Tinkerbelle,
   For your own sanity, you need to establish some boundaries around his crossdressing; you need to decide what you want to hear about and see, and tell him so.  Otherwise you'll be co-opted into helping him dress, choose clothes, and act out his fantasies--drawn in, in other words.  Read "whatasham"'s posts here on the forum for how that works out.
   As for the "suicide" thing: this is what the trans activist sites say.  That the only way to treat gender dysphoria is by transition.  De-transitioners will tell you that is not only not true, but that it's damaging.  Hormone treatments and surgery are permanent.  But the dysphoria doesn't go away.  
  

Duped,
   The thing is, hanging around in stockings IS just sexual for them; it's just low level.  Your question "What real woman does that [wear stockings to watch tv]?" points to exactly that. The whole time they're there sitting around in women's clothes, they are AWARE of it, and excited by it.  This is one way you realize this isn't about being a real woman, it's acting out a sexual fantasy.  If you read around on trans boards you will see lots of talk about how just wearing women's clothes turns them on.  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (April 28, 2017 4:02 pm)

If you do not have a counselor I strongly suggest that you get one because if your husband wants you to remain in the marriage you are going to be subjected to all kinds of pressure and you need someone to not only help you sort it out but to help you define what you want going forward.

I did not realize until I was divorced after several years of separation how diminished I had become while  trying to keep us together.  Even though he was the one who came out and left I am sure that he still blames me for the marriage's failure but I am no longer accepting his version of reality. 

Your husband didn't just discover post-marriage that he wanted to dress as a woman and whatever else he desires, just as my ex did not discover post-marriage that he was sexually attracted to men. These needs or drives are deep-seated and the why's don't matter for us: we need to recognize how much of our own needs and drives we are expected to suppress so that our spouses can fulfill theirs and to be strong enough to say "I don't" when the reality is too much.

 

 

Abby wrote:

I did not realize until I was divorced after several years of separation how diminished I had become while  trying to keep us together.

 

 

This hits me strongly.  I'm already compromising.  I'm already going against what I believe.  <sigh>

I have drawn the line though and I'm firm about it.  If he wants to dress in public, take estrogen or start the official change I'm gone.  I do not want to be in a lesbian relationship.  My confidence in him to not be able to take it that far is very low.  I've told him to see a counselor so he can figure it out and I will give him some time.

Right now I'm stuck anyway until we can get the second house finished.  I'm just thankful we never lived there together.  I'm also thankful we do not have children.

I do think I should probably see a counselor too.

