Hello Peppermint, 

Welcome & sorry you have to be here. 

I was in a situation similar to yours.  Like you, I was not into having a female partner.  I married a person who presented as a hetero man.  I have never had any sexual desire for women.  My husband and I had many discussions, and marriage counseling.  I can't say what was in his head but I believe he thought I would have to come to accept his new identity and our marriage would be saved. 

I couldn't. 

You have to consider what is best for you.  Maybe you can make it work, maybe not.  If your partner transitions, it will be a long, drawn-out process and his focus will be on himself.  

In my opinion, it's not your obligation to feel fully accepting sexually and societally.  You can support him but you have to support yourself first.  

Best wishes to you.  

Peppermint:

    I tried.  I shopped with him online.  I encouraged him and bucked him up when he despaired that however much he felt feminine he saw "a man in a dress" (his words) whenever he looked in the mirror. I indulged his sexual fantasies (I shaved his legs for him; I penetrated him; etc). 

  Ultimately, however, my now-ex's evolving sexuality and gender identity precluded his being "willing to bring" any "male energy" to our sex life, and outside of sex, his need for me to accommodate his increasing and increasingly extreme view of gender ("men are taller than women so to feel like a woman I need you to stand on a stair while kissing me"; "women are passive and coy") was both burdensome and acted on my feminist sensibilities like sandpaper.  

   In the end, I could not be satisfied with his using a strap-on but not his penis (and by "not satisfied" I don't mean physically able to orgasm).  I wanted body to body contact, not to pretend that being penetrated by a silicone dildo was the same as my body responding to his.  I was put off by knowing that his pleasure was located in his acting female and not in intimate communion with me.  I was angered and insulted by his claims that what he felt when being penetrated himself was what I felt, and that the glans of his penis was a clitoris.  It hurt that he pushed me ever more toward fulfilling his need to have a less feminine partner, and then began referring to me as butch, so that he could fulfill his need to feminize and feel feminine.  I didn't want to be re-made in the image he needed to feel he was achieiving his vision of being a woman, or to know that his approval and expressions of love depended on my willingness to remake myself.  I wanted to be loved for myself, and I wanted our sex life to be a celebration and coming together of two people who loved one another.  Instead, my life became a performance acted out on a mine-field. 

   Aside from these real issues with sexuality, there was the entitlement of it, the idea he had that of course I would support him and even owed him this support, even as he refused to meet any of my needs.  I met him more than 100% of the way, while he refused to entertain even 10% effort, and characterized my needs as an attack on him.  His entitlement and resentment grew even as I was yielded more and more of my own desires in order to support him.  My experience in this regard is not unique.  In fact, it's pretty textbook.  

  About your question of whether your desire can "evolve."  We all have mirror neurons in the brain.  They are the basis of empathy.  Babies will imitate faces made to them at a very early stage.  Babies will cry when another baby starts crying.  Mirror neurons help us bond.  Adults who consciously mirror the actions, ideas, facial expressions of others elicit stronger feelings from the person who is being mirrored. One's own identity evolves when in relation to another.  This certainly happened to me in my relationship.  But there was a point beyond which I was unable to go.  Setting aside my objections to his ideas of woman and femininity, I was simply not able to forego my own heterosexual desires and needs.  I was not able to pretend myself out of, or talk myself out of, or mirror myself away from, wanting a male to bond with as a mate.  Nor did I realize until after I left that attempting to subvert my sense of self, my sexual response, and my sexual and gender identities, had damaged me psychologically.  

  Your desire to love your partner and to support him is normal and understandable and admirable.  However, my counsel is: be aware that your desire to be a loving partner can lead you to act in ways that will ultimately do a lot of damage to your sense of self. 
   

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (October 21, 2020 9:27 am)