I was lying in bed last night thinking about all of us and how most of us are responding. I know i can come across harsh and brash but take this as compassionate bc it is. I am thinking about us all a lot lately. The harshness for me is bc I'm fed up and I'm not going to go along with this. This part of my post has nothing to do with my post but i thought it might help you to hear me a little better. My husband was my high school love. Our parents separated us and we pined for one another for 20 years. To get back together we both left our marriages. I left a lifetime marriage to my best friend. He left a brief marriage to a transgender. I married my spouse knowing he was bi, had been married to a tg, was an alcoholic, had imo, a minor psychiatric diagnosis, had been an abuser for most of his life. After our reunion, i found he had multiple lives, multiple men and women in his life, porn addiction, thought he would be abusive to me, was incredibly verbally abusive. I learned about the horrors of alcoholism. It's not the minor thing i thought it was. So i have gone along with and coped with and we have counseled for and i have adapted to and tolerated and forgiven more than most of you can imagine, but for me this issue...the issue we are all here to discuss was my line in the sand. I'm not doing it. I'm not going along with it. I'm not participating in it and I'm not tolerating it. He is free to go and i am free to go but I will not abide this ridiculousness. 

My concern for this post is how we are all talking about his needs, poor him, wanting him to be his true self, to get his needs met and how we are all suppressing our needs, putting them on a shelf, putting them in the background, putting them on hold, making everything about him and his needs. This is not mentally sound. This is not rational. This is not smart and this is not right. Love is mutual. Love is about a relationship that serves and blesses and builds us both up. Love is about a relationship that builds us both up and heals us both and supports us both and meets both our needs and provides comfort and security for us both. Sure, there are times when one person's needs may be greater than anothers, but we are talking about a lifestyle that completely pushes us to the background, completely suppresses our needs, completely neglects us, completely disregards our wishes, our attractions, our desires, and fulfills only one person's needs to the neglect and regard of everyone around them. I have many trans acquaintances and this is the m.o. Generally speaking, they are neglectful of others, insensitive to anyone's needs beyond their own, selfish, self absorbed. They seem incapable of investing in others. They don't kill but much like a sociopath, their blatant disregard for others should be troubling.

I am concerned that so many of us have just accepted this as normal, as their right, as them needing to meet their own needs, to the neglect of everyone around them, and we are acting like and talking like this is normal and ok. I wrestled with the same thought process for approximately 48 hours before i came to my senses. These people are not well. They are mentally ill. If we want to dedicate our lives to caring for and meeting the needs of their mental illness, we are free to do that, but i believe we should at least acknowledge it and call it what it is. Just because it has been declassified or reclassified in the DSM does not change the reality that this is sickness and if the whole society behaved as self servingly we would annihilate ourselves. We have to have care for and regard for one another to survive. Reclassification has come as a political/social agenda push not because the reality of sickness has changed.

I'm just calling to all our attention, myself included, that when we neglect ourselves to the care of others as a way of life, not a temporary condition, that we too have a mental disfunction. We too need help. Many of us are getting help but to feel guilty or obligated to these people who don't feel guilty or obligated to us other than to use us to meet more of their selfish needs, is not a good place for us to be and certainly not a good place for us to stay. It is my hope that we all find the internal fortitude to hold onto ourselves, to stand up for our needs, to protect our children, to not succomb to our spouses and societal pressures to neglect ourselves for the consuming desires of our spouses. Much love to you all. Stand up. Stand strong.