I met my husband when we were both fourteen and freshman in high school.  For a time a picture of us at the party where we met floated around…it has been destroyed since then but he still remembers seeing it.  For the next five years we would pass in and out of each other’s lives.  Once he spotted me from atop a Ferris wheel several states away while we were both on vacation.  I still have the picture he drew that day in a sketch pad I was carrying with me.  By the time I was 18 I had developed a significant crush on him.  I thought the reason he wasn’t into me at the time was because I had put on a significant amount of weight.  It turns out the real reason wouldn’t surface until after we had gotten married.  By the time I turned 19 he turned his attention towards me and after a short game of cat and mouse we settled into an extremely comfortable, loving relationship. 
Together we went on trips, both literally and figuratively, if you count the many substances we explored within the first few years as a couple. We discovered our family’s had been connected in different ways for years.  We moved in together at 21 and started building our family which started with our now 14 year old cat.  We had a quaint little third floor apartment that was our starting point in what we assumed would be a life time together.  Unfortunately around this time my libido crashed and it was the end of real intimacy between us. At the time I thought I couldn’t figure out why.
Through everything, my husband supported me.  I’ve suffered with mental illness since I was a child and he would be the in the psych ward for every visiting session.  I have been chronically ill for what feels like my whole life but the real diagnosis came after we had bought our house together at 24.  At that point the doctor’s told me I’d have to give myself weekly infusions of human immunoglobulin for the rest of my life or until new treatment became available.  This was not exactly a crisis but it did signal the beginning of a steady stream of doctor’s visits and antibiotics as well as the occasional hospital stay.  It also really kicked off Paul’s need to be a care provider for me.  I think that’s sort of where stuff started getting murky.
About 7 years ago, around the time I was 28, my husband told me that he liked to wear women’s clothes when he got stressed or depressed.  He told me it helped him feel better and though I was definitely weirded out I thought I could totally handle it.  By, this point we had gotten married. It was a lavish event with all of our friends and family.  It started at noon and went until midnight.  I don’t know if there were many dry eyes when they asked for us to dedicate ourselves to one another in sickness and in health.  I’m not sure what people thought about my immune disorder but sometimes I wonder if people questioned how long I’d be around.  I wonder what they would have thought if they’d known what he’d tell me just two years later.  What would they have thought if they’d known I’d be buying my husband feminine clothes and makeup so that he felt supported by at least me?  
Between the time we got married and he told me the secret he’d been keeping all of his life, my bi-polar and anxiety disorders and immune deficiency began to bury me.  I stopped working and spent most of my time lying on the couch.  I no longer went to his shows (Paul has been a drummer since he was 13), I no longer saw my friends.  The only real human contact I had was either with my best friend since child hood or my sister, both of whom moved away at different points for several years, making socializing agonizing for me.  As the years went on my life circumstances didn’t change.  In eleven years I have only worked about 16 hours a week, and for only five of those years.  Paul has taken care of me the whole time.  Through no sex and no leaving the house he has stood beside me.  The only unfortunate side effect to this is that I feel like he takes on the role of care provider too much.  He asks me daily about my diet and sleep.  He organizes my medications.  He does housework and works full time as well as shooting video as a part time gig.  I am grateful but sometimes his badgering irks me in a way that’s hard to describe.  Well, no, it’s not.  It’s like living with your parent.  Your parent who has fake boobs and likes to wear tight skirts and 6” heels.
About a year ago I started seeing a new therapist.  We set one of my goals as working on intimacy with my husband and another as communication.  Six months in I had to re-visit those goals.  I came down with mu usual infections…Sinuses, ears, throat and chest.  I had to miss work and while it was all happening my husband’s grandmother died.  I missed saying goodbye to her but I was able to at least drag myself to her funeral to be there for my husband and his family.  Before I was able to make it back to work I had a routine medical procedure that injured me in a way that caused unimaginable, unbearable pain. I went back to work anyway thinking I could limp through it but had to keep going back to dr.’s and hospitals trying to figure out what happened.  I ended up back out of work and after a month they realized what had happened.  I had surgery about a month later to repair the damage but there may be lifelong effects.  At some point before the surgery my husband explained he no longer thought of himself as a cross-dresser but that they only words he had for it was gender dysphoria.  I thought, I can get through this…he’s just unsure of himself.  But around the same time he began noticing thinning in his hair and decided to see doctor's about Rogaine etc.  By the time I had the surgery he had made an appointment with an endocrinologist.  He also told me that he was transgender.  He planned on starting hormones.  10 days later, January 26, 2018, my husband began his transition.  Soon after I ended up back in the hospital “with life threatening” levels and soon after I was in a partial hospitalization program for impossible depression and anxiety, adjusting meds and then having to take a break two days in because all the same stupid infections were back.  In the midst of all of this we lost several members of our family as well as several friends including the woman who had taken the picture of us the first time we met at 14.  It was the hardest period of my life by far.
