I Hate Passing as a Straight Couple

ok so, year into our relationship, my soulmate came out to me as a trans man. Not gonna lie, I wasn’t thrilled about it! My lesbian identity is so important to me, but I love him dearly and was supportive and adapted. Now we are a year into his medical transition, he has facial hair, he’s had top surgery and passes 100% of the time. This is all fine I think. But over the past few months he has been less and less interested in being part of queer community, which is so important to me. We were on a kickball team together that he quit, and I get that since it is technically a “she/they” league. But that was a lot of our social life together too. He told me that he likes passing as a straight couple. He started a new job and isn’t out at work as trans. But I HATE passing as a straight couple! I hate that his co-workers think I’m a straight woman with a straight boyfriend. I love him and can’t imagine my life without him, but I also can’t imagine this life, either, and I’m worried that my feelings about this are transphobic and I want to be supportive of his identity. What should I do?

Summer: The rational part of my mind feels like this is a pretty straightforward life event. But I know that given the volume of emotions and investment you have in this relationship, it won’t be anywhere near easy for you.

Simply put… he’s a man now, and you’re seeing him as a man (a good thing). That means he’s not nearly as compatible with you as he used to be, seeing as you’re attracted to women. You’re attracted to women. Being a lesbian and being seen as a lesbian are important to you. The gradual detachment from pre-existing queer communities aside (those can be fixed/adjusted), you’re now dating a new and changing person. With no malice needed, you’re in a situation where one person’s happiness will have to come at the expense of the other. If you want your happy, lesbian life back, he’ll need to detransition—a grossly offensive and destabilizing concept (speaking as a trans girl). If he wants to keep his happy life as a new man, it comes at the expense of your gender identity and relationship needs. Both of those compromises are unacceptable to ask, in my eyes.

This happens all the time in couples where someone transitions. Incompatibility followed by a separation is a better outcome than people compromising for the rest of their lives. This incompatibility comes from a good place: your recognition of his personhood as a man and your resilience in not giving up your sexual identity. That’s little recompense for the loss of a relationship, but it’s better than alternatives like lifelong misery. He isn’t your soul mate anymore if one of the prerequisites for your soul mate is ‘woman’.

Motti: To begin, I’m sorry this is happening. I’m not sorry that your boyfriend is transitioning or that he passes and is living the life he wants to live. I’m just sorry that this, like many huge life events for people, is shedding light on incompatibilities with someone you otherwise considered your soulmate. As a trans man, I think that a break up caused by transition, and all that comes with it, is actually not a wild concept. It feels completely understandable to me and if I had transitioned while dating a lesbian instead of the bisexual woman I’ve been with, and she wanted to break up because I am a man and she is a lesbian, I would understand.

Like almost all breakups, it would suck. But it wouldn’t be transphobic or morally fucked up of you to exit a relationship that no longer serves you. As Summer mentioned, your identity as a lesbian is something that deserves affirmation just as much as his identity as a man.

I also think if you, as Summer suggested, separated due to incompatibility now rather than compromise, you’d be creating an environment in which a friendship (that can still be soul mates!) can take place. But if you truck on for the sake of trucking on or allyship, then you could risk any good standing your relationship has, romantic or otherwise.

There’s absolutely cases of lesbian couples staying together after one transition, despite being a lesbian. Sometimes people fall in love with the person and that’s enough. But others’ sexualities are so deeply tied with the lesbian culture, community, and small day-to-day details of lesbianism. Two years into medical transition and passing, I am still mourning the parts of my lesbian identity I can no longer participate or see myself in. I wouldn’t want someone to give those things up just to be kind.

Nico: You aren’t straight, first and foremost, nor is a person in a different-gender couple/partnership straight by default, so I do think it is unfair to expect you to allow other people to assume you’re straight. I think it’s unfair to ask you / imply that he desires for you to pass as straight, or if I’m reading between the lines, to not be out as queer, which is a thing you could do without outing your partner as trans. Plenty of queer/bi women date dudes, after all. Now, if you aren’t attracted to men, you aren’t attracted to men, and if your partner has come out as a man and is a man, then it’s understandable that you would find that you’re incompatible for that reason alone. However, you don’t really stay on that aspect of the situation in your question and in fact say you’ve adapted, so I hope I’m not misinterpreting here, but maybe you’re finding some flexibility in your queer identity, maybe finding that you can be bisexual/pansexual when it comes to being with your soulmate.

However, what is clearly the sticking point is, again, that your partner — according to your message — wants both of you to present as straight and wants to distance himself from queer community, to no longer participate in queer community in the ways you do and want to. You have different life plans / goals / desires, now, and, like you, I fear this may be the biggest hurdle to your relationship continuing. I don’t think it’s transphobic to say that you found meaning and happiness by belonging to a queer community with your romantic partner and that you miss that community. You miss your lesbian and/or queer identity being seen in your day-to-day interactions. It’s okay to acknowledge these things.

