So my desire to be a woman is something I struggled with my whole life.  I mostly just repressed the idea, thinking I'd never be the kind of person who could transition.  I lived my life, got married, and had a few kids.  I finally came to terms with what I wanted and slowly made the decision to come out to my wife.  The problem was that soon afterward we found out she was pregnant, a pregnancy that has come with illness on her part in the form of severe vomiting and near complete bed rest.  Unfortunately coming to terms with myself has had a snowball effect in which I find it increasingly difficult to remain in the closet and lie to her, but I find it so selfish and problematic to come out to her right now.  But I don't know if I can hide this from her for another 7 months or more while we wait for the child to be born, but I hate the thought of her feeling left alone during the pregnancy if she decides she can't stay with me.  I'm just wondering if anyone else has found themselves in a similar situation or might have advice for me.  I appreciate any help as I feel I'm in a no win situation right now.

Hi Jak. Welcome to Susan's. 

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There is another member that is going through almost exactly the same thing. Her screen name is KatelynBG, and she tells some of her story in this thread: https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,195724.0.html.

I don't have much to add, other than to send hugs your way and point out that if your gender dysphoria eats you from inside out you won't be much good to your wife or your child, so taking care of them may mean taking care of yourself and relieving yourself of the crushing burden of keeping secrets.

Big warm welcome to Susan's Jak...

I have had those feelings and hiding the same just about all my life, just recently came out to my wife after years of HRT...

First thing is that Pregnancy and childbirth is a time of very high emotions... probably not the right time. As far as you are concerned you lived with yourself for many years, can you do it for the next year? Balancing between your wife's well being and emotions and your well being is a tough place to be... for me I would wait, just do whatever is needed to defocus on my own issues and look to the future beyond childbirth.

Hope that helps a little.

Welcome and look forward to seeing you around the forums...

L Katy 

Try testing the waters first. Maybe watch some transgender stuff together so she can see its a normal thing that happens to a lot of people. We feel fantastic about ourselves, the problem is social condemnation because they are ignorant in most cases.

I agree with the comment above but it is essential that you are honest to her. Its not easy for spouses to deal with it. I am married to my wife and it did take us some processing to make this work. At this moment your wife is in love with a man not with a woman, she will probably learn how to adapt and love you but you will have to work your butt off to make her feel good with you in your new form.

Sometimes my wife cries and she says she misses the old me. Sometimes shes super happy about the new me. Its essential to understand what you are getting into and when she feels sad support her 150%. Always walk the extra mile.

Most spouses go to a process similar to like if  their husbands had died. Its super painful for them.


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I went through the same thing sorta.  I told my wife when she was 4 months pregnant.  It was an accident really, so maybe you can play it the same way I did.  Here some back story:

My whole marriage I have been effeminate.  My underwear choices (men's thongs almost exclusively), my mannerisms, I'm moderately bi-sexual, and I'm "small-framed". 5'6" and 140 pounds.  A lot of times when people met me that didn't know me, they would think I was gay actually, just because of how I acted apparently.  My wife had thoughts in the back of her mind for years that I might be gay too.  I always denied it vehemently and actually said that I thought of myself more as a lesbian trapped in a man's body.  Apparently that's a common theme among many transgirls.  Bear in mind I had no idea about transsexuals for all this time.  When I was much younger I can remember seeing porn with beautiful women who had penises.  I just presumed they were born that way though and never considered that it could have been something medically attainable.  Also, my wife has been bicurious for as long as I've known her it seems, but she's never really acted on it except once, briefly...


So anyways, that's the backstory about me and my wife and where our minds were at 6 months ago.  If your story is similar, keep reading, because there's probably some good hope for you too!

Here's how the big reveal happened.  I was watching some documentaries on YouTube about transgender children one day, and everything just clicked in my head about "how I used to be growing up."  So I went home and told my wife about watching them and discovering what I thought was the reason for "who I used to be."  Over the next few days though I slowly realized it wasn't just who I used to be, it was who I AM!  She did some reading too and came to the same conclusion.  There were lots and lots of tears and many difficult conversations to follow in the next couple weeks as we tried to figure out what we wanted from our marriage, from life, from each other, from ourselves.  We decided that we both wanted to stay together.  We were still in love with each other, we were still great friends, and we wanted to raise our baby in a loving family environment.  Not in a broken household.

