Hello, 

My husband and I have had a difficult marriage. There have been times we have gotten along just fine, but other times when things were strained and hurtful. I don't even know if I could share everything that has gone on in our lives, so many sad things. We have two lovely children that we both love. 

Recently my husband started having panic attacks (triggered by a vacation to Mexico), and started seeing a psychiatrist for antidepressant medication and went on FMLA leave for his job. His job as a truck driver/miner at a large mine was becoming too stressful. He had also experienced homophobic assumptions and innuendo from co-workers and bosses, as well as emotional abuse. So we decided I would increase my work hours and he would quit and we would make the best of it until he could get the panic attacks under control. 

After much emotional anguish, he told me one day after I got home that he was gay. I told him no, you aren't gay (which was true), as he had told me over and over he wasn't interested in men. Then I suggested to him that he might be a transgender person. He had often told me (several years after we were married of course) that he thought of himself as female, and it would shock him when he looked at himself in the mirror. He also hated his body hair, beard, and other parts of himself. He is a very average, normal looking guy, attractive as well. 

Long story short, he thought about that and decided it was true, and as he thought back through his life it made sense, things that he had done, gay people hitting on him all the time, friends who assumed he wanted gay sex, girlfriends putting makeup on his face during his sleep, all sorts of weird stuff that he didn't understand why it happened. He would buy me sexy clothes secretly wishing he could wear them, grow his hair out wishing that it would make him more feminine. After extensive online research, he now says he wants to do HRT, get a wig and get his beard removed, but has no interest in getting a sex change operation. He's even told me a few female names he likes. He's terrified of coming out to any male person.

So now we are several weeks in and I'm struggling with the implications of it. We had a tough conversation the other night where I laid out to him that if he turned into a woman (which he is going to do eventually), then I would have to become a bi-sexual person, which I am fairly certain I am not. I have always wanted to be married to a man, in every sense of the word. He had not thought of it that way, and I could see the dismay and denial on his face at the truth of that statement. He accepted it quietly, though I could tell he didn't want to fit those types of labels, and just wanted us to create our own sort of sexual reality. I think he's rather wishing in the clouds on this one, and I felt sad I had to bring him down to earth on the topic.

However, this person has changed dramatically since coming out to me. He quit drinking cold turkey with some medical help(we were spending up to $800 a month on alcohol), quit smoking and quit caffeine. He is on muscle relaxers and anti-depressants, and they are helping him even out emotionally. I have a small website design business on the side, and he decided he wanted to learn how to do that so he could work from home, and has been diligently learning coding for a week. 

He has only come out to his counselor and a few other women in that office, and he feels supported there, even more so than with me. I have done my best to be his friend, but I think he wants more from me than I can give. He wants me to totally accept him and be ok with all of this and screw what the world thinks. I mean, he's not giving up his penis, right? So everything should be ok? But at the same time his anger has virtually evaporated, he has been very sensitive towards my feelings, letting me know that he has massive regret for not figuring all this out before we got married, that it hurts him that he is hurting all of us through this process. He has a porn problem, I knew about that a couple of years ago, but he has not cheated on me and I know he loves me. 

It all feels very complicated. He told me that he would only do what I was comfortable with, but I know that is a stage for resentment down the road, and fights and boundary pushing eventually. So I know that if I stay, I am going to have to accept whatever he wants to do to become who he wants to be as a woman. I don't feel like he/she is co-opting my femininity, something that he celebrates and wants to share with me, like bestie girlfriends. But I just can't do it. I just can't be bestie girlfriends with my former husband. So I feel guilt. 

I also don't know if I love him enough to go through this with him, to give up so much of myself and my own dreams. I knew our marriage was going to be hard, but I did not bargain him becoming female as a part of for better or worse. That is outside of my zone of what should be worked at in a marriage. I feel like it is a basic betrayal of marriage vows, what I signed on for in the first place. I have stayed through everything else, emotional abuse, pushing, fighting, insults about my family and myself, anger towards my children, working with my own anger and disappointment, working through all of that, both of us growing as better people, and now this. It just feels like too much to voluntarily go through. I know I have a choice. It's easy to get divorced in my state as long as both spouses agree on everything, which wouldn't be hard to accomplish between us at this point. 

My husband even told me that he understood if I wanted to leave. He is a good person, a good person with dysphoria and an awful childhood and overbearing emotional single mother, who has been betrayed and hurt over and over by friends and family. I have my own issues and difficulties retaining friends, but nothing like what he has experienced in his life. So I have so much compassion for him, but I'm finding any sexual attraction I had slipping away, and emotional exhaustion and apathy replacing it. We are still good friends through all of this. I came home and cried on his shoulder the other night. He jokes about being the first overweight trans person on YouTube. We have forgiven each other so much, over and over and over, but I don't think I can do this. I don't think I can live with a wife in 10 years or however long it takes to transition. And my children are young, and if we do get divorced, I think now would be a better time than when they are 14 years old. And I feel like a failure. He told me he loves me, it feels wrong to divorce, and he really hopes we can work out a compromise. But I feel like I would be holding him back, and we would resent each other on the deepest levels of our personal selves, and I don't see a path towards my own happiness. 

Thanks for reading.