im scared

@colemaster Hi Cole! I hope you are doing well! I am sorry to hear of all the stress you are under. I realize it's a difficult time when you are finding out who you truly are. I want you to know that in regards to college, more people are accepting than you realize. You don't need to look a certain way to please other people. Please be yourself and the right people will love you for you. I am happy you have support with your friends and your mom! Everything will fall into place and you will find those that are meant to be in your life. We are here for you!💕

@colemaster

Hard truths, but I think you need to think about what you want to gain from each situation, and pick your battles.

If you haven't started hormones yet, and want to, and you're a minor, then you probably need parental assistance with that, and getting your mom's support there was likely critical. If you're over 18, then you can pretty much get it with or without their help. Getting to over 18 is going to come either way, so if you're under 18 now and want hormones but don't get them at first, you can always get them when you turn 18.

Your concerns about your partner and his family are real. A lot of people do lose their partners when they come out as trans. Not everyone, thankfully, and sometimes people surprise you. It might be time for you and your partner to do some soul-searching about his sexuality. If he's bi or some other identity that's open to dating a man, that's great. If he really is only attracted to women in his heart of hearts, that's going to end in heartbreak. You can't be a woman forever just to keep him without resenting him immensely. Even if that takes the form of him conditionally respecting your pronouns but clearly needing to view/think of you as a woman anyway in order to have a relationship with you. If he's open to dating a man, but his family won't be accepting, that's more hopeful but it will still require him to be brave and live his own truth. You might need to talk with him about that too, like if he needs some time that's okay, but if he's never going to be able to be out to them and wants them in his life, that's going to be a problem.

You have to understand, this isn't just about him accepting you as a man, this is about him accepting himself as gay or bi or some other variety of mlm. He's got his own closet to come out of there, and that may take time and will definitely take courage.

If in the end you're at an impasse with him, know that he isn't the last person you'll ever love, and the more you're able to be your real self, the more people who are attracted to your real self will see you and be drawn to you. The more what they see is what they get, the less conflict there will be down the road.

Misgendering is a boundary issue, and like any boundary issue, that means you should assess your ability to enforce your boundaries. If people misgender you, how will you respond to it to make them stop? I've found one of the only things that really works is disconnecting from people who won't respect my gender--sometimes the threat of disconnection gets them to put in the effort, sometimes I do just have to cut that tie. But this is also so costly for me that I don't draw that line unless I really feel I need it. There are situations where I stay more closeted because it isn't a boundary I have the wherewithal to attempt to enforce. Sometimes being closeted is a valid option, when you don't have the ability to enforce your boundaries.

Lots of trans people don't come out and get their pronouns 100% respected overnight. Many play it close to their chests until they're at a point in their physical transition when it starts to feel natural. In an ideal world, everyone would respect everyone's pronouns all the time no matter what anyone looked like. But in the world we have, if you want to consistently get he/him and "Mr." and "sir," you have to look the part, and that usually comes in a vial of testosterone cypionate. If you're not ready for that step, your gender is still valid and that's okay and you shouldn't do anything like that you aren't comfortable with (especially since some effects are indeed irreversible!) but it may be a reality that only close friends respect your pronouns. Wearing a pronoun pin and having people gently repeat whatever they just said but with the correct pronouns can help somewhat with enforcement.

By the same token, it might be paradoxically harder for your partner to come out to his family as dating a man if you still look like a woman to them and they're still thinking of you as a woman. They might invalidate it, handwave it and generally not understand it. It might feel more real, to him and to them, to have that talk with them when they start looking at you and seeing a man, or at least seeing someone in obvious transition. If they're closed-minded people or don't understand the LGBTQ community well, it's hard to expect more than that of them.

As for college, well, nuts as this sounds, but I'd worry less about that. Unless you go to some extremely conservative college (lifehack: don't) you aren't going to be the only trans person on campus. Some of my professional work is on college campuses, and trust me, visibly trans students on college campuses is a mundane sight. There's several in every classroom. Some aren't even trying to fit into the binary, and don't "pass" as anything but their wonderful selves. College isn't a bad place to fine-tune your transition, meet other trans people, and figure yourself out. You don't have to have it all figured out by then. Whether your boyfriend can tag along with you on this journey or not is going to be up to him. The best people in your life will stick with you through this.