How To Support Your FTM Partner Through Their Transition

Rudy: It wasn’t a sexual relationship, but rather, my best friend of over 10 years. I’d say she was more important to me than any girl I was sexually involved with. She had been through the most toughest parts of my life, including me getting sober. She tried to be supportive about my transition, but it just wasn’t sincere. She would always tell me how much she missed Karolin (my female name) and how Rudy was just so different. She would often compare Karolin and Rudy as if Karolin was this perfect human who died and would never come back. She made things very difficult, and I decided that she had become very toxic for me and my transition.

Evan: Yes, I last women I dated before my transition was very controlling. She said more then one time, “I’m a lesbian and that means you need to be female.” I learned so much about what I wanted in a relationship

Leo: I’ve never been with someone who has not supported my decisions, but if I did, I love myself too much to stop myself from doing something that meant my life happiness.

Simon: I dealt with this issue when my current partner and I began dating. They identified at the time as a cis queer woman, with a recent history of dating exclusively women (but with an extensive history of dating men prior to that). But, at the time, they identified as someone who dated only women. We met on Tinder and hit it off right away. It was obvious that we had an intellectual and emotional connection. However, pretty soon into seeing each other, they began having issues with dating me because of a fear that I was “male” and that I would only become more male as time went on. It took several long conversations, and ultimately just time, for them to realize that although I looked male on the outside, I still very much had the soul of a queer person who was socialized female.

I would say to any cis queer woman whose partner is transitioning to male that they need to not make any assumptions about what their partner will “turn into.” First, they should think about what it is that’s really bothering them. Is it the fact that at some point, if their partner 100% passes, that the outside world might read them as heterosexual? If their partner is anything like many of us were pre-transition (as in, genderqueer, boyish, etc.) there’s a good chance that is already happening at least part of the time. You can’t control what anyone else thinks, so why try? If this is a bother, then it’s necessary to really look into yourself to determine why.

Maybe they’re worried about things changing with respect to sex and how their partner likes to experience it. I think largely that people don’t really change too much through transition except for the outward changes, and so some drastic shift is probably not likely (unless their trans partner has some repressed issues in that department, in which case they could come out and change things).

However, something that is common is trans men who previously only (or primarily) slept with women becoming sexually attracted to men (trans or cis). There are a lot of theories why this could be true, but sexual orientation is individual to the human, so there’s no one answer. I know for me, I had always been attracted to men, though it was something I never really acted on. I had always presented in such a masculine way that there was no real option for me to have romantic or sexual interactions with men—neither straight nor gay men were interested. When I transitioned, something happened—gay men began showing interest. That factor, combined with my latent attraction and my increased sex drive, led me to start pursuing sexual interactions with cis men for the first time in my life. And this is pretty common with trans guys.

So, I would tell partners that there may be shifts in how their trans partner is perceived sexually by others, and how their trans partner’s attractions manifest themselves. But keeping communication open is key and also remember that this may be a first for your partner. Try to be open and non-judgmental about whatever your partner tells you is happening to them through transition. You don’t want them to suppress or hide what’s happening from you because they’re afraid you’re going to judge them.

When I first began my transition, my girlfriend at the time and I were long distance and would have been for at least a year, if not more. I found that my increased sex drive made it really hard to consider staying in a relationship that was devoid of sex. The increase was so dramatic that it actually made me really sad that I couldn’t have a sexual connection with another human, and that sadness turned into resentment. I asked for an open relationship so that I would be able to meet my needs and still maintain the relationship, but my girlfriend did not want that, so we split. I tried as best as I could to explain that my needs were not romantic, per se, but more basic than that. Increased libido can also alter the attachments we have to sex. For me, it became something that I was capable of doing casually, with little to no romantic attachment, and it would still be physically satisfying. It was hard to explain that to my girlfriend, however, and she felt like my request to open the relationship was a reflection on her.