There are a few other ladies here who are dealing with a trans-spouse so I expect you will hear from some kindred spirits. As majenco said it's admirable to try to make it work but I think you are allowed to decide that it's not for you. Being under the constant stress of saying the right things to 'her' and to others is not healthy. You said your spouse sometimes feels you do not support 'her'. Do they show any compassion or understanding about how they have turned your life inside out and upside down?

omarieb,
  Two years is a long time to live in this nightmare, and you are showing the signs of that stress.  My husband disclosed his belief he was transgender two and a half years ago, so i have walked in your shoes, wanting to support him, wanting our marriage to survive, wondering what my future might be--and, like you, eventually realizing that I was being beaten down by the whole sorry mess.  Realizing that is the first step in a process of reclaiming yourself. 
That you are isolated by the situation and have lost the support of your family makes your situation worse, because without an outside perspective one is left inside the circle of crazy that is your husband's play-acting of woman and his self-serving utter lack of empathy for what he is asking of you. 

   To be told your husband is no longer a man but a woman, and you are now married to a woman has the effect of pulling the foundation out from underneath you.  It's an assault on the deepest foundations of your sense of yourself.  It makes you question your past together, your marriage, your sexuality, and your femininity.  It has put you at odds with your faith. 

    Yet still you hang in there, wanting to be the supportive wife, fighting your own discomfort, deep-sixing your own hopes for the future, trying to remake yourself in the image he has presented you with and told you he expects you to adopt.  No wonder you're feeling as if you're "losing yourself."  You are.  You are dealing with both self- and other-imposed demands that your deepest self is rebelling against, and the result is that you are depressed.  

    In no way should you feel like "a terrible person" because you "struggle so much."  That struggle is your core sense of self trying to tell you that what you are living in is beating you down and extinguishing your spark of joy in life.  You say you love your husband, but what is it that you love?  The male "wife" you have or the husband you married?  The man you expected to have children with and grow old with, or this new being who is not a partner but a dictator telling you that what is expected of you is for you to totally remake who you are?  Can you honestly say, in the face of that reality, that he loves you for who you are?  

  I'm with Duped: you need a counselor who has YOUR interests at heart and will help you sort out what YOU want, not someone who is "trans friendly" and believes her job is to help you learn to cut yourself into a new shape to accommodate someone else's idea of who you should become.  The advice I've seen is to find someone who does not advertise they are prepared to counsel for "gender issues."  That you can't even be honest with your own therapist because you're afraid of being judged is a huge red flag to me that you aren't going to get the help you need with this therapist; you need to feel you don't have to hold back in therapy.  There's no law that says you must stay with any particular therapist.  You need to find one that you feel comfortable with and supported by.  

  You're not a terrible person.  You're a heterosexual woman who married a heterosexual man who later changed the terms of the marriage and has the selfish entitlement to expect you to clap your hands about htat and support him uncritically, to compromise and remake yourself, while he goes full speed ahead.   He has the right to remake himself; he has no right to expect you to remake yourself.  A man who loved you and who was as committed to you as you have been to him would never even ask that.  You're not a terrible person; you're a woman who is learning that love doesn't conquer all, and that you have a choice to make and the right to make it in ways that give you YOUR best chance for happiness.  

  Just as he has the right to remake himself, you have the right to define who you are and what you want--and from what I see, spending the rest of your life with a transwoman is not what you want.  
 
  
 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (November 5, 2017 8:47 am)