughts about my gender identity and sexual orientation. My mom never accepted me as a boy, after I declared I was one (between ages 3 and 12) and I had no one I could turn and talk to about it for years; because of that, once my body started changing, I basically made myself stop thinking about how I differ from other girls or what makes me feel that I’m actually a boy, ignored my feelings, urges and thoughts in this matter, and adopted the female role and behavior that I was expected to have.
The problem was, that these feelings didn’t stay locked up inside me for long. Every now and then they would come up to the surface, overwhelm me and then I would have a big melt-down with the first little frustration that came my way and suppress all these feelings after I calmed down. In between those meltdowns my moods were erratic at times- going from being calm and productive…and even creative to being depressed and dysfunctional.
Having gender dysphoria made life difficult, especially since I didn’t understand what these feelings meant exactly or why I was having them. For years I thought of my breasts as ugly tumors, with which I had to live; my monthly period cycles as punishment for something I might have done in my previous life… I never came across Trans people nor have I heard much about them until age 30 or so. So you can imagine my surprise when I realized that I was one, after my psychologist suggested that I researched it.
Back to how things are different for me…
Many of the Trans guys I know find themselves struggling with their partners/ spouses once they start transition; dealing with all the changes isn’t easy… not for themselves nor for their partners. In my case, it’s even harder at times, because my wife still has to take under consideration the Aspie related things on top. for example- like most of my Trans friends, I don’t experience anger more than I did pre-transition, despite taking Testosterone. In fact I feel calmer now. However just like it happened for my Trans friends, the way I handle the anger, when it does present itself, has changed. While some men become more verbally aggressive once angry or on the other pole- find it easier to let the anger go, I become overwhelmed by the anger and frustration and completely retreat into myself. I can feel myself sitting there stimming (usually rolling my thumbs or biting my lip) in silence, going over whatever happened, that managed to anger me, in my mind, and even though I want to be able to talk to my wife, when she pushes for it, I can’t seem to make myself do that for hours. Prior to transition, I used to be very verbal, even when angry…I just used to raise my voice or shout but since I kept talking, I would calm down faster.
Other challenges I had to face were:
– explaining things to my friends and family when I came out to them. Explaining things isn’t my strong suit and I had to do that a lot! I had to explain when I got diagnosed with Asperger’s, then when I came out as “lesbian” and then once I came out as Transgender. Each time to over 20 people in person and through the phone and then later to many more friends through social media and/or email.
– staying strong in the face of losing friends and family over coming-out isn’t easy for anyone, but most neurotypical guys can handle frustration and being hurt much better than I can. I get frustrated within minutes and then I spend hours trying to minimize the anger that goes along with this frustration. Same happens when my feelings get hurt. So, you can imagine how frustrated, hurt and angry I became when I heard friends telling me that they’d rather not talk to me anymore than put the effort to talk to me as male (the “it’s just too difficult to get used to” line). It’s not that I didn’t know I might lose friends over this…I did, but once I did lose them, it hurt and once hurting, I got frustrated which brought on anger and rage, but since I now handle things differently, what happened was that I internalized it all and it was eating me from inside. It took me over a year on Testosterone to get to the point where I could rationalize things when angry and calm myself down. Another anger/feeling hurt related difficulty is that others can’t see it on me anymore. Ever since I started taking Testosterone, it seems that whatever I’m feeling inside doesn’t translate to my facial expressions or body language. In the past, it was like I was wearing my heart on my sleeve; you could see every emotion I had right on my face. That’s why I could never really lie- you’d see it right away. These days, I’m told that it’s very difficult to see what I’m feeling and my facial expression is often misinterpreted. When that happens, it causes some friction between my wife and myself.
– being seen as a man now, I’m expected to be more assertive, take the lead and initiate a lot of things. To most Trans guys, that is not a problem…on the contrary, many of them used to complain they didn’t get the chance to do those things before they came-out and transitioned. To me, however, it’s very hard!
My initial tendency is to be shy and disappear to the background. like most Aspies, I hate being in the spotlights. I worked hard on myself and I guess the Testosterone helped some too and I did become more confident in myself, more assertive too but initiating conversations with people I don’t know and taking lead on certain things, are still a battle I need to fight on a daily basis!
There are many other things I have to deal with, being both an Aspie and Transgender, but as I said before, it’s hard for me to point thing out and explain them.
So I’ll leave you with this: Life for an Aspie is always difficult! by adulthood many of us are already used to being fighters…fighting for things that neurotypical people take for granted,
and although I find that transitioning from female to male has been harder for me than for many others out there, I also find that I enjoy it more than most would. The fact that as an Aspie I feel things to the extremes may be really difficult to handle, but the pay-off is amazing! While other Trans men report suddenly being content with their bodies, after starting HRT (hormone therapy), for me it has been more of an extreme happiness, euphoria of a sort…feeling whole and going from hating my face and body to truly loving how I look.
Transition is the one thing, I have experienced in life, that truly makes sense to me and I would do it all over again, if I had to!
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