It sounds like you had a good run. It’s okay if a relationship isn’t forever — that doesn’t mean it’s a failure. In fact, your partner felt like he could trust you and come out to you and medically transition while dating you, so I am imagining that there is emotional safety in your relationship with each other, and that’s awesome. But if he wants to be straight and live a “straight” life (whatever this means) and you are not straight and do not want to live that same life, it’s okay to go your separate ways. Like Motti said, if you break up before things deteriorate and while you’re still on good terms, that leaves you with a much better setup for a future friendship.

Riese: We don’t always have to have romantic relationships with our soulmates. Sometimes a soulmate is a best friend, you know?

My girlfriend and I identified as switches, but we’d also both only ever dated tops before dating each other, and it’s starting to feel like we are actually both bottoms…. it’s not even about penetration or anything (both of us like to give and receive)… it’s more about initiating, and guiding the sexual experience. Can two bottoms ever make it work? We have sex maybe once a month and we’ve been together for 1.5 yrs.

Summer: When I see something like this, I go back to the model of spontaneous vs responsive desire. I’m leery of any model or assumption that slots people into two main groups, but this one is a good starting point for rethinking how desire and sex drive operates in people who do feel a sex impulse, but still can’t resolve how it works.

In short, spontaneous desire tends to resolve itself by pursuing the desired party actively. Responsive desire doesn’t usually pursue actively, but may need to be awoken by an active trigger. There’s no ‘right’ way to desire or want sex, but this model helps explain unexpected sexual incompatibilities between people who are otherwise interested in sex and interested in each other but just can’t ‘make it’ happen.

I recommend reading into this explanatory model together with your partner and see if it aligns with your shared experience. Even if it’s not an exact match to you, it might give you insights into how your respective understandings of desire work. And you’ll hopefully be able to work around it. <3

Oh, and don’t forget that your type of desire can even change with age, life experiences, and in the presence of different people. Love, desire, and sex are never cut and dry. It’s often wibbly wobbly vibes-based stuff.

Ashni: I have SO MANY THOUGHTS on topping and bottoming but I’ll share two relevant ones for right now. First, I’m a firm believer that bottoms make the best tops. Second, I think some tops (and really, I mean service tops) are just bottoms in disguise. Think about how eager they are to please. Maybe I’m saying the same thing twice, but all this to say — the top/bottom dichotomy is fluid and flexible, like all good things, and y’all can absolutely make it work provided you’re willing to put in the effort! Consider planning the sex before you have it, making it more of a collab situation, or taking turns trading off initiating if you both have responsive desire. The fact that you both identified as switches at one point makes me think there’s a desire to top hidden inside both of y’all that maybe is just dormant right now. Unearth that energy and cultivate it a little!

Nico: From the article Summer linked to, one of the myths around sexuality is: “If we have to put any preparation or planning into our sex lives, then we don’t want it ‘enough’” — which is categorically untrue, right? I think it might be a good idea to talk with each other about the emotional aspects of feeling more at home in the realm of “responsive desire.” People who experience a lot of responsive desire can see success with planning sex, but there also might be some mental/emotionally barriers y’all are dealing with when it comes to putting sex on the schedule. Does it worry you or make you feel anxious that neither of you initiates much spontaneously? Is there any emotional baggage around the idea of planning sex? What do each of you need in order to feel good about planning sex or designating time for intimacy? Does planning sex or putting sex on the calendar make you feel less desired? Can you unpack that and maybe try to reframe things, if so? What else do you feel holds you back from planning?

Then, there’s the distinction I just drew, which is: you can make time for intimacy without the expectation of sex, but with room in the schedule for sex should it be a thing that you want to do! If it feels like too much pressure to carve out a couple hours and mark “Sex!” on your Google calendar, then maybe you can plan a long date afternoon / night where emotional connection and intimate touch are the centerpoint. Get dressed and done up in ways that make you both feel sexy even though you’re not going out, create an emotionally safe space for each other, and engage in an activity that sets an intimate tone. This could be cuddling and watching a movie, making a special dinner together, dancing together, giving each other a massage, practicing something kink-related like Shibari (if that’s something you’re into), reading aloud to each other – things that allow for touch and kissing and which are not just collapsing on the couch after work and watching TV. From there, you might find that you naturally want to try to move onto having sex (or not if not, you’ll still have had a lovely time connecting).

Also, I know you say you’ve been together for 1.5 years, but are you still dating each other? Are you pushing yourselves out of your comfort zone together and trying new things? You might see where I’m going with this, but if you can both get in the habit of trying new things together, of challenging yourselves, then I’m wondering if it will make it easier for each of you to try initiating sex/intimacy more often. Because that is the final thing here, right? At the end of things, you’ll just need to communicate and give things that don’t feel super easy or quite natural to you a try. You can also, when it comes to taking turns, leave it up to chance or contest. Does the winner of a board game lead? Do you just draw straws, roll some dice? Do you think it would be fun to wrestle for top? Regardless of who winds up guiding / leading at any given time, it’ll take both of you communicating and being active participants in your sex life if you want to have sex more often. I believe in you!

Riese: Also I would love to direct you to Two Bottoms, One Relationship, a classic advice piece from Ryan Yates!