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agonyaunt2021-02-17 10:47 am
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2021-02-17 10:47 am
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Dear Prudence: How Much Do I Have To Rewrite My Past?
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.
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.