Quote from: Pugs4life on Yesterday at 06:19:24 PMDo you know how your wife got the real you? How did she get to that point?
Amy, I do know! My wife says so herself and what she says makes total sense, explained below.
A bit of recap from other posts:
I have been a soft and very sensitive person since I came to the world and I was very soft/sensitive when meeting my wife almost 40 years ago. She knew immediately that I was her man and fell in love hook, line and sinker.
In hindsight everything is simple but it is quite obvious that my female identity, though not really known at that time, was much closer to the surface back then. There are posts about this in my blog thread.
Then life happened and layers of more or less subconscious "identity protection" were stacked onto me and they made me harder, insensitive and at times quite arrogant and perhaps a bit difficult to live with. The real me came out only under certain circumstances, so my wife always knew that deep down I was still that soft and sensitive person.
The interesting part is that after coming out to myself but
before coming out to my wife, things changed a lot. I got very soft and really sensitive again, cared, listened more, understood and related more to other peoples' feelings, could relate to and discuss with my wife about things that were just not interesting before coming out, enjoyed shopping for clothes with and for my wife or for me, the affective empathy that was buried under all that protection came to life again, and the list goes on.
I became the real me again, the me that had been hidden by the identity protection, much more like the me that she fell in love with all those years ago. The short version: I got nice again and everyone around me could see it, and they liked it.
Quote from: Pugs4life on Yesterday at 06:19:24 PMQuoteWe, I and wife, both know and have agreed together that we just don't know how things will play out. But we do know that we really WANT to be together and that is our "foundation" in this journey. She understands that I need some level of feminisation and she will be as welcoming and accepting as she can, but will tell me if she gets uncomfortably uneasy about things. I will (try to) go slowly, meaning to not rush things just because of euphoria but instead be intentionally hesitant until I know that I cannot avoid doing whatever change I have to do.
However, since things are moving a bit slowly for me she hasn't really been put to the test yet and I plainly don't know what I will need when it comes to femininity. I don't know and the only way of knowing is to continue living the life.
This. This is what I would hope that my spouse and I could do, Anna.
I do hope that you can. I think that you can.
Quote from: Pugs4life on August 13, 2026, 04:18:02 PMShe isn't happy about where I am at and I am not happy about where she is at.
I am by no means a coach for these kinds of situations so don't take this for truth.
That said, I believe it is important to be honest with each other, for both to try and understand the spouse's situation and possibly adapt or adjust a bit with respect to that. Not always an easy thing, but probably more or less necessary. Acceptance only gets you so far, there needs to be a portion of understanding as well, in both directions.
Part of the things below don't apply to you since your spouse is already on her way with transition, but maybe they can provide some insight, some comfort, some understanding?
Anyway, this is how it happened for us. I admit that I orchestrated things a bit. I feared coming out to her, oh how I feared that, but I also saw that the changes that came with coming out to myself were very good for us, so I was intentionally a bit soft and vague about being transfemme.
I allowed her to experience the benefits before really having to face that her husband is transfemme. I paved the way for her as much as possibly I could.I came out to myself in March, halfway to wife in April, fully to wife in June. So there was three months of increasing understanding for me and then for her. Three months of benefits before having to face the harsh truth.
Coming to the understanding and agreement about our journeys was via a painful June evening, the evening that I really came out to my wife and when she really understood that I am a woman on the inside, that I both want and need to beome more female. To say that there was emotions on that evening is an understatement. But my wife is a fantastic person and she sees a lot of things very clearly, that other people perhaps don't see as clearly. There was fear about me becoming attracted to men, since I am a woman on the inside, fear about her own attraction to me if I become too much woman, fear of the unknown.
Here is the thing: Relating to the soft/sensitive me that she/we had experienced over a couple of months from March to the June evening, and the very positive things that that had already brought to our relationship,
she saw that the person that I am becoming, that I perhaps already was, the more female person, perhaps even the woman I might become, is the person she fell in love with all those years ago. No guarantees about eternal attraction if I become "too much" woman but we really, really want to be together and our relation is currently better in all aspects than it has been in many, many years. Perhaps better than it ever has been. She explicitly says that she loves the "new" me, the me that has surfaced again, that she has fallen in love again.
It goes without saying that I enjoy things a lot. I am so much more me, so much more in touch with my own feelings as well as other peoples' feelings. So much, much more able to enjoy life fully. If you have read in my blog you can see that the years preceding my coming out have contained some really painful things and all those have vanished just like magic once I came out.
Simple, yet complicated? Yes.
Enjoyable, but slightly scary? Yes.
A lovely life right now? Yes.
Forever lovely? Maybe.
With potholes and roadblocks? Absolutely, but these are the things that we want to be candid about so that we both see them and can try to navigate them together.
And Amy, keep doing what you are doing. Keep trying to understand. Keep being honest with yourself and your spouse. It will help you in your way forward.
💕
