Overall good but it’s been quite a year. Survived a reorg at work that completed in March, got remarried in March, bought the new home in June, moved 2 households into one all summer and routines are finally emerging for the new family as school starts. After 25 years of living with a GID spouse, and six years of reorganizing life post DDay, only now can I say that home life is starting to feel ‘normal’.  Our daughter has said she now has more of my attention and our sons are starting senior year with what appear to be defined vocational goals.  In my experience, living with my GID spouse had an underlying stress grounded in her unhappiness that I can now see because of her stress in repression. So at 59 I’m finally seeing relationships that are and feel healthy.

Co-parenting continues to be an emotional challenge in sustaining boundaries with my ex. A pattern has emerged where about every 2 months she has a ‘concern’ she needs to raise.  It’s annoying, time consuming, and usually evaporates. My friends believe she just can’t accept that she lost  the privileges of marriage.  She still wants her cake at least in parenting and can’t accept that my children might be influenced by another partner.  So getting to Meh is still a challenge on some days. 

I’ve been on this board since April and it’s really helped.  Probably the biggest help has been to  identify and clarify patterns in the GID spouse pre and post  Dday.  The patterns pre Dday are equally important in reprocessing our pasts.  Recognizing the narcissistic patterns of a GID spouse, especially subtle ones of manipulation, has been extremely helpful in establishing boundaries.  I hope my posts have been helpful to others. I know I present a lot of my narrative, and I  don’t intend to be self focused but only to be helpful to provide threads whereby others realize they are not alone in their experience.  Writing the narrative here  has also helped me greatly to get it clear in my own mind.  Deciding what I can understand about this experience and accepting what I will never understand and knowing the difference.

For those early in this journey, it is hard and painful in the beginning but it gets better.  The last six years were the most difficult of my entire life - the coming out, the divorce and the deconstruction of family life through no choice of my own was extremely painful in ‘14 and ‘15 and rebuilding over the last four years was a process taking patience,  time,  and more work than I imagined.  But it has been continuous improvement and worth the investment. 

All the best,

ADSJ

Last edited by a_dads_straight_journey (September 14, 2019 4:53 pm)

I haven't written much on here.  I'm separated from my husband, he has moved out and is living with a male nursing student.  He shows up at public kids' functions but rarely spends time with the kids at home.  He tries to introduce his 21 year old boyfriend to the kids, inviting him over to the family home when I attempt to take time for myself, so I am staying home all the time.  I don't think the kids are ready to meet this young man - I really think he wants to show off how good a dad he is to his lover - without realizing or caring that he is triggering his daughter's anxiety by doing so.  I'm so angry at his behavior.  I've become even more of a single parent.  He doesn't even ask to have the kids or how he can help with what the kids need.  They are 13 and 15.  Somehow, I guess since he's been so busy in the years prior to coming out and didn't spend much time with them before, the kids don't seem to notice that he's not around and say they don't feel like they need to see him more.    So I'm angry, tired, protective but glad I'm not sad and I would never want him back or things the way they used to be.  In a few years, when the kids are out of school, I'll chart a new course.  

ADSJ, and everyone:  I hope no one ever apologizes for writing out their own stories.  It really helps me to read everyone else’s stories.  It also helps me to have a place to write out mine.  I find it is just incredibly hard to explain to anyone the many layers of distress.

My husband moved out about 3 weeks ago.  I had to really stand up to him.  Beyond my own distress, my teens were also distressed having him in the house.  because of how he continually crosses boundaries and then twists things to make me the bad guy, I was really walking on eggshells afraid that anything I did or did not do might be used against me in court.  It is such a relief to all of us for him to have moved out, 

I have been lining up therapists for the teens and also for my young adult son.  One of the teens has already met a couple of times with a therapist—the other on a waiting list.  I have also spoken with the social worker at the Hugh school, and he is watching out for my two teens.  He also gave me names of good fit therapists and helped me get on lists.  I have also spoken with the leader of our church congregation, and he is going to now—with my permission—share with youth leaders about the divorce—though not share about husband’s sexuality.

As for me, in addition to my regular therapist, I have started some sessions with a family therapist, to help coach me in re-establishing some healthy family routines and rules and attitudes here at home.  For me and my teens, it is like we are survivors of a bomb attack and kind of hanging out dazed.  I have signed up for 12 sessions, and hope to move outward in my discussions with him to include advice on re-establishing my relationships with my two young adult children.  They spend quite a bit of time with their dad, and this really grieves me because my daughter has enforced having very little contact with me.  I believe my husband is nurturing my young adult son as his next source of “narcissistic supply.”  The mirroring, the money-spending on fixing this son’s gear, etc.  I hope that over time as I am consistent and authentic, it might help.  I really cannot express how much pain I feel about this distance between me and my young adult children.  I also know how my husband is lying and distorting things in the community and his extended family, and I imagine he is probably doing this with the young adult children too, although I do not know that.

