Personally, I would consider it a mistake to think of them as a "new person". Personality isn't something that changes easily; they may adopt more feminine behaviors, but likely mostly ones they had in the first place but were repressing. If they try to force such changes, they're just going to be pretending to be someone they're not, from one extreme to the other. If you befriend someone by being on the same sports team, and know them for years, and interact a lot through/about sports, that's a major part of who they are and how you know them. If they get in an accident and can no longer play that's going to be a big change, in both their active behavior and probably their mindset, but it's not a different person. If you stopped being friends because you only hung out for the sports stuff, it couldn't really be said you were much of "friends" in the first place. The goal of gender reassignment surgery and related lifestyle changes is not to change who you are on the inside, but to change your outside to match your inside.

Welcome to the world. A lot more things other than sixual preference and mental six are determined beyond a person's control or acceptance.



Again, you don't understand that your friend is doing exactly that - accepting him-/herself for who (s)he is. It's not an easy thing being mentally female and bodily male (or vice versa) and it takes a lot of courage and willpower to accept it and come out with it.



Like Rhekarid already said, there is no "new person".

The latter. I'm not really sure that someone looking to "reinvent themselves" would choose what's going to be a particularly onerous route...

:P was being rhetorical.
I agree, i dont think they are going to be a "new" person either.

When I say "new individual", I mean it in the sense that they are someone different than I knew. Whether it is their true self as they want to be or not, it doesn't change the fact that it is someone different than the person I've been friends with for years. If they have always been different inside, then that just means I've been friends with a lie this entire time. And I guess I really prefer the lie.

Then no-one can fault you for that. If your friend has been hiding this from everyone for however long you've been friends, and is just dropping it on you now, it's not your fault if you turn away. It'd be like falling in love with a woman who claims to like everything you like, then 5 years later they tell you it was just to get their claws in you and that in reality they can't stand anything you enjoy. If a house is built on sand but told it's really rock, don't blame the homeowner for moving out when the sand starts to shift and the rock facade is torn away.

I cant trully say because i am not going through with they or you are.
But is it that you were friends with a lie, or that they had more to them the you knew?
I would imagine all of us have secrets that if they were shared, people may feel differntly about us. Does that necessarily mean that you are lying to them and would it make you different in their eyes to the point of being someone else?


I cant say its an easy chocie, but i would think the core person is the same as they have always been.

You haven't been in a friendship with a lie - you've been in a friendship with someone who simply didn't reveal all of themselves to the world and/or you. You know why? Because they were confused. They were scared. They didn't want to lose you as a friend. But then they got the courage to tell you and your other friends that they were transgendered. That, I can tell you, takes a whole lot of courage. When I came out as gay / bisixual in highschool, that was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Coming out to my parents was even worse. I literally cried myself to sleep some nights because I was so damn scared of what might happen.

But, every other time you write a post in this thread, I am forced to wonder if your transgender friend really would want you to be her friend if she knew how you thought she was a "lie."

You seem to be purposefully misunderstanding and looking at it the wrong way. (Yes, that sentence sounds a bit like something a 10-year-old would say, but it is true.) Your friend is not someone different than the person you already knew. You just didn't know his/her entire personality. No one ever reveals their entire personality to all other people, including their closest friends. There are always things about you which you won't mention to your closest friends and even some which you probably won't mention even to your closest family members. I know to you this seems a million times worse than some triviality about you which you don't mention to other people, but this is the exact same thing - your friend is still the same person you knew before and him/her being mentally female instead of male doesn't change his/her personality as drastically as you seem to think it does. Granted, it apparently does change your perception of the person drastically, but if you'd be willing to try to look past that and talk to your friend and accept him/her for who (s)he is I'm sure you'd see that (s)he's still the person you knew.

edit: Actually, Reneer put it much better than I did.

I think that's a little judgemental: nobody in this situation sets out to mislead, and this sort of reaction is perhaps the reason it is very hard for someone to tell others what's the deal: if anything it's a big deal that they feel they can't speak out. It's a little harsh to accuse them of hiding something that could and does provoke negative reactions from many people; or even themselves, for that matter.

No offense, but after 12 years of friendship, if you can't tell that person ANYTHING & EVERYTHING, then you're not truly "close" friends to begin with. There is not a SINGLE thing about me that my best friend does not know(granted, we've been best friends since I was 4 and he was 5, so nearly 25 years, but still). So in essence, Proditus has been friends with a facade, a lie, and on top of that, what if his friends entire personality changes. I mean, if you can hide feeling like you're a woman on the inside for 12 years, there is a significant chance that you're also hiding back many, MANY behaivorisms that you're now going to change as well. The situation isn't just cut and dry here, not like so many people seem to be making it out to be. Not to mention, as Proditus mentioned, his friend can no longer be "One of the guys", because he's not, he's now "one of the girls". That is a significant difference as well.

