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Hey, fellow travelers.

I'm Lori Gottlieb.

I'm the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the Dear Therapist advice column for The Atlantic.

And I'm Guy Wench.

I wrote Emotional First Aid, and I write the Dear Guy Collumn for TED.

And this is Deo Therapists.

This week, a trans man deals with family pushback as he begins transitioning right before his sister's wedding.

My mother will go march for gay rights and all of these things.

But you know, as soon as her son comes out to her that he is part of the transgender community, that's where issues start arising.

And then it's like, Okay, well, maybe you're not as accepting as you think that you are.

Listen in and maybe learn something about yourself and the process.

Therapist is for informational purposes only, does not constitute medical advice, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

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Hey Laurie, Hey guy, Well this week our letter is time sensitive.

Oh well, in that case, let's get right to it.

Indeed, let's do that.

Dear therapists, I come to you both begging for help on a tough issue I'm facing.

Last month, I came out to my family as transgender and began my hormone replacement therapy in the lengthy conversion of female to male.

My sister is getting married, and because of COVID, the wedding was postponed for months.

The wedding was originally planned for April and now will commence next month.

I'm serving as my sister's maid of honor, and I'm expected to wear a dress and make up.

I've suffered from body dysphoria since a young age, constantly covering up my body when swimming, dressing more masculine, and it has been getting worse with the wedding drawing closer.

Finally allowing myself to wear what I feel comfortable in has really made me so much happier, and I feel like this wedding is throwing me back into the old discord.

I spoke to my sister about alternative options, but she gave me an ultimatum.

Wear the dress and stand on her side, or wear the same thing as the men and stand on his side standing next to a slough of since gendered males in nice formal wear will only make my body dysphoria worse.

I've spoken to my other sister about the matter, but she does not know what to do or have any suggestions besides not being in the wedding altogether.

Please let me know if you have any advice or even something I can do to try and ease my anxiety about this day coming soon.

The plane at the moment is to endure the mental depression and to just do this one thing for my sister, even though it's really taking a toll on me.

Liam.

This is a really tough situation for Liam, and it's especially hard because I think that he's in uncharted territory and I think that his family has just gotten this news and they are trying to be supportive, but Liam is not feeling supported, and it's hard for them to communicate about what would make Liam feel supported.

We are at a place now in society where we're recognizing that gender is not binary.

And here Liam is faced with a binary choice when he really doesn't want to have to make a binary choice one way or the other at the moment.

And so there's this very literal translation of where society is in terms of coming to terms with the fluidity of gender.

I think you're right that this really underlines how aey has not caught up.

And you can see that on the smaller level within families where people say this is who I am and there are no rules, people don't know what to do.

And I think that we need to help Liam to get his voice heard.

Here, let's go talk to him.

You're listening to Deo Therapists from iHeartRadio.

We'll be back after a quick break.

I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm Guy Wench and this is Deo Therapist.

So Hi Liam, Hi, Thank you guys so much for having.

Me, Thank you so much for coming on.

So Liam, we know this was time sensitive.

Tell us if there's been any developments since you wrote your letter.

Yeah, absolutely so.

Initially, upon touching on this subject, I feel as though I reached a point where I kind of gave in to, yeah, I will go with what you truly want, and then we kind of left it, and I started to talk to my other sister, Tina, and she really had no advice on where to go.

It was still bothering me.

And then it just so happened that my sister Sarah called, and it kind of seemed like, oh, she called, let me just lightly bring the subject back up, and at the mere mention of this subject, she got very defensive and very touchy.

I reiterated that I was just trying to have a conversation, but it was very clear her frustration about it.

It was I thought we dealt with it already.

I thought we had discussed what we were doing.

So I was met with a lot of emotion.

So Sarah's the one who's getting married, right, and what is the birth order?

Tina is the oldest, She's about seven years my senior, and then Sarah's two years my senior, and then I'm the youngest.

Okay, And before this wedding stuff came up, and before you told them that you were transitioning, what was your relationship like with both of your sisters.

We had a bit of a rocky childhood, so we got very close, very quickly.

I was closer with Sarah because we shared a room for majority of our childhood.

I mean, we've always been really close.

I don't think there's a day that I go without speaking to both of them.

Tell us about the rockiness of the childhood.

We had abusive parents, so we stuck together through a lot of hard times.

We constantly were ripped out of our home, stayed with other people.

Some of our friends couldn't know where we lived, so that was kind of hard.