I am taking incremental steps toward divorce.  My husband is now very focused on his own needs.  Of course he needs to be concerned about having a place to live and laying for things.  It is just that the conversations we have suggest he is (as usual) aware only of his own needs and does not care so much for mine.  Also says some punative things like asserting we have to sell our house so it can all be fair.  We have plenty of assets to not have to sell the house—this was just him being punative because he comes from a place of enormous self interest and still focuses on the consequences of his actions hurting him (suggesting I am hurting him), ignoring the context of it all.  I very much want to stay in this house that my children have grown up in, and to be surrounded by my friends.   He thinks it is extraordinarily unfair, unfair unfair unfair!  And has kind of aggressive assumptions that are likely to grow and hurt me. He told me a few weeks ago that he was getting a lot of pressure to really throw me under the bus in the divorce and he was going to have to fight those urges. He also says things that I KNOW he is is guarding information to make it look like he is in a tougher spot than he is.

I am looking for a different attorney.  I really need someone very strong and who will absolutely have my back.

I have enormous fear about the divorce and about how my husband will probably do all he can to take advantage of me—because he sees me as the bad actor.  He is all about winning and losing.

I cannot focus on my part time job.  That is not good!

Now that my husband is out of the house, it is similar to when I stopped having sex with him many months ago, in that there is now a doorway open to a new field of memories and other things to process.  Things that were somehow not as present until now.

For a few weeks, I have had some particular memories knocking, like “hey there, just waving through the window, remember us? we are coming.”  And then last night some of these hit full force, and I recognize now that this stuff will probably take me a couple of intense weeks to work through, and I suspect that these memories—because they are hitting me big—are likely to become very significant parts of my new story.

I have written several times on this board how withholding is a kind of sexual assault.  Now that my husband has moved out, what I am now dealing with are memories that are NOT withholding, but that came after significant periods of withholding.  I am actually considering talking with someone who works with actual sexual assault counseling.

     Trans bomb drop, March 2015.  Moved out and into my own apartment, March 2018.  Initiated divorce proceedings; divorce final November 2018.  In September 2018, in response to silencing via threats of disciplinary action by my university supervisor, I renegotiated my retirement date, and then, after a general buyout offer by my university in March 2018, advanced it once again, to officially retire on July 31, 2019, two years before I would have otherwise retired. 

    Between March 2018 and July 2019, then, I moved out of the marital home of 28 years, got a divorce after 36 years married, cleaned out my office of 28 years, and retired after 35 years of college teaching.  In the midst of what was already overwhelming, in February of this year (2019) my 92 year old mother had a stroke, her second in two years, so I spent March 2019 with her after she was released from re-hab (I was at her house when I learned of the university's buyout proposal).  

    So many long term structures in my life gone in such a short time, as if a whirlwind had blown through, and before I had a chance to do much more than sit and look around me to catch my breath and assess how I would rebuild, these changes in my life--no spouse, no job--marked me as the logical person to deliver care to my aging mother.

      I offered to be that person, for one year.  To do this required I put my life on hold and move to where she lives, a thousand miles away.  I was lucky to find a house-sitting job very near my mother, so I am now living in a stranger's house "doing for" my mother.  

    This situation is both a good thing and a difficult thing.  Good because it removes me from the place and from situations in which I am reminded of my ex and that three-years-long trans-nightmare, and because the necessity of focusing on my mother for hours every day provides an alternative focus for my thoughts.  Difficult because at a time I believe I need to be focused on re-building my life and setting up a plan for my future, I am in a kind of limbo. 

    Caring for and dealing with a mother in cognitive and physical decline, while preparing everyone for the inevitable next step of moving Mom out of her home when I depart here next June, is a challenge that is requiring courage and determination on my part.  To confront accusations, my own, and that of my siblings (unuttered but implied and clearly conveyed) that I am unfeeling because I would abandon my mother feels very much like the situation I was in with my trans ex during those years I was attempting to "live with it."  The questions that confront me, too, are the same: Do I have the same right to my own life that others do?  Am I of equal importance?  Am I allowed self-worth apart from my service and use to others? 

    I believe, however, that the lessons I learned extricating myself from my marriage and standing up for myself at my job have equipped me to do what I need to do in my current situation.  I'm more worried, in fact, about whether I can find the necessary compassion and patience to be my mother's helper than I am about setting self-protective boundaries--which feels both quite new and quite odd.  And oddly satisfying.

   I am choosing to see this time now as a period of testing and in transition.  I'm satisfied that I'm doing my duty to my mother and to my siblings by agreeing to take on this responsibility to help my mother, and I'm satisfied that I'm doing my duty to myself by setting a boundary of one year, which allows everyone to plan and prepare for Mom's next step.  

   I read recently the words of a South African man who had been imprisoned on Robben Island in the apartheid years and is now a tour guide of the island and prison (Nelson Mandela was imprisoned there for 18 of the 27 years he spent in prison).  When asked how he survived mentally, he said something like, "Like others here, I tried to turn what was a disadvantage into an advantage, and use the time to plan for the future."  And although this year I have committed to helping my mother is not what I would have chosen to do with this year--and it's not prison, either!--I find what he has to say an inspiration.   I am trying very hard to look at what this year enables--that perspective of distance, a breathing space--and to use it to my benefit as well as for the others in my family.

   So: I'm in a transitional period in which my life is not fully my own and my choices more constrained that I would like them to be, but which provides me the distance necessary for perspective and the ability to plan for the future. 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (September 15, 2019 10:46 am)

OutofHisCloset wrote:

........So: I'm in a transitional period in which my life is not fully my own and my choices more constrained that I would like them to be, but which provides me the distance necessary for perspective and the ability to plan for the future. 

You're an inspiration