Most of the topics in this "Transitioning 101" series I've been writing off and on about are things that I've been fairly significantly impacted by (both good and bad); but the majority of those things were more or less "external" things that impacted me. Expectations however; are more of an internal impact; though there are also external expectations such as those from family, friends, employer(s), etc. That being said, this topic going to focus on those internal expectations that come with transitioning. One side note, while I tend to focus on Trans-women since that's the demographic I fall into personally, this post will definitely skew towards that even more than normal.
I think the best place for me to start is with myself. I have a tendency to expect the worst, or at least towards the worst, when it comes to the outcome of anything, not just things related to my transition. Some (many? most?) would say that's not a great way to go into things, but over the years it's worked for me. The vast majority of the time things do go better, often far better, than what I expected and I believe that helps keep me happy. And for those rare occasions that things do go poorly, well then I got about what I expected. I believe that this attitude of mine has played a significant role in how my transition has worked out. For the most part things have been great and have exceeded my expectations. There have been two notable exceptions where I let my expectations become overly positive in relation to how things worked out and I'll touch on those later; but all in all I think I've done well managing my expectations in relation to my transition.
However, as time has went by and I've paid more and more attention to others transitions, I see far too many who have suffered or are suffering from their expectations not being meant. In many cases that has led to at least some disappointment, and in some cases - far worse. While I cannot say that had if any of their expectations been different that things would have worked out better; I am fairly certain that in at least some cases, things might have worked out differently and hopefully better. Now before someone gets upset and thinks I'm heading off on some sort of "victim blaming" diatribe, that's not the case. All I'm saying is that having reasonable expectations, especially when it comes to transitioning, is something I believe will contribute to the success of a transition and hopefully at least increase the odds of a person being happier than they were pre-transition.
So now that I've made my assertion on managing expectations, I thought it only fair that I give a few examples of what I feel are common areas where expectations could often be better managed. And as I say all the time, and probably should have said before now in this topic, I'm sure some/many/most may disagree with how I see things and as always that's fine. I'm by no means a mental health professional, nor for that matter an expert on transitioning. These are simply my thoughts and observations and should simply be treated as such - nothing more. So with that out of the way, lets get on to some of those areas.
The first one is one that I've talked about in another part of this series of posts and that is HRT. All too often I see people who seem to believe that HRT is some magic bullet that will suddenly make them into their vision of the woman they want to be. First off, appearance doesn't make the person, much less the woman. That being said, I can understand the desire to be attractive; especially as a Trans-woman since society as a whole tends to place so much weight on that. But if you expect to become a supermodel simply from HRT, not to mention it happening virtually immediately - well you're likely in for a bad time. Yes, there are plenty of people who have had great success on HRT, but even for those that do, it's often a lengthy process and there is often far more than HRT at play. There may be surgeries involved, makeup often plays a huge part, as can hair style and clothing choices. And even with those things aside, HRT is a roll of the dice. For example, some develop fairly large breasts, some average, some below average, and some almost none at all. Some may have more redistribution of body fat than others, and so on. I'm by no means trying to minimize the effects of HRT, I'm just saying the expectations of what it might do need to be reasonable. For myself, truthfully considering my age when I started HRT, I didn't expect much and I've been pleasantly surprised to this point.
Another place where I think expectations are often overly optimistic is when it comes to pronoun usage. I've actually got an entire topic dedicated to pronouns coming up, so I won't delve too far into it here; but to just expect every person you come into contact with to automatically start using your preferred pronouns 100% of the time is just not reality in my experience. If for example I'm presenting female then yes I have an expectation to hear she/her/ma'am/etc. This is especially true for anyone who didn't know me pre-transition. However, even if am presenting female, people who knew me pre-transition, in some cases 40+ years, well no matter how good their intentions are, they may well slip up from time to time - especially early on. It doesn't mean they don't care, it doesn't mean they were being malicious, it doesn't need to ruin my day. People make mistakes and for those that I care about, well they get the benefit of the doubt until they prove they deserve otherwise. And I haven't even touched upon if I were to present androgynously or even male as I did before I went full-time. In those cases, especially with those that don't know me, how can I expect them to get pronouns right 100% of the time? But yet I see people who seem to think that this should be the case and then being upset over an incorrect pronoun. Look, I'm not saying that I should have to be in a dress to hear she/her/ma'am/etc, but if I were to walk up to a complete stranger dressed in a male tuxedo, no makeup, a bald head, and speak in a deep voice - well then how can I be surprised if they drop a he/him/sir/etc on me? Well for me personally I wouldn't be; but there are those that are and I really think they need to re-evaluate those expectations.
Another expectation that come to mind are employers - this is one of those places where I let my own expectations get too positive, though as I've touched on this before I won't revisit it here. Yes, in a perfect world, employers would be supportive, or at a minimum accepting of an employee transitioning. However, there are plenty that aren't and in those cases even if there are legal protections, it is possible for an employer to find their way around them if they really want to. Yet I still see a great many people that for example feel that as long as they live in a state with legal protections that their employer won't make things an issue. In many cases that is true, but to have a blind expectation of it, well that's just begging for disappointment in my opinion.
There are plenty of other things I could talk about, and even go the other way where people have an expectation that they can "never pass" when in fact with enough effort they probably could. Or people that feel their wife/girlfriend/SO/family/etc would never be supportive when in fact they just might surprise them; but I think I've made my point. As I said above, I'm not advocating having low expectations as I tend to do, but rather simply having realistic expectations. I really do believe that doing so goes a long way towards being happy and having a successful transition.
- M
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