Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I may have brought this up long ago.  I came out to my spouse over 4 years ago and it led to many sessions of tears, yelling, threats and general emotional disturbances.  She and I attended many sessions with my therapist and she with hers.  She cannot accept me as a woman and told me that transition would be a deal breaker with our relationship.  I love her and do not want to lose her as my life partner . . . so I have been in repression ever since.  In the last month or so . . . strong feelings of GIS have returned.

Has anyone dealt with a non-supportive spouse?  How did you deal with the feelings?  Did the suppression work?

Help.  I need advice,

I got rid of mine.  Told them if they had a change of heart they knew where to find me.  But I won't wait up either.

This kind of thing is hardly easy.  Sometimes people grow apart.  This is time and energy you could be spending on yourself and more fulfilling relationships instead of trying to save a sinking ship.

Quote from: teri on February 19, 2016, 06:55:06 PM
Has anyone dealt with a non-supportive spouse?  How did you deal with the feelings?

Aye.

Decided I had to be myself and left it up to her whether she wanted to stay married. She didn't. We're good friends now, but it took awhile before we could get back to that point.

I hated getting divorced. But I would have hated THIS much worse:

https://www.susans.org/2015/12/06/is-there-hope-for-the-cliffhangers/

Yes. I would have stayed but this happened over thirty years ago. She petitioned me for a divorce based on religious reasons that she still clings to. I lost all privileges in custody. I moved to another state to start a new life. I kept up spousal and child support. I had no issues with what the court mandated. She and I stayed close for two decades. We'd talk on the phone often. During the past ten years we haven't had much contact, just once every couple of years or so by her husband's mandate. I still love her and I always will. That's the thing with me... once I love someone, I'm theirs forever. Same goes for my recent ex husband who left me for a younger woman. I still love him too. I think I'm totally messed up! ;)

I'm getting good with my life. I know that I've done the right things for the right reasons. I don't have those sorts of regrets.

Cindi

Cindi

I live in fear of the unknown.  how do I get over the fear . . . and her tears and anger?

Love yourself.  Understand your own worth.

Odds are, they don't have the courage to end it either.  People are interesting sometimes in the fact that in attempts not to hurt someone, they wind up hurting them even more.

I am in a very similar situation, but it has been going on for 7 years and I have been with her for 23 years.  I love her so much, but she hates me being trans.  I have tried so hard to accommodate her, but it is only now that I am starting to realise that the relationship is one sided.  I work really hard, pay all the bills, give her loads of attention but she won't accept me for who I am.  I broke down two years ago and begged for help (I couldn't stop being trans) only to be told that she wanted a divorce.  I have now had two years of the yelling, accusations and constant threats.  The refusal to come to terms with me being trans is still there.   

I suppose what I am trying to say is that I can now see that I give her everything in this relationship but I don't get what I need in return.  I need someone to love me for who I am and whilst I accept that I have changed, if she doesn't want me for who I am then the relationship is over.  I can't cope with this but it is far better than continuing with the way things are.  Something has to give and I have done nothing wrong.

My advice would be don't deny yourself what you want/need as it will cause you much more anguish in the long term.  You have to be happy with who you are. 

Quote from: teri on February 19, 2016, 07:54:25 PM
I live in fear of the unknown.  how do I get over the fear . . . and her tears and anger?

You can't control either her anger and her grief. If she needs to grieve, she'll grieve. If she needs to be angry, she'll be angry (though she has no cause for anger over you're being yourself as long as you're honest with her).

Please don't try. Trying to control someone else's reaction is stressful and ultimately futile.

All you can do is be honest with her and let her decide how to react.

As for your own fear, find the strength within you. It's there, I promise.

Hugs.

I never came out to my ex-wife as either trans or bisexual and just suppressed it because it just wasn't the kind of thing I could talk to her about. We weren't together more than 5 years though. We both knew that we didn't love each other and we eventually admitted it. After the divorce, I finally came out and started transitioning. As expected, she eventually found out and started spamming terrible messages to me on social media and through texts. I'm definitely glad we didn't stay together any longer.

I'm not going to say that my experience is what everyone goes through, because some relationships are much better off. My current boyfriend is much more supportive of me, for example. If I had been with him from the start, I wouldn't have had to go through the terrible breakup like the one with my ex.

I dropped the T-Bomb on my wife about 7 years ago. She was far from thrilled hearing that her lover of over 30 years whom we both thought was "Just a CD" sort of kicked over the table by escalating things to whole new quantum level. Add to that "Betrayal" is a BIG hot button issue for her and I essentially lied and betrayed. I was perhaps a bit more then a CD and kept it from her all this time.

"If only I knew before we got married". "I did not marry a woman". "I like men. I love sex with with men". Plus throw in a few "Who in their right mind wants to be a 50 y/o woman?". And those are the less creative (as in stake through the heart) responses. Yet, despite those she also knew the possible long term possibilities of me either "exploring" this aspect of myself, or going back to stuffing it.

