Topic: Chapter 5: I am Emma

[davina61]

Hugs, in the end I think you will go ahead as it will pray on your mind. Personally I cant wait to get the uncomfortable lump removed , only been waiting 60 years. It looks like Emma is dominant now and she will only get stronger.

[Emma1017]

It sucks. I am crying my way through midtown Manhattan. Can’t wait to take the subway.  I really don’t want to go home right now.

[Emma1017]

Subway ride helped clear my head. Heading home.  Not sure what I am doing anymore. I need to sleep on it. 

[Pammie]

Subway ride helped clear my head. Heading home.  Not sure what I am doing anymore. I need to sleep on it.

That makes sense hun xx sending more hugs


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[Emma1017]

2022.

[Emma1017]

Sorry for the emotional drama yesterday.  Still getting used to emotions.  The funny thing as I was walking along crying yesterday I was wearing sunglasses and a virus mask so I still had a lot of privacy in public.

Pammie thanks for the hugs and Davina I think you are right, Emma is in charge.  I am certain that I will transition....wow really tough to say that or type it.  I have such a long way to go and I am dedicated to help my wife and I stay together.

I found this response on the internet and I hope to have the chance to share it with her. 

Thank you all again,

Emma

How did your wife react to you coming out as transgender?

I can actually answer this.

I am the wife that reacted. Badly. Horribly. I could have done so much better than I did, and I still feel, after all this time, guilt over how unsupportive I was.

When she came out, she was already scared, vulnerable and terrified that I would leave her. Regardless of what anyone says, inside, there is nothing but terror at being abandoned.

As her wife, it was my job to reassure her that I was there for her and that I wasn’t going anywhere.
I dropped the ball. Like, so badly dropped the ball. I became withdrawn and sad. I was angry and depressed. I felt isolated, like no one else on the planet knew how I was feeling, and no one could empathize.
I resented, and we fought. She withdrew, and we fought. I yelled, got silent, slept on the couch, and we fought.
Now, I get that there are probably people out there who would say that I needed to self-care - I, after all, married a man, and that should have been all, right?
Nope.
I do get to self-care. Yes, absolutely. I get to feel grief over what, at the time, I felt was almost a death. The person I married wasn’t going to be the person I married. Was I a *gasp* LESBIAN??

As time passed, and I began to actually educate myself, I learned that she was still the same person. I didn’t fall in love with a penis. I fell in love with the person. Communication at the time was next to nothing because we were both licking wounds in separate corners. Once we finally started talking to each other, like REALLY talking and being frank and honest, we discovered there was a lot of information that we could share with each other that actually helped clear a lot of the fog I found myself in. I had questions about sexuality - hers and mine. I had practical questions about sex. I even had questions about how she was going to present.

What ended up happening was that she trusted me enough to be her “dragon at the gate”. I was the one who helped her come out to family and friends, and later workplace folks. I feel honored that she trusted me with that.
Was it an easy thing to accept? No. Did I handle it right? Again, No.

Did I love her any less?

NO. She was and is my life, and I’m confident to say she feels the same about me.

If I could do it all over again with the understanding that I have now, I would. I would do it better. I would BE better.
Now, things are different, better. It wasn’t an “all of a sudden” improvement - gradually we both began to relax into our bodies. I’m not saying that everything is perfection. We still scrap it out, but we scrap about the same things that a het couple would scrap about. Our disagreements are not centered on her transition. That doesn’t come into play at all. She’s my wife, and she drinks out of the pop bottle, leaves <poo> on the counter instead of putting it in the garbage, and stirs the coffee with a knife instead of a spoon. Drives me crazy, lol.

I have a hundred things that drive her bonkers, too. That’s marriage. You bonk heads together and then get over it.

It’s still a journey, but she’s my co-pilot, thank god. She’s better at reading directions than I am.

[davina61]

 I learned that she was still the same person. I didn’t fall in love with a penis. I fell in love with the person'

I think that says it all

[Emma1017]

I agree Davina. That leaped the page to me as well. Simple and so to the point.

[Pammie]

I agree Davina. That leaped the page to me as well. Simple and so to the point.

This is always the hard bit for me to relate to because finding myself late in life uncovered many differences (nature vs nurture) so I am absolutely not the same person. Hopefully, Emma, that is not the case for you.


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[Rachel Montgomery]

If you are entirely the same person, what was the point in transitioning?