We kind of looked at Tina like the mother sometimes, if you will.

She did a lot because she was the oldest.

I think everything affected her a little bit differently.

She kind of took on this leadership role and me and Sarah kind of were waiting on her word, doing what she thought would be best.

When you say you were ripped from your home, do you mean that child services took you out of the home.

I don't want to say child services ever came, but family members would come.

My aunt would come and grab us and we'd stay at her house.

A lot of my best friends in school, they weren't allowed to know whose house we were staying at, just in case it were to get back to my father, but we still went to the same school, so he was able to come, and he had lunch with me a couple times, so that I feel like alienated me a little bit because I would be sitting at the lunch table with my father crying at the end, while the rest of my class was happy eating lunch, and they're like, why is why is his dad coming and sitting with them?

And all they do is cry.

Oh wow, can you Can you tell us a little bit about your parents and what might have been going on with them and what kind of abuse you had to endure.

The physical abuse was towards my mother.

We witnessed it and heard it a lot.

We often were the ones that had to call the cops, so that was terrifying.

We also had family members that would stop us from calling the cops and tell us to go back in our room and everything was fine, So then we would have to crawl on the floor to get to the phone to call for help.

We were in a really underdeveloped neighborhood, so it wasn't like we could run to the neighbor's house and go, you know, ask for help or anything like that, So that kind of banded us all together.

I feel like, in unfortunate ways.

There were other family members living in the home.

They were just visiting so of this and then told you not to intervene.

They would be visiting.

My maternal grandmother was majority of the time the one to say, put the phone down, go to your room.

They're having a discussion.

You a maternal grandmother, No.

I'm sorry, I think I misspoke my paternal that makes my grandmother.

And then because of that going on, my then maternal grandmother came and stayed with us, kind of acting like a guard dog almost to make sure that none of that was going on with her daughter being involved.

And at what point did you leave the home the.

Final time that we left and did not come back, I was seven, so that would make Sarah nine and Tina must have been around fourteen.

And where did you go?

What happened?

We went to one of my aunt's houses.

It wasn't the same town, it wasn't too inconvenient, but that was one of the addresses that I wasn't allowed to have friends over, and we kind of all crammed in this two bedroom house and tried to live as completely normal as everything was with your mom with my mother, when.

Did the body dysphoria start?

Honestly, when I was speaking to my mom about it the first time.

The way that I introduced the topic was, do you remember when I was about five and every time I would go in the pool, I would wear this giant T shirt.

Numerous times it was the reason that I would be drowning, where it was like, why do you wear that?

That's not going to help you.

You know, wearing a bathing suit would be easier for you to swim in.

So I remember from a young age I was constantly covering myself when I was going in the pool.

Also, I mean just dressing in general.

I was always I was very famous for wearing soccer shorts to school, the same boyish outfits, if you will.

So I would say, as young as I can remember, around like five or six, I was tending to cover up.

How old are you now, Liam, oh?

Eight twenty eight?

Yeah.

So what was it about the last maybe year when you decided you were ready to transition?

I think the biggest factors that allowed me to be true to myself was that I just bought my first house this year, so I have a perfectly safe environment I have a great job that I work for amazing people that don't treat me any different.

They don't make me feel as though I'm jeopardizing my job by being honest.

So really those main things is just having my shelter that I don't have to worry about, and having my job that isn't going to terminate me for any of these reasons.

When did you first start to realize that you were a transgender and when did you come out and how did that go?

I think I've always really known.

I was always wishing on my birthday candles that I was a boy for as long as I can remember.

I thought that it was something that nothing could be done.

I just had to deal with it.

I had to suppress it.

I had to come to terms with this is the way I was born, this is the way I'm going to die.

There's really nothing you can do about it.

But really seriously got into the idea of transitioning back in twenty fourteen.

As soon as I got out of college.

I went to a big university, so it was very diverse.

I went to a lot of the LGBTQ community meetings, met a lot of people through that, and twenty fourteen, I spoke to one friend about it, one person I confided in and really rest my true feelings, and he was great, He was amazing, and he encouraged me to take the next step.

I set up all of the appointments that I needed to with the doctors, and to be honest, at the last second, I just did not go to any of them.

At the time, when I moved back from college, I was living with my mother again, regrouping on where to go now.

I just finished college.

What kind of career am I going into?

And I think by that pressure it kind of teared me from taking this route any sooner.

When you say that pressure, you mean you came home from college, you told your mom and she didn't react.