She experienced how the last 10, 20, 30 years of stuffing affected me. It wasn't in a positive manner. As she puts it I became an angry isolated person. I describe is as becoming this lifeless soulless thing with no hopes wishes or dreams bar one given up a long long time ago.

The weeks and months that followed were filled with a lot of emotions, and tears. But I did forge on in my explorations. Primarily focusing on how I can make these two great aspects of myself live in harmony. I read a lot of self help and inspirational books. Eventually got into therapy. Again primarily focused on loosing the truck loads of baggage I accumulated over a lifetime of not doing anything about being trans.

Amazingly, I slowly changed how I thought about myself. That in turn led to me outwardly being better to the world. Most importantly my wife began to see how much of a better person I was growing into. I was evolving into the type of person she long wished I would. She was my spiritual mentor and reality therapist.

Seven years later, many of them on HRT, I still live and primarily present as male. My wife and I are still together. She is resigned to the fact that she lost "her husband". TBH - I am not. A part of me always tries to convince me "You can beat this. You got it beat now. Put it all behind you. Go back to being 'Normal'". I guess it's better then believing all that like I had in the past.

I repressed full transition because my wife said it would be a deal breaker. I stalled my full transition journey for 2.5 years. On 11/12/2015 I told her I was going to fully transition and fully come out the next day. She said she would divorce me and the next day contacted a lawyer. We love each other very much but as I need to transition she needs to be away from me. Since starting the divorce process the stress has been reduced greatly. Since expressing and changing my ID at work and fully coming out at work I feel much better.

I know I'm on the other side of the tracks here and will always be that way. I preface by saying I never been married nor have I had a relationship in 40 years. My point of view is that  the SO has equal rights in this argument. For one thing people divorce and separate for every reason there is. I don't understand the rationale of the SO needing to accept what your doing after the fact. I personally don't see anything wrong with being trans because I am , but there is no way I can expect someone else to accept it. I live by the laws and deserve to be  respected as a citizen and a human , but that doesn't in any way  mean someone else has to like what I'm doing. They can't murder and abuse me , but they have equal rights to believe what they believe.

I had to break it off. I tried suppressing it but it just got worse over time, and she wasn't willing to budge. I knew I would get over her in time, but this I would not. I was tired of making myself suffer. Have never regretted that decision.

I understand exactly how you feel.

Quote from: Jasmine H on February 20, 2016, 03:47:55 AM
I suppose what I am trying to say is that I can now see that I give her everything in this relationship but I don't get what I need in return.  I need someone to love me for who I am and whilst I accept that I have changed, if she doesn't want me for who I am then the relationship is over.  I can't cope with this but it is far better than continuing with the way things are.  Something has to give and I have done nothing wrong.

My advice would be don't deny yourself what you want/need as it will cause you much more anguish in the long term.  You have to be happy with who you are.

I have it similar, as long as we had the nice and comfortable situation (for her) she stayed, now that the good times are maybe over and the times might become bad (what ever that means) she is gone into the arms of someone else.

So in the end you can only trust yourself, so be good and true to yourself, you deserve it!  :)

Hugs, Thessa

things like this happen  all the time throughout history people divorce people move on

How do I let go of the guilt and pain that I feel when had talked about this in the past?  When she cried and did the drama, my heart broke, I melted and then suppressed my feelings.  how do I stop doing that?

teri

therapy and compromise

Just how do you deal with this if you have kids, the dysphoria has come on so strong this past year, I've been married to my wife 15 years and we have 3 young children, I always new there was something missing in my life, I thought it was marriage and love and it's been a wonderful marriage but still there was something wrong and I eventually found my way back to dressing which I did in my pre-teens and teens before man-ing up. Some days I don't know how I can hold on to this cliff any more but how can I live with myself destroying my wife and children's lives. Maybe it would be good to drop into the vast cold ocean but I can't I can't do that to them either, I'm so stuck!

I truly have a heart for this issue. My own situation has steadily improved but has not been easy on our family. Compared to what others have faced, though i feel guilty at times.

One thing that helped my wife and I is to just not focus on gender a lot, forget labels, forget roles, and just be people together. She use to say to me, you have changed so much but then i asked her to focus on me the person, not me the guy, or woman, but me the person. Now she says there have been actual improvements.

What we found was considerable relief of pressure. The conversations turned from "the transition" to more mundane topics about style, clothing, strengths and weaknesses. Somehow, don't ask me exactly how this framed my changes as more like changes that all married couples must face. Mine was just of this sort.

I really wish you all the hope and love in keeping it all together - Hugs, Robyn

I don't have experience in this type of situation, but I don't have to have any to be able to realize that asking your wife to become a lesbian for you is tough , and excuse my word, but it is very much selfish.

