OurPath Open Forum
This forum is for discussion of issues related to Mixed Orientation relationships only, that is when one partner is heterosexual (straight) and one is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Questioning.
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- Abby
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Re: Husband of 16 Years is Questioning His Gender
I so understand the comments about making myself "small" during my marriage. One of the things I had lost was my own sexuality as I was rejected by my husband for years. When he announced he was gay and leaving me one of the things I put on my "to do" list right after consulting an attorney was to rediscover and reclaim it.
My mantra was "new lover/new lingerie" - not that I was looking for one at the time but it was my way of moving forward to where I hoped to be in the future. He was changing his look and I was changing mine. I got a push-up bra to point me in the right direction. I went to thrift shops and got new clothes to try out new looks and colors on the cheap. I started wearing makeup and doing my nails more often. I was out of his closet and becoming proud. I even went to see the movie "Magic Mike"- and realized how much I like men with body hair.
Why should we be expected by anyone - counselor/family member/friend/church - to suppress our sexual orientation and what turns us on to support them as they pursue what they say they are? If being true to who they are is so important to them then why shouldn't the same be true for us?
Try Gardening. It'll keep you grounded.
- OutofHisCloset
- Member
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Re: Husband of 16 Years is Questioning His Gender
Abby,
What you have to say about losing your own sexuality so resonates with me, because my husband, who has declared he's transgender, is now calling himself a lesbian. For us to have a relationship, I'm supposed to suppress or remake my own sexuality to enable his idea of himself as a "woman" having sex as a "lesbian" with another woman. As if wrapping my head around this idea isn't crazy-making enough as is, what I would see while this was happening way my 6'4" husband--male in every way--wearing women's lingerie.
What you have to say about new lingerie makes me think of how this situation has altered my own sense of clothing. My husband now genders everything! Clothing is no longer just something you wear, something you don't think about. Instead, every item of clothing has become laden with meaning, a means to an identity. Something so arbitrary has become the sign and symbol of "authenticity."
Looking forward to my future I cannot wait until I can regain my own sense of clothing and stop gendering every clothing choice and style. I want to be able to wear a man's t-shirt to bed again for its cut and roominess (and well constructed neck band, in stead of the flimsy ones on too many women's tees) without my husband saying "see, you wear men's clothing; what I do is no different" (it is, because I don't get a sexual thrill from wearing it or think it makes me "more like" a man and walk around aware of that all day). I will also be grateful when I can choose to be feminine when I want, too, without feeling his envy ("I wish I had your hair," he said to me one day--not "I love your hair, honey"); and it would be nice someday to have a man give me a compliment for my clothes, lingerie or not, to be aware of my body in them and appreciate it, instead of my role being to appreciate his body in women's lingerie as if it were a female's body, just as I will also appreciate being able to wear clothes and not think about my body, my sex, or my gender in them.
What he says he is has made it impossible for me to be who I am--and that's an irreconcilable difference.