I’m not sure about you, but the best partner I could ever think of is one that is also your best friend; they are easy to talk to, comfortable to be with, you can joke with them, appreciate the world with them, and generally see them as your best friend, with the layer of also feeling profound physical, emotional, and (possibly) sexual intimacy. You genuinely love each other in the most pure sense of the word and can depend on each other more certainly than anyone else, because you can share anything with them, because they are your closest friend in the world.

However, most of it depends on what you want. Simply think about what you want most in a partner, and then look for that. Are you looking for someone who is also figuring out what to do in their love life? Do you need someone to push you in a direction? You have far more agency in your choices than you think you do.

Perhaps first, you should meditate on what you are looking for before you begin seeking it.

saying that I wish you weren’t trans by wanting to see your anguish disappear simply doesn’t compute to me. From what I’ve been hearing from each of you, being trans is a response to what is being clearly acknowledged as discomfort with yourself.

The point is that you and everyone else said they are not content with their sex, which is an issue because you shouldn’t have to feel like the opposite sex to feel they way you are.

If you’re a biological male, you should not have to feel that you must label yourself as female in order to present yourself the way you feel and vice versa. In fact, having to feel the need for a gender separate from your sex shouldn’t even be necessary, because you should be able to just present yourself without essentially stating you’re a different sex.

Men can be as stereotypically feminine as they want, and women can be as stereotypically masculine as they want.

The point is that you shouldn’t have to present yourself just the way you are and then justify it to society by labeling yourself as something other than your sex in order to conform with it.

Just be yourself. The issue is that you seem to think you have to justify it by labeling yourself differently.

I’m sorry if it came off that way,

I’m well aware that there’s not much else available because the medical field clearly doesn’t care enough to give you a more effective treatment option. I remember hearing about a drug that eliminated the feeling of gender dysphoria, but now I can’t even find anything about it on the internet, and to be completely honest, it feels suspicious, because even the idea of innovating toward simply treating the core emotion of gender dysphoria is shunned, even though it’s the most rational and straightforward treatment anyone could have.

The point is that a medication that could eliminate the root cause of dysphoria should and possibly did exist, but clearly something is strange with the world if even the idea of directly fixing someone’s mental anguish is seen as hateful and bigoted. You should not stand for those keeping you away from genuine relief and contentness, instead of this half baked excuse for a treatment that is destructive to your body, emotions, and fights your hormones.

I’m very much not shaming anyone, I’m trying to tell you that the “treatment” you’re receiving is actively detrimental to your body and only exists because the medical field doesn’t care enough about you or is too scared to give you a real fix. I understand that you might find any sort of criticism as an attack against you, and I apologize for it, but the truth is that you should be demanding more from the system that’s using you without you realizing it.

so you’re going to ignore the clear moral implications of forcing your body to be something it wasn’t designed to be and instead hyperfixate on me mentioning the cost of the treatment. You can’t call it a conspiracy theory that the medical industry isn’t earning money from it. Any marketable product is a source of income and clearly hormones are in high demand, and as mentioned by another user, something that is purchased regularly throughout the life of the person. Also, you don’t know anything about what areas of hormone production are or aren’t profitable. I can assure you that somewhere down the supply chain, there is a company profiting from it, otherwise it wouldn’t be available in the first place.

I made no mention of conversion therapy, but I am happy you are content with yourself now.

except low test men aren’t doing it in an attempt to fix a core discomfort with their own identity, you deserve real help instead of bandage fixes.

Having a hole in your heart is not a deep seated mental anguish that is being socially normalized to the detriment of its victims, it is a physical issue inhibiting the proper functioning of a vital organ.

This is an attempt to normalize an issue people are suffering from. This is something that should be addressed and fixed, rather than left for the victim to deal with as if it’s something acceptable to be forced to suffer in the era we live in, with the medical innovations we (should) have.

