Backstory:

My parents are divorced, for now 20 years. Both have remarried and are happy with their new partner. The divorce itself was messy and my siblings and I were caught in the crossfire. Lots of social services stuff and eventually the court ruled that we could stay with our mother despite the lack of income, as opposed to staying with our father where income would not have been an issue but non of us kids actually wanted to stay there. So they listened to us kids and ruled we stay with the mother the father has to pay child support as much as was possible by the laws of the time.

Now my relationship with both my parents was difficult in their own rights. I think my father might have no type of emotion at all or at the very least he’s on the spectrum and can’t deal with social stuff. Either way we eventually worked out a kind of relationship that works for us both.

My mother was always around but never there. If that makes sense. I never confined anything in her because she never listens to what I am saying and only ‘mothers you’ and tells you what you ought to do and think.

Main body:

I told them both separately last week that I am trans mtf. My father’s main concern was that I make my wife unhappy with this (she fully supports me) other than that he was basically “👍” and said as long as you are happy - I wouldn’t understand why you’d do that but I must not understand either. Anyhow how’s the BSc going?

My mother didn’t even let me finish before she went in and expanded my explanations with some stuff. For example I said :” when I am feeling I lose control of a situation I bite my nails” she then would interrupt there and say “yes because the loss of control is stress and when you are stressed you do that”. So I would have to correct and say “no, not when stressed, I am stressed constantly because of the BSc or other things I never do it because of stress”. Which only illustrates the problem I had when telling her about being trans. She took it badly and made it about herself.

I called my oldest sibling after and they told me that’s my mother typical response when you tell hehe something personal, don’t think anything of it. Now a week later my mother sent me a very long email about how my “problem” as she calls it is not that I am trans but that I just have trauma from her divorce. That despite having a step dad I never had a male figure in my life who could show me that being male is okay. She went on and on about the divorce my father and what not. In the end she said that I have to take this food for thought to my therapist because, though she understands that my “problem” is about identity, finding once identity, identity disorder, personality disorder and developmental disorder I have made the wrong conclusion and solution to my “problem” .

Is that typical mother behaviour? What do I do now? (I tried yelling, running around the lake, crying and bought a new skirt out of spite. It’s super cute btw, and extra short because I know she hates that.)

Besides that I talked to two friends and they read the text too. They said it’s a really bad take and she is implicating a lot of bad attitudes towards the LGBT+ community as a whole. Things I didn’t even see. Like the way she talked family and role models would implicate that only the “typical church approved” family can have healthy children etc.

Closing words:

Thanks in advance, I’ll be making myself some lasagna now, because my mother can’t eat that because of the cheese. So have at it 🖕

Haylie