The earlier you transition, the better your chances of successfully living stealth at some point in your life. Especially if you didn't have to change your name. Sure, there's a danger that someone will figure it out. But that doesn't mean it will actually happen.
I think there might be confusion about what "stealth" means. I understand it to mean that you live as your true gender without divulging your trans status/past. The term therefore refers to an intention, a way of living, not a risk-free life in which no one knows or could possibly know about your past. In this usage, "stealth" refers to how YOU live, not whether other people can find out about you. Because someone pretty much always can, if he or she digs enough. Of course, if someone does find out and outs you, there's a problem.
I would be completely stealth if I could. I don't want people thinking that I'm not a real man or that I used to be a woman. Ugh. I didn't change my gender. That's always been male.
But to be truly stealth, I would have to cut off all of my old friends and all of my new trans friends. I would have to stop attending the few trans groups that I still attend. These are tacit admissions to my trans status. So I consider myself semi-stealth.
Quote from: TheCG on April 13, 2010, 03:50:52 PM
I have lived totally stealth for the past 20 years with only my wife knowing my past. She knew from the very beginning about my transition as I had been living full time for over 10 years when we first met. Now that we are in the midst of a nasty divorce, she seems to decide to "tell all" to everyone with her, of course, being in the dark about it all the time. This makes her look like a big time victim and me being nothing short of pure evil.
Tell me, people, do you really think it possible to live with someone for almost 20 years and not know?
It does seem hard to believe, but Billy Tipton might have pulled it off, for shorter periods of time, with some of his relationships. And he hadn't had surgery or, from what I understand, hormones. I've also read accounts of other relationships, mostly in the nineteenth century, in which the wife says that she didn't know.
Non-op and non-hormonal. Twenty years like that, in these enlightened and information-rich times? That would take a lot of doing and a lot of luck. It seems improbable.
Your circumstances are quite different; you're on T. But you wrote that you only started T a few years ago. Surely she would have noticed that you suddenly started changing...
However, you have to remember that transsexuals have a long history of being seen as deceptive. It's what lots of people automatically assume about us. Even the term "stealth" implies deception, doesn't it? And people tend to want to believe the first statement they hear about an event. If your wife is the one putting out the initial report about you, you have to work harder to change people's minds. And because you are trans, logic and evidence and reason (oh, my) won't necessarily be enough.
With that said, I get what you're saying about stealth, and I hope your life improves. I'm going through a non-nasty divorce, but it's not without its bumps. So I can only imagine what yours is like. Hang in there, CG.