Well, I didn't tell anybody back in twenty fourteen except that one friend.

The one friend.

By skipping those appointments, I think that was me weaseling out of actually addressing the issue and talking about it with any of my famis family.

So I recently just came out to her last month, and she is legally deaf.

She relies heavily on reading lips.

We have a house phone that when you call it will type the dialogue, so that she can read it back.

So I actually had her come and stay with me, and I wanted to have this conversation face to face with her.

How did that conversation go?

So I explained to her about the body dysporias since I was young, you know, the bathing suit, the covering up.

I kind of was allowing her to connect her own dots there.

And as soon as I said the words like I'm going to transition, the first thing that she said was I knew you were going to say that.

In that moment, she told me everything that I did want to hear.

I still love you.

I will never cut you out of the family or stop talking to you or stop loving you.

And I felt very relieved and very happy at that time.

She was actually the last person that I told even though I have a great relationship with her.

It was the hardest because she was brought up very Catholic and I just was very unsure of how she would take it.

So I left the best for lax.

Have you discussed it since?

I mean, sometimes there's the coming out conversation and then things get kind of shelled or ignored or dismissed.

Has it been discussed.

Since with her it has actually, so when she got back from the vacation here, it was as if she flipped a switch and everything she said was null and void.

She tried to talk me out of it, as if it was something that one could be talked out of.

She told me that I need to be true to who I am, in which case I responded, I'm trying to be who I really am.

She asked why I had to alter my body with hormones, why I have to look differently, ultimately pointing out that my biological makeup isn't going to ever be the way that I really truly want it to be.

So hearing all of that made me frustrated at first, because these would have been things that I wanted to discuss face to face.

Again, she is deaf, so all of this is being portrayed through text messages, which tone can be interpreted differently out of context, and I really didn't want to make her feel as though I was attacking her or anything.

But on the other hand, I felt very attacked and very lied to.

I felt like she was saying that because she was in front of me, not because she was really accepting and really loved me and really didn't want me to feel alienated.

You know, what happens sometimes with parents in these situations is that when she's face to face with you, she is in that moment living how much she loves you and how much she cares about you.

And I believe that what comes out in those moments can be more authentic because she's with you.

This is how she truly feels about you.

Yes, I want you to be happy.

But then when she goes home and you're not in front of her, then she deals with the consequences of having to deal with telling the people around her and the community and the family knowing, and what feedback she will get from that, and she starts to think about herself perhaps and what she's going to say to people, how she's going to feel, And then she takes a step back.

And I think what's important to remember is that you've had many, many years to process this, and she needs a little bit of time to go through that process as well.

She's hearing this for the first time, even though she's suspected that's not the same as really processing it.

I can understand why you feel hurt, because what you want from your parent is I'm really happy for you that you are finally going to get to live in the way that it's true to you, right, and now you get to live who you actually are.

She does have some catching up to do it, but at the same time, there's this ticking clock of this wedding, and so I wonder how your sisters since you told them first, how did your sisters react?

Who did you tell first, and how did those conversations.

Go and when.

Yeah, so honestly, this was the second time that I've come out to my family.

I identified for the first twenty eight years of my life as a lesbian, So the first time around, Tina was the most accepting, and she was also the one that was like, yeah, I know, it's okay.

It's okay that you finally are okay with it.

That meant the world to me.

That made me feel exactly how I feel she intended to make me feel.

Sarah, on the other hand, was very surprised, which it made me giggle.

It was funny because I'm like, you know me better than anyone.

We've shared a room for almost twenty years together, and this is catching you off guard.

But sure, all very accepting about coming out as gay in high school The second time was harder for me, but I feel like they were both very very accepting, very supportive, and encouraging, actually very encouraging.

You came out to Sarah and Tatino?

When was there second time?

A month ago?

Oh?

Okay, so very recent, very recent.

Yeah, I wanted to tell them before I actually started my hormone replacement therapy.

I wanted to clear the air so everybody would be on the same page.

I anticipated needing a lot of support, so I wanted everybody to be caught up in well aware.

Can I ask you who else is there in your life that gives you support?

Plot twist?

My father is actually a huge part of my life now.

That is a blood twist.

Yeah.

I've always considered myself like a well from before this point, a daddy's girl, right.

I am very much my father's son.

I've connected through my childhood, even through all of the horrible things that I've endured because of him, our relationship now is truly better than ever when I came out to him.

My father is very open minded.