When you meet people, one of their first assessments is "male or female".  How they interact with you often depends on that assessment.  Maybe they also notice your stature, your race, your hair or lack thereof, but one of the first things people assess is your sex.  For most people, one way or the other, it impacts on the relationship somehow.  Expectations, intentions, emotions, etc., are all wrapped up in that assessment.  i would never have dated my wife is she had been a man.  It matters that much to me.  And, if I didn't want to transition myself, it would matter to me if she did.  As is, I think I would shrug it off and say "aren't we the couple".   

I am not trying to talk you into or out of anything, other than calling on you to recognize that if your gender presentation matters enough to you to change it (despite all the social costs that may involve), it might also matter to her.  If it does matter more than she can accept, she may still love you but not want to remain married to you.  Those who can accept it should, but not all can accept it.  Just like you must do what you need for yourself, she is entitled to do what she must for herself.  And, you must find it in your heart to forgive her if she cannot continue as your wife, just as she should forgive you for not being able to be her husband.  Love and forgiveness go hand in hand, and they go both ways.

Good luck.  I hope it works out the way you want it to. I hope you find peace and make the most of the rest of your life, in joy and in love.

[Emma1017]

Rachel I don't disagree with you but in my case we are 65 years old and have been together since 1976.  We have an amazingly close relationship.  Without question asking her to stay as I transition is a big ask.  My three year thread here and 5 chapters attest to our commitment to each other and the desperation we both feel to stay together. 

Spouses have the absolute right to come and go.  When the wife in my entry said "I didn’t fall in love with a penis. I fell in love with the person." she recognized her priority but she didn't get there right away.  If my wife choses to divorce like I wrote earlier, I want it to be a full and complete decision with no possibility that we could have salvaged it, assuming that I will fully transition.

We both have needs.  I just hope that the needs of our relationship are enough accept my need (not choice or desire) to transition.

Every couple and every spouse has to choose their own paths.  There isn't one solution.

[EllenW]

I just hope that the needs of our relationship are enough accept my need (not choice or desire) to transition.

Emma,

I sincerely hope that you get your wish that your relationship continues throughout your transition. My late wife and I worked hard to keep our relationship going during my transition. The work was worth every tear that we shed.

Wishing you and her the best

Ellen

[Emma1017]

Ellen thank you so much for your thoughts.  They mean a lot to me.  I agree that hope keeps me focused.

Hugs,

Emma

[Emma1017]

Wow trying to find a surgeon to do my "FFS lite" surgery has proven to be a challenge.  Every surgeon seems to have patient complaints.  It scares the heck out of me!

There is enough fear in transitioning without the fear of a surgeon making it worse!

[Jessica_Rose]

Remember, most people only post about a surgeon if they have a complaint. Even the best surgeons in the world will have a number of patients who are not 100% satisfied with the results. Sometimes they expect to come out looking like a supermodel, which isn't realistic. There are always risks associated with surgery, it's just something we have to accept in order to move forward. It's best to find someone having personal experience and talk to them, ask if they liked their surgeon and the results. There are many great surgeons out there, each of them probably perform hundreds of surgical procedures every year, so the odds of everyone being 100% happy are actually somewhat slim. Most diamonds have flaws if you look at them close enough...

Love always -- Jessica Rose

[Sephirah]

If you are entirely the same person, what was the point in transitioning?

If you'll indulge my nonsensical ramblings for a moment, this is a very good question and one I've pondered myself often.

I think it comes down to how you define person, within the context of your own world. And because of this, I think it's possible to be the same person... and someone different... at the same time.

I feel like we have two aspects to our makeup which go into making us who we are. Think of it like an ocean. Our lives on the surface are made up in large part by the reflections of ourselves we see in others' eyes. How they shape us through their interactions, lessons, experiences, assumptions, beliefs, hopes and dreams. A lot of influences shape us like wind driving waves. Blowing this way and that, moving us in one direction or another. Calm, or stormy, gentle or destructive, sometimes confused and crashing thoughts and views as we're pulled in different directions at once.

We also have the deep parts of ourselves. The deep currents that don't change. The underlying driving forces that most times we can't see, but feel in a way we can't explain. Currents that drive us in a direction, regardless of the weather on the surface. Powerful, primal forces not influenced by the ever changing weather we get on the surface.

