thanks for your response! I am fully confident with the way our relationship has gone, that we will indeed work things out. I suspect both of us tend to "avoid" certain areas of our past - but both of us are now more willing to work on ourselves than we ever have been. She has said all on her own that she DOES want to amend her anger - she knows it makes her feel terrible and sad. The desire to change is there, which is excellent

She is on hormones - both testosterone supressants, and estrogen. I didn't even consider the fact that her hormones may be causing issue - it's quite possible. I personally notice a difference when she's OUT of meds, which hasn't happened often - but I notice a sharp increase in anger. We've agreed that for now, until she is evaluated, she should probably not miss meds unless it is an absolute emergency. That seems to be a trigger point for her anger too. She could in fact be on the wrong meds/wrong dose of meds, or even not enough meds. As a possibly unrelated side effect, she's also getting breakouts which she normally doesn't. I know that can be testosterone related...thanks for pointing that out. Could be a very valid point.

Yes, I think that therapy - or heck, even someone both of us could see together - could at the very least give her and I the tools to properly deal with each other and communicate. I have PTSD; she likely does too with the traumatic history and there is the obvious gender issues. I think it's not really surprising that we are butting heads at points!

That's the thing - here, how our system mostly works is that you are assigned a therapist. You don't get a whole lot of choice (Canada). I've been thinking this over and to be honest I'm wondering if, even though it may be hard to afford, we should evaluate a private therapist or psychiatrist or something - and pay for the specialty skills. I think someone with knowledge of both issues would be amazing

It may be better to find a way to afford such instead of ending up matched with a therapist that is not a good match. Gender issues especially around here I find don't have a lot of support at all - therapists seem to mostly know about it but don't have much skill in the area. I think they feel it's simply not common enough but quite frankly, it's become very common!


This is something that I've thought about too. I *do* feel that she is avoiding the past a bit - hell, who wouldn't avoid the past? I do it myself because that crap is DIFFICULT to deal with. It doesn't feel good dredging up those memories. Sometimes it needs to be done though. It's worth mentioning that her gender issues came before finding her father - she'd already been through some therapy re:gender and on hormones for a few years when the incident with her father occurred. But - if we were to, say, run into enough money for surgery right now - I don't think she'd fully pass the psych exam. I haven't said that directly to her as I think that is a devastating thought that doesn't need to be brought up just yet.

Some of this resistence may be because her last three medical professionals (her doctor, her therapist, and even her endocrine doc) have all had to move on to different things. One had a baby and stopped working; two moved out of province. So I think she felt like she just got started and was left hanging (as for some unknown reason, they didn't transfer her to someone else.)

We did have a chat about this last night and there is some progress - she's willing to go *with* me to a generic therapist, on the basis of getting some assistance with learning how to argue more effectively/communicate. She's said she's not sure about addressing our issues seperately in the same session - which makes sense to me - but she WILL see someone with me to help iron out the kinks in our communication. So that's great, and I'm actually fine with that It's a start, right? And perhaps after a little bit, that therapist can give us some ideas on how we can move forward, too.

It's a start anyway. I'm not willing to give up on this relationship just yet She's otherwise a wonderful person, with an amazing family who has taken me under their wing as if I was just another of her moms "kids". Kids in quotations because her mom does foster care work

I think I will also take the advice of making a list of ways I think a therapist can help. Communication is a big one. I'll also attempt to express that she's not ever forced to remain in therapy - if it doesn't work, it doesn't work - and we can move on from it