Hello Confused
Oh dear I'm really sorry that you are being put through this by your husband. You must be in a complete state of shock after having such a bombshell blow your life apart, and in such a way. I guess if someone I loved and married over a number of years had been lying and deceiving me through keeping something as important as this secret I would be devastated too.
I think what many trans people seem to forget when they decide to come out is that they're dealing with an issue which is completely and totally off most people's radar.
I mean, it's not like your husband has been having an affair, is it? I'm sure that during the course of your marriage there have been those moments of insecurity and maybe you might even have suspected that your husband might be sleeping with someone else (I don't know you, so please forgive me if I'm guessing, making assumptions or generalizations).
Nor is it like something you read about in the newspapers, is it? I'm sure that you've heard about people having a 'sex change', being a 'transsexual' or going for 'gender reassignment'. There is some awareness, but even with this awareness there's still no way of anticipating that someone you know, or even worse, someone with whom you're sharing intimacy with and having a sexual relationship with could be transgendered.
Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel that the major problem, or the most immediate problem is that your husband has suddenly dropped this on you out of the blue. Not only that but he appears to be holding a gun to your head in expecting you to react a certain way, in a positive way, and continue being loving and supportive.
This I feel is something you might be feeling is unreasonable because you are feeling so much confusion, you are also hurt that you've been deceived (which might have damaged your ability to trust your husband if not shaken completely your confidence in him) and you are probably wondering what is going to happen next.
I wish I could empathize more but you see I don't have a clue what it feels like to be a natural born woman in a relationship with a man who apparently wants to be a woman. I don't have a clue what it feels like even to be a natural born woman. I would love to have had my own child but see, I'm a transgendered woman, I can't even have a period.
However if you are reading this and feel that I have empathized or tried to, maybe you will be able to find it within yourself to try and empathize with what the others have posted here and what I'm about to write.
I could tell my own story, but I'll stick just to what is relevant here. I grew up feeling different to most other people. People referred to me as a boy, they called me a male name, but I never felt anything like a boy, never felt male at all. But do you know what I was feeling?
I felt that I was trapped inside this boy, as someone else. I couldn't relate to anyone, couldn't feel love, could never be happy, because I always felt that they were addressing this boy inside who I existed. As I grew older I played along at being this boy, hoping to share some of the love and the happiness, but what I ended up feeling was that I was making all the effort and he was getting all the attention, all the love, everything.
I guess from your perspective it's a bit like having two boys who are brothers who fight with each other over everything. Only I didn't feel like a boy, and I wasn't separate, but trapped inside this boy.
I started to feel female shortly before puberty and started to crossdress. My parents didn't accept this, they didn't try to understand and the psychiatrist they took me to was just determined to make me stop it.
This is where I learned to keep this issue a secret, to deny it existed, to pretend to be that boy and that man, because I didn't want to be hated, I wanted to be accepted and loved, I wanted to be happy. What's more more than this I wanted to be 'normal'.
I got a sense that I was female and needed to be female all the time at the age of seventeen, but I felt that it was the crossdressing getting out of control and that maybe if I just tried harder to be a man then it would go away. When I went to get professional help I was dismissed as a crossdresser and told to accept it.
So I kept on at trying to be male. I dated women, but when they got too close and wanted to start a sexual relationship or get married I would suddenly break off the relationship without warning. I broke several hearts that way.
Long story short I got married later on and put my wife through a similar experience to the one you're going through now. Only she knew from the start I had gender issues and didn't mind me crossdressing. We lasted three years, no children, I let her pay off the flat with my income, we had a quick no faults divorce which was better than the wedding. The wedding was where I stood next to my wife exchanged vows but wanted to be her. By then all the evidence had mounted up, all the experience, and I felt that I needed to become a woman.
My wife was the last ever woman I have formed a relationship with as a man.
There is a French proverb which states 'It is easier to lie to others than to stop deceiving yourself.'
You see I was lying to myself, refusing to face up to my issues, and because I was lying to myself I was also lying to other people, deceiving them, and hurting them. I decided to face up to the truth and stop living a lie, and start being honest with myself and others.
I can't help but wonder how similar your husband feels to me, how similar his experiences are.. Probably not very similar, I'm not your husband, but like him I'm trans, and I'm just trying to present all this in a way you can relate to.
I can understand that you feel under pressure to accept these changes almost as if your husband has decided to change his hairstyle, right? We as trans have had quite a lot of time to come to terms with who we are, our issues, and we sometimes forget that other people need time too when we drop our 'bombshells'.
I guess you might also be feeling somewhat left out and that nobody is really interested in how you feel and what you have to say, and what the implications of all this are going to be for you. It's not just his life that's been torn apart, but your's too.
Please don't think that it's because your husband is being selfish, or uncaring, or unconcerned.. it's just that being transgendered is a much bigger issue than just the bedroom, or a relationship, or wanting to wear female clothing.
Being transgendered affects every single aspect of your life. Gender dysphoria is a bit like depression, a bit like a dull toothache, it's a constant, nagging, persistent pain that eats away at you all the time, day in, day out. You feel that you cannot connect, that nobody can connect to you, and so you feel lonely and isolated.
The only relief is sleep. But when you wake up and look in the mirror it comes back and it stays with you until you go to sleep again. Do you know how many times I've just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up again? Can you imagine feeling like that?
It's something which dominates your thinking, and each time you try and think about something it's there trying to distract you. You could be working, you could be driving, you could be having a wonderful conversation with someone, and all you have inside is this desire that you could be a woman, or that the other person could accept you as a woman.
As this is such a persistent and nagging issue, many trans especially in the early stages forget about the others around them and become more focussed on themselves. Even to the point of 'it's all about me'. They're right to a point, because gender dysphoria is just affecting them, it doesn't affect anybody else. But being trans does affect other people as well, it affects everyone who is closest to them, especially partners, parents, children, relatives, friends, employers, and so on.
As your husband has tried to come out to you, it's obvious that he's decided to make an attempt to face up to his issues and stop lying and deceiving everyone.
But you know he might be feeling just as lonely, isolated, confused, and sad and angry as you are. Yes he has lied to you and deceived you, but I would wager good money that this fact doesn't sit too well with him at all, it's probably going to give him deep feelings of guilt, and shame and remorse.
Now if you've got this far and you have somehow managed to empathize with me, a complete stranger who is also trans, do you think you can find it within yourself to see if you can empathize with your husband?
Can you also see if you can find a way of getting him to empathize with you?
I wish you both well and am sending warm positive wishes to you both and hope that you can find it within yourselves to reach some sort of solution or compromise.
Please feel free to contact me if you need to.
