Okay, yeah, title sounds awful, but give me a bit to explain myself.
First off, I don't hate trans people. One of my best friends is a trans man and I could never dream of hating him. I feel like that's important to get out of the way.
But the problem is that I'm not so sure that whatever is going on is actual self discovery. My sister has always been the type of person who loves taking on "projects." I don't know a better way to put it, but a lot of her exes even going back to high school were people she took joy in helping change or discover things. I think she feels like she has a very good read on people and helping them discover "their true selves."
She set her sights on my boyfriend a month or so before the pandemic really hit hard in the states. She was over for lunch and at some point our childhoods came up. My boyfriend mentioned how his mom was super against him doing anything "feminine" and how he wished things were more open minded when he was a kid and it was like a lightbulb went off in my sister's head.
It started off fairly harmless, offering to help him with painting his nails, getting in touch with his feminine side, all of that. If anything I was pretty on board at this point since my sister and boyfriend never really meshed all that well together (my sister and I are coworkers, so she's around a lot) and this was some decent common ground for them.
But as we moved into the lockdown things started to get a lot more serious at a pretty quick pace. For one she started calling my boyfriend a different, female name. I asked him if this was something he wanted to be called, and he just kind of shrugged and said it was a nickname she gave him. And around that time the packages started coming in. Because apparently my sister had gotten his measurements and did a bit of clothes shopping for him.
Again, at this point, it's all fine. Maybe a bit overboard with buying him a bunch of women's clothes, but as long as she wasn't spending too much and he wasn't uncomfortable, who was I to judge?
The real issues started in private with me and her. We were working the same shift and were doing our check out for the day when she kind of out of the blue told me that I needed to be doing better for my boyfriend. I asked her what she meant and she basically said that I wasn't embracing his transition enough and that I needed to be a team player.
"Transition" threw me for a loop. He hadn't mentioned anything about transitioning and as far as I had been made aware it was just some crossdressing and the like. She insisted that if I actually was supportive I'd have already noticed how my boyfriend is clearly an "egg" and that if I wasn't going to help "crack it" then she was going to.
I tried talking with him about this but he didn't say much. It was pretty clear that he didn't want to talk to me about it. But in general I've noticed he's gotten a lot colder around me, and is especially awkard whenever I see him around the house in some of the feminine clothes my sister got him. He's a fairly passive guy as is, and with someone as domineering as my sister I could see her urge to "fix" people bleeding in and causing stress.
Every time I see my sister at work she makes a pointed effort to talk about my "girlfriend" and how if I don't start treating him right she might ask him to move in with her instead for a while. She also makes sure to correct me every time I use male pronouns with him, even though he has not once told me to use "she/her" himself. I feel like a lot of this is coming out of nowhere and she's trying to paint me as a villain for no reason. I know that she and my boyfriend talk privately a good bit and I'm starting to worry about what she's saying about me to him.
What should I do? My boyfriend should be able to express himself however he wants, but I'm scared that my sister is taking his soft, passive nature and using that to play dress up with him and maybe even turn him against me. Am I going crazy?
TLDR: my girlfriend with a history of trying to "change" people has latched onto the idea that my boyfriend is actually a trans woman and seems to be purposely trying to drive a stake through my relationship with him.
Submitted February 05, 2021 at 12:52PM by FondantStrange https://ift.tt/3oUvaIL
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