My STBX has fully transitioned, but like OoHC, I'm not sure exactly what kind of support you are looking for.

My kids were in their mid to late teens when my spouse came out. We tried to make it work for a year, but then I asked him to move out. That was several years ago, and we are currently going through the divorce process.

Go to the General  Discussion section.  The second thread there is "Forum Jargon for Newbies."  It has the lingo.

 

Thank you! Found it!

OutofHisCloset wrote:

Go to the General  Discussion section.  The second thread there is "Forum Jargon for Newbies."  It has the lingo.


 

Becky,
    I left.
    The short version of my story is this: My husband came home in March 2015 after 32 years of marriage and said he had decided he was a woman ("a woman in a man's body" he said), was going to "transition" to live as a woman, wanted to take female hormones and have his testicles surgically removed.  He had for years been "experimenting" in secret, including by fishing my discarded underwear and bras out of the trash and wearing them around.  We had a son in his early 20s, and when I asked about what he was planning to tell our son, he simply ignored the question.     
      He later decided he would continue to live publicly as the man he is, but to act out his desire to pretend he was a woman at home.  He expected me to live in his closet, which I did and do to varying degrees to this day.  (I do so now only at work, and unwillingly, under a gag order from our workplace, because he also works there, and his "gender expression" is protected.)  He also expected me, in the divorce, not to tell our son the truth about why we were divorcing.  I compromised, by telling our son that people don't get divorced after 35 years while in their 60s simply because they "grow apart," and there was an issue with his father's that was his father's to tell him, and he could ask, although I already knew his father would tell him "some things are private."  I regret that now, a year later, and wish I'd told our son the truth, which I had intended to do and was bullied out of by my husband's raging at me.

   My ex, too, decided he was a lesbian, and that in our sex life I must not expect him to "act male."  His version of "acting female," however, was a man's porn fantasy of a woman: submissive, passive, "do what you will with me," "I need you to fuck me."  He wanted me to sit on his face so he could immerse himself in "woman."  

  It became clear very quickly that his desire to be a woman had everything to do with a sexual fantasy life and nothing whatsoever to do with the day to day life of woman as I and every other woman I know lives it. 

   He grew ever stranger, more demanding of me, and more entitled.  He moved the goalposts of what he had agreed to in terms of expression.  He acted in secret.  He shut down communication with me and kept me from talking by treating my every expression of discomfort or doubt as an attack.  He opted to try to manipulate me rather than discuss what he wanted.  He resented me for my femaleness even as he claimed he desired me.  In terms of sex, I grew to believe I was merely a prop in a scene he was scripting and acting out for himself, and it made me physically sick when he told me, for example, that he imagined the glans of his penis was a clitoris.  I realized that I had convinced myself to go along with things in the spirit of "helping my male husband act out his fantasies," but that my husband was rejecting his maleness (he also told me "I hate my penis and balls swinging between my legs," and did so deliberately to hurt me, because he knew I loved and wanted him as a man).  

  Still it took me almost three years to work up to being able to divorce him, to get past the initial shock and my desperate attempts to save our marriage (including sexual acts I am now ashamed I engaged in), and to do the emotional and psychological work necessary to contact a lawyer and to leave and initiate the divorce.  As part of that work I had to research transness, as I had only the vaguest liberal idea of it, and I read a lot, "affirmative" stuff as well as the feminist gender critical side, plus the psychological literature.  

   I think I've posted this elsewhere, but here's my current list of what I found helpful reading:

Academic and Professional:
  Michael Bailey, "The Man Who Would Be Queen."  It's available online and downloadable.  Bailey is a research psychologist at Northwestern Univ.
 
 Donna Chapman and Benjamin Caldwell: “Attachment Injury Resolution in Couples  When One Partner is Transgender”
Journal of Systemic Therapies, Vol 31, No. 2, 2012, pp36-53
(full text of article available online)

  Anne Lawrence, "Men Trapped in Men's Bodies/Becoming What We Love."  Lawrence is a trans person and an MD, a psychologist who treated (now retired) trans identified males.  Lawrence maintains an online presence and there are articles there.
 
http://www.annelawrence.com/autogynephilia_&_MtF_typology.html
 
4th Wave Now: a website for parents of mostly girls who suddenly declare they are transgender.  4th Wave maintains a wonderful set of academic resources.  
 
Memoirs/Accounts by Wives
 
Those who left:

 Christine Benvenuto: "Sex Changes."     A memoir

   “Naeferty”  (a pseudonym)  Naeferty ran a blog about her experiences with her own trans identified male partner.  Read the post "Gas Light Six" and the comments.
 
A podcast: How my ex-husband’s transition made me feel
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06xvbsc

Also, I was helped immensely by "whatasham" here on the SSN; you can read her posts if you search for her name.

I've not listed any gender critical feminist writers, because they are theorizing and not living the experience, but there are a quite of a few now, many of them British: Jane Clare Jones has a good website. 

If you're looking for accounts by wives who stayed, you'll want to look up Helen Boyd, author of two memoirs about her husband "Betty."  I personally think she's drunk the trans koolaid, but because you asked for those who stayed, I'm supplying her name. 

  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (March 26, 2019 5:18 pm)