Tired,

I've been off here a bit but just catching up on email alerts and I've had to pick my jaw up from the floor a few times on these last comments but firstly, before I forget.....do any others husbands have fathers with the same proclivity?

Uhhhhhh YA!!! We found oud from one of my TGH's fellow girlfriends that inf act HIS OWN FATHER is TG. He is also an asshole. Left 2 wives, series of kids & finally hooked up with a woman who controls his every move. I love it. He's 80 now & I suspect he still dresses, although in the privacy of his home now.

My husband has 3 brothers, 2 of them are also suddenly going thru divorces. I also suspect the one brother is going thru TG problems because he said he's "seeing a therapist to help him get thru something" 

On the mention about huusband being the social one? Not in my house. I was always the social one, him the "strong silent type". In fact, he told me when we were first married that "I talk too much" at his family functions. Dick. Now, after 25 years of being beaten down & physically unwell, he is the social one, especially when in drag. In fact, he thrives on the attention, prancing around events so people can take a photo with him. Ya, he's a real hero. I had one girl tell me how lucky I was to be married to a TG. I clearly was not in agreeance. She said she wished her own boyfriend was TG. That was the last time I went out with him. I'm a third wheel, he could care less If I'm there, dying in the bathroom or having sex with the bartender. I sure as hell don't need any more reinforcement how bloody lopsided society is with support & understanding in the TG world. And I refuse to be his fan any more. I know I am naturally & genuinely more social & people comfortable than he is, even in drag, and I am definitely not reliant on him, but the fact is, after all these years of being isolated, plus being physically broken, I'm too bloody tired to get out there. 

With regards to the timing of his amping up the CD/Tg? He started it big time (purchasing more clothes, silicone tits, wigs etc) when he was hitting midlife, discovered he had a heart condition (lots of operations), yes, my daughter was going thru puberty. He REALLY amped it up over the last 5 years as I have been unemployed, physically unable to work, dependent! they really LOVE & need a woman to be vulnerable & at their mercy in some way to have the freedom to go full throttle, not give that one last damn. That saying "The only way some people can keep you is by keeping you down"? Ya, him to a T. 

He also stopped having sex with me when I got pregnant. 23 years ago. I pretty much had to beg for anything after that. So the idea that that they are jealous of any REAL woman in their family, with all her "privileges" is entirely believable. All these years when I make the effort to get out of slumpy mode & really bring it make-up/hair/clothes, he NEVER says a thing!! My daughter will prompt him (guilt him) into noticing. He absolutely is jealous of me. Funny, I used to be jealous of "her", for all she stole from me, for being the ever growing "other woman" in my marriage. Now I just have zero effing respect for either of them. They're both selfish & I would never choose either one of them as my friend.

I am in therapy, sporatically albeit. It is shitloads of money in Canada. $250/hr, but she is a Godsend. She does not give any sympathy to him/her. She had one beatiful piece of advice for me that I think works for anyone who has had a life of trauma. "Re draw your blue print" It's a bit kitchy , but it helps me feel like I have some power in this shitstorm, to move away from the cruel mother & shithead narcissist husband. Plus, she swears nearly as much as me.

This is a particularly rough time of the year as we approach halloween. Being in the same home still, having to be around all the costume fanfare & seeing how much friggen money he is spending is a test of my sanity & patience. Some days it's bearable, most days I want to tell him to dial it the fack down already. They really do think they are all that at Halloween. Always the bride.



 

I so wish I would have found this site earlier. To finally see that I am not alone! Some of your situations are so close to mine - I just can't believe it. My first serious relationship was a physical and mentally abusive nightmare. Then one day I met "him". Thought he was wonderful-trusted that he would not hurt me in the ways my ex did. I was just so happy to finally have a "normal " relationship that I just ignored some of the things that were going on. We started playing lil sex roles - I thought it was just for fun. Then suddenly I saw just how much he was enjoying dressing up - he really thought he was the shit! So I stopped it - said no more of this. And stupidly thought that was the end of it. Over the years I've caught him watching his transgender porn and pictures - he would say it was no biggie. Then I would just shove it to the back of my mind. I thought he just liked dressing up, boy was I wrong. Last year I caught him again and we had a blow up. I had a sickening feeling that it was bigger than I realized, And then he said it - "I'm transgender"
It was horrible. He had been seeing a therapist, and I went in with him so we could talk about it. I've been trying ever since to make our marriage work, with the understanding that he wasn't going to do it anymore. Said he knew he'd lose me if he did. But I don't think I can hide from this anymore. I've finally realized that's what I've been doing all these years - hiding from the dirty lil secret. im sick all the time - wanting to hate him but feeling like I deserved all this bull because I basically knew but married him anyways. Sorry this is so long - and I hope it isn't to whiney. I'm just so lost - I need help! Thank you for listening.

