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June 11, 2017 12:39 pm  #21


Re: New Here - Wife of M-to-F Transgender

Deleted

Last edited by Duped (November 11, 2019 3:17 pm)

 

June 12, 2017 9:57 am  #22


Re: New Here - Wife of M-to-F Transgender

Hi Trunte,

I'm sorry that the responses were difficult to digest.  That's very often the case with newbies.  What we're saying isn't your truth, necessarily.  But it's amazing how often we see people start posting here only to have their gay spouse's lies unravel after the straight spouse starts digging, or becoming more aware of manipulative or deceitful behavior.  We want straight spouses to be VERY clear on what their truth is - because so many of us have been cheated out of it, and spent years (or even decades) making decisions based on a reality that never existed.  If your reality is exactly as you think it is, then that's a good thing.  We've just found that most often, our spouses and their lives are not what they portrayed them to be to us.  And we do not want anyone to not know about that possibility / probability.  If your marriage is meant to be saved, then it will be - despite what we here have to offer in the way of advice when it comes to looking at your situation with your eyes wide open.  We just don't want people coming here and us NOT telling them what we perceive to be our truth because it might scare them.  We're already all scared and confused.  I'd wager a guess that you are, too - otherwise you wouldn't be here.

If you think that a forum that exists specifically to support Mixed Orientation Marriages might be more helpful for you, then please - go find them.  They are plentiful, from what I understand.  You are still welcome here anytime.   I'm sorry if we aren't being all that useful to you at this point.

Kel

Last edited by Kel (June 12, 2017 9:57 am)


You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.
 

June 24, 2017 2:40 pm  #23


Re: New Here - Wife of M-to-F Transgender

OutofHisCloset wrote:

Sham,
   I love your fighting spirit, your anger, and the mightiness you demonstrated in getting free of a soul-crushing marriage that nearly killed you.  
 

Oh, but I'm not free. Not even close OOHC. So many years spent in this hell has left me seriously flattened. As everyone here knows, the real work begins after separation. I'm sure I'd be doing much better if I had better health, but physically & mentally, I'm pretty bankrupt. The longer one stays in these relationships, the harder it is to unwind all the damage. My heart aches for all the young partners who think it only takes small compromises to make the marriage work because we all know how insanely cruel & exhausting those compounding sacrifices are as the years pass. 

Trunte: I'm sorry it's such an ugly, tortured & crass outlook we tell, I truly wish we could be a shining-bright-with-love declaration of making a straight spouse/TG  marriage work. There are other opinions & forums out there that are less harsh for sure. They talk about "compromises & consolations" (on the straight spouse's part mind you, NEVER on the part of the TG/crossdressing part, unless you agree their "sufferring & slow pace" is a compromise). In 25 years though, I have yet to hear a single story of how joyous, fulfilling & positive such a marriage is & that they highly recommend it. Not one. That's telling enough in my opinion, to strive for more from a marriage & life. At the very least, please put yourself at the TOP of your list and don't fall victim to the Transcentric focus or him being the foundation & axis of everything. If allowed any freedom, it will turn your life upside down & your "new normals" will progress so far beyond your initial & authentic comfort zone.

So much time & energy is spent on Trans once it's been disclosed, it's the same all consuming shift not unlike coming home from the hospital with your first child. You forget what life was like before your life took on this change & there is no going back. You are no longer single minded, but responsible for something greater than yourself. Except with a new baby, the future is joyous & spare a handful of compromises, you can still carry on with your life plans. When you partnered with your spouse, you assumed you were a male/female heterosexual couple. Had you met your spouse as "her", would you have embarked on a future with her? If the answer is yes, wonderful! You have a 50/50 chance of a successful marriage. If you're not gay however & have no desire to be married to a woman, there is a very slim margin for happiness & fulfilment. It's really THAT simple. Don't fall victim to gaslighting, or personal fear of divorce clouding the issue with crappy declarations that "He's still the same person on the inside". It is NOT about the clothes he/she wears. if they are honest, they will admit that. Or you will sadly realize it years & heartache down the road.

To be clear, I believe successful partnerships come in all sizes & colors & righteousness has nothing to do with gender & sexual preference. As long as people are honest about their preferences & gender identity at the onset, so one can make an informed & authentic promise to each other, the odds of a healthy & fulfilling relationship are increased. LIE about your true sexuality & preference, and it's a 100% guarantee someone is being duped, cheated, used, manipulated. 

