SS1979
Just a thought on explaining things to your daughter so that you can hold your boundaries. Both when I was still married to my ex and after we had an expectation of dress for the kids when we went out in public. Nothing exceptional, but clean, well groomed, and clothes that fit reasonably with the idea of  putting our best foot forward as a family in public. (Early on in the separation my youngest was fully capable of looking like an urchin if left to her own devices. And as they are now teens it’s paid off - they both pay attention to how they look.)  Could you hold your ground by explaining to your daughter that your husband and you don’t agree on the dress code for the family or something in that vein?

StraightSpouse1079
   I remember this feeling well with my trans-identified then-husband.  What he considered a compromise was that he was refraining from full out 100% dressing at home (he'd initially said he would be satisfied dressing up only in the bedroom), a boundary he later violated, by the way. 

  I, too, perceived that the compromises I was expected to make were much more far-reaching than those he believed to be compromises on his part.  I--and you--are being asked to compromise on the very basis of our marriages--we married men, and now they want to be women, and they think we should be ok with a complete remaking of our marriages (your husband now wants you not to be "two friends" rather than a heterosexual male-female married couple).  They, as you point out, compromise not at all--for him to say he's "compromising" because he doesn't wish to dress any differently than he currently does is hogwash; he's doing exactly what he wishes to do.  If he's compromising at all, it's to some stereotype of how he believes transgender women generally dress. 

      My ex believed he was compromising if he didn't wear women's lingerie while we were having sex (usually he would even change clothes once or even twice!), even though he refused to, as he would put it, "act the part of a male."  I so vividly remember after one such session, one in which he didn't dress, but went through all his other behaviors, including lying on his back with his knees drawn up and breathily gushing, "I need you to fuck me," he asked me, "Was that hetero enough for you?"  In his mind, he'd "compromised" for me, because he's held back from dressing up, but in the essence of sex between husband and wife, he hadn't compromised at all--I had; he was still seeing himself as woman and me as lesbian partner, and asking me to play that role.  If you weigh our respective "compromises"--my sexuality, his not wearing lingerie, then, like you, I was compromising to an extent he wouldn't dream of.  For him, his new identity and sexuality was non-negotiable, but my sexuality was not accorded the same right; he was perfectly willing to violate mine.  

   You do not find acceptable the way he dresses, and he will not change a thing under any circumstances.  To him, the way he dresses is non-negotiable; he's drawn a boundary line around it.  Instead, he's trying to get you to redefine the relationship away from marriage to "friends," which would be a huge compromise--a re-drawing of a boundary--on your part if you agree to it.   He's willing to demote you from wife to friend in order to keep dressing like a Britney Spears back up dancer.  Your feelings are not important to him.  In fact, his clothing is more important to him than you as his wife. 

    Stop and think about that for a minute. 

   Here's the situation you're in. 
You drew a boundary of what is acceptable to you. 
He has said he will not meet it, and has suggested you re-define your relationship (again: your feelings are not important to him, and his dressing is more important to him than you as his wife).
You cannot make him do what you want him to. 
You can only decide what you are going to do in response. 
If you have said you won't attend family functions or go out in public with him as a family while he is dressed like a Britney Spears back-up dancer, then your course of action is clear.   
Follow through. 

You never state a boundary as a way to coerce behavior in someone else.  You delineate a boundary because it's what you can tolerate.  If you can't follow through on what you said you would do or not do, then you have demonstrated to him that your boundaries are not serious, and he can violate them with impunity.

   You can be sure that your husband is going to keep on as he is going now; this activity never stops (except for brief periods before it ramps up again), and it escalates over time.  The psychological literature on this is clear: once they start, they don't go back. 