When I first told him that I have always felt like his son, he responded to that by saying, I've always felt you were my son, and he normalized it and made me feel as though this was a realization that maybe I was just coming to but he had thought about before.

But he treated me with nothing but respect and love and support.

And it really caught me off guard because I thought the reactions between my mother and father would have been crisscrossed if you would have asked me who was going to react?

Which way?

Can you fill us in on what happened?

So once you moved out and there was this abuse going on, how did you reconcile with your father after that?

There was a lot of time that I didn't.

There was a lot of time that I would see him and I would give him the silent treatment and the cold shoulder.

Christmas would come and go, my Birthday would come and go, and I would have no contact with him, nothing, And those were really what hurt me.

So mostly I responded by not speaking to him and kind of just pushing him further away.

Did you ever have a conversation as you got older about the abuse and did he ever take responsibility for it?

I actually did the last time that he was here.

My whole family still resides in Florida, So he came up here and We had been great the entire time that he was here, but plans got mixed up because of COVID and my mother was supposed to come up as well, and my father was still here, so they went ahead.

The plan was that my father was going to leave and before my mother came, so there was going to be no overlap.

Unbeknownst to me, they went ahead and made plans in which my mother was now coming up while my father was still here, and then they were going to drive back to Florida together while staying at my house for another seven days.

Now, I work an overnight job, so I tend to leave my house at six pm and I don't get home until around five thirty six am.

So those feelings started to resonate with me.

Oh my gosh, my parents are going to be alone in my house while I'm not there, and all the memories started flooding back.

Everything started making me anxious, and I didn't feel like I really had a say in it at all until I really sat with my feelings and spoke to both of my sisters, like, why are our parents acting like this is normal that they're going to come and stay with me?

That would be perfectly normal if they were a couple and they were still together, and you know, our childhood didn't happen.

But I feel like I was being extremely gaslighted into thinking that this was not only okay but normal.

I hate to use that word safe.

Safe is better?

Yeah, absolutely, So clearly they had been in touch and had some kind of understanding.

Were you aware of that?

When I addressed my mother, she told me your father and I have had a relationship for the past two years.

We are friends, we know where we stand with each other.

And then she went on to say during the hurricanes, he stayed at the house with me.

Now, that was more than I really needed to hear.

I appreciate that they have been honest throughout this entire thing, but it didn't ease any of my anxiety or make me feel safe at all.

So what happened when you addressed it?

Did that give you an opening to have a conversation about the abuse that had happened.

When I told my mother, I don't feel okay with this, it was very what we told you about this, Well you were fine about this, Well, why is it a big deal now?

And I persisted to tell her it doesn't make me feel okay, I've been very anxious, and then that led to just inevitably my father being like, what's going on?

You don't want your mother to come up here, very innocently, very you know, testing the waters, and that was kind of just the last straw, I would say.

I went off on him in the sense of saying, I'm I think my opening remark is I'm finished calling the police.

I'm finished doing that.

I do not want to do that again.

And he was taken back by it, and the ball started rolling, everything started coming out.

I've told him how everything he's done in the past had manipulated the way that I turned out, and maybe he didn't realize it because he wasn't around to see the effects that he had then had on my life.

I even apologize halfway through it, saying, look, I'm sorry to dump all of this on you, but you have been gone for almost twenty years.

You never had to sit here and listen to what has happened to me, and you never got to hear what you did to me.

I have thrown all of that on mom for the past twenty eight years.

She has heard everything because she was there.

You weren't there, And I told him how it felt that I was abandoned and my dad isn't a bad guy.

I know the reason that this all had occurred was due to heavy drug use.

And I told him I felt every day you had a choice, and every day you walked right past your family and you chose the lifestyle that you wanted.

And I told him how that made me feel.

And honestly, I think that is why we have a great relationship now.

I never had that cathartic release of look at what you did.

How did he respond?

A few tears?

He was really taken back.

He was very silent.

I remember saying, do you have anything to say?

Because now I feel like I had just spilled my heart out to somebody and then them just be like silent.

Was he able to talk to you about what had happened and was he able to take responsibility?

He did say sorry.

He never touched on any subjects of abuse or drug use or anything.

It was just I'm sorry.

So you've really been practicing being authentic over the past couple of years, having you because you're laying it on out there in terms of friends or a partner, other other people in your life who support you.

Unfortunately, I moved up here out fresh out off of a breakup.

Our plans were to move here together, and then I was dumped and I continued on and I said, okay, well, this is the plan that I had been working towards.

