Post transition or most of the way through transition Transsexuals in relationships

     People are actually reading these blog entries. That makes me happy. As little as I talk at work, I really am an extrovert. Actually it's been a good thing because this last week I've needed some reassurance about my appearance.
     Also I'm finding out that some people I know have dated or are dating transitioning transsexuals.  People don't really know what to think of us. "...Well he was really pretty, but we never had sex" talking about an mtf, or rather I think she hesitated about the pronoun. One thing I think is odd is that I could tell she had experience with a transwoman the first time we met. I kind of want to ask them about the experience, but then again I guess it's kind of personal. I wonder whether they stumble over the pronoun because they are trying to be clear with other people or whether we really are all that in between. I think it depends on how far someone is in their transition.
      About six months into hormone therapy I started to lose the ability to think like a guy. It isn't that I began thinking like a girl, I probably had begun doing that much earlier, but I lost these thought processes that I used to have. I'm still the same person but I don't really have the same thought process that I once had. For the first six months or so I probably thought in a more gender neutral way, and before hormones I probably thought more masculinely, though probably never quite like a cisgendered male. It bothered me at first but after talking to my therapist I realized that it really isn't any different from moving from child to adult. Yeah I can't exactly relate to the person I once was, and I don't have any unique perspective on how men think, but I can't and don't with children either. It's kind of once we change we forget who we were. We can remember the past but we think in the present.
      I kind of want to ask these people about their experience with these trans people. I mean sexually, I gather, trans-women generally don't want or enjoy sexual activity using their penis. At least I don't. So, we don't really have sex.  We're kind of limited to heavy petting and making out. (Of course I am a really good kisser and have amazingly perky breasts). What I'm really curious about is personality. We're all different. I think some of my relationships in the past have suffered because of unrealistic expectations about my personality, and I kind of want to find out what type of expectations these people have about personality.
      One person I dated very briefly said once "if you were a normal girl I'd think you were too prissy." I absolutely could not let it go. The thing about it is I could see and hear myself acting that way girls do that drives guys nuts but I honestly couldn't let it go. "What does that mean?" and "Don't touch me." I think she had an expectation that somehow dating me would mean a break from all the pain in the ass girly emotions and thought patterns and it really doesn't. A year earlier perhaps it would have.
      Of course there is also natural personality. I have a very feminine personality. Dating me is almost like dating a straight girl in many ways. Perhaps that is why I'm attracted to masculine women. I like the femme/butch dynamic. I am attracted to masculine genders . I wonder why no one seems to take gender into account when talking about sexuality. I mean it seems that everyone has a preferred gender they are attracted to as well as sex. I guess being a femme attracted to butches makes me heterosexual in a gendered sense. But anyway...
      I think that some transwomen have very masculine personalities. I think I've also suffered from the assumption that we all have somewhat masculine personalities, that we have to learn femininity. For me, it wasn't anything I learned, and I just know how to wear a dress. There is expressing gender and there is expressing gender identity. Ultimately wearing makup, and dresses is more about expressing my natural gender than it is about expressing my gender identity, though it does both. I make sense in heels and a dress I don't think all trans women do. Of course I think having been denied our gender identity for so long we feel the need to perhaps express a more feminine gender than we naturally have... We all eventually settle into something natural.
      The problem is the assumption people have that trans people are all similar. A lot of trans women do have masculine genders that doesn't mean we all do. Perhaps that is the old primary vs secondary transsexual that used to be used in diagnoses. Maybe that's why I don't have much in common with the mtf tranny groups. I found my support with cisgendered women. I actually tend to have more in common with cisgendered women than with the other trans women I've met, but I think that  might be the case with "primary" transsexuals.
       Of course also having experience with a secondary transsexual and expecting me to be similar is a mistake. Basically with me you get everything you would get with a cisgendered woman psychologically as well as all the annoyances.