My wife wound up going on a low-dose of Zoloft from her obstetrician who said that it was better for the baby than the stress and anxiety this was causing her.  She also told a couple of her friends (who I suggested), so she could have a third party to vent to.  She also found a therapist that she saw every 2-3 weeks or so, and still sees about once a month I think.  Part of the key to our marriage having significant hope of working out though was her bicuriousness.  Some women know flat out that they can't be with a woman.  My wife on the other hand was more like, "I can do that, or I can see it working.  I wouldn't mind being married to a woman."

Our daughter was born on September 10th, so ya know.

So there you have it.  Every step along the way felt like I was fighting tooth and nail.  Clothes, makeup, shoes, jewelry, hair, glasses, hormones, etc...  But we worked through each one of them.  And there are still hurdles ocassionally, like when I talk about GRS.  It's one thing to think about sex with another vagina, it's another thing to actually be with one, and it's yet another thing to be with a vagina that used to be your husband's penis!  We actually talked about bringing other people into the relationship to fill the void that would be present, heh.

From the beginning, she wanted me to wait until at least January before she would be seen in public with me.  I was fortunately able to trim about 3 months off that for basic stuff like going out for lunch on weekends, support groups, basic errands, etc...  None of her family or coworkers will be meeting Kristina until January though, but I'm OK with that since I rarely see them anyways.  I present as female when and where I want right now.  I'm slowly transitioning my wardrobe.  T-shirts and lounge pants seem to be on the bottom of that list though since that's mainly just around the house stuff and I don't feel a need to accentuate my feminine presentation when it's just me and her and the baby at home.

And there's pretty much everything I can think of right now.  Hope it helps!

Kristina, that actually does help a lot.  I don't know if she'll buy it as an accidental slip up the way you did though.  She is a very strong supporter of the trans community but in just afraid she's going to feel like she can't stay with me and will feel abandoned.  She has told me that she has had a few girlfriends before before but says she's not really bi (being with a woman isn't unattractive to her, she just has no desire for it either).  I could see her response going either way about 50/50 (staying together/leaving me).  I'm leaning towards trying to find a way to tell her, but I don't think she'll be all that surprised actually (I have many very feminine mental attributes and mannerisms she teases me about a lot).  The thought of waiting another year to come out just makes me nauseous and anxious.

I hate to broach this subject but it needs to be said. This is a short term pregnancy of two months right? Might she reconsider giving birth if you were divorced? She deserves to know by my opinion. A termination of pregnancy is a very difficult decision to make, but it is hers and hers alone to do. Don't take that decision opportunity away from her.

Cindi

My experience with my wife has some parallels, both with Kristina and with you, Jak.  My wife kissed a girl once in a theater production (and a bit at the after party) when she was in college, and admitted some curiosity but never enough to act on it.  She's always identified as an LGBT ally.

My wife made a... somewhat... reasonable decision to switch antidepressants.  In the middle of the switch, we hit a snag with our insurance, and she got a concussion.  So she managed to quit the one antidepressant, but didn't get a prescription for a new one.  The concussion had a huge impact on her mood, too.  This was early in my discovery period, when I was having really strong dysphoria.  Rather than tell my wife that I wanted to experiment with crossdressing more, I bottled it.  I kept my mouth shut because obviously, my stupid fetish was less important than her wellbeing; she was depressed, stressed, anxious, losing weight because the stress was making her feel sick all the time.  So I bottled it, and kept bottling it.  I told myself to let her get past the concussion, and then maybe we'd have time to address my stuff.

When she finally noticed that something was wrong (I'm a bit too good at hiding my feelings) I was a complete wreck.  I was just a disaster.  Dysphoria combined with... I don't even know how many sources of shame... and I still hadn't really done the work to grieve my dad, and two more of my family members were dying of cancer... I was under extreme stress myself with new duties in my job... oh my god, what a dark time.  I melted down.  She melted down.  We tried to patch things up, but she ended up hospitalized, and I started seeing a gender therapist.  When she got out of the hospital, she started to see a gender therapist.

These days, my gender isn't an issue.  Isn't causing me trouble, isn't causing her trouble.  She appreciates certain aspects, grieves others, but mostly, she's happy that her wife is happy.  She's managed to bring her external attitude in line with her internal attitude; she's a trans ally and she's my trans ally (previously, she was fine with any transgender anything, except in me).  She's even come to appreciate how I dress, she likes how my body is responding to hormones.

She's said since pretty early on that I'm "her person," that where she used to identify as "straight," she now identifies as "married."  She's off the market, she's got her person, it shouldn't matter what my gender is.  Now... it took almost 9 months for that to sound like the truth to me... but sometimes when you repeat something enough it becomes true.

