I am still living with my spouse after 37 years of marriage as I transition. She wants a divorce but is going back to school as she has been out of the workforce for several years. I'm not begrudging her that even though this is slowing my own transition down in some respect (financial aspects). We now go to lunch together and I wear feminine casual clothes (jeans, sneakers, pierced ears, longer hair (except for the male pattern baldness areas that I hide with a hair piece or a cap), feminine tops/sweaters, and I carry a purse. I've started facial hair removal and though I have a long way to go apparently it's already enough that, with a close shave, I get gendered as "Ms." or "Maam" fairly often now. And each time, my spouse, who has known about this now for 21 months, is stunned. She says she just doesn't see it.
But she also doesn't want to let go of "him". She broke down crying the other day and I gave her a hug. She said, "I miss you" and I was stunned. I've been here the entire time but she has ignored me for 21 months and cut me off from large swaths of her life. I wasn't quite sure what to say so I said, "I never meant to hurt you" but it felt a bit hollow, as she has clearly meant to hurt me for choosing to be me.
I've learned not to fight with her, to just ignore her rants, her emotional outbursts, and try to be friendly and supportive. But this is what happens when someone has deeply preconceived notions of who you are and demands that you live up to them.
"Selfishness is not living your life as you wish. It is asking others to live their lives as you wish." -- Oscar Wilde
When I was trying to understand all this, a very dear and supportive friend wrote the following back to me. (Note: The legal first name I plan to adopt is Cara, just for reference, as it is a Gaelic female equivalent of David, and I chose that, because in a sense, it still honors my mother's choice of first name for me.)
Quote"Ah, but you are gone. Cara is an almost completely different person than David was. You probably don't see how much from your perspective, but to the rest of us, it's obvious.
Basically, she is a widow. The man she was married to no longer walks this earth. Yet there was no closure, no final goodbye, just a slow slipping away that she has been and still is living with, seeing daily. I can see her going through the stages of grief, but the particular position she is in makes that difficult and probably slower than it would otherwise be. The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance (not necessarily in that order, and some people never make it to the acceptance part). Sound familiar? There's no shortcut through them either. I think she'd benefit from counseling, but that's her decision. I'm not excusing her behavior, but I can completely understand the difficulty she's going through. I think she's starting to come out the other side of it, but it's going to take some time before she's completely there."
I realized that she was right too. Cara (me) is happier, more well adjusted, more outgoing, more open to chatting and talk, and far more likely to smile than David ever was. And I suppose for those that knew David for years, this is an abrupt change.
So while I know it can be difficult when others have trouble getting their heads around this, I think we need to be patient as well. Perceptions change slowly. I'm not suggesting that anyone specifically slow down your own transition, just that you be understanding that some people may take time (if ever) in coming around to see you as the real you.
