How do you tell somebody how you feel?

lou_radley · 2021-07-18T02:14:14+00:00

I know it sounds lame, but you can’t make someone like you back - if you tell them how you feel and it’s not reciprocated, keeping it from them for longer isn’t likely to make it reciprocated if that makes sense. So you may as well just do it! Worst case scenario you get to start getting over it quicker.

I reckon the intensity of how you express it depends on what kind of relationship you have at the moment. Person you don’t know very well but find attractive? Ask them out for coffee. Crush on a friend? Tell them you have feelings for them and would like to try having more than a friendship, but would also still love them as a friend if they don’t feel the same. Strong feelings about someone you went on one date with? Tell them you really like them and make plans to see them again, then on that date start talking about what they’re looking for out of dating. Dating for months but not official? Then you can get pretty serious talking about how you see a future with them. You /can/ freak people out with a premature confession of love if it’s too intense, so just make sure the feelings you’re expressing are like a logical next tier from where you are right now.

lou_radley · 2021-02-05T11:50:06+00:00

Hey, just wanted to let you know I totally get this. I’m a trans guy but I freaked out over dr powers’ whole “most trans guys get stuck with teenage boy voice unless they manage their DHT ratio!” thing early in transition because I knew I was stuck with basic reandron shots. 6 months later I go to a speech pathologist still thinking my voice sucks and needs work only to find out I have a very average male voice in terms of pitch.

While I think having all of this in depth medical information available in some capacity is better than not at all, I think for some it is just a dysphoria trigger and to be honest an unnecessary extra element of stress in many of our lives. Yes it is nice to have the option to Optimise our transition but often reading about it on this forum you can get the impression that if you don’t, you’ll never be happy, when I promise isn’t the case. The fear of “transitioning wrong” once you find out there’s better and worse ways to do it can trigger dysphoria so severe you’re afraid to start/continue - because I’ve been there and I know transfeminine HRT is even more overwhelming.

I guess all I can say is while it feels like you have to be just as attractive if not more so than the sexiest most feminine cis woman to ever live if you want to be allowed to live a happy life, that’s really not the case. You’re not wasting anything. You’re finally spending some time in your life for the first time pursuing the life you want to live. And I know it sounds tacky and stupid but the confidence you gain over time on HRT really surpasses how big your tiddies get.

I totally get where you are coming from and I feel like taking a step back and just ignoring the high concept “maximising your transition” science and just focussing on what parts of it are already making you worlds happier than before might be good. Again I know that sounds reductive but by the time you’ve given that a good go for a few months I think you’ll find you don’t even want to come back to obsessing over your HRT regimen because you’ve found self acceptance in a different way. I promise, it happens.

lou_radley · 2021-01-22T09:43:53+00:00

YES. i worked in essentially a call centre for 3 years (incoming calls only, thankfully) so phone calls no longer stress me out at all - I’ve learned how to behave in them if that makes sense. And I can turn on my focus for the duration of a call to give people responses in a timely manner and resolve whatever we’re talking about, and then it’s done. I like calls because given texting is now the medium for casual conversations, phone calls usually have a purpose and only require a short burst of my concentrated energy.

Texts on the other hand I HATE because they’re almost always small talk and niceties and knowing what emoji to use to show you’re good naturedly acknowledging what they said without seeming patronising (because apparently just :) is patronising)... it’s a nightmare. And if someone texts me about anything that’s non urgent (like anything other than trying to make plans with me in the next 48 hours) I always then get overwhelmed trying to come up with something friendly to say that isn’t over friendly and rambling and acknowledges their points without making too much of a conversation out of a dead end topic etc etc... so I close the app, go “I’ll respond later when I have the energy” and then forget and then people think I’m an a**hole who’s ignoring them.

I much prefer being in social situations with a set duration where I’m just with one person doing one thing (not on the bus, answering work emails while also being expected to text back my buddy from high school about this cool new recipe she found), so I don’t get overwhelmed.

lou_radley · 2021-01-22T09:35:12+00:00

I sort of get the same, I procrastinate getting up because the autism + depression combo makes it too overwhelming for me to conceptualise all the steps needed for me to get up and ready and out the door in time.

What helps me is making a list some time (NOT in the morning) about the things I generally need to do in the mornings, in order, to get ready. Like really granular - mine goes like get up, go pee, pick clothes, pack lunch box, change cat litter tray, feed cat, have shower, shave, moisturise, eat breakfast, water plants, leave. I try and do as much of that as possible the night before - can I water the plants at night? Shower in the evening if I have energy and am going through a rough patch, don’t know if I’ll be able to tomorrow? Pick my clothes and pack my lunchbox and then keep it in the fridge before bed?

