Thank you everyone for the kind words.

So far this has me feeling similar feelings of fear, dread, and intense sadness that my divorce did. But I do appreciate my husband being honest with me. I think his story is changing because he's so unsure himself of what's happening and aware of how it's affecting both of us, so he'll try to soften things.

@hellobritty and @AuroraMoon, I'm sorry to hear we are all in a similar boat, it's a rough place to be. Are your spouses going to therapy?

Today was a better day for me. My husband reached out to a trusted friend last night and another friend today and shared with them, which relieved me of the emotional support role for a while so I could focus on myself but still know he was being heard and reassured, which I care about. He's feeling a lot better.

For my husband his anxiety, I think, is playing havoc on the entire situation. It often manifests as a fixation on worst case scenarios and he struggles to let them go. We both think it's possibly the root of the whole thing for him, late at night he had this scary thought, his anxiety then picked it up and spun a scary scenario around it, when he took it to me I usually see the signs of this kind of spiral and can reassure him all will be well no matter what, but this one threw me. And it's been a runaway thought train from there.

I am looking to book an appointment with my own therapist to help me, and definitely appreciate the support here. I'm very glad my husband is going to pursue therapy and I am confident he's going to follow through on that.

Today I'm wrestling with feeling bad that I want therapy to reveal that he isn't trans or bigendered and that it's a mix of depression/anxiety and some deep seated self loathing that has gone unaddressed for too long. I worry that me wanting this is unsupportive or transphobic.

Why wouldn't you want therapy to reveal that your husband is not trans or bigendered?  Why wouldn't you wish to return to the state you described as characterizing your marriage when you were best friends and confidants, and you felt confident in your choice of a husband?  Of course you would want this.

 And why wouldn't you feel yourself guarding your feelings after such an announcement by your spouse?  Your husband's announcement that he is trans, and his subsequent redefinitions as he struggles with his feelings, has placed your future in an uncertain state.  To do so is a healthy impulse on your part.  

 As someone who was in similar shoes for three years (before I divorced my now-ex), I can tell you that uncertainty--yours and his--is your new normal.  He is uncertain about how to characterize his feelings, uncertain about how he wants to define himself.  But even after he decides who/'what he is, the uncertainty is going to continue.  How do I know?  Because it's clear what he wants, and he has told you so: to be a woman.  To transition and live as a woman.  He has been equally clear that he thinks he cannot do this without consequences he does not wish to experience. He knows that this desire of his will have consequences, and he doesn't wish to experience them.  (My response: actions/words do have consequences, whether we wish it or not. And it's not your job either to protect him from them or mitigate them, especially at the expense of living your own life in accordance with your own values.)  That impulse of his to want to be and live as a woman is not going away, even if he attempts to suppress it and says he doesn't need to live it.

    He doesn't want his marriage to you to change, and he doesn't want you to change, even though he is fully aware that, first, his announcement, and second, following through on what he wants, will introduce a change, and so he puts that on you: he says he feels you withdrawing.  (Again: for you to withdraw is a healthy protective response on your part.)  He also doesn't want to experience any social consequences for becoming who he says his is and wants to be.  Yet he knows there will be these consequences, and even if these are benign (people who may wish him no harm may still recognize that he is transgender), he doesn't wish to experience them.  So he is now trying to figure out how to get what he wants without having to experience any of the consequences.  (I would point out here that there are plenty of people who experience consequences daily because of who they are, and they don't have the option to opt out of these by staying closeted: females, non-white people, people with disabilities, fat people, etc.)   

  As for you, you are going to inhabit a state of uncertainty if you hook your decisions to what he wants and decides, instead of focusing on what you want, what you value, and who you are, and making a decision based on what you want and living in concert with your own values and sexuality rather than what he wants and does.  Why?  Because he is going to continue to dance around about who he thinks he is and what changes he's going to want, and what he settles on "for now" is not what he will commit to for the future.  He may decided to stay closeted...for now.  He may decide not to take hormones...for now.  He may decide that he will act as your husband in sex...for now.   He's still going to be fighting that urge inside, and it's not going to go away.  He's likely, in fact, to project his unhappiness that he cannot have what he wants outward, and you will be a target for that unhappiness. It's also likely that with your husband, as with my ex, his lifelong anxiety and self-loathing is related to his deep-seated and long-standing desire to be female. 

  It's clear that you have been care-taking him emotionally for a long time (I base that comment on how much time you spend in your comments talking about him and his emotions and what he does; it's obvious you spend a lot of time "reading" him), and that he relies on you to do this for him.  This is not an emotionally healthy state for either of you.  His confusion and struggle now will result in his wanting you to provide even more focus on him, at a time that you need to be taking care of your own emotional state and figuring out what you want--and taking action to achieve it, rather than reacting to him.

  One thing is for sure; You are never going back to that earlier state of your marriage, when you were happily married to an unproblematically heterosexual man.  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (April 12, 2021 10:03 am)