Dear Prudence: How Much Do I Have To Rewrite My Past?

[minoanmiss]

I had a close friend who was also my on-and-off partner for over a decade. We lived with each other for a while, mostly at the beginning of our relationship. Much later on, they came out as nonbinary and changed their name. They also have since moved across the country, and we are no longer in contact for unrelated reasons.

At the time we dated, we had nicknames and traditions in the relationship that were based on traditional gender roles. During a recent discussion among friends, I brought up this partner as an example of my experiences cohabiting with men. A mutual friend was shocked and admonished me that my partner is NOT a man. I also got admonished about keeping mementos with our gendered nicknames that were hand-crafted by my partner. While I absolutely respect that they are not a man, do I really need to get rid of mementos that are happy little reminders to me? My experience during that time was of living with a man, and it feels so weird to have to erase all those things that happened and meant a lot to us. My former partner never brought up that I should destroy those things or never bring them up again, and now I don’t have a way to ask them. What would you say?


A: It’s always a little complicated to figure out how much weight to give a third person’s opinion of a relationship, and even more so when that relationship is now over. I don’t think you have any obligation to get rid of your treasured mementos, and your mutual friend’s belief that the politest thing to do when someone transitions or changes their name is to throw away any letters/gifts/photos is hardly universal. There is no single etiquette on the subject.

As for the question of how you describe your relationship with your ex, rather than assigning you a universal set of rules, I’d encourage you to keep an open mind. You can’t call your ex and ask them for their thoughts on the subject, of course, but if they ever discussed their own relationship to gender or reevaluated their sense of their own pre-coming-out life before you two lost touch, you might try to incorporate what you do know of their perspective into your own. You don’t have to persuade your mutual friend to share your view of that relationship, and I don’t think you should try to, either. Don’t get caught up in arguing whether someone really “was” their assigned sex before coming out or transitioning, especially when that person isn’t present to discuss their experience. Your friend’s request that you get rid of your mementos of that relationship was not a reasonable one; their objection to your characterization of that relationship is slightly more open-ended, and I think you can thoughtfully incorporate their reaction into future conversations without either dismissing them or beating yourself up.

Comments

[jadelennox]

It's also reasonable to say, "Friend, you're right, I should have said, 'an example of living with someone who, to me, was presenting as male.'"

I mean, that's a really common issue. There are a ton of female computer programmers, for example, who were presenting as male and using male pronouns while they were getting started in the profession, and it's not invalid to acknowledge that when you're discussing early-career so-called pipeline problems. In fact, it would be ridiculous to act as if they experienced harassment as women while everyone in the profession believed they were male. (That's leaving aside any professional harassment of people who were gender-nonconforming, the ways in which they experienced harassment as people around them began identifying gender-nonconforming behaviour or presentation, or the ways in which the women in question felt professional pressure to be closeted, either because of transphobia or misogyny. That's a separate issue, and obviously also totally real.)

But the demand from a third party to get rid of mementos is garbage and should be ignored.

I have asked trans friends in the past "hey do you have preferences about these things I have associated with your deadname" and respected their wishes (which I believe have been universally 'whatever, that was my name when I created [thing],' but I can totally believe other folks don't feel that way). But that's up to the trans person in question -- and LW doesn't necessarily even have to respect it. If, say, ex-partner had hypothetically said "I demand you get rid of all these pictures of us holding our child in which I have a beard," then that's also an unreasonable request, and a reasonable compromise might be "I will put them in rooms of the house where neither you nor any mutual friends will ever see them."

[kelly_holden]

Re: the pictures of the child. Could get as many as possible carefully cropped and reprinted, perhaps? Since the child is usually the point of a picture of with a child in it. Or maybe photoshop the beard out?

[shirou]

One person asking another to crop/edit their photos still seems unreasonable to me. If the photos are painful to the first person because they no longer identify with the gender they presented at the time, they can crop/edit their own versions, and they can ask not to see the second person’s photos. But the second person should still be allowed to keep the originals that (presumably) reflect that person’s memories.

[kelly_holden]

Sorry, yeah, I was thinking about shared versions, and being able to keep some version of the pictures on display, not, like, getting rid of the originals.

[ashbet]

>>>It's also reasonable to say, "Friend, you're right, I should have said, 'an example of living with someone who, to me, was presenting as male.'"

Agreed!!

A former partner and close friend is nonbinary, and in interactions or referring to them in the present day, of course I respect their gender and pronouns.

It gets a little dicier if I'm recalling/recounting something from the past casually (doesn't help that I have ADHD), because I need to edit/correct my memories (some of them from 20 years ago) in which they identified and presented as their birth gender, especially since they didn't change their name.

I sometimes have to change my wording on the fly to reflect the person they are now -- not because I'm failing to acknowledge their transition, but because those memories were experienced prior to it.

(With that said, part of my job in being a good friend to them is making that correction consistently, preferably while it's still INSIDE my head.)

A third party insisting that someone get rid of mementoes of a past relationship, regardless of the circumstances, is being entirely inappropriate -- and doing so *speaking on behalf of the absent party without their input or permission* is pretty damn rich. I'd feel free to ignore that friend's opinion.

[sporky_rat]

That adjusting memories in the fly and being willing to say, 'no, wait, wrong words, hang on' is so valuable.

My friend used to identify as female, used female pronouns, the whole enchilada. Now my friend identifies as male, presents as male, uses male pronouns.

I still have to pause when I am talking about him before he started using and identifying with and as male because that's some twenty years of memory groove I have to yank out and adjust. It usually manages to happen in my head.

(Talking about him in the present or recent past is fine! It's the twenty year old memories that's hard!)

tl;dr - words and memory words and adjustment is sort of hard, why is English.

[rosefox]

I've had a journal for 20 years. It's got all kinds of wrong pronouns in it—for me, for other people—and other gendered language that's been rendered outdated. I don't go back to correct those entries. I do try to remember to say "CN: outdated pronouns" when linking to one.

Re "cohabiting with men"... yeah, that would make me itch, because the person the LW was cohabiting with wasn't a man, even if they were perceived as one (and perhaps even if they perceived themself as one). "Cohabiting with male-socialized people" isn't that many more syllables. I'd put in the effort there, because it's a conversation with someone else who knows the person in question, and accuracy matters for the sake of not making anyone uncomfortable.

But people of any gender can give one another gendered nicknames, and there's nothing wrong with keeping mementos of those, even if the nicknames no longer apply. If an ex of mine had given me a "best girlfriend ever!" mug or something, I might keep it for the fond memories and the giggle of how far it is from how I see myself now. Or I might not. That sort of thing is very personal and not subject to other people's takes.