I strongly disagree. Our minds are the most malleable part of ourselves and should be the focus of any fixes the medical field innovates toward. The fact that you feel they are so immovable is proof that the medical field is failing to truly fix what plagues so many people with those feelings. If the proper treatment target had been identified from the beginning, you wouldn’t be suffering in the first place.

i’m genuinely sorry you have to deal with that. The world would be a better place if there was a greater focus on helping people feel comfortable in their own skin rather than seemingly embracing those cold feelings and letting trans people suffer through things like that.

I understand your viewpoint and that you understand how many people feel, and wish that core discomfort you feel could just be destroyed and replaced with the warmth that should fill you without having to make compromises to yourself or others.

You and everyone else deserve to be happy the way you are, and the medical field is doing you wrong by focusing on the wrong part of the issue, and I’m sorry so many people are so hateful toward those who suffer from that without understanding what they’re going through. I’m sorry if what I’m saying is coming off as hateful, but I just want to see that core, inner coldness be replaced with happiness without people having to change themselves, and without that issue being ignored or glorified.

Honestly that’s pretty cool, and I’m glad you’re happy with how you are now, I just wish we lived in a world where you didn’t even have to go through that process to feel happy with yourself. People deserve to be able to feel happy the way they’re born

I guess my question is why doesn’t the medical field try harder to actually properly fix the suffering they’re experiencing instead of just helping them with the part of the process that keeps them buying hormones for the rest of their lives to fight their own body’s hormone production and sometimes involves painfully mutilating themselves?

okay, I acknowledge that maybe it’s not prohibitively expensive for the end user. You don’t think the development of new products to sell you also makes money for other companies in the chain? They have to develop the product, ways to harvest or synthesize the chemicals in it, deliver it, test it, and refine and iterate upon it.

Now that I’ve acknowledged that, are you going to acknowledge the moral implications of encouraging people to physically and chemically deform themselves to feel comfortable in their own bodies, whether they’re okay with it or not?

I still stand by my point that it’s like putting a band-aid and topical anesthetic on a 3rd degree burn and saying it’s okay because the victim doesn’t have pain anymore.

I understand your point of view, it’s good that there’s a lot of care taken to make sure the mental impact of transitioning is minimal, but the point is this is a huge amount of work to help someone try and cope with “being” something that doesn’t align with what what they were born and biologically formed as. It’s a noble sentiment, but we should be approaching the whole issue in a way that helps people realize that they don’t have to change to be themselves.

what part of any of those things is female? you don’t have to be female to enjoy “stereotypically” female things. that’s pretty sexist and shortsighted of you, so I’m not surprised why, when surrounded with assumptions like that, they would feel the need to justify those preferences with being “female”. maybe if you and the rest of their family were more open minded and accepted them for who they are, they wouldn’t feel they had to transition in the first place.

just because it’s less expensive doesn’t mean it’s right either, just hacking off your body parts to feel “right” in your own body is even cheaper but that doesn’t make it tight, because you shouldn’t have to feel that way in the first place.

if destroying the physical and chemical makeup of one’s body is necessary to make them feel “right” in it, then it’s definitely not a non-issue either, the fact that someone feels that way in the first place goes against their genetic and chemical makeup, as well as their physical formations resulting from that makeup, which gives you the undeniable truth of what you “actually” are, rather than any thoughts or emotions one might have.

bro that’s fucking horrible and nobody should have to go through that but making people go through irreversible chemical, hormonal, and physical “treatments” instead of even trying to help their mental anguish is even worse. That’s literally saying that cutting body parts off and gaslighting yourself into being okay with it is a reasonable fix toward feeling uncomfortable in your body, they should have the root issue addressed rather than having the entire medical field shit on them by making them think mutilating themselves is the right and empowering choice. they’ve fooled everyone including you, and it’s all for money, because these “treatments” rake in ridiculous amounts of money and would bring in more money than just fixing their real issues so they can live a happy life phisically and chemically intact.