Hi all,
I’m about 1.5 years into transition, started at age 31. I’m happier and healthier than I’ve ever been, and absolutely delighted by life now. I’m doing fantastically, I have a spouse who is my biggest fan and supporter, and we have a child together - My second biggest supporter.
I’ve alhad a really good relationship with my parents for most of my life. Maybe not incredible, but they did their best and it showed. They worked hard to provide for me and my siblings, and have been a safety net for us a few times even after moving out some 12 years ago.
The problem: my parents are conservative and very transphobic. Like, “dad posts stuff about ‘men playing sports with girls’ and means it” transphobic. “Stood up and walked out of the room, refused to talk to me when I came out” transphobic. They are loving and kind otherwise, and not particularly conservative in general. Just this one sticking point really, which makes it so much harder to comprehend.
When I came out to them, I had already made peace with the reality: My parents were likely to want me gone. I went in, not asking for acceptance but declaring my truth. I told them I wasn’t going anywhere; That I was only leaving if they wanted me gone, and then they … Proceeded to make it rather clear they wanted me gone, by never inviting us to anything besides major holidays, and refusing to just sit down and have a chat with me to try and understand or let me explain anything at all. Every time I’ve offered.
My dad is also a car guy. Built a garage in his yard with a lift in it, swaps vehicles almost yearly, always has an exciting new toy, car guy.
All my adult life of owning a vehicle, he’s been the one to do any major work to it. So, when it started idling really roughly the other day, my heart skipped a beat as I remembered I would usually call him to talk about it.
So I did what made the most sense to me: I tied my hair back, put on my gloves and handy-ma’am hat, and dove in. I diagnosed the problem with some research, and learned I needed to clean the throttle body. Not a hard job, but a bit involved. Then I spent the next 3 hours doing just that - Going to the store, buying the stuff I needed to do it, taking things apart, cleaning them, putting them back together.
I crank it, and it works!.. And I was quite suddenly hit by the weight of three emotions:
- Happy: Overjoyed, ecstatic that I did that! I did it all, me!
- Angry: I didn’t have to call my dad, I didn’t need anyone’s help - I DID IT. ME. WHO NEEDS A DAD ANYWAY!?
- Hurt: … I can’t even call him to share my excitement. I didn’t need his help to do it, why does it feel like I need his validation on the matter?
… And I realized from there that I’m not sure what to do about it. I’ve already cried and held my spouse, talked them through it - that’s step one: let myself feel the feelings.
But, what do I even do from here? Any ideas to help when this kind of thing happens? How do the rest of y’all with unsupportive parents handle the feeling of a need for validation?
My parents aren’t supportive of me being trans (one of my moms has makes similar complaints about sports), but they not to push me away. So I still share such with them. Otoh, the person who birthed us has never really been a major part of our lives and we all have cut off contact with her, but since contact with her was limited even as children, she was never that person whom I’d really want to share stuff with anyways (ironically, the only thing I’m sorta interested in seeing how she’d feel if she found out I was trans). It’d be rough not having my parents to tell things too because they didn’t want to be around me. Otoh, they’ll probably die before me, so the lack of being able to talk to them is something most people eventually deal with. I have my brother and my friend who would be the closest replacement (being people I already share those wins with).
Just a suggestion if you still want to feel some connection with your parents: write a letter, a birthday card or christmas card or something like that with the various wins and successes and maybe some of the tribulations you had over the year.
Give your parents the choice of if they want to be proud of their daughter or not, if their desire to know how their daughter is growing up even now overrides their antitrans bigotry. It takes a lot more effort and thought to send a reply letter than a fb post, email or just talking back at you. If they’re going to spend the time to write hatemail back then you know how far gone they are. But at least you’ll avoid the brunt of knee-jerk conservative BS.
Not trans, but I cut my shitty parents out of my life and have literally never been happier. I share my life with my friends, and I’m fortunate enough to have inherited a good family through my wife.
Your life is too valuable and your time is too short to waste any of it on people who are unsupportive of you in any way, family is no exception.
i had a rather bad relationship with my parents. not catastrophic, but not good for sure. being trans only showed me this bigger problem once again. i do not talk to the father atm and avoid the mother.
what i still do is sending them pictures of me via group chat when i feel great. i want them to see their daughter. they either do not react to it at all, or very distanced (like “that looks different.”). besides that i do not share anything. they would only turn anything agsinst me.
so. i do not deal with that situation in a very grown up way. or maybe i am just done? i learned years ago, that i shouldn’t expect anything from them. your case seems different in that they were caring an suddenly stopped? it must be a schock to suddenly watch your parents shift and let you down. even if you somewhat expected this, seeing it play out in front of you is a very sad moment. please keep walking. your little family sounds awesome! :)
I’m sorry this isn’t a more pleasant answer, but after a brief period of trying to educate them and meet them halfway I basically let the matter lie until they both died. I had just given up on them changing, and eventually it was no longer possible.
So, I can tell you that’s probably what won’t work. How much you want to push them, how much you can deal with being repeatedly rejected, and how often you want to try is something that’s completely up to you. I’m still not even sure I necessarily chose wrong, since I spent most of my life trying to budge them on other issues and getting nowhere.
I have mostly dealt with feeling like shit over that by trying to ‘it is what it is’ it into oblivion, as one of those things my therapist would tell me I have to accept because I can’t change it.
