I'm very new here and for a reason. Although I'm older... 66... it is only within the last 2-3 weeks that I've realized I'm transgender. Through 4 years of therapy for other reasons (well, maybe not, after all), I had one more box I had to open and look into. I've made a lot of discoveries about myself and I've made a lot of progress. This last box to be opened scared the living daylights out of me even before opening it and it took me several weeks to face looking into it.
I'd begun to think transgender, but I kept pushing it away. I had a couple tough sessions with my shrink trying to deal with this. On the drive home from therapy one day, the words came out of my mouth, "I am a woman." I can't even tell you where those words came from, but I felt an immediate calm come over me. I smiled to myself. If felt good about myself.
When I went home, I put my 'girl' clothes on and walked around as if on air. Again, my mouth opened and this time I was saying, "I love me!" and I meant it.
In my next therapy session, I told my shrink about this and how happy it made me. I'm missing a week of therapy because of Labor Day but told shrink I might be telling my wife before my next session. Now I'm afraid. I'm afraid I'll lose my wife, my adult children, my job, my friends... let's see... is there something else I could lose too? Well there that goes too.
My therapy started as a condition of my wife continuing our relationship after finding out about a secret I'd kept from her about another, let's say, fetish-like activity. She felt lied to, betrayed, etc. The therapy has been the best thing in the world for me, and recently my wife has been saying how much she loves me... how things are so good... and I do love her in return. So now I feel like I'm poised with a chain saw to chop our relationship apart and cut her heart out. I can't possibly imagine my wife wanting to continue a relationship with me as a trans-woman. I'm afraid of hurting her and hurting my family, even knowing how much it will hurt me if I can't be true to who I am. I feel that if I do love my wife, I owe it to her to tell her now and not keep it hidden from her.
My older daughter is to be married next summer (and as clergy, I'd be performing the service) and I feel somewhat of an obligation NOT to be in transition in a noticeable way at that point, but I need to do something!!
On the one hand, we aren't in a position financially to split up and go our own way, but I can't use that as a crutch and false hope that it might keep us together.
Heck, I'd be happy moving into another bedroom of the house and just being close friends to my wife, but I have little hope for that either.
I look at myself in the mirror and see a bald head... yeah, maybe a wig, but I'd so, so love to have a nice head of hair and be able to change hair styles. There are some other features that could be changed...if I'm not too old...and if we aren't too poor (and look, I still say 'we'...)
Oh, I'm sorry to get on here and just sob like this. I started reading the sticky thread about people who did NOT lose everything and that's nice, but is there anyone out there who can relate to my situation? Old, afraid, anxious to plan transition but afraid to think about it?
Of older people here, have you managed to save your marriage or at least keep a relationship between you? How??
Anything any of you can say might help. I don't know... I've just got to get past my fears.
