I was married for over 30 years and in a relationship for the past 13 years. I grew up in a family who invited Johnny Walker, Jack Daniels, and Bud Weiser into our house as permanent family members. Home was kind of an emotional earthquake zone where my mother's emotions ruled the roost.
From my experience relationships are an emotional tug of war between two individuals over whose needs are going to be met. If one person, sacrifices their emotional needs so that the other person's emotional needs are always met, then that person becomes selfish and bitter if their needs are not met. This also happens to the person who always sacrifices.
It is unrealistic when you are in a long term relationship that neither of you will be the same person that you were when the relationship started. For one thing, you are going to age, and your relationship will have to adapt to the addition of other little egos, your children who are also going to insist that they have the right to change, but you do not.
No relationship can remain static. When one person claims the right change for themselves but wants the other to stay the same as when they first met, this creates an imbalance in the relationship. When you do change you need to take into an account the other person's feelings.
Now if one person tends to keep their feelings private, as my ex did, and only display the edited feelings, then sooner or later the relationship may end like mind did because she didn't want to live with me any more, for her private feelings and their was nothing I could do about.
So it really comes down to the state of your relationship with your wife. Is there room for each of you to emotionally change without giving the other ultimatums. Is there understanding of the other's need? Are both of you willing to make changes which may result in altering the way you see each other? Or must it be my way or no way on both sides.
When you are transgender you know you will have to change and become your true gender. Then deciding your lifestyle in that gender is a matter of choice. In becoming your male or female self how will you adapt to meet the emotional needs of your spouce. And what changes will she make to accept you.
Without flexibilty your relationship becomes brittle and breaks. It is beyond me how some couples stay together inspite of what are unsermountable obsticles while others fall apart.
I think that both partners have to have commitment to the relationship for some reason and when one or neither is committed then it falls apart.
When my ex-left me, I started transitioning in private because I had my home to myself. I was a school teacher and had five children of which four of them were adults. Rather than transition in the privacy of my own imagination I found a cis woman, who accepted my femininity but not quite the same way that did. She had children and we had one. When I turned 62 and was retired by the Bush Recession and the lack of work I went full time in the context of elementary, middle school, high school, and adult children in my house and my whole past on social media.
Fort he past 8 years I have lived full time and accept the fact that while I am a woman, my partner sees me as a male who dresses as one, and the world sees me as granny, my spouse as my daughter, and the children as my grand kids. That is those who are not familiar with my family. Those who are know that I am a female who has fathered a child and I don't get into anything else.
The point being that you will probably work it out until you don't. Then if she accepts your feminine side and that you will be feminine in public and at home. You know that you are a woman, how she sees you is her business.
I haven't worked out physical transition which I will face when medicare helps pay for my transitioning. I also live over 1000 miles from my past life, so those people knee me in my butch mode don't have to deal with me on a day today basis and neither do my birth family that are still living.
So how I have transitioned may be totally irrelevant to many of you.