I'm just going to go ahead and do it myself.

Then so I packed up and moved out here, and not too long ago, I was contacted again and I was given the whole I'm so sorry.

I really messed up.

I'd really like to try again.

I'm going to move up there.

Can we work this out?

And me, being the one that never lost the love in the first place, was like, of course, yeah, I've been working on myself for the past year.

I'm not the same person.

I'm sure you're not the same person.

But if it's true, it'll work.

And we started to see each other, and then when I came out as transgender, she told me that this wasn't what she wanted, and then that was the last time we spoke.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Are you in touch with any other transgender people?

In terms of getting support through this.

Process, I've heavily relied on social media to allow me to have visibility into this community.

But I can't say that I have one in person, real life friend that I see or talk to.

Just people that are visible for other people that can't be that want to provide information and support, and YouTube has really been a life saving tool for me for just any type of information or education.

Really, yeah, I think about when I'm hearing all of this, is how difficult your childhood was, and how you were so resilient throughout all of this, and at the same time you were struggling with this knowledge, this place of knowing in yourself that you are male, and so there's something in you that has been so able, even with this last breakup, to say this is who I am.

And so when I fast forward to the wedding and I think about the trouble you're having, You've been through so much and gotten through so much and stayed true to yourself.

So let's talk a little bit about why this wedding makes it so hard for you to stay true to yourself.

As much as my family is very accepting, I think that this issue really shows that people can be accepting and supportive, but I think once that person is involved in their inner sphere, that is where the really it shows that they aren't as accepting as they think they are.

Like, my mother will go march for gay rights and all of these things, but you know, as soon as her son comes out to her that he is part of the transgender community, that's where issues start arising.

And then it's like, Okay, well maybe you're not as accepting as you think that you are.

And I think that that is showing a little bit with my sister, and I don't want to hurt her feelings by saying that she's not accepting as she may think she is.

I just think that she has traditional values and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I just think it's harder for me to fit those traditional values and still be true to myself.

So let me ask you this in your mind, and what would it look like to be true to yourself at Sarah's wedding.

So I am her maid of honor, so I know that I'm going to be at her side.

What would make me feel comfortable would be wearing men's formal wear.

The day of her wedding, I will be taking my seventh testosterone shot, So my mind is somewhere, and then my outer appearance is I feel is being stuffed back into a closet.

Well, so you're saying you want to wear men's formal wear.

Right, I mean she pointed out that the mother of the bride and the grandmother of the bride are usually in a pants suit or you know, something different than a formal gown.

And even that I would feel a little bit less out of place.

I would feel a little bit more aligned if I was wearing anything, honestly, other than address.

Didn't Sarah offer to Didn't she say to you one of the options was that you could wear what the men are wearing.

Yeah, so I think that that was not a very genuine option, and only because they are having a man handstitch these beautiful Italian suits and they had to start this process because they are being handmade so long ago.

She may have meant it genuinely, but in actuality, I don't think there was any way of that truly happening.

If there was a way to make it happen.

Does that excite you the idea of wearing this custom made suit?

Honestly, it actually pushed me more towards okay, just conform to this female appearance, because all I could think about when she said that was standing next to a bunch of cisgendered males that are going to look great in their formal wear.

And then you have me going through my second puberty, only like six to seven weeks on testosterone, still very female presenting, and I think that that would do more harm to my mind than anything.

I think it would make me feel even worse out of place, like I don't fit.

So you want to wear men's formal wear, but you don't want to wear something that's such a direct comparison to those men.

And I think standing on his side also, I was against, and not because I don't like him.

He's a great guy.

This is where I guess my values don't align with traditional values, because in my mind, the perfect way this wedding would go would be me wearing this nice suit or blazer or whatever, matching her standing on her side.

Whereas she sees it as okay, if you want to be male presenting, stand on the male side.

If you want to be female presenting, stand on my side, which is fine, it's just more traditional, whereas an I could see me very well wearing men's formal wear but standing on her side.

Have you had a discussion with her about this whole idea of gender being non binary, and that she's actually asking you to revert to one or the other, and your feeding is I would like to do something that's a little bit more in the middle, stand on your side, but where something that has a jacket to it or something like that.

Have you had that discussion with her so she can connect it not just to the visuals of the wedding, but to the feelings you have about gender and about yourself and what you want to present to the world.

Yeah.