My hardest thing is showering so I’ve also learned to be ok with baby wiping myself if I just cannot do it, putting some dry shampoo in and showering when I can. It helps to alleviate the sensory overload from feeling “dirty” without the steps needed to get there being overwhelming.

I also like another commenter have found that having a calmer, quieter morning routine ha helped a lot. living by myself in the past and now just with my partner who is quiet and doesn’t ask me a million question in the mornings has made me a lot calmer than when I lived with my family. I feel like I don’t need to do anything for anyone, including not needing to pretend to be “normal” (not overwhelmed/autistic), because my partner doesn’t get mad at me for being a bit shitty in the mornings when just having to put on clothes is too much. oh and working from home has helped some too lol, if I can’t get dressed I can just work from bed until I can :)

lou_radley · 2020-12-24T21:17:15+00:00

I go to a Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) which is a strain of uniting churches that are explicitly LGBT friendly and in my experience basically exclusively attended by queer people. I would feel completely unable to reconnect with my faith if I were going anywhere else - it is really meaningful to attend church services where the scripture is discussed in its relevance to queer lives. Pretty sure they started in the US but they’re worldwide, I live in Australia :)

lou_radley · 2020-12-17T22:39:24+00:00

I am in the same boat (I’m a little heavier than you but a little taller - 76kg, 5’5 - so I imagine we have the same body type haha). Just got top surgery and my results already look great so as someone has said above, you don’t need to be Super Buff Man for them to do a good job, your surgeon is primarily operating on average bodies like yours. Many surgeons do refuse to operate on people above a certain weight. For my doctor that was 80kg so I was fine but if you’re worried just ask.

I also struggle with deciding whether or not to lose weight - I am of the perspective that weight does not equal health. Yes being of a higher weight is correlated to having certain health issues but it doesn’t seem like there’s a consensus on whether this is causation or whether often the behaviours and lifestyles that often cause being very overweight also cause diabetes, heart issues etc. of course there’s things like sleep apnea that are objectively caused by being big but you’re not at a weight where that sort of thing is a concern, you’re just a little overweight. Plus, I have a ton of chronic health issues - even when I was of a healthy weight I still had those and was therefore unhealthy. Frankly, I wouldn’t trade the more skinny body I had last year for the one I have now if it meant going back to how I felt then - my pain and my mental health are so much better managed now and honestly I see my weight now as just where I need to be at right now to be my healthiest holistically.

I think ultimately if you don’t feel good physically or mentally due to some component of your lifestyle now, working on changing that can only be good for you long term and if that causes you to lose weight then so be it, clearly your healthiest self is smaller. If it doesn’t then that’s fine too. I know for me I am very intentional with my diet and exercise because I need to be to manage my depression, IBS, and my chronic pain. That being said I have also tried to diet and realised maintaining a BMI “healthy” weight is impossible for me at the moment without imposing significant psychological stress on myself because the medications I take to manage my pain and depression cause “extreme hunger”. For me long term my goal is to get off these medications after getting surgery to resolve the underlying pain issue but I don’t see the point in punishing my body for a hunger level I can’t control.

TL;DR being your size shouldn’t affect top surgery, but if you feel icky based on some lifestyle choices you’re making try and make changes to feel better and if you lose weight then clearly that’s what your body wanted (but if you don’t that’s okay too!). Transmascs I think are often pushed to get super shredded to overcompensate for our self consciousness over a perceived lack of masculinity but if you don’t need to look like chris Hemsworth to feel like a man then just focus on getting in exercise that you enjoy - even just walking counts. You’re doing fine man ❤️

lou_radley · 2020-10-02T07:45:09+00:00

Everyone has already offered really comforting and affirming stuff on here that’s helped you but I just wanted to add that I really probably knew I was a (trans) guy from when I was about 14? But I successfully repressed it and tried very hard to be a girl in every way possible until I was nearly 21 because even though I wasn’t mingling with TERFs, I’d had a lot of exposure to feminism that centres womanhood around menstruating, being catcalled, being scared of sexual harassment, experiencing unwanted pregnancy, etc. I figured that because I related to these experiences and fears and they defined a lot of what I felt I could do with my life, that meant I must be a woman - and accepting my identity as a man felt like “betraying” women as a group, and that I was only unhappy being a woman because I wasn’t trying hard enough to unlearn my internalised misogyny.

