My mate had SRS when we were separated and now we are together fully intends to have vagioplasty. I am devastated by the choice as it affects my life too. I do not want the transition to continue as I am not convinced my mate is truely transexual as we have many children together and have been together for 44 years. Please comment! Thank you.

Hello Beverly,

It is really good that you found this site and spoke out asking for help. Welcome. I have only been a member here for about a month. While the membership consists of far more trans people than allies, I have found the site to be well moderated and the most of the people to be very compassionate.

I am married to a male-to-female transsexual who is near the end of her transition which began two years ago. We have been married for 21 years (together for 24), so not as long as you (!), but at least a good while. We have one child together and she helped raise 3 children from my first marriage (since the ages of 2,5 and 6). You will notice that I exclusively use female pronouns and avoid the term husband. This was not always easy for me to do, but with time, I have adjusted.

If your mate has already has SRS, then there is little doubt that she is a transsexual. That level of commitment is simply not something that one does out of sexual fetishism. She did that because her sense of self demanded it. What is more likely is that you are going through the classic stages of grief. Grief is a natural thing for us spouses to experience; after all, we are losing the image of someone we have long loved. The good news is that we do not lose them to death; we keep them with us in a new form. If you choose to stay with the person in their new form, it is possible to find acceptance and keep love alive. It takes some degree of work on your part. I find it useful to embrace the sentence "This is my transition too."

One of the stages of grief, as you may already know, along with anger and sadness is denial. The fact that you have many children and 44 years of marriage together does not preclude the fact that your partner is transsexual. There are lots of other marriages that have gone through the same thing. For you to be convinced that your mate is not transsexual may mean that you have not read enough to have learned what it means to be transsexual. I resisted reading for many years; when I finally began to read, it opened my eyes and my heart. If you have read, you may simply be experiencing the denial stage of grief. You are not alone.

I would like to encourage you to join another support forum if you have not already done so. It is a forum created exclusively for spouses. There is a real sense of being held there by people who have successfully remained in relationship with their transsexual partners for many years. Some have even had marriages as long as yours. There are also lots of newbies, people who are leaving their marriages, and people who are just trying to figure out what to do. It is called transfamily.org/spouse and is run by the Cleveland Transgender Alliance (or something like that). You have to write a little paragraph about yourself and then you will be admitted to the group.

Another thing that I found very helpful in working to keep my marriage happy was therapy. Working with a gender specialist, just like your spouse is doing, allowed me to process the grief I was feeling. My therapist helped me to examine what I wanted and who I was now that I was married to a transsexual.

Many blessings on you Beverly. This path has unforeseen benefits and gifts. Please feel free to ask for more help on this site if you wish.
Kindly,
Ruby

Welcome to the group.
If your spouse has had SRS then it is done deal.
Like Ruby already stated therapy is a good idea.
The link Ruby provided is a good group. I am not a member myself but they have a good rep.

Beverly, I can only imagine how painful this must be for you. but I feel the need to point out that transsexuals come in many forms. Some know from childhood that they are different, and some don't. Some transition early in life, and some not until they are retired. Some of us go on for decades before transitioning.

I "wanted to be a boy" from early childhood and always imagined myself as a boy, but I didn't know about transsexuals until I was much older. Even then, I didn't know that trans guys existed. After I found out about FTMs, I waited twenty years to transition. Okay, it's not four decades, and I don't have any children, but it's a long, long time.

People who go as far as SRS are almost certainly trans.

Have you tried support groups and/or couples counseling? Regardless, I hope you can find some support here. It's mostly trans folks, as Ruby says, but there are quite a few significant others and allies here, and they're good people.

Hello Beverly,

Sorry, I somehow missed this thread. I am the SO of a MTF transsexual who has yet to begin transition. I wish I could peer into my SO's head sometimes and see what is going on, but alas I am unable to, so I must take the thing he (he asks that I still use male pronouns) says at face value.

I don't doubt the fact that my SO is trans, and I intend and try to support him as much as I can. Is that always easy? Absolutely not. There is nothing comfortable about unexpected change. That is something that I am trying my best to come to terms with. As has already been suggested above, the best thing I can recommend if you intend to stay with your SO is couples therapy, preferably with a counsellor who has experience working with TS people.

From what you said your mate has already had SRS, and if that is true there is no going back from that (well, in a conventional sense at least). You said that the two of you were apart, but you got back together? I'd imagine that if you were seperated and reconnected that you must have missed each other immensely. If that is the case, I know it probably sounds like a difficult thing to decide, but would you rather live without your SO, or support her decision to live life the way she needs to?

I know that as difficult as many things are for me, at this point in my life the thought of losing my SO is not one I am able to come to terms with lightly. I would rather support my SO in whatever path he chooses than risk loosing him.

I'm not sure if this will be helpful to your situation, but I do hope it is in some way. Either way, I wish nothing but the best for you and your SO. I will keep you in my thoughts.


Hugs,
Jacquelyn

Quote from: Beverly on January 28, 2011, 03:30:10 PM
My mate had SRS when we were separated and now we are together fully intends to have vagioplasty. I am devastated by the choice as it affects my life too. I do not want the transition to continue as I am not convinced my mate is truely transexual as we have many children together and have been together for 44 years. Please comment! Thank you.

Sorry I found this post rather late.

I have just one question - because I suspect we may be confused here. SRS & VAGINOPLASTY are pretty well the same thing - they are done simultaneously otherwise the whole process becomes too complicated because ideally you need parts of the old bits to make the new. There are a few older people that opt for merely having a cosmetic procedure but mainly they are older and effectively they are happy to have no working genitals. Once the cosmetic procedure has been done, it is very unlikely that a satisfactory vagina can be made without major surgery.

Just to be clear SRS stands for Sexual Reassignment Surgery - the irreversible surgical process by which the penis and testes are removed and a vagina is constructed. Anything else, such as breast augmentation and hormone therapy is NOT SRS and is reversible.

Your comment that you partner still has yet to have Vaginoplasty suggests to me that whatever treatment they have had it was not SRS, and therefore is not final.