So in the very first conversation we spoke about this, there was a point in the conversation where we were discussing me wearing something other than the dress that I already bought.

We already have it.

I mentioned wearing the same color but something different, and her response, which I took as the most authentic, raw emotion of how she truly felt, was her saying, I don't want my photos to look weird.

And once she said that, I felt something in me shut down.

I was like, Okay, nope, I'm not doing this.

I don't want her to feel any type of way.

This is her special day.

I will choke down any feelings I have.

I can do this one thing for her, and I knew that no matter how many times if she were to say I take it back or I don't think photos would look weird, I knew that that was how she truly felt.

And I was like, it's over in my mind.

I'm going to do this for her.

She told me how she really.

Feels, is that where you are right now when you're thinking yes.

Because the second time that we spoke about it, where I was kind of just trying to talk to her about it, she, after all, is my best friend.

And I went to the depths of saying, you know, I haven't been shaving my legs or shaving under my arms, and I was explaining to her how it felt so relieving.

I was finally able to express how I feel.

Things were actually starting to align, and I told her, if this may sound very trivial to you, but I don't want to shave, and of course I'm going to need to.

I mean not of course, but I guess I would be expected to.

And I was telling her how those little things may not mean much at face value, but they really did mean something to me.

At that time, she was like flustered again, and I feel bad because I know that this was all just another issue that she had to deal with, the makeup people, canceling, the hair people.

You know, it's a crazy time to have a wedding.

So when I brought it back up, I think that's where some of the frustration went, because she's like, great, another thing I have to deal with.

So was there any closure on that?

Did she have what you would do in that regard?

I think she realized that she was being a bit harsh, that she was maybe coming across as unwilling to move her position or look for a solution, And after leaving the conversation like that, giving herself time to reflect, I then got a text message later at work saying, look, I'm really sorry if you feel like I'm not supporting you.

I want you to be happy, and I know you're going along with this because you want me to be happy.

And then she followed that up by saying, let's fix this, let's do something about this.

But I see where she's going with it, and I really just think that I need to just do this for her.

What do you mean you see where she's going with it.

I think she wants me to know that she would maybe sit with some uncomfortable feelings that she had if I were to, Okay, yeah, let's change it up now, which I don't feel like I can do because of time constraints, and just truly knowing that she wouldn't be as happy with her photos.

She might not be as happy with her photos if she thought you weren't happy in them.

And that's another thing.

She was saying.

She doesn't want her photos to look weird.

And what's going through my head is, I'm never gonna want to look at those photos because it's not going to be who I am.

So when she said to you, let's fix this, have you given any thought to what that might be on urine that would make you feel less dysphoric?

Yeah?

Absolutely.

I did suggest that maybe after the ceremony I could change and then wear something that involves pants as opposed to the dress, and she went for that, and she said, of course, whatever you want.

And I guess that has kind of just been the middle ground that we're leaving there.

I don't know if I actually will end up going to change.

I guess I'm kind of waiting to really see how I feel in it.

I'm thinking about how it was only a month ago that you revealed that you were transitioning, And with weddings, there's a lot of planning that takes months and months and months, and so I'm just curious to know if you thought about that while she was planning the wedding, while all this was going on, how you thought about the timing of that and what you thought would be realistic given the tight timing.

So, originally the wedding was supposed to take place in April pre COVID, so I thought I wouldn't even come out until after the wedding was already finished, and then it being pushed back presented obviously more problems.

When I did initially come out to Sarah, I told her, I can wait to even begin my transition until after your wedding, if that would make you feel better, make anybody feel better.

I was a little bit worried about how his family might react, and she was quick to say, absolutely not.

You've waited long enough.

You do what you want to do, and it's okay.

Both of you are sort of saying we want to make sure the other person is happy, and yet you are holding on to those words about the photos that I think she's come around in a lot of ways where maybe in a perfect world for her, she would like her photos to look a certain way, But she also says I love you so much and I want you to be happy, and I want you to be who you really are.

And yet you're saying, yeah, I'll just wear the dress to make her happy.

Do you see?

So it's almost like you're putting yourself in a prison that you're not actually in.

I agree.

What stands out for me is how much you and Sarah love each other.

You've been through this really difficult traumatic childhood.

You shared the room, you were there for having to call the police.

You clearly really love each other.

And as Laurie was saying, she wants you to be happy and you want her to be happy.

You really have done such a remarkable job of being authentic and speaking your truth and really telling people how you feel and who you are over these past years.

