When do you tell your date that you're trans? Do you tell them right off the bat or after a couple of dates, maybe even until they try to get intimate? There's this harmful idea out there that transmen and women are "deceiving" people by not revealing their birth sex right away when starting a relationship. While I think that's a stupid concept (we have a right to keep that private), that does raise the question of when you should tell someone, since it'll have to come up eventually...
I would probably tell them early on, but not right away. If you tell them right away. They may start to judge you on that a bit. So you want them to get to know you a little bit first. But you don't want to wait too long either, because they may get upset by the fact you waited so long, and it is hard to predict how people may react to that. So I'd tell them sometime early on, before we get too intimate, but after we get to know each other a bit.
I tell them right away so I don't waste time with someone who won't like me when they find out. It can make things discouraging but I think in the end it makes it easier for me.
... IF I am interested. They want to get to know me, right? Well, it's not me, but an important part of who I am. (Advice : Beware closet cases, they are nothing but troubles at the end.)
I personally feel no need to tell disclose my identity unless I know things are going to go in a sexual direction. I was already out when I really got back into the dating scene, so there wasn't anything to hide.
Yeah this is pretty much how I feel. I wouldn't want to tell them right away, I would rather they got to know me first, but I wouldn't want to wait too long.
I would not want to tell them as soon as I met them, but I certainly wouldn't want to wait until we were about to head off for bed together. So, I agree with what some of the above have said.
The few times when I was dating- particularly when I was younger and was living as transgendered - I put it off for as long as possible, and it tended to actually not blow up in my face, but at the same time I was also actively find partners who seemed like they would be interested or at least wouldn't mind it. I wouldn't recommend putting it off for too long though- as much as it can suck if you put it off for too long and then they blow up about it- it can be worse if you're trying to force something that one of you isn't wholehearted in. One of my relationships when I was living as my non-assigned gender was with a person who initially identified as bisexual, and who I felt I didn't need to reveal my assigned gender to. At one point though, after we'd been romantically involved for months, they told me that they had been more or less bicurious and that I had made up their mind for them. They were from now on only interested in my non-assigned gender and they had told their family as much too. Well needless to say when I did reveal it they weren't pleased- but they still wanted to be with me. On the other hand, they weren't at all open to the idea of me being transgendered, but I still wanted to be with them so I tried to not be. It became a really rough situation- we both cared for each other and wanted to be together- but I was living uncomfortably as my assigned gender and they were dating uncomfortably against their orientation. It's a situation where some one is going to get hurt, and we carried it on for 6 years- by the time it ended it was really just devastating for both of us.