Feeling Cheated, I second Sun's comments.  You didn't "basically know" anything more than that you enjoyed playing around with gender in bed with the man you loved.  What you didn't know--and couldn't know--was that your partner/husband wasn't "playing"!  I did the same; I indulged my husband's desire to "act like a woman" in bed, and even enjoyed it, because to me we were engaged in activities that were gender bending.  To me all activities are just activities, not evidence of naturalized gender difference (definition: traits and behaviors women--or men--exhibit simply because they are female--or male; you know, the ones that "prove" women are the opposite of and less than men, like emotional or passive.).  It took me a while to understand that to him these were not games or play, but that he was deadly serious and actually believed he was inhabiting femininity or womanhood, "feeling like a woman" because he was doing these things, even if he didn't think he "was" a woman while doing them.  That is, I came to understand he wasn't gender bending; he was occupying the opposite pole, and in ways that I found insulting to women: "a woman's deepest wish is to penetrated and I want to be 'taken'" and other traditional and (misogynistic) conventional ideas about what constitutes woman.  (This is what exposes the trans argument that they are "undoing the gender binary." Undoing the gender binary would be unhooking gender from all behavior; but for these types, it's all about the gender binary and claiming the opposite pole.)  And while my husband and I were having this unbridled sex--the most unbridled he'd ever been with me in over 40 years together--outside the bedroom he was extending his actions into body modification--shaving his chest and underarm hair (because "women are smooth")--and dress (wearing women's underwear underneath his regular work clothes, lounging around in a dress in the mornings before work).  These additional manifestations brought me face to face with clarity: if "shaving equals woman," and I, a natal female, shave, am I, who must shave my facial hair, not a woman?  If "lace and satin and swirly skirts and ruffles equals woman," am I, a natal female who prefers the comfort of pants and flannel shirts, not a woman?  When I confronted my husband with these contradictions, contradictions that put him into conflict with his desire to believe he was really experiencing what actual women experience , he engaged in all sorts of verbal gymnastics to justify or explain his behavior, the best of them, in that it helped me understand his actions, is this (a position he has arrived at because I have made him confront his behavior, not just let him believe his own promptings): he is driven to "feminize" himself, and although he (now) doesn't think shaving makes him a woman, or makes a woman, it does being him closer to what he isn't and can't have--he's "smoother," so to speak, than a man would ordinarily be.  And that's what he wants: to be closer to female/woman and further from male/man. (And yet, I remain a woman who likes male/men, which means, Houston, that sexually we've got a problem....)
   And yes, this is a mental condition. It's called "autogynephilia," a sexual paraphilia, and like another such sexual paraphilia, pedophilia, it pushes those who have it to believe its promptings.  Think of it: the "Man-Boy Love Association" (NAMBLA) says they aren't predators but that they simply "love children" and argue that the boys they "love" "love them back."  The origins of AGP are physical and biological, yes, but that doesn't make it just an alternative sexuality (like homosexuality).  It's a sexual orientation in which the object of the attraction is an imaginary woman the man imagines inside himself.   Men with this psychological condition suffer from body dysphoria--they hate their male bodies and wish they had female bodies and could be women.  Somehow, those with AGP (autogynephilia) have been able to push the line that their problem is not their body dysphoria, but us--that they suffer not from the mental condition that prompts them to hate their bodies and wish to be the other sex and express the characteristics of the other gender, but from societal prejudice.  
    I compare what my husband has to what I have: chronic depression (which I have had far longer than I've known my husband).  Depression is a constant in my life, but I don't go around indulging it and acting out and expecting others to validate it and indulge me when I'm in the grip of it.  The chronically depressed would like to see the cause of their depression as coming from outside themselves, and to understand their depression as a rational response to those bad circumstances outside themselves. (I'm not talking here about "situational depression," which can be set off by the grief and stress of actual circumstances like a death, etc.) The chronically depressed are driven to think the cause is outside themselves, not that their pessimistic outlook on the world or their own worth comes from within and is  "the depression talking," as I put it to myself when I find myself exhibiting the symptoms of depression.  But to indulge me when I'm depressed isn't going to help me out of my depression. If when I'm depressed you validate my sense of the world as hopeless, that is no going to help me get out of my depression.  And I'm not going to say the problem when I'm depressed is not my own behavior and outlook but that others don't recognize the rightness of my position that the world and I are hopeless.  That's a recipe for enabling me, allowing me to continue living in my delusions, and it could end with my committing suicide.  
    Over the years I have learned how to manage my depression--to be alert for its signs, to keep it at bay, to intervene when I can feel it getting worse, to ask for help.  This is what I think we ought to be doing for those with AGP--not encouraging them to indulge their delusions that they can transform themselves into women and supporting their push to re-define woman in ways that decenter actual natal women and their legitimate concerns.  I understand that there are no good medications for AGP; I understand there are degrees of suffering from body dysphoria, and some are intense, akin to major depression.  I will even go so far as to say that for those suffering the worst body dysphoria, SRS may be the best treatment--and that such a person should not be then discriminated against.  But to normalize (and even celebrate) AGP as a harmless alternative sexual orientation?  Nope.  And this, finally, is what puts me at odds with my husband, who would like me to embrace, enthusiastically, his perspective.  Well, he's an adult and entitled to his own beliefs and to act on them--but don't ask me to drink the trans kool-aid.
   Feeling Cheated, my husband right now is in a period of either repressing it or hiding it from me.  I don't know which, because he won't talk about it.  I think he's conflicted: he feels ashamed of his desire and doesn't want to feel ashamed of it (and he can't help it, after all, so why should he feel ashamed?--well, I think it's because in our society a man who belongs to the dominant and "better" sex but who wants to be a woman, the "lesser" sex, clearly has a problem), and his need not to feel ashamed makes him defensive. Add in the paraphilia's push to make him believe his delusion is real, and it's a disaster.  
   I have recently realized that my husband's self-absorption, the consequence of his paraphilia, will never go away, and that means he will never be able to be fully present in our relationship.  That, more than anything, has been the proverbial straw.  
   I hope that what others say here will help you clarify your own position and provide you support as you decide what you'll do.  That's what being here has done for me, and I'm very grateful for it.

OOHC,
"Verbal gymnastics " wow, I LOVE that phrase, it's so perfect for 99&  of our situations. And to you, and Sham, and sun and Feeling cheated, you have certainly enlightened me on this issue, holy crap! You are all amazing! Keep up the good fight to be free , I'm cheering you on big time!

OOHC,
I too had a jaw drop moment when I heard "The One" comment about narc spouses. Did we all have some Silkwood "glow" about us to draw these assholes in?!

And no worries, I too justified in my own head all kinds of reasons for sticking it out, one more year & then I would promise to "reevaluate" the situation. I thought all the time "What if this is as good as it gets? What if I find out that 50% of the male population is in fact CD/TG and I've thrown out a long established relationship only to find every man at the speed dating event is also TGGID?" I realize it all had to do with having zero self worth but that acknowledgement was too painful to admit so i called the excuses for staying something else: he's my best friend. he's not a lazy dick, he's just a liberal guy & it must be destiny that he was sent to me because I'm also liberal......seriously, the crap we tell ourselves when the truth is so goddamn painful is amazing. Stockholm Syndrome much?

Dee, It's so wonderful & encouraging to know someone else is learning & "getting" the TG spouses' plight. To be honest, I'm being enlightened as well, hearing other's stories that mirror mine after years of feeling so isolated and also, by putting it all down "on paper' here, it's as though I'm speaking in the third person & hearing my own story for the first time, as a bystander. It sure has made me stand up & take notice.

Cheers
Sham