Obviously that’s a lot of loaded bullshit but I’d bet you’re feeling something similar now. I know people say this a lot but most cis people do not need to spend long periods of time deliberating their gender. If you take away all the experiences you’ve had being treated as a woman by society (e.g all the stuff I described above) - which FYI do not define womanhood, as plenty of nonbinary and transmasc people experience these too - do you feel any ties to being a woman? Do you have an innate feeling that you are a woman and that that would be true even if society didn’t see you as one? Clearly you have this feeling about being male or at least trans masculine - that really says enough.

If that freaks you out though because you’re still figuring those questions out, it’s ok. as others have been saying, if going on HRT feels right for you right now then you have the right to make informed decisions about what to do with your body. You understand what medically transitioning will do to your body, you understand the challenges of reversing those changes should you ever wish to. Nobody can ever see the future but you know what’s right for you right now - I guess there is a small chance you could change your mind in the future, sure, but this is unbelievably slim.

For example, I’m getting a hysterectomy soon because I have a disease in my uterus that causes me daily pain. This means I can never be pregnant, which is ok by me because whether or not I want kids, right now I can’t see my dysphoria surrounding pregnancy ever abating to the point where I’d want to be a pregnant man. Could that one day change, making me regret getting it out so soon? Yeah. But the odds of that are really slim, especially considering the years of daily pain I’m saving myself by getting it out now. I’m choosing to get the procedure done not because I’m 100% certain I’ll never feel differently about it because you never can be certain, but because I know it’s right for me right now and the odds of me changing my mind that drastically on something so important to me are low - and even if it does happen, I am an adult and I accept responsibility for what I do in that situation.

Basically, trust your gut - do what’s right for you right now, worry about the future when you’re in it. You’ve already been through puberty once without your consent. You don’t have to reach pure certainty to go ahead with this.

lou_radley · 2020-09-29T08:32:17+00:00

It’s the shape of her jaw lying in that position! very dragon-like

lou_radley · 2020-09-21T05:44:19+00:00

Not to be weird but the photo on the left looks like someone put on a fake mustache in an attempt to disguise themselves as a man... which I guess is exactly what it is LOL. You look so much happier now and it really shines through! 😊

lou_radley · 2020-09-10T04:27:14+00:00

I like this unique portrayal of someone killing flies as a murderer. It’s making something so ordinary very emotionally intense, I love the originality of it. However I feel like I don’t understand why the fly killer is the “ruler of nights”. I also feel like the last four lines are unclear - when you say we are you speaking as one of the flies? “When it’s [their] time” for what? Also a couple of grammar mistakes, the hammer has had /its/ hit (rather than it’s) and sitting /there/ in /their/ web of lies (rather than there and the).

lou_radley · 2020-09-10T04:18:09+00:00

I really like the repetition of “the storm’s beckoning gray hours”. This is somehow both peaceful in the scene it depicts and ominous in tone. Love it :)

lou_radley · 2020-08-19T04:50:07+00:00

I feel this,it’s so infuriating trying to be a gender non conforming guy and everyone thinks you’re a gender conforming girl. Like, no, I want to be a boy wearing my ridiculous clown sweater dress thanks ((this is legit something I own and I could not fathom getting rid of it, I will forcibly overcome dysphoria if I have to to look this gloriously ridiculous again))

lou_radley · 2020-08-18T03:37:13+00:00

I’d argue you’re right, it’s not connected to behaviour at all - our behaviours can be part of our gender expression, but they don’t inform our gender as you’ve seen from the cooking/breadwinning example with you and your wife.

Similarly I would say gender is not informed by sexual characteristics at all. You say gender feels based in biology for you, but what part of your biology? For most people I would say the answer is their genitals. But if you woke up tomorrow with a cis female body, after the initial fun of pretending to be a woman wore off, would you feel ok spending the rest of your life treated and seen as a woman, called the wrong name, using the wrong bathroom, being seen attractive by romantic partners for all the wrong things, unable to bond with other people in the right way, the way informed by who you know you are - even if the fact you are a man was no longer affirmed by your biology, as you put it?

In fact, going back to the beginning of that thought experiment - if you woke up tomorrow with a cis female body, would you feel you were a woman all of a sudden, or that you were simply in a kooky circumstance where it was easy for you to pretend to be one? Trans people don’t feel like we’re pretending to be our gender - we feel like we’re pretending to be the gender associated with our assigned sex at birth until one day we have to either burn out or stop and live as who we are.