You should absolutely transition and she should respect you for it, but I am sure she also married a man and everything that it entailed. She very much has the right to change her mind over this, just like you have the right to transition because you need it.

if she stays with you then amazing but expecting her to stay, that's a little much. Let me just put it this way. If you were a man and not a trans woman, happy in your marriage, and your wife came home and said. I need to transition to being a man, had Testosterone injections and phalloplasty. I know for a fact many of you would have said ok let's be friends but I can't do this. And would have moved on to be with a woman instead of trying to become a Gay man, which isn't something that can be done at will.

Quote from: calicarly on February 23, 2016, 04:00:45 PM

if she stays with you then amazing but expecting her to stay, that's a little much. Let me just put it this way. If you were a man and not a trans woman, happy in your marriage, and your wife came home and said. I need to transition to being a man, had Testosterone injections and phalloplasty. I know for a fact many of you would have said ok let's be friends but I can't do this. And would have moved on to be with a woman instead of trying to become a Gay man, which isn't something that can be done at will.

It would be relatively easy to accept my spouse as a trans man if she was so inclined. Many of us are equally or fairly equally attracted to both genders. Sexual preference like gender is often not a binary thing. Also in a long marriage, there are many, many other issues beyond attraction and sex. Shared history, extended family, children, economic partnership and more.

Do not forget that many spouses married with the understanding and knowledge that their spouse was gender-questioning, I see this a lot. Still, it becomes difficult when a change does come even for those couples. You are right everyone has freedom and should as to where to whom to associate with, but that does not change the real emotional impacts and the need for support that both partners in such situations need. To me these threads, are beautiful in their loving hope to maintain a connection to the person they love.

As you try to figure your path out remember two things:
- to the best of my knowledge we each only get one life.  Don't blow it.
- the same thing is true for your spouse.  Don't let them blow it either.

If you need to transition, do it, don't beat yourself up over it.  I recommend you take it a little slow just to let your loved ones adapt. 
In the end you should not live your life for another person.  It's the one thing that should be yours.  Don't come to the end of your days regretting that you lived the life expected of you instead of the life you wanted to live.

Quote from: CrysC on February 24, 2016, 11:21:57 PM

In the end you should not live your life for another person.  It's the one thing that should be yours.  Don't come to the end of your days regretting that you lived the life expected of you instead of the life you wanted to live.

This is what I'm so scared off, at 44 I feel my time is ticking away, I love my family and the conflict between wanting to transition and also the fear of it and the sense of duty to my wife and children is just a constant daily anguish and noise in my head, antidepressants help take the edge of it but so far this year it just hasn't stopped.  I feel one day I might snap and maybe that would be a relief but also I'm scared I can and will just keep soaking up this pain for ever.

Quote from: AmyRose on February 25, 2016, 05:41:45 AM
This is what I'm so scared off, at 44 I feel my time is ticking away, I love my family and the conflict between wanting to transition and also the fear of it and the sense of duty to my wife and children is just a constant daily anguish and noise in my head, antidepressants help take the edge of it but so far this year it just hasn't stopped.  I feel one day I might snap and maybe that would be a relief but also I'm scared I can and will just keep soaking up this pain for ever.

I also loved my family but last year I reached the point that gave me no other (feasible) choice then to start transition.
I still love my children with all my heart, more than ever before and I know that I can be a much better parent because I can be my real self.

Therapy was such a valuable tool for finding the right answers to my questions.
It also helped me to realize that a strong sense of duty shouldn't lead to self-sacrifice.

I wish you all the best on your journey!

Quote from: AmyRose on February 25, 2016, 05:41:45 AM
This is what I'm so scared off, at 44 I feel my time is ticking away, I love my family and the conflict between wanting to transition and also the fear of it and the sense of duty to my wife and children is just a constant daily anguish and noise in my head, antidepressants help take the edge of it but so far this year it just hasn't stopped.  I feel one day I might snap and maybe that would be a relief but also I'm scared I can and will just keep soaking up this pain for ever.

Sorry honey but you already answered the question on what you need to do.  I'd confirm things with the therapist just to make sure of course.  You don't bring your wife to those sessions.  You need the sessions yourself. 

Assuming things are confirmed, which is what it sounds like, then you can make the fear less if you take it slow.  There isn't a need to switch overnight. 

Start with the things that you need to do like hair removal.  Bond with your wife with things like shopping trips and the like.  Work your way up to going out occasionally with her as a girl.  Who knows, maybe you don't need to go all the way.  That was my plan.  I said, go out once in a while but never all the way.  In my case that turned out to be incorrect but maybe that will work for you. 

Hello

I don't have any advice,but I'm sorry you're going through this.
Compromise always helps but needs to be by both parties.
I found as a SO understanding more about transgender helped me through it, but your wife would need to be open to learning more:)

Thinking of you:) Marie


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Significant other
Heterosexual woman

My wife knew before we were married that I liked to dress in female clothes especially lingerie and nitegowns,she didn't know the full story til I confessed 11yrs later and we worked on boundries and compromises and we are still together,next Wed we are having a make over day the first in13 yrs and I'm looking forward too it.

I know this:  I cannot have it both ways.  and I am the one who needs to choose.