It's a hard pill to swallow, realizing your spouse is not the hard working, kind, loyal, trustworthy partner they portrayed. I think a great deal of one's desire to "make a go of it" stems not from being loving, open minded, liberal & supportive, but rather from shock, PTSD, & fear. If it truly was the former, straight spouses would willingly marry gay spouses all the time. But if you wouldn't knowingly marry a gay spouse, why decide to make a go of it post-nuptial? 

As people have said many times before, What advice would you give to your son/daughter should they find themselves in the same circumstance? Put yourself on that same honour list. 

Be kind to yourself, always & especially these next few months as you navigate this confusing course. 
Sham

 

June 24, 2017 5:00 pm  #24


Re: New Here - Wife of M-to-F Transgender

Deleted

Last edited by Duped (November 11, 2019 3:06 pm)

 

June 24, 2017 6:15 pm  #25


Re: New Here - Wife of M-to-F Transgender

Sham,
 So good to hear your voice and I'm sorry if I minimized your ongoing pain.  You have always told it as you found it and lived it and experienced it, and I have always valued your honesty in doing that.  By telling your truth as you lived it for so long you allowed me to see the pattern of escalation in the cross dressing and transgender behavior, and when I looked at my husband's behavior and statements in the light of what you said I could see that my husband's behavior was not, as I had thought, unique, but only too cut to this pattern.

    We wives of cross dressers/transgenders bargain our way into our own personal hells.  I love him and want the marriage to work!  Maybe if he dresses only at home....maybe if I play along in bed....maybe it won't feel so wrong and will feel more normal later after I've gotten used to it...look at him he's so happy and he's so happy when I pretend I'm happy for him, and I am happy he feels better but why do I feel worse and smaller and feel that I count less?...maybe, maybe, maybe, all the while we watch our husbands disappearing and watch their excitement at painting their fingernails and wonder how they can give such a small thing such importance, how they can be willing for such trivialities to transform an entire relationship and marriage and take precedence over our children.  We grieve our loss and tell ourselves to buck up and give ourselves pep talks and take ourselves to task for doubting or wavering or lagging in our support.  We love our partners, and we take our partners into account, and we think they are in love with us and will take us equally into account.  And in the end what we learn is that we are not even a distant second to their desire for themselves as women, that if we have a role and place in their lives, it is as a validator or enabler of their sense of themselves as women.  This is the particular experience and burden of being partnered with someone who suddenly declares himself transgendered. 
   I am currently away from home for a good while, grieving, planning, and thinking hard about my future, acquiring the needed perspective to make the self protective move of telling my husband I'm through.  I've realized several things: one, although I drew a line and said I wouldn't be married to an out trans person because I didn't want transworld to dominate my life, transworld has dominated my life since the day he disclosed to me he had decided he was transgendered.  "All consuming," you said, Sham, like being remade by bringing an infant home, and it is. I know now that as long as I stay in the marriage I will never be free of it and it will make my life smaller and less satisfying, not more joyous; two, I see clearly that transness has dominated my life for over two years now and in that short a time it has already taken an emotional and physical toll on me--I've physically aged, and in my last physical my blood tests showed the markers of health have declined; third, I can see how both living with his transness and living in his closet have distorted all my relations with everyone--friends, colleagues, and family--with the result that my life and psyche have been squeezed into a smaller and smaller space.  I can't be honest with anyone I know, so I've withdrawn and hidden my self away, self-isolated.  And at home, my cross dressing husband has appropriated femininity and defined it in ways that exclude me from the definition.  No wonder my health and confidence have suffered. 
   How, I wonder, could any wife/partner accommodate herself to her own diminishment?  How could any husband ask it?  If a man wants now to be a woman and declares himself a lesbian, let him have the ethical courage not to try to bind his wife to his new life. Live your new life by your own standards, but have enough love and respect for your wife to see that she deserves the same, instead of trying to bind her to you while you have the cake of your family while eating it with a mouth lined with lipstick!  
    Like you, Sham, I read between the lines of those bravely triumphant articles in which a wife declares bravely, with chin lifted, Yes, I lost my husband, but in the process I've discovered new ways to live and love.  It's like the writer is desperate to convince herself that her own erasure, her own inability to get her own needs met, is a joyous occasion that proves her credentials not only as a supportive wife but a trans ally and social justice warrior, which is supposed to serve as her consolation. But it's true: if you asked every one of these women if they'd rather not have had to make these accommodations, they have to honestly say they would prefer to go back to their old life.  The best they can say is that transness, like cancer, is just something that happens, and so they felt they had to live with it.  They're trying really hard to turn those lemons into lemonade.  We all gush on at the beginning about how in love we are with our husbands, but we haven't yet fully understood the fact that our husbands are no longer considering themselves our husbands, but our wives.  And that changes the rules and changes the game.  If we'd encountered them as they now are, we might or might not have been interested, but we weren't given that choice.  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (June 24, 2017 6:23 pm)