I feel we are both of these. At once. And transition serves to calm a storm raging on the surface of our psyche, a storm of dysphoria whipping up waves of pain, hate, self loathing, depression, fear, hopelessness, shame and doubt. One of many storms we experience in our lives. But sometimes a violent one.

For me personally, gender is more at that surface level. Transition is what we need to do to calm that storm. To see the sun sparkling on a deep, powerful ocean. That surface part of us is constantly changing. Constantly becoming someone different. Every moment of every day. But that deep part stays the same, and will always stay the same. Sometimes, rarely, we allow other people to see the deep part of ourselves. We form connections that don't need words, or actions. Sometimes oceans merge to form something vast, and beautiful.

So... really, I think it can be both. We both are and aren't the same person before and after transition. We just have one less storm to ride out.

[Emma1017]

I agree, Sephirah, with your use of the ocean in your example (your water element ).  It is a good example of our conscious and sub conscious in operation.

The conscious mind contains all of the thoughts, memories, feelings, and wishes of which we are aware at any given moment.  The subconscious is the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one's actions and feelings.  Thank you Oxford Dictionary and Sigmund Freud.

Based on the exhaustive therapy (my emotional exhaustion) I have had with two psychologist and one psychiatrist, gender dysphoria manifests itself because your subconscious is ringing an alarm bell that something is wrong with how we are presenting our gender, to ourselves and publicly. 

Rachel I posed a similar question to my therapist this past week:  "Why can't I just be satisfied with intellectually knowing my gender is female.  Why do I need to see myself physically?"   (I am constantly trying to find the backdoor out of transitioning).

Her answer was that we need to see ourselves in the mirror and, because we are social beings, we need to see it also reflected by those around us.

As smart and as clever as we are, there are some elements at our core that are inescapable and unchangeable.  I have massively bruised my ego trying to with gender dysphoria.

[Pammie]

I agree, Sephirah, with your use of the ocean in your example (your water element ).  It is a good example of our conscious and sub conscious in operation.

The conscious mind contains all of the thoughts, memories, feelings, and wishes of which we are aware at any given moment.  The subconscious is the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one's actions and feelings.  Thank you Oxford Dictionary and Sigmund Freud.

Based on the exhaustive therapy (my emotional exhaustion) I have had with two psychologist and one psychiatrist, gender dysphoria manifests itself because your subconscious is ringing an alarm bell that something is wrong with how we are presenting our gender, to ourselves and publicly. 

Rachel I posed a similar question to my therapist this past week:  "Why can't I just be satisfied with intellectually knowing my gender is female.  Why do I need to see myself physically?"   (I am constantly trying to find the backdoor out of transitioning).

Her answer was that we need to see ourselves in the mirror and, because we are social beings, we need to see it also reflected by those around us.

As smart and as clever as we are, there are some elements at our core that are inescapable and unchangeable.  I have massively bruised my ego trying to with gender dysphoria.

I think that - as usual with me - I feel somewhat differently. Certainly there are parts of my core that are constant and unchanged but my changes are not just superficial. When I released my real self from the walls I had put up it released changes both on the surface and underneath . I am fundamentally different in some ways. I am not my old self in a dress is how I phrase it.


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[Rachel Montgomery]

I can relate to what you all three are saying.  And, I see truth in all of it.  The distinction boils down to how you define the entity you are describing when you think of “yourself”. 

Christian theology teaches of the body, the soul and the spirit.  The spirit is a gender neutral essence of who you are as a human being.  Your body includes your brain, both the chemistry and the physiology of the organ.  And the soul is that part that is consciousness. 

Your spirit wouldn’t tend to change with transitioning.  Your spirit would only tend to change according to new understanding, such as learning the importance of forgiveness, learning the meaning of love, learning hate. I suppose the spirit is much like the subconscious. 

Our bodies are essentially intersex, in that the anatomical structure of our brain doesn’t match the genitalia.  The hormones are generally in accord with the genitalia, which seems to cause the spirit and the soul distress.  HRT reduces the tension.  But, as you indicated we need to see the right reflection (both in the mirror and in the eyes of others).  And that requires transitioning. 

The question is personal as to what relief is required. 

[Emma1017]

Rachel knowing your core, who your are and how you define yourself is so massively personal.  The challenge is to filter out all of the outside influences to find your truth. 

Jessica you are absolutely right, every surgeon is going to have someone unhappy.  I have found that unhappy people tend to be the most vocal.  Anger is a great motivator.