Mel,

  The relationship you had is over and it's not coming back.  Things are never going to be the way they were.  This is a very hard reality to accept, and it's painful because you are grieving the loss of what you had.   

  I can give you advice based on the very painful lessons I learned, but the advice I can give you is not something you want, and may not be something you are ready to accept, let alone follow.  

  One thing I warn you about is that based on my experience physical intimacy with your husband is a minefield for you, and may prove to be both a source of hurt and trauma in the future, because your husband is not just seeing himself as a man dressing like a woman, he is trying on what he thinks it is like to be a woman and to experience a woman's sexuality.  Once this enters your sex life, you are in a for a world of hurt.  My ex rejected his male sexuality, and decided he was a lesbian, and that we were two lesbians.  What he wanted from me, what he asked of me, and what he denied to me was the cause of a great deal of damage to my psyche and to my sense of myself as a woman.  I don't expect you'll take this advice, but I would urge you not to continue to have sex with him.  

 I understand how hard this is for you, and how much you want your life and husband back.  I also understand how hard it is to realize that you can't go for comfort to the one who is causing you pain.  


As to your question about changing presentation: I found it intolerable, because I understood that my husband was sexually excited by and attracted to himself by the act of wearing women's clothes.  His wearing women's clothes was a sexually charged act.  His wearing women's lingerie to bed with me was a sexually charged act.  It seemed to me that he brought another woman into our bed--himself, acting as a woman--and made love to her, and asked me to love her, too.  

 I'm sorry I can't offer you a rosier picture or more hopeful outcome.  Elle is right that these relationships work only if the wife is ready to compromise her deepest beliefs and to set aside her own needs.  I could not do that, nor did I want to.   I hope you will listen to your own instincts and discomfort. You say that your husband recognizes your pain--but I would ask you to consider what exactly he is doing to show consideration for how his actions and decisions--unilateral ones--have altered your lives.  I very much suspect that the house and family you want your girls to grow up in is not one in which their father is crossdressing in front of them, or asking them to acknowledge him as a woman.  

(I edited this remark after I wrote my initial post.)

I hope you will game out what your response will be if he tries to breach the boundary you set, as he is likely not to respect it, or to manipulate you in some way to set it aside.  My ex used the old "poor me, this is so hard, won't you help/comfort me?" move, and because I am vulnerable to that sort of appeal, I caved.  So think about your own areas of vulnerability, and be on guard.  

I'd say AGP is the driving force behind his move to "gender fluidity"; I'd also say that many many of us here have experienced a cascading sequence of "what our spouses say they are" that changes over time.  A gay man in denial might say he's bi, or that he's emotionally attracted to his wife but physically attracted to men.  A man who will end up calling themselves trans might begin by calling himself "non-binary" or "gender fluid." I have said here before that the old joke of trans identified males themselves is "six months from cross-dresser to trans."  

I personally don't buy the defense of "I cross dress to relax" or "I cross dress for comfort" or "I cross dress because I like the feel of women's clothes."  If a man just likes the "smooth" feeling of women's lingerie, he could buy a silk robe or boxers and get the same "feeling."   If he does it "to relax," what about "wearing women's clothes" is relaxing?  As for comfort?  Very few women's clothes of the type cross dressing men usually choose are designed for comfort.   

Although they may try to normalize it by claiming those things (that it is "relaxing" or "comfortable") choosing to cross dress is not a neutral act.  It is not a choice made in a vacuum.  It is not just one of the available paths one might take to relax or experience comfort.  Choosing to experience what they take to be woman's existence or experience is likewise not a neutral act.  It is profoundly interested.  What do you suppose he would say, should you ask him, which I don't suggest you do, as it will merely open you to a lot of self-justfiying verbal and mental gymnastics, "why do you need to explore gender-fluidity, what prompted you to do this, and what, exactly, do you get out of this experience of wearing women's clothes and makeup and going out in public dressed that way?  

Here's another way you can tell it's AGP.  It's all about HIM and gratifying his needs. It's not about others.  Ask yourself this: If he just wants to explore "gender fluidity," why does it take the form of women's clothing (skirts, of course) and/or lingerie, or make up and jewelry, and egregiously overt gendered behavior?  

   Why doesn't it take the form of other arguably more important aspects of female socialization, in which women put others first, behaviors like, to name a few, supporting others' interests, being others' cheerleader, taking responsibility for domestic life, like cleaning the house, or throwing in a mid-week load of laundry, or keeping track of the kids' medical appointments and homework, or taking time, before one leaves the house in the morning, thinking about what you'll be making for dinner, and making a grocery list or taking something out of the freezer to thaw?   

To me, this focus on the self, on their own self-gratification, is what tells the tale.  

 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (April 23, 2024 10:01 am)

I'm glad you are clarifying for yourself what your deal breakers and needs are.  

AGP is such an inward, self-focused condition.  As their partners, this is very difficult for us to comprehend.   I  notice you say that you are the one to have sent your husband the resources, and that you are still seeing yourselves as "we" ("we had a talk"; "we are going to have"), and want to say that separating from them, detaching from them, seeing ourselves, and them, as separate individuals instead of a couple, is not easy, but necessary.  After I finally left my ex and divorced him, I wished I had been in the right frame of mind when he first dropped his trans bomb to have said, then, "This is your journey.  I can't go on it with you , and I can't go on it for you; you need to go on it yourself, with help from your therapist.  And that means we need to separate, at least for now."  I had enough to deal with myself, in myself, that I would have been better off to have done that alone.  For both of us, the continual interactions and adjustments in response to the each other's responses made it all more difficult.