My wife and I were together 10 years before I realized I was trans and started transitioning, and she thinks of me as a totally separate individual from my pretransition self. In her mind, she is married to current me, and we had to take down our wedding photos because it upset her to see her ex-husband plastered on our walls. We also both pretty regularly say [deadname] was an asshole, like that person isn’t me. Does anyone else’s partner compartmentalize like this after you transitioned during your relationship?
Maybe it’s only cause i’m not that far into my transition yet, but i kind of flip-flop back and forth on this depending on the context. Like, I generally think of pre-transition me as “myself but less developed”, but sometimes I do find myself going “Why did [deadname] do this? Wtf was he thinking?” if I’m regretting a poor past decision or whatever.