And I think there has to be elements of that in this wedding where you feel authentic to you.

But when you say, well, I'll do it for her, that is you not giving yourself the authenticity have to be pictures you can look at and be happy.

I mean, when Tina got married.

I wore a dress, and I love those pictures.

I think maybe I'm a very anxiety written person.

Maybe I am just letting my thoughts get the better of me, and that when I do see myself in that dress, and when I do see how happy my sister is, maybe I don't feel the way that I anticipate that I'm feeling.

You know what, Liam, I hear you talking yourself out of your truth.

And when you say that you were happy looking at the pictures at Tina's wedding, you were in a different place.

Yeah, And this is where you are now, and all of you siblings have gone through so much together, and here's a really happy occasion.

And what's so happy about it is that your sister is saying, Look, I'm human.

I have reactions to this thing.

You are human, You have reactions to things.

But in the end, we always come back to we love each other and we want each of us to be true to ourselves.

And you keep fighting that she has come back to you multiple times.

You've recounted in this conversation how many times she has come back to you and said, I want to fix this, I want to make it right.

I want you to be comfortable and every time you argue with it, and so this conversation with her just gets prolonged and it becomes almost an argument where you're arguing against yourself, and then she has to be the person who is arguing on your behalf.

And I think what's happening is you're externalizing an internal argument.

So you're making this internal argument that you're having with yourself about well, how public should.

I be about this?

And how do I feel about being public about this in front of my family, in front of all of these people.

And you may have some fear around that, but don't make Sarah the bad guy.

In this, because she's not right.

So we're thinking about your situation and we have two pieces of advice that we'd like you to try this week.

And the first is that we would like you to have a different conversation with Sarah than the one that is getting nowhere.

This just keeps going back and forth, and that is for you to say to Sarah, I am so excited for your big day.

I am so excited for this new chapter of your life, and I want it to be everything that you want it to be.

And the reason that it's hard for me to either wear a bridesmaid dress or to wear men's formal wear.

Is because I am transitioning and I am in the middle right now, and I would like to go to your wedding in a way that reflects that middle ground where I actually am in life.

And you have been so gracious and supportive and I so appreciate that, and I would like to figure out with you what would make you comfortable that I can wear that reflects the actual place that I am right now, which is in that middle ground.

And you talk about colors, and you talk about style, and you talk about whatever it is, and by the end of that conversation, you say, this is the tailor we have to call, this is the thing we're going to order, and you get that order in by next week.

Okay, So none of this back and forth, none of this is what do we do?

And oh no, she's going to be displeased.

Oh no, then she thinks, so I'm going to be displeased.

I think you both actually agree.

You've already resolved this.

You're not taking away anything from her day.

The spotlight is on her and you're in the middle, and you want to wear something that reflects that.

I think you're both in agreement on that, So now you just have to execute that.

So instead of having this internal argument with yourself that you're now externalizing to Sarah, you can say, wait a minute, I need to look at why this is so hard for me to accept her offer.

Laurie Setti that you're having this argument in your own head that you're then externalizing with Sarah.

I think that's primarily because you don't have other trans people to talk to about very specific situations.

You're on a journey that's a marathon, it's not a sprint, and you really need to have people who've been through it, who understand it, who are going through it, that you can talk to and you can share some of these feelings so that you can get clear in your head that what you feel is completely valid and legitimate and important.

So the second part of the advice we're giving you that we'd like you to do this week is to find some kind of trans support group where you're talking about these things you need to have around you.

People who really truly get you from experience, are not just from love, which is what you have right now, and that's great, by the way.

So those are the two things.

How do you feel about doing those things.

I've actually found a group that meets every other Sunday with a focus on the transgender community.

I just have not yet made it to a meeting just because of work constraints.

But it is worth it to take a day off of work to make this happen and to get the support of people in my shoes.

And it really pained me to hear the first bit of advice because I'm realizing that I did not say any of those things.

I'm so happy for you.

I'm so excited for your big day, and I really am thrilled for her and I am excited for her, and it makes me sad that I haven't a vocal that yet.

So I think both bits are very doable and I think this will definitely get us past, like you said, this back and forth of really not getting anything done.

And it will be helpful to hear it too, because there's so much stress before a wedding, and to say, listen, I think this got lost in all of the logistics.

I just want to let you know that I am so excited you found this great person and I hope to find a great person, and that you are there, just as she has supported you, you are there to support her that day and just say it's been hard for me to accept your support because I'm so worried about your feelings and I realize that not accepting your support, I'm actually making it harder for you.

