F*ck political correctness.  This isn't about you not accepting someone on the LGBT spectrum.  It's about someone on the LGBT spectrum deceiving you for years about the fact that they weren't actually straight.  It's about that person trying to make you embrace a different sexuality for yourSELF - one which you've made clear that you're not interested in exploring.  It's about him not respecting your boundaries.  It's about how he lied to you about who he was, and now if you don't change the entire orientation of your marriage, you're the bad guy?  Eff that static.

I've rarely had a conversation with someone where they've even suggested that I might have stayed with my gay spouse and "made it work".  If I dug deeper, that meant to them that we stayed married but satisfied our intimate needs outside the marriage.  So not many people even think that you should stay together with someone who is of a different orientation than you.  But to those who've said that, I've said, "Is that what YOU'd have done?  I had exactly ONE person say yes.  And then I asked them, "Why?"  And they had no answer except "for the children - so they don't come from a broken home."  And then I asked, "So, it is most important that the family unit stay intact?  So important that their blueprint for marriage is two people co-existing but feeling nothing more for each other than roommates?"  Then it was a no.

You can't worry about what others think.  I learned in the end that I would never forgive myself if I let everyone around me determine my happiness.  It's funny - the people I see who've done that (like my own mother) don't really seem so happy anyway.  And the people they stayed to please have either since died (their parents) or grown up and left (their children).  And they're still stuck in unhappiness.  Doesn't look like a good trade to me.

I got to the point where I just felt like, "I'm freaking FORTY YEARS OLD.  If I can't make my own decisions by now, when would I be able to?  I still take others into consideration.  But I don't fool myself any longer into thinking that I'm not as important in the decision making process as everyone else is.  I am someone, too.  I am worth something, too.  I matter.  And if I won't act like that, no one else will, either.

As for what to say about what happened to your marriage, I think you'll be surprised how few people even ask you.  Only family, for the most part.  You can decide to say something vague - like, "It just wasn't working any more" - because you don't owe them a detailed explanation.  Or you can decide to say something vague but a bit more pointed - like, "He wasn't who he originally presented himself to be."  Or "He changed dramatically in several very important ways, and I realized that who he'd become didn't match what I needed from a marriage."  And then there's what I'D say - "He wanted to be a woman - and I'm not a lesbian."

Kel
 

It's as if I am required to have all this compassion and understanding for his "horrible" situation.

     Wow, does this ring true/hit home to me!  So many sources and people assume "fault" on the part of the straight spouse or excuse thoughtless or cruel behavior on the part of the LGT spouse, because, you know, homo/trans/phobia.
    That an in-denial spouse hiding in a marriage or a spouse changing the rules in the middle of a marriage by declaring a different  sexuality might also have some responsibility or obligation to the spouse gets lost. There are, for example, very few places that don't write from the assumption that the wife of a newly declared transwoman must adjust or accommodate or educate herself on the needs of her once-husband now-wife.  I have yet to see someone address the trans partner and say, "it is your obligation to understand that you have fundamentally ruptured the terms of your marriage contract and your ethical obligation is to free your partner from the marriage."  But I have seen many, many exhortations to the wife that it is her duty to understand and accommodate, and I have even seen speculations not about why the transwoman stays but why the straight wife stays, because the assumption is that it's on the straight spouse to adjust, and not on the trans spouse to, ahem, "man up" and face the consequences for the declaration. 
    I believe fewer of us would find ourselves in agony over our spouse's sexuality or identity if the narrative were to change to put the onus on the newly out spouse and not on the unsuspecting straight spouse.  (And we all have heard the "you must have known" accusation, another little blameshifting tactic.)
   This time of year is hard for us straight spouses, what with National Coming Out Day (last week) and Trans Awareness Week (coming up in November).  Media attention ramps up about this time; it seems I, at least, can't escape yet another celebration of transwomen every time I turn around--"Finding Your Roots" will feature transwoman Janet Mock next week (Janet Mock, who wrote about transwomen greeting each other and 'affirming' themselves with the (offensive to women slur) greeting "Girl, you're looking 'fish' tonight!"); today's NYT features an article in Health and Wellness (!) saying "Playboy" will have a transwoman on its cover (a transwoman who is thrilled to be chosen as it affirms her "femininity"!--showing once again that the reality for transwomen is not what it is for women, who by and large do not celebrate their objectification because it "proves" they are women--desirability by men not being the defining quality of woman!).  
   I'm winding myself up, so I'll stop now.  Suffice it to say that for me, a shift in the balance is long overdue--it's irresponsible and unethical to see "coming out" in a one-sided celebratory way when in reality it's so much more complicated and fraught.
  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (October 21, 2017 7:04 am)