Hello everyone my name is Lisa. I'm just shy of 40 years old, married and father, and I'm transgender. I was assigned male at birth but right now am working through my gender exploration to really understand where I fall. I've been self-identifying as gender fluid but am still trying to determine whether the connections I feel to my masculine persona are real or just the result of almost 40 years of conditioning. 

I've come out to my wife, children, parents, siblings and a few very select friends. My wife is struggling mightily to process all of this and find a way to support it. Right now, she hates it but is working with me to try and keep our marriage together.  We both are separately seeing therapists and we are also going to couples counseling.  The hardest part right now is the uncertainty. I can't tell her for sure what transition means for me.

So far the only modifications  I've made to myself physically have been less than permanent.  I've gone clean shaven (ditching a beard and mustache I had for decades), body shaven, pierced my ears and am starting to let my hair grow out.  But I can't rule out at this point the possibility of more permanent changes such as HRT, surgeries or full transition to female.

I'll leave it at that for now, I'm sure I'll be sharing much more with you soon.

Lisa, welcome to our club.

I went through and in some sense I still am, the same issues with my wife.  She is upset that 30+ years of marriage may go up in smoke.  We've built a relationship and family (kids are grown and out of the house) not to mention retirement plans that are all in jeopardy now.  But if you go slowly, talk to her (but not everyday) and get her input you might save the relationship. 

In my case, she "is not a lesbian" so intimacy ended with my first injection.  But we are best friends forever.  Hopefully we're over the hump but it was rough for the last year.

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Thanks Denise. What you describe sounds very similar to my situation. My wife has drawn the line at permanent body mods such as HRT, FFS, BA or SRS. If I take that first injection she's already told me that's the end of our marriage.  While she has "bi-tendencies" as she calls them, she's made it clear she's not a lesbian and has no desire to be married to a woman.

Right now I'm still sorting all this out but that extra pressure of knowing that there's a hard line in the sand is making it tough for me to differentiate what I feel and need, versus what is needed to keep my marriage together. My kids and family are totally accepting and supportive, so it's really just a matter of my wife at this point.

I look forward to discussing with you more on the forums as it sounds like our situations are somewhat similar and you may have some experience I can learn from.

Hi Lisa 

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V M

Hi Lisa and welcome to Susan's.