We all have secrets, but very rarely are they big enough secrets that it changes the person entirely. I can get around embarrassing secrets like having to sleep with the lights on every night because you're afraid of the dark, or you're actually bisixual, or you like to watch a lot of porm, or something like that, because it really doesn't change your conception of an individual that greatly. We all have our personal lives, and they don't usually affect your interaction with your peers and friends that greatly. Transgender, on the other hand, is a dramatic shift in behavior and identity, and it's not easy - not impossible - but not easy to accept that and move on.



But it is truly a lie. Do you really enjoy hanging out with us, doing the things we do as a guy, playing video games, etc etc, or has this just been a facade to hide your inner self out of fear of what we may think? Justifiably, dropping that facade would indeed alter people's conception about you. Do you actually care about your friends who happen to be males, or will you abandon them for female peers because you've never actually connected with them personally?

I mean it can't be both ways. Either this person is becoming someone different, or their previous self is just a mask to hide their true self that's been there all along. Which one have I been friends with, the mask or the truth?

I'm not saying it wouldn't be weird at first. The dynamic of the relationship might change but there's no reason why they shouldn't remain good friends.

[censored]. Plain and simple, [censored]. If you're truly best friends with a person, you can tell them anything, and if you've been best friends(or even close friends, in the OP's case), you likely HAVE told them everything. You must just not be very close to your "best friends".

And you have never ever pretended to enjoy something more than you actually did just to have a better time with your friends? Your holier-than-thou attitude towards your friend is becoming a little tiring, to be honest.

edit: Regardless, you need to talk to your friend and ask him/her if (s)he actually enjoyed the things (s)he did with you and your other friends or was that just an act.



That's too ridiculous for me to even begin deconstructing it to demonstrate why and how ridiculous it is.

I'm telling you again, you just need to talk to your friend instead of with the random people on the Internet.



Oh really? So your best friend knows literally everything about you? There wasn't a single thing in your life which you did or thought and were later terribly ashamed of and/or regretted it and didn't mention to your friend?

If the answer to that question is positive than you are either lying or you're not human.

Call me a liar or non-human if you want, but there is literally nothing about me that my best friend, and my wife for that matter, does not know. If there is something they don't know about me, then it merely has NEVER come up before. I would not hesitate to tell my best friend my deepest, darkest secret. I'm sorry that you're so closed off that you find you can't tell your darkest secret to someone you've been friends with all your life and consider to be your best friend. But, that's you, it's not me.

Edit: To prove a point: My best friend knows that my real mother abused me as a child. I told my best friend the very first time I mastvrbated. I told my best friend all my doubts and fears I had when I got my now-wife/then girlfriend pregnant. I've told my best friend every sick and twisted dream I've ever had. There is NOTHING that i've ever felt to uncomfortable about to tell my best friend. And again, My wife for that matter.

Have you ever been in the position where you've had to tell someone something that's essentially life-changing?

Seriously? This is a hopelessly jaded view and one that doesn't take into account people change. Plus the fact that people don't generally realize they are gay, straight, transgender, etc really until they hit teenage years.

Secondly? I've had a friend for roughly 18 years. It was hard as hell to come out to her as bisixual when I was 18 - we had known each other for roughly 10 years at that point. Even if you share everything with your best friend / wife whatever, people change. Plus, people don't always realize certain things about themselves or even come to terms with themselves being gay or straight or purple. It took me several years to come to terms with my bisixuality and even then it scared me to death to tell my friends because I was worried they would simply reject me.

You don't think having a friend come out as gay or bisixual can really affect a relationship? Coming out as gay / bisixual can change the dynamic of a relationship just as much as coming out as transgender does. Basically all I see here is that you are being selfish.

You are falling into an either-or fallacy here. And you're taking this in such a selfish manner to boot. Your friend will still like what she likes. She will still probably play video games with you and watch football. She cares about you as a friend. Do you honestly think that your friend, for 12+ years, was merely putting on a facade that whole time? If you truly believe that, then I don't see how this discussion can continue. Plus, if she didn't care for you, why would she even tell you about being transgendered?

Yeah, It's called getting a barely 17 year old girl pregnant and I didn't even have a job. I had to tell my parents, which I was very scared to do, but I still did it. And I did it right away, because they had a right to know. There are other things, but seeing as how this is a forum of people whom I like, but don't know on a personal level enough, I'm not willing to share. I've never shied away from telling the truth, no matter how [censored] it makes me look.

