Me & My Husband

[ladylovesladyboy]

Its has been almost a year now since my husband told me that he wanted to be a woman and wear women's clothing and makeup.  At first i cried because i thought he was going to leave me for a man, but he told me he still would like girls even as a woman and he would never leave me because of that. After i understood that i was fine with it because i like women also(and i love him with all my heart). So since then ive been supporting him and also planning his transformation. He has not started taking the hormones yet and Because he is scared of what people mite say he only puts makeup and women's clothing on at home. We both want children and we are still in our early 20's, so we want to have a few before he begins his transformation.  We talk about it almost every day and he has told me he wants to keep his penis but have breast. So . . . . .really i came here to ask people who are transwoman or people who date/are married to one a few questions.
What is it like being/being in a relationships with a transwoman as a woman?
What are things i can say to offend him?

I read that that after a while it will be hard to have or keep an
erection, and i was wondering if there is any way to help him with that.
I would like any advice/information that anyone has and im open to any advice.  Thank you for your time.

[Devlyn]

Welcome to Susan's Place! Thank you for trusting us with something that certainly weighs heavily on your mind. Bless you for being supportive of her. Yes, you may have to get used to using her in conversations!  Keeping open lines of communication is going to be critical to keeping your relationship intact. I'm single, but the married people will come by with much better advice, trust me!    Stay strong, you can do this!

Hugs, Devlyn

[ladylovesladyboy]

Thank you for answering my questions and trying to help me. . . I guess im just nervous. ... i keep reading around alot that when taking the hormones that they actually gets more attracted to men (even though he promises me she does not like men at all) , i just dont want her to leave me or cheat on me . Ill do whatever it takes to make her happy and to feel beautiful. . . I just dont know what to do . 

[Tessa James]

Hi there LLLB,

Welcome to Susan's and thank you for being such a supportive spouse.  This is a fairly dramatic bit of news for most spouses to digest and I hope you will also avail yourself of the SO section of this forum.  We had a poll question here recently and a significant number of us indicated we are married to a cisgender partner.  I am one of those lucky girls that has the love and support of my wife.  It helps that we have been in open communication, as our friend Devlyn notes, about all of this sometimes tough stuff.  It helps that we are both bisexual and have decades with an alternative relationship style and outlook.  I think for some there may be shifts in orientation but most of us suggest no major changes.  It sounds like your partner is a committed spouse.  There are ways to facilitate a satisfying intimate life for you too.  Some folks use a bit of testosterone or episodic boner pills to help.  Others remain functional for as long as they are active.  My opinion is that we trans people are just as capable of marital fidelity as anyone else and those loving techniques to keep commitments intact are important to us too.

The coming out and transition process can really feel like an obsession.  It absorbs our daily thinking and I recommend we all take plenty of fun breaks to keep our full lives in balance.
Good luck!

[blueconstancy]

Welcome!

Hmm. Interesting questions. As for what it's like being in a relationship... much like it was being in a relationship with her before, except with a year or so of transition hassles and trauma in between. (I've never been explicitly dating a woman - though I'm bisexual and there were some friends with benefits situations when I was younger - so I'm not sure how to compare, but I'd imagine it's a lot like dating a cis woman except with the transition drama.) But we'd been together a long time by then, so it's a little different, I think; we had to readjust to each other, but the coping skills we'd learned from growing up together (we met as teenagers) helped. Anyway, I don't know if that's all that helpful, but for your specific situation I'd stress that this will not be a totally different person; there's likely to be a lot of changes, big and small, but the basic personality will probably stay more or less the same. I also don't know of very many people who found that their sexual orientation changed so much on HRT that they abandoned a long-term partner; in fact, just as there are heterosexual cis women who stay with a trans wife because they can make a special exception, so there are trans women who aren't willing to torpedo a relationship because HRT shifted their primary preferences. That was the thing I was most afraid of, and in the end my wife was bisexual at the start and is bi now, though she had a somewhat increased attraction to men - say from 90-10 in favor of women before to 75-25 now.

As for what can offend your partner, that is up to them! ("Ladyboy" is considered offensive by some trans people, but if your own partner doesn't mind being called it, that trumps strangers' opinions.) Communication is key here, just in general.

We didn't want kids, so I can't help much there. As for the bedroom activities, well, you have been attracted to women, so you know that an organic erection isn't necessary to have fun. It's possible that HRT will cause problems there (it's possible that it won't), but there are even trans women who wear strap-ons despite having a penis. There are a lot of workarounds.