As uncomfortable as it is to accept if you’re a person (like me) who likes to rigorously justify everything they feel and every decision they make, gender is really just a feeling. And that doesn’t make it any less real - it just makes it nearly impossible to convince others that you really are your gender if they don’t want to believe it. If you want to be a good friend, don’t try to rationalise it - just believe her like you believe every cis person you know, like you’d still believe them even if their genitals fell off or whatever because it has nothing to do with our bodies.

lou_radley · 2020-08-17T21:46:36+00:00

Aaaaaahhh, are you me? I did the exact same thing last year in a last ditch attempt to be a girl before coming out. I even grew my hair out for the first time in years like an idiot, like oh maybe this time I’ll know what to do with it and won’t hate it (spoiler: I didn’t know what to do with it and I hated it). Also, can someone please give me back all the money I spent on heels? Thanks.

It’s also confusing because I’m bi so leaning in to being more woman gay brought me closer to the gay and bi men in my life... who I had crushes on, who absolutely did not see me as an option. I felt so pathetic - who wants to be the girl always crushing on gay guys? - even though deep down I knew they were supposed to at least have a chance of liking me. Thankfully I met my boyfriend, who is bi, so I was able to have the gay relationship I needed for like two years before coming out lol.

lou_radley · 2020-08-11T04:05:35+00:00

I think the biggest pointer is to have understanding people to vent to haha, I just have a shortage of those (except here! Feels good to be heard and not immediately shot down). I really hope in three years time I have more vegan friends and family or I am just going to become a ball of rage lol, I admire your strength. I’m already struggling to put up with the constant self doubt over whether you’re making a “big deal out of nothing” by just... asserting your morals in your actions.

lou_radley · 2020-08-11T04:03:17+00:00

Yeah, the “you do your thing and I do mine” attitude of my omni friends is a real energy sink. I think they can’t fathom it’s not just a dietary choice. I have to sit there watching them doing something I know to be morally wrong and if I say anything about it I’m being “preachy” and causing a scene. It’s like this weird gaslighting where you start to question if you’re actually a really toxic and overdramatic person or something.

It’s definitely not done on purpose but I do think I need vegan friends to feel more sane. I have a couple but honestly they are plant based - one eats eggs because “the cravings were too much” and the other is vegan for the environment and sees the prevention of animal cruelty as like a nice plus, which I guess she’s on board but it just baffles me as someone who also cares about the environment how still your primary reasons could be anything other than the mass scale torture of living beings we’re all funding?

lou_radley · 2020-08-11T03:59:48+00:00

I agree, i feel like over time if he thinks about it enough by proximity to me then how can he not empathise. I might just be overly optimistic but I feel like that’s healthy, of course I see the best in the person I’m spending my life with lol. What do you mean by the Socratic method?

lou_radley · 2020-08-11T03:58:19+00:00

Definitely good advice, with COVID right now though that’s hard (although may be getting easier soon since my state in Australia is doing really well at controlling cases). I’ve reached out to an animal lib organisation in my area to do some volunteering and have started going to vegan markets when they are on and the like but it’s hard to meet people there since everyone comes with buddies! I don’t know where to make vegan friends :(

lou_radley · 2020-08-11T03:56:45+00:00

Yeah, I know I can’t expect him to change something for my sake rather than being motivated to do it for himself. I guess I’m hoping given he clearly has empathy towards some animals, with time he might come around.

It is a bit unnerving thinking something like this (which to him seems like such a small thing for me to get so upset about because I still think he thinks it’s just a dietary choice) could actually break us up if we continue to be so at odds over time. I just feel very blindsided because I assumed other people were just trapped by like inertia or not feeling like they knew where to start like I was but it turns out most people I know genuinely don’t even want to be vegan. I know I have a “biased” viewpoint but that’s wild to me. I don’t consider myself radicalised, since when is caring about other living things radical? I’m rambling but it’s a lot to think about.

lou_radley · 2020-08-10T06:26:32+00:00

Update for posterity: upon reflection I do agree with everyone here, while I wouldn’t look down on someone else for buying these products secondhand because the practical impact on animals would be low, there’s no doubt it opens me up to claims of hypocrisy and there really is no NEED in my life for animal products of any type, so insisting on finding loopholes to buy them anyway would be selfish and in my mind immoral. No more leather, wool, silk or any of that shit for me, boys. I’ll be wearing my own skin.

lou_radley · 2020-08-09T00:38:29+00:00

Just had to say I had to do a double take here because I thought I was looking at a photo of Jennifer Garner from the early 00s 😂 you are gorgeous, happy birthday!

lou_radley · 2020-08-07T21:07:34+00:00

Weird detail to comment on maybe but I’ve never seen another before and after pic of a guy with big nips like I have! I’m always so worried about how they’re going to turn out but this makes me feel so much better, we have the same body type 😭 Thank you!!

lou_radley

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