When it comes to affairs of the heart, we are all beginners. Some of us, however, at least speak with authority. Introducing Shon Faye, author of The Transgender Issue (2021) and the forthcoming Love in Exile (2025), whose advice caught our eye. Contact her at DearShonVogue@gmail.com for your own chance at enlightenment.
Dear Shon,
I’m a trans woman, and for a year now, I’ve been seeing this guy. He’s very hot and cold but overall so incredibly sweet, kind, funny, and handsome (and so on). We were official for about a month, but he came to my place one day and told me we had to break up because I’m trans and he didn’t want his friends and family to know he was in a relationship with me.
Despite him trying to break up with me, I’m still seeing him. I still love him, and I’ve told him so—even if he won’t say it back. I’ve never felt so safe and comfortable around another person, and ironically this is probably the healthiest (and definitely the longest) relationship I’ve ever had. I really believe he loves me, even if he is so emotionally unavailable and frankly cowardly that he can’t seem to admit it.
Part of me knows that this is temporary and will end someday, either because I just can’t take it anymore or because I find someone else who actually does want to be with me. But I want to find a way somehow to make it work because he is such a sweet man and so good to me, most of the time. What should I do?
Yours,
Wishful Thinking
Dear Wishful Thinking,
It was really brave of you to write to me. I want to begin with that because I know, from experience, how difficult it is to admit that you’re still in a relationship in which you’re not being treated well. You’re not alone. So many women I know are quietly accepting hurtful things in their relationships with men they wouldn’t readily admit to their friends out of fear that they’ll sound naive or that voicing the reality of the situation will dispel the desperate hope that somehow, someday, he will change and things will get better. I don’t want you to feel naive or give you false hope, so let’s look at this calmly.
First of all, let’s look at this man. Cis men who are attracted to women are attracted to women who happen to be trans every day. Lots of them. It’s not a rare form of desire. It is my strong belief that it’s pretty common for straight and bi men to be attracted to trans women who have qualities they find attractive and that society has warped us all—including cis men and trans women—into thinking it is a niche, weird, and unusual thing. Many cis men themselves get coached by the streamable porn industry into thinking it is exotic and kinky, not something you integrate into public relationships and thus share with family and friends.
The stigma against trans women means that we also don’t confer that macho idea of status on men for loving us. They can risk being subjected to family rejection, judgment by friends, career risks, and more by openly dating trans women. It’s horrible. I feel so sorry for these men. I wish we could accept as a society that men’s sexuality is much more flexible than we admit. I wish we could be real about the fact that many straight-identifying men secretly engage in sexual and emotional relationships with people—of all genders—other than cis women. I wish cis women didn’t so often feel threatened by this idea and say gross things about it. I wish fewer men were so sexist that they saw the purpose of their cis women partners to be their caretakers and mothers to their children. In short, I wish we could make society better in countless ways so that this man you are seeing, like so many men trans women get entangled with, felt less shame and fear. I also know, though, that the fact he does is simply not your problem. It is his. Unfortunately, men have a habit of making their emotional problems women’s problems. In the case of trans women, some men have a nasty habit of transferring the shame they are made to carry back onto us, as if we didn’t have enough of it in our lives. What a terrible betrayal.
I believe this man has feelings for you and what you sense coming from him in the good moments isn’t all in your head. People who are afraid can act in confusing and contradictory ways, and sometimes overly romantic ideas of love tell us these are exciting because they’re unpredictable. It is understandable you have wanted to keep the good parts of his behavior in your life. It is natural to want to see if it can be improved upon. I would also imagine that you also think that getting a good relationship as a trans woman is rare and so, having found some scraps of goodness, you should cling onto it. Here’s the reality check: This is not going to get better. Repeat: This relationship will not get better. He has already broken up with you once, i.e. vocalized a deeply hurtful rejection just because you’re trans. Sadly, as the relationship has basically resumed on a less official basis, he hasn’t had any cause to become the consistently loving partner you deserve. It’s rough, but there it is.
Now we need to talk about you. I want you to ask yourself whether, even if this man suddenly asked you to be in a public relationship again, you could truly live with the resentment and pain he created when he demoted you last time. Could you truly trust him? You describe this relationship as the healthiest you’ve had, which left me wondering about your relationship history and its impact on your self-esteem. Low self-esteem can reinforce a negative cycle where we accept less and less in our personal relationships because we have no precedent for what more would look like. For trans women, our lives are so hidden and unrepresented in mass culture we often don’t even see an idealized or romantic version of relationships involving women like us. We come to the dating market with lots of internalized gloom about our prospects, our worth, and what we can expect from men. You can’t build self-esteem from getting men to love you—Lord knows I have tried! Instead, building genuine friendships with other trans people (helps with feeling seen), pursuing my own interests and creativity (helps with self-expression), and taking breaks from dating and therapy (helps with understanding and changing patterns) have all worked better. I used to panic that focusing on these things would mean I would miss the scarce opportunities to find a man willing to have me. But by doing them the idea that I was there to be chosen by men became less and less dominant in my thoughts and I got a better sense of agency in my love life as a result.
