My xh is a transgender woman. He came out to me 12 years ago, which was 11 years after our divorce.
At the time he came out, he broke off our relationship which was long distance friends at that point.
Later he moved back to the very small city where I live.
I would see him around occasionally but there was no communication for 9 years.
Recently I saw him at the church where we were married, dressed as a woman.
This was the first time I had seen him that way.
I saw him there a second time, again dressed that way and then I stopped going to that church.
I was having doubts about that church anyway. I’m now going to another church where I also have roots.

I have a long history of mental illness and when I saw him, I felt I was getting sick. It was shocking and disturbing.
My first reaction was a deep feeling of shame.
My self worth was knocked way down. I felt very alone. Nobody I knew had ever had this experience of being
married to someone who was TG. Nobody knew what I was going through.
Recently I talked to a friend and her comment was "But you're not married to him anymore."

My x had an anatomical difference in that he only had one kidney and one side of his reproductive tract.
He was all happy when he found out about that.
He fathered two sons in his first marriage and had an active sex life with women before I knew him.
I can remember things about him early on that showed that he had the tendency towards being TG.
I didn’t put 2 and 2 together until much later.

I thought he was a good person when I met him.
He was a social worker and had really great insight into people and behavior.
But to be honest, he really wasn’t what I wanted in a mate. We did get married, one of the worst decisions of my life.
I found out that he was self centered and always put what he wanted first.
A few years after our marriage he began leaving me every weekend to go to his cabin in the woods.
This seemed very unsupportive, like he was just dropping out of our marriage.
A therapist later suggested he was “transgendering” there.

I wanted to have a baby at one point.
He told me he was too old, didn’t want to start again and if I wanted a child, I’d have to find another guy.
He had a vasectomy when I didn't want him to. That felt like rejection.

He made all the decisions including our last move to a remote area where we built a house in the woods.
The winters there were very hard. I was alone there most of the time.
He was still going to his cabin every Friday night and Saturday which was 3 miles from the house.
I left him after 3 years there.