Tinkerbelle,
  I am happy to see you recognize how you are already being asked to compromise and knowing this is an unhealthy denial of your self. 
    If I may offer some advice from my own situation, please guard yourself against being drawn back in.  After my husband saw a therapist (a trans person) who approached their therapy from the perspective of "how to transition" rather than "getting to the root cause of/exploring your gender dyphoria," he began to panic about how difficult the rest of his life was likely to be, and he asked me for comfort.  Like the chump (ok, compassionate person) I am, I gave it to him.  And I got drawn in again.  I wish I had recognized that my husband's asking me for comfort was part of a pattern of self-involvement, one in which I had become secondary to his desire to feminize himself.  I should have realized it (in the first days after he'd disclosed to me and I was still in shock and reeling, he'd already selfishly said to me,  a former director of a women's studies program, "I don't know why you can't help me with this; gender is what you do!"), but I didn't.  
    It's now two years later.  We had a "honeymoon period" of six months in which I got drawn into his "pink fog" and tried to adapt myself to sex with a man who needed to pretend he was a woman.  However, after I saw that his actions were escalating and the goal posts of what he was doing and how he was thinking about it were moving, discovered how secretive he was being about many of his actions and thoughts, and realized how offensively, stereotypically feminine his sense of the "woman" he was acting as was, I began to come to my senses again, to gain some perspective, regain my equilibrium, and recover my sense of self and my vision for what I needed and wanted and thought.  
    During this same time, I also began to feel the full effects of how stifling it was to me to live in his closet--it meant I was distanced from all my friends, colleagues, and family and felt as if I couldn't be authentic with them about what was happening in my life--and began to resent like hell the fact that at home he expected to be able to switch into and live in "girl mode" and that I would accommodate it, while he continued to leave home every day as the man he continued to be in public. I got only his "woman" self; he didn't want to be "pressured to act male" at home because he had been doing it all day at work, and he needed "relief."  Finally I realized that I was being asked to bear all the costs of his decisions, while he was unwilling to bear any himself.  He was getting to have his cake and eat it, too, while I got a shit sandwich and was expected to smile while eating it, and act as if I enjoyed it--as if it were cake!--so his experience of cake-eating wouldn't be compromised. 
   I'm telling you all this because the line you have drawn for yourself ("dress in public, take estrogen, start the official change") is the same exact one I drew for myself.  If your husband does what mine has, lives at home as a woman and at work as a man, maintaining a secret life, something like what I went through is what awaits you.  They are like closeted gay men acting on their sexual impulses with men, but instead of taking their pleasures outside the home and marriage, they want them inside the home and marriage, and for us to not only accept, but participate and approve.  They need us to be actors in their fantasy to be able to believe it and validate their sense of themselves.  At the same time, they are like cheating spouses, except that in their case "the other woman" is them--and they see themselves now as lesbians and still want to have sex with us, as lesbians! All the same blows a straight spouse endures when a partner comes out as gay we do, too--the questioning of the past, the undermining of one's own sense of one's sexuality and self--but with its own particular additional mind fuck of enormous proportions.  It's disorienting and crazy making. 
   If I had to live these past two years over again, I would not have yielded to my husband's request for comfort, and would have steeled my resolve.  There's a difference between self-protective and selfish, and I have never been good at seeing that they are different; I've always thought acting for my self is selfish, and others come first.  But they are different, and you need to be very, very self-protective, especially if you are going to continue to live with him until your new house is finished.  
   I can tell you, also from experience, that distancing yourself emotionally while co-habiting is very difficult, and makes the co-habiting more difficult, because he will resent your distancing.  It's a fine line to draw, and you will have to be very self protective as you draw it.  To distance oneself emotionally, one has to, as Rob once said, Observe, not Engage.  From my experience, the necessary ways to protect yourself are these: don't participate in his dressing up, don't have sex with him, don't even sleep in the same bedroom.  
   I'm so sorry you're going through this, Tinkerbelle.  I've been in this situation a little over two years now; I've been on this forum since September 2016, and every time I see another woman write in with a tale of how her partner of 6, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 years has decided he wants to be a (caricature of a) woman, my heart just sinks.  I hope you are reading all the posts here on transgender/cross dressing; it helps one get clarity and perspective when one can see the patterns of behavior, both theirs and ours.  You are thinking about the love you feel for your spouse and your commitment to him and to the marriage, but he is thinking only about gratifying his desire to be a woman, and to him you are worth something only to the degree you can make that easier for him.  My husband said to me, laying down the law "To the extent you can enjoy me as a woman, we have a future together."  At the time, I thought of this as a threat and a challenge, and panicked that I would lose my marriage and that I was a "bad feminist" for not toeing the trans line.  Now I see it as clarifying: it said what I refused to hear, that I came second and my husband's commitment was not to me and to the marriage but to himself and the gratification of his desires.  And now I also have a different response to it: even though I could pretend, for his sake, when I thought he was still essentially my heterosexual husband, the fact is that I can't and don't enjoy him as a woman AT ALL, and that means, just as he said, that we have no "future together."  Now I have my own corollary to his pronouncement: "To the extent you can see your desire to feminize as a delusion and get help for it we have a future together."  And I already know his response to that.  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (April 30, 2017 9:10 am)