This blog will be primarily about bottom surgery, but it will also be about relationships and my difficulties with them. My decision to get surgery is predicated on my ability to have a health relationship with somebody afterwards, because I'm not going to do a expensive, multi-step surgery that leaves ugly scars just to keep it in my pants until I die. (Worst case, I could hire an escort, but being genuinely wanted by somebody is clearly better.)
I have always had friendship and relationship problems, but my awareness of them has really solidified over the past year. Ever since puberty, I've had awful friendships. I was clingy and anxious. I would be so nice to people that I would lose myself in the relationship. I was codependent. I didn't understand any social situations. Everybody was at arms length and I was "so nice" to them (as they would keep telling me), but then I would go home from whichever social event I was at and be alone. I was so confused. There were issues with how I approached friendships and relationships--I'll refer to all as just "relationships" for simplicity--at so many levels. Overall, my problem was that I had no real friends for most of the past 15 years, so I would be insanely nice to people because that's what everybody said would get me friends, but when I still didn't have friends, I was lost and angry. I know now that "nice" is not a personality, and it's merely a starter to friendship. It can also be overdone, so much so that it is off-putting (which is echoed in Michael Leviton's "To Be Honest," a life memoir that outlines how excessive honesty and niceness can actually destroy relationships, kid you not).
I have also been told by two separate professionals that I either have High Functioning Autism ("high functioning" being a misnomer) or Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD). Either of these have given me both a cluelessness and ironic precision towards social situations. Until the past year or two, at age 25, I don't think I ever said the right thing in a social setting. I would often say the opposite, or I would misuse slang and come off like a royal asshole. This was more so around ages 19-20, and I was newly out as trans and was basically learning social rules from scratch. But I was just awkward and insufferable. At the same time, I knew this and I knew I was hard to be around, so I compensated by being exceedingly nice. And people would tell me this all the time. "You're so nice!" Like they were amazed. But then I never really got invited anywhere and I was so alone that it physically hurt. I would think to myself that I did what everybody and all the self help articles said ("be nice") and yet I was still alone. So naturally, I got angry and distrustful.
The anger and distrust was where the OCPD really shined through. The OCPD caused me to clutch all the social rules I had painstakingly collected over the years to my chest, and anybody who didn't follow them as well as I did was looked down upon. The thought was that I saw people saying they wanted "X" out of life and relationships ("I want to marry a kind person, I want a husband who always cleans up after himself, I want a career that changes the world," etc. etc.) and I would do those things myself and then feel entitled to everybody liking me. Basically, I went from not understanding the rules (possibly the autistic part) to seeing the rules and following them obsessively, to then not getting the reward I expected (relationships, a sense of belonging, yadda yadda) and feeling resentful towards everybody for it. I mean, it makes sense to hear people say they want one thing then to do the other and get mad about it, but to have a bone to pick with all 7.x billion on Earth because of it? That is OCPD.
Side note about OCPD. It's not the same as OCD. For OCPD, imagine the perfectionism and obsessiveness of OCD but directed towards both the self and others. It's precision directed toward relationships rather than hand-washing. In reality, it's more complicated than that and the two disorders really shouldn't have similar names, but let's start there. This may muddy the waters also, but I do have regular OCD towards blood and fear of contamination via blood. I'm a mental health mutt.
So what does this have to do with bottom surgery? Well, I won't feel ready for bottom surgery until I figure out how to approach relationships in a better way, that is with less moral perfectionism and less entitlement as a result of that perfectionism. Entitlement and perfectionism are a turn off anyway (unless we're talking short-term hookups with what's-their-race at the club, which I'm too much of a germaphobe to engage in). In the end, I have so few attempts at relationships that weren't marred by either my or the other person's self righteousness and perfectionism (go figure, I'm also attracted to people with my same brand of goofiness) that it leaves too many questions in my mind about whether bottom surgery is right for me or not. It's too expensive, time-intensive, and dangerous of a surgery to go into without being reasonably certain that I want what's on the other side. Maybe I'd rather forego relationships and forget sex even exists and just go do science with all my free time. I'll be Isaac Newton.