 
Here I am reflecting on our journey.  I feel blessed to have had a partner who’s grown with me all of these past 17 years and taken care of me in ways that are really indescribable.  He’s been my rock, my soul mate my best friend.  We have a 14 year old cat, an 11 year old dog and an ageless lizard we inherited.  We have a home.  We have memories.  I guess all of that just makes this harder.  If we weren’t so close I could literally just turn and run away.  But I don’t want him to feel alone in this journey.  He supported me through everything I’ve been through.  But in reality…is that what I want for myself?  In two and a half years we’ve only had sex once and since he came out to me I have a hard time even letting him touch me.  I have to steel myself every time he leans to kiss me.  At night when he wants to snuggle on the couch I hold my breath.  Is this fair to me?  Is it fair to him?  I don’t look at him as a lover…I look at him as a friend.  He knows this, he’s a smart guy.  Ever since he’s begun hormones he asks frequently if I’m going to leave him and even though I don’t have an answer to give him he always follows it with please don’t.  He says hormones have robbed him of his libido and that even though at one point he told me he’d leave me if we couldn’t get back our sex life now he’s willing to live without it.  But it’s raised the question for me, is that what I want?  I’ve checked myself only to come to the conclusion that maybe I do have a libido…just not for him.  And now when he’s raising up his shirt to ask me how his breasts look or counting calories out loud I think even if a year ago we did have sex regularly, I couldn’t now.
 
So what do I do?  I guess I have options.  I could stay and accept things the way they are. My husband is a woman.  Even though he says he’s only going to come out to his close friends/ not family or coworkers, it appears as if once he’s finished transitioning he’ll be living as a woman full time with me.  So for all intents and purposes, to me, he is now a woman.   So, staying and leaving things the way they are.  Cringing at his touch, desperately missing the man I married.
Or, I could stay platonically.  Try and re-negotiate life as friends.  Live in the same house and figure out how to make that work.  The thing that will kill this idea is neither one of us will be able to handle the other entertaining a romantic guest.
If I choose to leave, we will have to sell the house.  We can pay off all of our debt and split whatever is left over.  I’ve already thought through the next steps.  Move back in with my parents and help them prepare their house to sell.  We have plans for this anyway…it would be even easier if I lived there.  I could save up money so that when they move I’ll have a nest-egg to sort of go back out on my own. 
This is all killing me.  As I write all this I feel like I have disconnected myself so that it doesn’t re-injure me every time I think about it. I’m sure I sound callus but it is simply how I’m choosing to protect myself.  While my husband has been there for me the past 17 years it does not mean that I simply owe him my allegiance after he chose to be the woman he wants to be without ever seeming to really care about how it affects me.  Any time I’ve tried to talk about my feelings he says things like “I’m throwing all of my pills away tonight”.  My therapist pointed out that is actually a quite manipulative thing to do.  He knows my biggest weakness is that I’m a people pleaser and that his words will haunt me.
What this all boils down to is that yes, I still love my husband inside.  But, I’m in no way physically attracted to the woman he’s becoming.  It also feels impossible living with him through this “second puberty”.  I can’t stand what feel to him as exclamations of his newfound womanhood.  To me they’re like a punch in the face every time.  A reminder that the man I married is now a woman…and I am not gay.  After a lifetime of mental and chronic physical illness and perpetual grief this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
*It should be noted that I am not trying to mis-gender my husband.  He has chosen not to change his pronouns-yet.