Title: My dad recently came out as bigender and I’m struggling to adjust — looking for advice
TL;DR: My dad (who I’ve always known as “Dad”) recently came out as bigender. I’m trying to be supportive, but I’m struggling emotionally to still see him as just my dad and not “a different person.” I’m also unsure about boundaries and whether I can still interact with him the same way. Looking for advice on how people adjusted and whether it eventually felt normal.
I’m 20, and my dad recently came out to me, my mum and my 15-year-old sister as bi/gender. I’m trying really hard to be supportive, but I’m finding the whole thing much harder emotionally than I expected and I’m feeling quite guilty about that.
I’ve known my dad as “Dad” my entire life. He’s always presented as a man around our family, and that’s the version of him I’ve grown up with and built my relationship with. He’s told us that he’s still Dad and wants us to continue seeing him that way, which I absolutely understand and want to do.
The difficult part is that, in my head, I currently feel like I’ve discovered this completely different person. I know rationally that he’s still the same person, but emotionally I’m struggling to connect the dad I’ve always known with this other side of him. Sometimes I look at him and instead of just thinking “that’s Dad”, my brain immediately thinks about his gender identity and femininity. I don’t want that to happen, and I’m worried I’ll never get back to just seeing him as my dad.
I’m also struggling with the femininity specifically. He is fem-presenting/dresses femininely around other people, but hasn’t really done that around our family. I think part of what’s difficult is knowing that this is something he does separately from us and that there’s this side of him I’ve never known about.
I’m also finding myself questioning whether I’m “allowed” to interact with him in exactly the same way anymore. Can I still ask Dad for things? Can I still go to him for advice? Can I still have the same parent/child relationship? I know the answer should be yes, but emotionally there’s a weird disconnect at the moment.
I think I’m grieving the simplicity of how I understood my dad before, even though I don’t want him to be anyone other than himself. I don’t want to take this away from him. I want him to be happy and I want to support him. I just need time to process the fact that this is a part of him that I’ve never seen before.
For anyone who is bigender themselves, or has had a child/parent come out as bigender, how did you deal with this kind of adjustment? Did it eventually become normal and did you eventually stop seeing your parent as a “different person” and just see them as your parent again?
I’m not looking for anyone to tell me that my dad is wrong or that I shouldn’t accept him. I genuinely want to understand and become more comfortable with this. I just don’t know how to get my brain and emotions to catch up with what I intellectually understand.