A little history. I have been a member of Susan's Place for more than two years now. A lurker for about six years before that. I am not a frequent commenter and this is my first OP.
I am about to turn 68 years of age. After a lifetime of mostly chronic, low level gender dysphoria punctuated with an occasional acute episode which manifested itself with private crossdressing ( and the inevitable shame and purging ), about ten years ago I got the opportunity to explore more deeply while I found myself away from home, and my wife, for business related travel.
After realizing, about six years ago, that what was going on in my psyche was deeper than a crossdressing fetish (or hobby, if you prefer), I came out to my wife of then 44 years. Over these six years she has progressed, sometimes reluctantly, along with me in coming to a "solution". We have just recently come to a place that I am reasonably confident about how much I need and at the same time she has defined what she can accommodate. She has come an incredibly long way. For me that is a non-surgical transition (started HRT for about six months ago) to full 24/7 living as a woman with her in my life as my wife in a physically intimate relationship. I am becoming more and more comfortable with being open about being a transgender woman. For her part, she wants very much for us to to continue in our relationship to "death do us part." She still has a bit of a hangup about appearing to others as a lesbian since she is most decidedly heterosexual. She says she will not refer to me as "my wife". She has not come up with a suitable substitute other than sticking with "my husband". If that is really what she wants, I'll take it.
Until we reached this point, we have avoided revealing to any of our somewhat large family and rather small circle of friends. Depending on where we ended up there may have been no need for anyone else to ever know of this. Now that this point is here it is time to begin to tell the world. At least our small part of the world. The starting place is our older daughter.
You might note that I wrote "older daughter." We have a younger daughter as well. That daughter has been estranged from us for twenty years. She never told us why. She just callously turned away from us. I say callously because, the last time we spoke with her was on her wedding day where she refused to have any pictures take with her mother and the one I was in was because I "pushed" my way into the shot and the photographer snapped before she could stop the moment. I am sure the picture was not kept. She allowed us to "participate" in that important event while not wishing us to be present at all. That situation took me years to somewhat recover from and nearly took my life. To this day, tears are only ever one thought away.
That is the background to my coming out to our older daughter. This past Saturday, while visiting our daughter, I handed (I knew I could not have remained coherent for long enough to have said the words myself.) her a a carefully worded, repeatedly edited, two page letter that expressed my love, our love, for her and briefly recounted some of what has been part of my whole life and how her mother and I have determined to handle it going forward. Now, understand that our daughter is liberal leaning and has numerous gay friends (She worked in cosmetology for many years.) so we had lots of reasons to feel that all would be well. Still, we were very, very apprehensive. I trembled as I waited for her to finish the letter. When she did finish we were relieved when she gave me a hug, told me she loved me, loved us and said everything was going to be OK. We finished the weekend together and all seemed to be well when I hugged her, kissed her on the cheek and told her I loved her as she left for work early last Monday morning. A little later, we drove to our home.
Her last communication with us was on Wednesday via email. It was not terribly long. It used the phrases "bad dream" and "death of my daddy" She asked for more time to process. She did not sign off with the usual "Love you both,".
I know she wants time to think. I know she needs the time and the space to do that. I am trying to be patient. But it is hard. Very hard. In her sister's case some twenty years ago I remember not knowing what to do. I ended up not being pushy and allowing her time and space hoping she would come around. Time did not fix it. In the end, I don't think it could have turned out any worse than it has. I have not seen or heard from her since (other than some news photos on the internet and a brief encounter with her at her grandmother's, my wife's mother's, funeral where she pushed my wife away and ignored me entirely). I know she has a daughter of her own that I am not likely to ever get to know. I often wonder if I could have done something to have gotten a better outcome. Now, with this present situation I am worried. I do not want a replay of the past with my remaining child.
Making matters worse is the fact that my wife is now rethinking our plan. So, it seems I could end up loosing both if our daughter turns away from my wife because of my "choices". My wife may not forgive me for causing this lose. Logically, my wife kinda understands that this is not really a choice. But this is a time when emotions rule and emotions might just win out.
Since I started writing this OP, my wife and I have managed to cry together and hug each other and better understand what each of us is thinking at the moment, so things seem a little less dire that when I started writing. But I am still not breathing easily. I have returned to dark thoughts that I thought were relegated to my past. I am not in crisis but I was certainly much happier before this all came crashing down around me.
I don't know that I asking for anything more than a sympathetic ear to hear my words. If you made it through to here, thank you for listening.
Stephanie (My wife uses Stevi, you can, too.)
