Whew, hopefully I haven’t already bungled this by making an offensive error in my title.  I find it hard to know how to be as supportive as I’d like to be, particularly in navigating my experience alongside my partner’s very valid experience.

I’ll back up a bit, when we got married, I knew my husband at the time was bisexual.  Unfortunately it was uncovered and not revealed, but so I’ve gotten used to a certain level of secrecy from my partner.  To try to address this, we have explored polyamory.  Honesty is very important I think to respect your partner and allow them to process life in a transparent way.  This route may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it works for us.

In the past few months, my partner and I stopped having sex.  I was depressed since another partner of mine (boyfriend) moved away and I just wasn’t in the mood.  My partner has been dating another girl who I love but who also has a better connection with my spouse, so I know he’s not been neglected.  I still showed that I cared.  Anyhow, I made plans to fly out to visit my boyfriend and shortly before leaving, my spouse revealed to me that they are trans.  Suddenly my vacation has me processing a lot more about my marriage and my life than I feel ready for, but that’s life I suppose. 

I care deeply for my spouse, but I’m straight.  I’m worried that we don’t fit together anymore.  I’ve received a lot of attention from different women over the years so i feel confident that I’ve considered my sexuality but I’m simply attracted to masculine energy - grunting dumb dicks, and it’s exhausting and kind of terrible dealing with men but what can I do? 

My marriage has always been great.  My partner supports me and we like a lot of the same things and they’ve always been very forward thinking regarding women and respect for them.  He convinces me of my value when I feel less important than them as the breadwinner.  I’m happy in my marriage.  We’re in couple’s counseling and we both are in therapy.  I value their strong relationship with therapy and mental health.

So I have a few concerns, and I really hope I don’t offend but I’m scared to talk about this with anyone. 

1) my spouse had serious OCD issues with pulling out their hair to self-soothe for the past two years.  They were supposed to use this time to address those issues but that’s suddenly turned into this much bigger thing, and yet I’m still very worried about the underlying symptoms of OCD that have been so all-consuming lately.  It’s literally a non-stop fixation and it’s so hard for them to be a normal human being with it.  So mental health issues have been relevant for a while.  My spouse shaved their head and their eyebrows in response to taking a leave from work to work on this.  There’s some concerns there as well… They have been wearing my clothes (which is fine I suppose) but then going for really long walks around the city alone at night. 

All this to say, I’m having a really hard time giving them nonjudgmental space lately because I feel like I have to help them.  My couple counselor says I’m codependent because I help make excuses for them and try to manage their feelings in our relationship, but they used to get mad at me all the time for little things so I resentfully feel trained to be this way.  I’m working on unconditioning myself to do these things, but things are so unstable lately that I’m scared. 

Does anyone have advice regarding mental health support in this time, and the spouse’s role in that?  I’m struggling to find the balance between trust and pointing at alarm bells.

2)  if I’m straight, how can I gently explore what this means for us?  I don’t want to say I’m not attracted to them anymore because that’s terrible to say and I don’t know if that’s true, but I also don’t want to fall into the trap of placating them to everyone’s detriment if they’re better off knowing our incompatibility is not their fault - just the result of 1+1 not equaling 2 for me… like Maybe it’s too much and too hurtful to quickly express my concern for the future without trying, but also maybe it’s disrespectful to not be honest about how I’m feeling. 

I don’t know, they haven’t been too concerned about how about anything lately I feel but maybe the distance is hiding all the scary worries for the future.

<3 This has been a stressful time for me and it’s been triggering other health issues navigating all this stress so I apologize if I’ve made a mistake somewhere.  I’d love help in thinking about how to approach these 2 issues.  Thank you so much.

Last edited by AnxiousCodependent (September 22, 2025 2:28 am)