Kylie,
I copied this from a gender site it was an older question and answer series:
We are planning to retire soon - my husband will transition at that time, and need to decide on a place to live. Reading your saga helped a lot. We are East-coast people. My sister lives on <A Location>, but she and her husband are not doing well with our news. My husband is very small (5'8" and 165 lbs) and will pass easily. Don't know about his head - his attitudes are so very typically male. He was brought up in an Italian immigrant family, so he has lots of deep-set macho details. What he, and I, would like to do is blend into a mainstream community, as cousins, or something. I told him he has to do the lying! We don't want to present as lesbians, or attempt to go into an alternative lifestyle community. Both of us are very straight-laced, and would not be comfortable in such a setting. Have any suggestions? We have been married for 30 years. Personally, I wish it would all go away. But I know it won't. I am still experiencing anger and confusion. He started the estrogen and electrolysis before he told me what his situation was, and that deceit is very hard for me to bear. He was a coward, and admits it. Just afraid - with good reason, of course. He has apologized again and again, but it is not the kind of thing that an "I'm so very sorry" can heal. So we have lots of problems. I have no therapist yet, nor do I have a support group. We live in <A Place In America> - transferred here by his job 3 years ago. Can you help me with advice - personal and/or how to find a support group?
For resources, may I direct you to the Ingersoll Center, in my links area at the bottom of my index page. Ingersoll is the oldest and most respected gender center in North America, and they would very likely be able to suggest options in your area. If I remember correctly, there is a group in <A Place In America> of some reknown, in fact, and I just might already have a link for on that page already, if memory serves. Check out the links area.
As for how to deal with how to stay together in the world, should you choose it, that is really up to whatever makes you feel the most comfortable. Every choice, every option, has consequences.
There is no reason you cannot present to the world as cousins, or sisters, or roomates, or whatever. However, keeping up this arrangement would mean having to avoid, and worry about, showing too much affection, concern, love, or attention to each other in a social context. In effect, you would have to keep a great number of secrets, which -in my experience- is a lot of work. Still, if being thought of as lesbian is too horrible, it is an option, and can be done. You can create whatever life you choose. In effect, you would be doing what lesbian couples have had to do for the last hundreds of years, that is pretending that they do not have a relationship or lifetime partnership, whilst still maintaining a relationship. 'Passing for straight'.
Of course, to avoid having to live in constant fear of discovery, to avoid the forever effort of keeping up false appearances, is entirely what all of the 'gay rights' business is all about. Living in fear of discovery is very difficult, long term. You both may want to think about the ramifications of such a choice.
I say this, because, really, in every realistic, rational sense, you are both Queer. Both. You always have been. Genderqueer is still Queer, so your spouse is a form of being Queer, and this form -transsexuality- is just as inborn as homosexuality is. You presumably love and are attatched...from all appearances devoted... to your spouse, and are trying to help her. (it is reasonable to call your spouse 'her' because if she really IS transsexual, she was born with the condition, and has simply been trying to cope with it for all these years the only way society has allowed, until recently).
If you fell in love with her, care for her, have stood by her, chose her over all other available mates, then this says something about what you are attracted to. Transsexuals cannot hide all that they are. They are often beaten, chided, or forced to overcompensate for the truth of what they are. They can never completely hide it. It is the truth of what they really are.
Therefore, it is logical to examine your own needs and true feelings. I am not saying that you are a closet lesbian. That is sexuality. But, there must be some reason you chose your spouse, and that reason includes all that they are...including the non male truth of their...for lack of a better term...soul. Indeed, because MTF transsexuality is the condition of having a brain wired in a naturally female manner -despite all of a lifetimes programming to be male, act male, think male- there must, reasonably, be some part of you that is more comfortable with another female as a partner. Again, this is not sexuality, it is not lesbianism, per se. It is a matter of choosing qualities of a life partner. Sexuality is a seperate issue.
In having choosen a transsexual partner, even one who tried very hard to pretend they were not (what other choice did a person of your generation have, really? Historically, most took their own lives. I do not think your spouse is a coward. Suicide is the cowards way out, in my opinion. Your spouse had no options, no hope, but soldiered on as best they could, in a very dangerous world. A world that -mostly- beats, burns, kills, and shuns the Queer of any stripe. I do not consider survival to be cowardice), there is information about yourself in your choices.
How do you want to live? In fear? In shame? You are what you are, and that is the sum of your decisions, needs, and choices in life. Life is too short, I argue, to live worrying about what others might think. But then, that is my experience, and I have faced the label of being Queer, or some shade of Queer, much, much longer than you, I suspect.
I offer that this situation you are in is as much an opportunity for you to understand yourself, as it is for your spouse, and that you need -in your own way- just as much help coping with it. Take care of you, too! Seek some councelling for yourself, if you can. What you are having to face is not easy for either of you. Your spouse may have to deal with a lifetime of suppression, repression, and the loss of being themselves, but you will have to deal with coming to terms with who you really are, to have chosen them above all others, and any issues and problems you may have been taught to have about that.
Far too often the spouse of a transsexual is overlooked, because the fuss of dealing with changing an entire body appears to outweigh the internal struggle of someone faced with a major revelation about their deepest motivations for making choices. You choose your spouse, and you had your own very real reasons, that define you. You almost certainly do not know them all. It can be tough to deal with, unless you are extrordinarily open minded.
However, I offer that learning does not stop simply because one is at retirement age. Indeed, it is the one quality that seperates the living from the already dead-yet-walking. Discover yourself, even as your spouse is trying to uncover themselves after years of enforced supression. You spent a lifetime with this person. The 'why' of that is an entire universe I suspect you have never explored. As they recover themselves, you will inevitably wonder who you actually are, and what you actually need and want from life. It might be courageous and useful to find out.
I do not know if it will help you or not?
ricki
