From the other SO's perspective:
I kept my secret life a secret for 7 years after my S.O. and I met, we fell in love, decided to have a baby, made life plans, entwined financially, and essentially became two halves of the same person. Some may say that I was quite the selfish person to allow such things to happen while hiding away this incredible, enormous, integral part of myself. Hell, I've been called many, many things such as: fraud, pervert, psycho, fairy, even at one time equated to a sexual predator... many of these things by people I don't really know, and it has been my belief that it's my charge to allow all of this to roll off my back, to allow the abuse and accept it as necessary retribution for the massive misrepresentation that I allowed to continue for so very long.
My significant other has known for three years, and I have been in transition for about one. It is not hard to equate my behavior to the behavior of a criminal, and I have been made to feel as such for quite a long time. I don't wish to seek out sympathy, only, allow me to inform:
The beast of burden can only travel quite so far under heavy load. A harbored secret is poisonous to the very soul, and its uncovering allows something festering inside of a person the things it needs in order to begin to heal. It is not uncommon for many trans people to rush in at the first sign of daylight, but I have not rushed at all. There has always been a calm about me, a metered response to every transitional life event. Once my casting off was complete I hefted upon my wife an incredible burden of equal stress to the one I felt melting away. As I became free, her world and the world I once ascribed to fell apart, and this is where my point of view comes from. Though, I suppose it would serve no one to suggest that I somehow became "free."
When I broke down and told her about my being trans I was (unknowingly) only months away from becoming unemployed, and I searched high and low for another job for another full year, without saying a word about the issue again, until I found a measly retail gig that offered on-call status. But I was to them still clearly an able "man." It can be construed that my transition and trans status prolonged my unemployment, and ended my ability to succeed in the blue collar world that I so efficiently and successfully navigated before. I couldn't conduct what I thought was the great disaster any longer, I knew I had to give up everything if I were to go on living. With my body now unable to throw loads, and my nature altered in such a way that I was no longer capable of commanding "Men," I tossed aside the idea of ever becoming the high paid young and successful supervisor, the eventual tire industry exec I was on track to become. Out of concern my friend started firing people so that I could have a part time entry level job in grocery. I adjusted, and I have suffered incredibly for it.
The new stresses of passing, insolvency, chronic depression finally affecting my judgment, and involvement with government agencies have converted more of my hair to gray. They have caused verbal eruptions in the household, and have also made it a worse environment for my daughter to bear. I do not enjoy trying to sometimes find an excuse not to play with my baby because I'm just too depressed to move. I have often told people that I just don't care what happens anymore. These are things that have happened due to promises made prior to transition, I promised to finish putting my wife through school, I promised I would not leave anyone worse off... Things are definitely worse, and I know it's my fault. I'm reminded it's my fault every day. This is the price I pay, but it is a very heavy toll. A few months ago the stress reached all the way down into the foundation of my being and I began to feel as though I would do absolutely anything required (even prostitution) to make ends meet. I lost my moral footing.
In my case, transition has served no practical purpose. I am alive, I suppose. Well, the fact that I am here typing this is proof that I feel quite a bit more than I did pre-transition, and I think my life is worth sharing and living. I guess I'm just here to say that a transitioning person knows they are quite possibly putting their SO through hell, but it is also quite possible that they still feel a large amount of empathy for the people they are effecting, and the stress everywhere can make everyone involved much worse off.
I must rush off to work, and I wish I were more clear, I guess I'm reaching out to sympathetic SO's because I don't have one, even though I still have an SO...
I guess I know I was wrong, and I can't really handle the consequences of my actions.
