AM,

We feel, we cry.  This makes us who we are.   Crying is ok. 

It sounds like you did not see him crying.

I recall my GX screaming at me  and calling an infant when I cried.  Screaming at me not to cry in front of the kids.  So she was hurting me and I was at fault for crying.   Not a shred of empathy or feeling in her.

The lack of her caring scared me more than the gay.  It scared me more than the word divorce or the unknown future.  I fear her still ..capable of unlimited hurt.

These spouses have no comprehension ..the gay thing has no take backs.  They think they are gods or omnipotent beings that can just make love or scream and that will make it go away. 
They cannot.  They are not gifted with that power.

Know that your feelings are valid and should not be discounted or demeaned.
There is nothing wrong with you.

Likewise we are not expected to have un limited strength and be super human.  God put people on this earth to help.
If the crying starts interfering with taking care of the kids or functioning a psychiatrist can prescribe antidepressants or other things to help.
It need not be forever but  can help you function.  This helped me function while under so much stress and abuse.


It would be abnormal not to cry.   

A sincere hug. (Virtual but authentic and real)

Intimacy is a bonding experience. Unfortunately, intimacy also can create a "trauma bond."  

When my now-ex was working with a therapist on a plan for transitioning, I found him one day in the bedroom, lying on the bed (on my side), clutching a pillow to his chest and looking stricken.  He asked me, "can't you just lie down and comfort me?" I did.  It was an appeal to my empathy, and I responded (as he knew I would and felt I should).  One thing led to another.

 I was so ecstatic at what I took to be the resurrection of our intimacy and by the belief that my then-husband desired and valued me that I went fully on board to "accepting" him for the next six to nine months.  I engaged in sexual behaviors that were gratifying to him and his fantasies only (his wearing lingerie during sex, every time, and changing outfits in a "session"; no penis-in-vagina sex because he eschewed his maleness; dildos and pegging (for both of us), but which despite the rationalizations (mental gymnastics) I engaged in, were damaging to me in quite elemental ways, and which I have yet to recover from (the invalidation of my sexuality as a heterosexual; the assault on my sense of myself as a woman; the mental dissociation required to suppress my feelings).  The cognitive dissonance was excruciating.   

It took a long time for my critical faculties and inherent sense of self-preservation to reassert themselves.  It was a gradual process, helped along by learning about autogynephilia, and about narcissism and narcissistic behavior and tactics.  

  I would venture to say that your reaction was condtioned by a kind of cognitive dissonance, in that your love for your spouse is butting up against your knowledge that your spouse is no longer (or never was) the husband you love.  His response to your distress, which is to invalidate your feelings ("Can't you just love me for me?") and minimize your concerns ("Why do you keep bringing it up? Can't you just move past it?") is unempathetic at best.  

 My now-ex also said things like "Why can't you love me for me?"  The problem with such a phrase is that, as you correctly discern, it is an accusation that denies the real issue and suggests the problem is not that their shift in gender identity has fundamentally altered your relationship, but your reaction to that alteration.  This is a tactic that is part of the classic pattern of an abusive dynamic (look up DARVO).  It's also logically incoherent, because this question ("Why can't you just love me for me?") at its core suggests that the spouse remains who he is "inside," and that we are somehow rejecting that inner self.  Yet at the same time our spouses are telling us that they are NOT who we have believed them to be, and that they are rejecting that person. They cannot, however, be both the same person and an entirely different person.  If it's so important for them to renounce their maleness, they can't also demand that we pay no attention to the alteration. They want to believe, and will claim, that "the person inside" has always been "female" and that the "body doesn't matter."  ("Why can't you just love me for me?" "Why can't you just get past it?")  But the body matters a great deal to them, or they wouldn't seek to change it to align it with their inner sense of who they "are."  They ought to be able to understand that our experience of them, even our love for them, includes our experience of that body.  My now-ex once disowned his maleness with the statement "I hate my penis and balls swinging between my legs," to which I said, "Your maleness was a fundamental reason I fell in love with you."  How is it they can't see the illogic behind, "My body shouldn't matter to you, but it matters to me, and matters  more to me than you and our marriage do."

No wonder you are feeling such intolerable cognitive dissonance and sorrow.  

   

 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (February 14, 2021 11:34 am)

AuroraMoon,
   Here are some useful resources for partners of men who decide they’re transgender:

Academic and Professional:
  Michael Bailey, "The Man Who Would Be Queen."  About autogynephilia.  It's available online for free and downloadable.  Bailey is a research psychologist at Northwestern Univ.
 
 Donna Chapman and Benjamin Caldwell: “Attachment Injury Resolution in Couples  When One Partner is Transgender”
Journal of Systemic Therapies, Vol 31, No. 2, 2012, pp36-53
(full text of article available online; even if your husband has not transitioned, what is said in this article applies)

  Anne Lawrence, "Men Trapped in Men's Bodies/Becoming What We Love."  Lawrence is a trans person and an MD, a psychologist who treated (now retired) trans-identified males (transwomen).  Lawrence maintains an online presence and there are articles there.
 
http://www.annelawrence.com/autogynephilia_&_MtF_typology.html
 
Autogynephilia: An Underappreciated Paraphilia Anne A. Lawrence Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alta., Canada
 
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3eb9/a449b840ef525436454c4f658b8d364d194f.pdf
 
 
Memoirs/Accounts by Wives
 
Those who left:

 Christine Benvenuto: "Sex Changes."     A memoir

   “Naeferty”  (a pseudonym)  Naeferty ran a blog about her experiences with her own trans identified male partner.  Read the post "Gas Mark Six" and the comments.
 
https://makemorenoisemanc.wixsite.com/mysite/post/a-plea-for-help-for-feminists-from-a-trans-widow
 
A podcast: How my ex-husband’s transition made me feel
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06xvbsc   (this is one of the resources on the site "transwidows voices" that I mentioned before)
 
In addition to these resources about transgendered spouses, I found ChumpLady's site valuable beyond words.  It's ostensibly a site for those who have been cheated on, but there is much of value there, and entries on boundaries, healthy relationships (reciprocity), the difficulty and rewards of leaving a spouse, and the outlines of disordered personalities (you will find a lot there on narcissism, entitlement, and the tactics of DARVO, etc (blame shifting, minimization, etc).  I credit what I learned there with the scales falling from my eyes and giving me a frame of reference through which to understand my spouse's manipulations of me.  It has been the single most important source of information and strength, and I credit it with teaching me what I needed to know to be able to gather up my courage and leave.  It continues to be a source of support and wisdom for me as I make my new life alone, no easy task after 35 years of marriage.  I, too, was a child in a dysfunctional home (my father was mentally ill and violent), and I have learned a lot from this site about healthy relathionships.

Also helpful to me was the book "Boundaries" by Adelyn Birch, which is available on Amazon.  It's short and to the point, about how to rebuild after an unhealthy relationship, and how to set healthy boundaries.  
 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (February 14, 2021 5:04 pm)

You are so very welcome.  I remember how "whatasham" was so helpful to me when I arrived here, and how Duped, and Lyonene (to name just two of the women in our situation), and jkpeace,Jen S, and longwayhome, married to gay men, have been companions on this journey.  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (February 14, 2021 11:03 pm)