So... my advice is to (1) seek a gender-specialized therapist if you can afford to, and (2) tell your wife as soon as possible.  Do not, no matter what you do, wait for 7 more months.  That's what I tried; it barely lasted two months, and it was a complete and unmitigated disaster that nearly ruined us as a couple, and us as individuals.

Well everyone, I appreciate all the responses and advice.  I think I've come to the conclusion that I have to tell her.  She's been feeling much better this week after starting a new medicine therapy, and I have a three day weekend coming up so I think I may take this opportunity to have a long talk with her.  I hope I don't chicken out, and I hope I'm making the right decision.

Quote from: Jak of hearts on November 04, 2015, 04:13:46 AM
Well everyone, I appreciate all the responses and advice.  I think I've come to the conclusion that I have to tell her.  She's been feeling much better this week after starting a new medicine therapy, and I have a three day weekend coming up so I think I may take this opportunity to have a long talk with her.  I hope I don't chicken out, and I hope I'm making the right decision.

She deserves to know at the earliest possible moment. You are making the right decision. Good for you.

Cindi

Hi,

Sorry I'm late to this thread. Laura mentioned me earlier in the thread and maybe I can share my story, as it differs from others here. My wife is due for our 2nd child today, but it hasn't happened yet. We were actively trying for another child for a few weeks in February and then she found my hidden stash of women's clothes. I've known for 25 years that I was transgender but fought it and repressed it like crazy. My one outlet was those clothes. She exploded and tried to kick me out. I was desperate and would have said anything to save the marriage, so I played it off that I was a crossdresser. I purged and resolved to never do it again, that was her condition for staying.

A week later we found out that she was pregnant. The hug I gave her was the first time we'd touched since she discovered my stash. A funny thing happened though along the way. My dysphoria cranked up to about 10,000%. Watching her belly grow, desperately wanting my own womb. Knowing that I'd promised not to ever go down that road. It drove me crazy. I planned a suicide but something stopped me. That day I called a gender therapist and scheduled an appointment.

The day before my first appointment my wife asked what we were going to talk about. I talked about a particular anxiety that I have and then I mentioned what happened in February. She exploded again, "I thought that was over!" Etc etc etc. I told her that I just wanted to explore my thoughts on it. After several sessions I came home and told her that I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and that the only way to treat it was to change the body to match the mind. "So what does this mean for me?" She asked. I said that I would not do that because I didn't want to lose my family. And it's true that I don't want to lose my family, it's just that... I will die without transition.

I wanted to bring her in on my transition plans earlier but my therapist and I discussed my wife's angry reactions and we decided that she would seek revenge on me by shutting me out of my child's birth if I reveal led the full xtent of my suffering.

Tl:Dr is my wife got pregnant, my dysphoria exploded, and I decided to wait until after the baby is born to tell my wife of my transition plans.

Quote from: Cindi Jones on November 03, 2015, 02:59:30 PM
I hate to broach this subject but it needs to be said. This is a short term pregnancy of two months right? Might she reconsider giving birth if you were divorced? She deserves to know by my opinion. A termination of pregnancy is a very difficult decision to make, but it is hers and hers alone to do. Don't take that decision opportunity away from her.

Cindi

have to agree , she's got an absolute right to know, since you already know

Katelyn, I think its interesting that you mentioned your dysphoria getting worse when your wife got pregnant, as I feel like mine is too the further along she gets.  I'm feeling more and more internal frustration because I have started as a father for my first two kids and I just keep envisioning this next one being born and having the chance to be a mother to it at a younger age I think has really spurred my feelings ten fold.  Thank you for sharing that.  Knowing my wife, I can't see her shutting me out of my my kids or her life, I'm more worried about just general hurt as she feels like she is going to lose our marriage during the pregnancy.  And about the idea of terminating the pregnancy, although she is pro-choice I don't think that is an option she would ever explore personally.  I'll find out soon and let you all know how it went.

Good luck. I mean it.

I told her.  Funny thing is I was sitting on the couch with her and I was about to chicken out when she just asks, "Is there something you want to talk to me about?"  She could sense that I've been depressed and off the past few months.  She was extremely supportive.  She volunteered to ask some of her friends that have gone through this for resources.  She told me that the first thing we need to do is get me into counseling and a support group.  She said that she will support me and be with me every step of the way, however she did tell me that in all fairness, in a few years when I'm finishing my transition she will be looking to divorce me and find a new partner because she has no romantic or sexual interest in being with a woman.  But I'd say overall its a fairly decent outcome.  Now I have to tell me family...