 

June 28, 2017 2:11 pm  #26


Re: New Here - Wife of M-to-F Transgender

OutofHisCloset -

This is by far your most reflective, self-aware, profound post.  I feel the need to point out some of the sentences you wrote = because they are quote-worthy!  They are all so wonderfully helpful in and of themselves, but altogether, they're masterful.

OutofHisCloset wrote:

We wives of cross dressers/transgenders bargain our way into our own personal hells.

OutofHisCloset wrote:

I am happy he feels better but why do I feel worse and smaller and feel that I count less?

OutofHisCloset wrote:

...and all the while we watch our husbands disappearing and watch their excitement at painting their fingernails and wonder how they can give such a small thing such importance, how they can be willing for such trivialities to transform an entire relationship and marriage and take precedence over our children.

OutofHisCloset wrote:

We take our partners into account, and we think they are in love with us and will take us equally into account.  And in the end what we learn is that we are not even a distant second to their desire for themselves as women.

OutofHisCloset wrote:

If we have a role and place in their lives, it is as a validator or enabler of their sense of themselves as women.

OutofHisCloset wrote:

Although I drew a line and said I wouldn't be married to an out trans person because I didn't want transworld to dominate my life, transworld has dominated my life since the day he disclosed to me he had decided he was transgendered.

OutofHisCloset wrote:

All consuming,like being remade by bringing an infant home. I know now that as long as I stay in the marriage I will never be free of it and it will make my life smaller and less satisfying, not more joyous.

OutofHisCloset wrote:

I can see how both living with his transness and living in his closet have distorted all my relations with everyone--friends, colleagues, and family--with the result that my life and psyche have been squeezed into a smaller and smaller space.  I can't be honest with anyone I know, so I've withdrawn and hidden my self away, self-isolated.

OutofHisCloset wrote:

At home, my cross dressing husband has appropriated femininity and defined it in ways that exclude me from the definition.  No wonder my health and confidence have suffered.

OutofHisCloset wrote:

How, I wonder, could any wife/partner accommodate herself to her own diminishment?  How could any husband ask it?

OutofHisCloset wrote:

I read between the lines of those bravely triumphant articles in which a wife declares bravely, with chin lifted, "Yes, I lost my husband, but in the process I've discovered new ways to live and love."  It's like the writer is desperate to convince herself that her own erasure, her own inability to get her own needs met, is a joyous occasion that proves her credentials not only as a supportive wife but a trans ally and social justice warrior, which is supposed to serve as her consolation.

OutofHisCloset wrote:

We all gush on at the beginning about how in love we are with our husbands, but we haven't yet fully understood the fact that our husbands are no longer considering themselves our husbands, but our wives.

BRAVO, OoHC!!!

Kel


You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.
 

June 28, 2017 2:18 pm  #27


Re: New Here - Wife of M-to-F Transgender

Wow.  Thanks, Kel.  Coming from you that's high praise.  But yes, I am, as former Scientology members put it, finally really "getting clear." 

 

July 18, 2017 6:53 pm  #28


Re: New Here - Wife of M-to-F Transgender

OOHC,
Sweet Out, I did not take anything you said as diminishing, far from it. Your insight & grace is always welcome & appreciated. I hope your wee escape is the sabbatical your spirit so needs to "getting clear" & I look forward to hearing your new insight xx

 

October 23, 2018 1:14 pm  #29


Re: New Here - Wife of M-to-F Transgender

Thank you, Duped, Kel, Whatasham, and OOHC, for what’s written on this page.
Can’t bear to write any more on the subject- just, thank you for sharing. You’re giving me a bit of desperately needed strength. <3

 

October 23, 2018 7:46 pm  #30


Re: New Here - Wife of M-to-F Transgender

MeintheCorner,
    Anytime.  That's what we're here for.  And when you can share, we'll be here for you then, too.

 

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