Yeah.

Absolutely, well, we wish you luck with this this week.

Thank you guys, appreciate it so much.

What I really liked about Liam was that he was so resilient.

He had been through so much in his life, and yet at every turn he was able to stay true to himself to get to the point where he got to today.

And I think there's still a part of him, because this is so new that he's gone public, that isn't so sure about how to navigate this.

And I think because he's been so resilient, he thinks he should just know how to do this.

And that's why it's so important for him to be able to talk to other people and have some community around him.

I think what's blocking him a little bit is that he loves his sisters so much and his mom, and he's been able to forgive his dad, and he was able to forgive is from a partner and try again.

Is so empathetic that I think that that's what's bloging him.

He's thinking a little too much of other people's feelings and not prayer to himself quite enough, and being on the path that he's on will help him find balance between his own needs and the feelings of the people around him.

You're listening to Dear Therapist from My Heart Radio.

We'll be back after a quick break.

So, Laurie, we heard from Liam.

Let's hear what happened.

Hi Laurie.

Hi guy.

So I spoke with Sarah one last time, and we've come to the conclusion that I will wear the dress throughout the ceremony and after the ceremony when we all go to sit down to eat and then dance later, I'm going to change into a really nice mauve color blazer with just some nice pants and a nice shirt underneath.

That way, I can also get a bunch of photos in that outfit that I feel more comfortable in, and also my sister can get her ceremonial pictures how she likes it.

And I did try to go to an in person support group, but it does look like the COVID restrictions are still a little too strict to have those in person meetings.

I did contact the group and they did say that they do think that they'll be open soon, but I am continuing to look for a virtual support group until I can make those meetings.

So again, I just wanted to thank you guys so much for listening and sharing my story and providing me with some really great advice.

So thank you guys so much.

I'm really glad that Liam talked to Sarah.

I remember that one of the things we wanted him to get across to her was how excited he is for her wedding, and I think that that somehow maybe got lost in here, even though there's so much love between the two of them, and so we didn't hear from Liam.

Whether that happened, I don't know.

If it's just hard for the two of them to communicate because of the discomfort they're having around talking about something that's hard for both of them.

And this might be hard for Sarah in ways that they haven't been able to talk about, or Sarah hasn't been able to talk about for fear of hurting Liam's feelings.

So I'm glad they came to a compromise.

I'm not convinced that the sentiment that we hoped Liam would get across happen.

And I also think it's very common that something very concrete like a wedding becomes the focus of a deeper conversation that needs to be had, and so this just happened last month.

Everybody is all of a sudden talking about, Okay, Liam is transitioning.

What does that mean for how is going to be at the wedding?

And that's one conversation, but it opens the door for the many conversations that are going to happen after this.

I completely agree.

The one great service this wedding did is it forced him to have several conversations about Liam's transitioning, which meant that in the early stages, they already established this is something we're going to be able to talk about, we're going to need to talk about, and they already established that president which will be so valuable going forward with the process for Liam especially, but for his sisters and family as well.

It's great that Liam is looking into local support groups because it's really important for him to be able to talk with other people who are going through what he's going through.

I think Liam is setting the stage for creating the kind of support around him that will make this process go as smoothly as possible for him.

Yeah, it's going to be an exciting time ahead for Liam.

Hey, fellow travelers, if you've used any of our advice from the podcast in your own life, send us a quick voice memo to Loriandguy at iHeartMedia dot com and tell us about it.

We may include it in a future show.

Thank you so much for listening.

If you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate and review it.

You can follow us both online.

I'm at Lorigottlieb dot com and you can follow me on Twitter at Lorigottlieb one or on Instagram at Lorigottlieb Underscore Author.

And I'm at Guywinch dot com.

I'm on Twitter and on Instagram at Guywinch.

If you have a dilemma you'd like to discuss with us, big or small, email us at Lorianguy at iHeartMedia dot com.

Our executive producers, Christopher Hasiotis, were produced and edited by Mike Johns.

Special thanks to Samuel Benefield and to our podcast Fairygodmother Katie Couric.

Next week we'll talk to a mother trying to forge a more open line of communication with her adult children after years of turmoil.

I don't want to be a wedge between him and his wife.

I want them to figure it out.

And so I think part of what's been holding me back is saying I don't want to be in charge of my children making personal decisions on such a huge scale because of a comment I might have made.

Dear Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio.