I'm so sorry for the loss you're experiencing. I'm still living with my wife but I feel the same rejection.  I told her tonight that I'm working to not care about her but this marriage was supposed to last our whole life and I was not prepared for this. Sometimes I walk in the room and I feel like less than nothing to her, like a void. I don't know why she still matters to me or why I can't forget about her and move on.  It hurts and it's damn lonely at times.   Other times I think I can do so much better and I'm able to imagine a time when I'll be happy again.

Last edited by Supernova (June 15, 2024 10:07 pm)

Me too. Ups and downs. Days when I never want to see him again (most days at the moment), and days when I wish I could hug him and be with him. 30+ years is a long time to spend with someone and not feel their absence. I think it's just hard, and that's normal, and it will take time. I just let myself feel sad and cry if I need to, knowing that the next feeling will be along soon enough!

I think that is the difference between us and them..  we miss them and feel loss.   They somehow are capable of throwing us out like the day's garbage..and not feeling a thing.  It's a scary thing..its not normal.  Or at least it's the thoughts and actions of someone that we should not want to be around.



Lots of time to process and rationalize it but at the end of it all my conclusion is they have a "broken moral core".   When it started..the lie when they married us or when they started cheating .. it's still broken and wrong morality.

Last edited by Rob (June 17, 2024 1:41 pm)

“Lots of time to process and rationalize it but at the end of it all my conclusion is they have a "broken moral core".   When it started..the lie when they married us or when they started cheating .. it's still broken and wrong morality.“

Rob - yes. What I’ve found the hardest is that “we” are trying to love someone who for whatever reason does not love themselves and so is playing by a very different set of rules. I’d go to therapy with him - and he’d lie. I’d bend over backwards to “understand” and he’d take that occasion to walk right over me - doormat. I think they really are - or mine at least really is - so trapped in his own bs that he cannot see beyond it. So getting away is I think the only option. Took me years to see that! We took marriage vows etc. But you can’t have a healthy relationship with someone who refuses to get healthy and has no intention of being honest. Full stop.

Buzzybeez wrote:

New here. My husband just told me he wants to start HRT this summer. His transition has been an uphill battle. We get along and are affectionate to each other, but I'm suddenly struck by grief. Once HRT begins, I will lose more of my husband. He insists he'll still be himself, but reading similar stories, the transition will affect their emotions and outlook as well, won't it? What's gonna happen to us? Will our love guarantee we will survive his transition?

The idea of an uphill struggle may your interpretation of what it has been like so far. The truth for him, is that it has been a descent down a slippery slope. The trans widows I have spoken to over the years have all been very caring and empathetic women. They all by and large wanted to initially help their husbands deal with their inner demons and challenges out of the love they have for them. The idea of what it would be like, and what they would feel became very different very quickly once the transition became more evident both physically and emotionally. 
 He won’t still be himself. After all, this is precisely what he is transitioning from. Often, the person who gradually subsumes the original one is markedly different to the one they once knew. There tends to be a never ending need for validation and affirmations of the created female persona. They may need to redefine the relationship itself to reinforce the female personas feminine identity. This can be a need for their wife to agree that they are now both lesbians in a lesbian relationship. This is has two positive outcomes for them. They get to stay in the safety of the relationship, and it reinforces their need to identify as female. They cannot feel that they are transitioning if they are still a husband or a man on any level. As the transition progresses, the changes can come thick and fast. Many women learn to hate the squeaky voice and seemingly overtly feminine gesturing that is consummate more with a female impersonator or drag artist. They often describe feelings of grief for the death of their husbands, which leads to anger and frustration with who they now see as a perpetrator. Two particularly badly effected women were horrified by the fact that the new female version of what were their husbands, told them that their husbands were now dead and gone. While this would be a very honest assessment of what they themselves want to believe, it is of course a truly terrible thing to say to a loving wife who is already experiencing a sense of grief.
The physical changes and emotional changes will continue to a breaking point. A point at which you want it to stop. You may want things to go back to what they were. You may try to negotiate a path that attempts to limit the effects that a transition will have on both of you. You, like many women want to try and help and assist your husband with his needs. It is a laudable quality to have. But the man you loved will fade away. The person you loved will change. Through all of this you will mourn a little more every day.  For them, each step and milestone is exciting and rewarding. They will want you to share in this and be part of their re-birth. Some do, and can live in a redefined relationship. With compassion and compromise, understanding and support. It could still work out in some way. I think that this tends to also depend on the mental state of the transitioning partner, and also whether there are children involved. Mothers and children need to transition themselves along with the partner and Father. If they don’t want to, or simply and understandably struggle to, the transitioning partner may become highly frustrated at this and quite demanding. 
 I think that the women in the middle of this trauma have little in the way of support and understanding. That to even acknowledge their suffering is somehow trans hate. I separate trans hate from transphobic deliberately. To fear this transition is actually a very normal reaction to have. It is after all a fear of profound change that is detrimental to them as women, wives and partners to men. Men who they were once drawn to, and loved. The masculine qualities they trusted and admired, thrown away for something they don’t and can’t. Can your relationship survive? The simple and most honest answer is no. Any relationship you do have will be very different. Maybe you can enter into a lesbian physical and emotional relationship. Perhaps a two way platonic loving relationship based on mutual understanding and support, like sisters. Or, a mother daughter relationship where you assist and educate the new her in her journey into becoming a woman. Whatever it may be will be based on affirming his status as a woman. The question is not whether your love will or won’t survive this transition. It is whether your love will turn to grief. By the sounds of it. It has already started.

If I could hold you tight, I surely would.  If I could end this nightmare, I would, without thought or hesitation. All I can do is prepare you for what you are about to see and feel. So that in doing so, it is not, at least such a shock. The name of this thread is “I missed my husband today”. You will miss him everyday because he will still be there, but as a ghost of a reminder of what you have lost, and she has gained. You do have the strength to get through this. Through it is the only way there is. There is no way round it. Expect the worst and never blame yourself if you experience negative thoughts about any of it. YOU MATTER AS MUCH AS ANYONE IN THIS. PROBABLY MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE.