After my husband decided to transition I slowly started picturing him the way he pictured himself: with a flat chest and facial hair. Seeing him with a female chest became uncomfortable. But I couldn’t really picture exactly what he would look like with a flat chest. So instead, this area of my mental image of him kind of blurred out.
In prep for his top surgery consult we had to take topless pictures for the surgeon and take measurements which was a very uncomfortable experience for both of us as neither of us pictured him with a female shaped chest at this point.
After surgery we went back to the clinic about a week later for removal of the bandages. It was a very interesting experience to see his chest flat for the first time. I was finally able to look at that part of his body and not have what I was seeing conflict with what he looked like in my head. Over time the blurry part where his chest was in my mental image cleared to match what his chest looks like now.
I have started describing this type of experience as Interpersonal Dysphoria. This is when your mental image of your friend/partner/family member has changed to match their newly affirmed gender but their physical body hasn’t changed yet.
Experiencing interpersonal dysphoria is a good sign!! It means you are ahead of the game and have adjusted your mental image to match your partner’s identity. But it still sucks because it makes you somewhat uncomfortable with how they look. If you never experience dysphoria for your own body this is as close as you are likely to come to knowing what it feels like.
The areas of their body that now seem ‘wrong’ to you are likely the areas that they experience dysphoria with. But making this assumption can cause problems. Are you comparing their body with a cis body of their ‘preferred’ gender? Or are you comparing their body to how they personally wish their body looked? These are two different scenarios. Comparing to a cis body can be dangerous because they may not have any problem with certain areas of their body. If you are comparing to a cis body you are assigning a gender to their body parts the same way society does which can lead to shame, disgust, and dysphoria or avoiding interacting with parts of their body that they are actually comfortable with.
To avoid this scenario you need to have open conversations with your person to learn how they feel about different parts of their body and why (or as open a conversation as is appropriate given your relationship to that person – coworker vs sibling vs partner). Give your partner room to think about these questions and change their mind at different times. Recognize that these conversations will cause a temporary increase in dysphoria just by having your partner focus on those body parts. You may want to break the conversation into small pieces and revisit it with recovery time in between. Build in self-care recovery time after each of these conversations for both of you.
If your person can articulate how they feel about their body and how they picture their ideal body that would match their identity, you should cultivate a mental image that matches. This will help you adjust to using a different name and different pronouns and help you unconsciously interact with them in more gender affirming ways.
If this person is your partner, this type of interpersonal dysphoria will also lead to changes in how you will be intimate with each other. If you haven’t already had conversations about what ways your partner is comfortable having you interact with their body and what they are comfortable doing with you, now is as good a time as any. Keep in mind this is a two-way street – the conversation should also include what you are comfortable doing with them and having them do to you.
As they explore their gender and gender expression and find ways to deal with dysphoria during intimacy and sex the boundaries of what each of you are comfortable with may overlap or not in various ways and may change over time. These are conversations that you should get used to having on a regular basis. I don’t want to go into full sex talk mode here so I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination. If these conversations are too difficult for you to have with your partner or your partner isn’t able or willing to engage with you in this discussion I recommend finding a couple’s therapist that is familiar with trans issues to help you out.
Have you experienced interpersonal dysphoria with your partner, friend, or family member? How did you navigate the conversations that needed to happen for you to know how they pictured their body? Leave a comment below with your experiences or questions!