Being transgender is the kind of thing people are sometimes murdered for. It is something that, as this thread shows, even very long friendships can end over, because one person does not accept the other. Did you tell your best friend absolutely everything about yourself, every secret from A to Z, the very first day you met? No? Then apparently you're a liar. Or, more likely, information gradually passed as trust was built. Information that could destroy the relationship, or you yourself, tends to be the kind of thing that takes a while to be mentioned. I'd be willing to bet a buck or two that there were no magical best-friend sirens that went off when you met yours, nor when you officially passed the line from acquaintances to friends. How long were you a facade of lies that deceived your best friend? How many people do you know who are "friends" but not your "best friend", who I guess you'll never stop lying to in some form or another, ever?

No, the situation is not cut and dry, so you probably shouldn't declare Proditus' friend's personality a farce because they didn't immediately announce one of their most personal and potentially damaging secrets to someone who was basically a stranger when they first met. Ignoring that it's literally impossible to know everything about someone, and that I strongly think you're overestimating how much "everything" two friends will share, there is a difference between CAN tell someone anything, and DO. I haven't told any friends about this one time where I was walking a bit and stumbled but then caught myself and kept walking, because it's never come up and who cares. I might not tell them something really personal, not because I don't trust them, but because I don't see it as something they'd be interested in knowing, it's not important, so why bother with the forced awkwardness of it for something unimportant they won't ever even care about. It doesn't make my entire personality a facade.


Who says it has to be either? No one feature defines someone's personality, no matter how major. Compare it to, say, being adopted. If you've never had cause to doubt the love between mother and child, does the person who raised suddenly stop being your mother? Are you unable to care about them ever again because they're not exactly who you thought they were? Were they hiding it from you because their real self was behind a mask, or because they wanted to wait until you were mature enough to understand?

I can't reveal everything to people, but I still have best friends. Well I guess I broke your logic code.

So, you are officially contradicting yourself here. "PEOPLE CAN CHANGE". You said it just now. But earlier in the thread, you've said that most transgender people are born that way. You can't have it both ways. Either born with it, or you choose to be. If they are born with it, then they've been hiding it from their friend, and their friendship is possibly built on a lie, which is unacceptable(see my above posts about how if you're best/close friends with someone, you should have no issue telling them everything about yourself). If you can change, then the OP has every right to be unsettled by this "Choice", because they didn't see it coming, and it does change their relationship on a fundamental level.

Still, I fail to see why I'm "jaded". Lol. because I can tell someone I've known for a long time and care about everything? How is that jaded?

Also, please, you really need to take the OPs feelings into account as well(as my first post was about). This is every bit as hard for the OP as it is for his friend. The friend has at least had the benefit of knowing about this for some time, and has had time to prepare to come out to OP and others. On the other hand, the OP has NOT had time to prepare for this. This is, obviously, quite the surprise for them. They need time to re-adjust and re-evaluate everything that is happening. At least they are trying to be supportive and trying to understand. That's more then people would do. At least give him some credit and stop being quite so harsh and judgemental of them(which you accuse them of being).

I think the "right to know" element is the key part, though; but that's perhaps getting off the point since the OP's friend did let them know. One could argue the reasons why it happened when it did: perhaps they didn't accept it themselves until recently, perhaps it didn't have the urgency of an unavoidable event, but they did so anyway. I guess I'm just not seeing the point in judging them negatively for it. I'd see it the same way with someone in the same position you described too, for what it's worth.

I'm sorry, was I referring to people being transgender when I said that? No? Oh. Well then.

I was referring to your point that people hide behaviors. People come to terms with their own behaviors and their own view of self-worth - thus, people change. They don't become transgender - they come to terms with being transgender. Thus, increased self-worth, usually. Thus, the person changed.

And, again, people don't always know they are transgender or gay or straight the moment they are born. It takes years and years to first realize these things about yourself and then even more time to come to terms with it so that you can tell everyone else you know and love.

I was referring to your point about: if you hide being a woman, you are hiding lots of other stuff too. Jaded might not have been the best word to use, but it fits in my mind.

I am being judgmental of the OP because they have this view that their friend lied to them for 12+ years, which is decidedly not the case. That their friend created a facade and kept it going for 12 years is pretty much ridiculous. The OP has likewise admitted to being bigoted on the entire matter. So, yes, I'm being somewhat judgmental.

Both situations - getting a girl pregnant and coming out as transgendered - need to be handled with finesse, certainly, but you are comparing apples to oranges here.

It's limited how much people can change. On a genetic level no, but in learned patterns, memories, and data way they can. So yes it can in fact be both ways, I know a baffling concept.