     I don't know what and when you plan to tell your daughter, but you need to start planning for what she will be told, and by whom, and in what setting (a therapist's office would be a safe space), because I highly doubt that she has not made observations of her own.  Children at 5 years old are in fact quite observant and focused on sexual difference.  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (July 21, 2019 4:13 pm)

SS1979,
    Yes, it's so profoundly unfair that we are the ones who end up suffering as a result of their actions, while they get what they want.  It's also painful when we realize that it's not that they just don't understand (or "grasp") what they're doing to us, but that they just don't care--at least they don't care enough to stop doing it, which comes to the same thing, really, doesn't it?  The breathtaking hurt of knowing they don't care, or care enough, anyway, so stuns us, so guts us, I think, that we are unable to muster the strength to push back, and they take advantage of our paralysis, hurt, or confusion, to walk all over us.
    I realize, looking back, how much I compromised, and how many times my ex ignored a boundary he'd agreed to or even suggested.  I realize how often I didn't want to believe what my ex's behavior made plain, so I made excuses, or gave him another chance, but the evidence continued to pile up and up.  Eventually, I couldn't ignore the evidence, and then I started to keep a mental tally of the instances in which he made it clear that in his mind I and my needs were unimportant to him. 
       I see now how my tendency was to act only when the evidence was overwhelming and my back was against the wall, and although I'm glad I at least acted then, and didn't just collapse in the face of his continual pushing to extend his feminizing behavior, that I didn't just give up and let him walk all over me, and then rationalize my defeat to myself, I wish I had not had to be pushed to the wall before I acted. 
   Going forward now, I'm determined to put this lesson in place in future, in other relationships.  I'm trying to learn how to set healthy boundaries, and what I need to be clear about in my own mind as I do, including my motive in setting them, how to communicate them clearly, and, most importantly, have the wherewithal to follow through.  I know that I've often been good at communicating a boundary, but when someone doesn't adhere to it, I too often have backed down or given in.  
   
     If you are worried about your husband retaliating in response to your sticking to your boundary, by refusing to take you to your friend's house, can you make alternative arrangements for getting there?  If you're too far out in the country for Uber or a taxi, can you ask your friend to come and pick you up?  Is she able to do that?  (If your friend's response to your not being able to come and see her is simply to get mad at you rather than help you find a solution, that's a problem of another sort.) 
   Your negotiation over what is acceptable to you and what is acceptable to him for public outings should not be a factor in other aspects of your life.  A husband who would retaliate in that way, and refuse to take you to see your friend in order to force you to do something you don't want to do, is engaging in controlling behavior.  That kind of behavior qualifies as domestic abuse. 

  In your reply to ADSJ, you use the phrases "best feet forward" and "feel comfortable."  I wonder how you define that for yourself?  Would you "feel comfortable" if your husband were dressed in women's clothes, just less trashy ones?  Or if he wore a compression shirt?  Or would you only "feel comfortable" if he were dressed in men's clothes?  I would say that it's a good thing for you to know, exactly, what you would be/are comfortable with, so you can communicate that to him.  Maybe you have done this, but I wasn't sure from your original post whether you were telling us what you feel, or recounting what you told him. 
      I can certainly imagine you saying, "I'm not going out with you as a family if you are dressed in X, because it makes me uncomfortable.  I don't want to be perceived as a lesbian couple, or as the partner of a transgendered or sexually ambiguous one.  If you are willing to wear a compression shirt, or a less flamboyant outfit, that would make me comfortable enough to go out together." (Or alternately, you could say "I don't feel comfortable being seen in public with you or at family events while you're dressed in women's clothes.  If you won't dress in men's clothes, we can no longer do things as a couple.")  If he refuses, and then attempts to shift the terms ("let's go as friends") remember that this is as manipulative as assertions about "compromise," which were an instance of what in logic is known as "false equivalence."  And don't think that if he complies once, the matter is settled.  The overwhelming likelihood is that he will return to push that boundary, using a new tactic.

   Once you see him through the lens of his narcissistic behavior and lack of concern for you, the more you reframe his behavior and his words in light of what you see, the more clearly you define for yourself what is acceptable to you, the better you get at setting boundaries, communicating them, and then sticking to them by following through or leveling the consequences. 

  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (July 22, 2019 10:56 am)

Walk:
I ended up going to the beach with My husband and my daughter. She wanted me to go and I couldn’t say no. And to be honest I also wanted to feel like a normal family again but once I’m back home alone in my bed crying I’m not normal again.

I don’t know how to set boundaries but not disrupt my daughters time with her parents.

Sometimes I want to hug him because I just am starved for any affection. Sometimes I want her m to suffer but don’t know how to do that