Living in my husband's closet was slowly killing me.  The stress of living an inauthentic life, feeling as if I needed to avoid everyone's eyes, and that every interaction I had with family, friends, and colleagues was conducted from behind a screen, raised my stress levels and kept me isolated, which I now realized worked to normalize the situation.
   I told my best friend, a lesbian, immediately, with my husband's approval.  (I think he thought she'd be "on his side.")  I don't know what I'd have done without that outlet.
   A year or so later, I found the SSN, and began posting.  At first I posted as a guest (that was when you could still do that), and then I signed in.   To read others' experiences and to have you all give me your perspective on my own situation was a great eye opener and help, even when you challenged me.  I moved from guest to member after I finally spoke to a SSN volunteer in my town on the phone.  I still remember that afternoon.  I was almost afraid to speak out loud on the phone, and when I hung up, I was simultaneously overwhelmed with relief and afraid my husband might find out, but also determined that I had a right to tell my own story.  A week or so later, I followed up on that call by telling a friend, the soul of discretion, at work.  By then I had decided I needed someone in my everyday life who knew what was going on in my life.  To have her support was huge.
   In late July and early August (this past week) I told members of my family.  They, too, have all been supportive, a validation I didn't know I needed as badly as I needed it, as my subsequent gratitude to them has revealed. 
  I still struggle with balancing the right to tell my story with a desire not to "out" my husband, who works in the same place I do.  I suspect that once I'm divorced, I may open up a bit to some of my friends at work, in order to regain the honesty we once shared.  For now, though, I'm in stealth mode, so I need to keep my mouth shut, which I remind myself to do many times a day, as the closer I get to telling him we're divorcing, the harder it is to stay quiet.
   
  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (August 17, 2017 2:22 pm)

I told everyone.  Hell, it's so entertaining to everyone that I tell cab drivers.  Snort.

Kel

I love what you said here, jk, both that gayness isn't anything to be ashamed of, and so why hide it, and that it isn't "TGT" but "TGT plus the GID thing."  

This helped me in thinking about my own options for disclosing the truth of my life to others.  My husband insists to me that his autogynephilia, his desire to desire himself while dressed in women's clothes, is merely "an alternative sexuality," but he continues to hide it, out of shame, he says, as well as from his legitimate fears of encountering transphobic behavior.  

But that hiding is what's done the most damage, I think, to him, to me, and it created a dynamic in our family that can't help but to have affected our son.  

When last week I finally, after two and a half years, told my mother what's been going on, she said unhesitatingly and with a strong conviction that I should tell my adult son because he "deserves to know the truth of who his father is."  

I suspect she said that out of her own experience with my father, who was bipolar, attempted suicide regularly (and finally succeeded), was insanely jealous of my mother, and badmouthed her throughout their 30 year marriage to others, including her children, and continued to badmouth her afterwards, for ending the marriage, after all those long years of keeping everything contained within the family as our family "secret." Even as a child I knew there was something shameful about us--but only after I was an adult and he had killed himself and I had been forced to process our family dynamics did I realize that it wasn't that my father had a mental illness that was the source of our shame.  It was the secretiveness.  Secrecy begets shame.

     I know part of why she said what she did came from a desire to protect me from the same badmouthing she experienced.  She doesn't want secrecy because she knows it will enable my husband to control the narrative and blame me, which could lead to my son to blaming me.  But I think she also perceives the same essential point that you've made: "keeping a secret is what has caused us all to be here," and "telling the truth" is necessary to "process the truth" and "untwist" the "twisted world" we've been trapped in.  

  I used to think that what I'd tell people is that my husband had been keeping a marriage-changing secret from me for some years, and when he finally revealed it I tried to accommodate myself to it but ultimately found I couldn't.  More recently, I've thought I will be more honest than that, and say that my husband revealed a sexuality at odds with mine, and although I tried to accommodate myself to it, it was in the end impossible.  That's the essential truth.

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (August 19, 2017 8:15 am)

In the early stages, I only knew about his affair with a woman.  And I told a few close friends and was still in thinking we could work things out.  I felt ashamed.  I felt it was my fault somehow. 

And then when I found out that TGT was something he had acted on and hidden despite many conversations about his SSA 'curiousity' with the porn and gaydar etc.  I still kept his secret for many months feeling absolutely devastated, beyond even what the affair revelation which was HUGE.  It was the lies, the compassion I had tried to show for all his choices that had been difficult for ME!   And his complete lack of honesty all that time.  20+ years!! 

Now I have told my sons, and my family and his.  And I do tell anyone my story.  A bit amusing and unbelievable! 

And I don't want anyone NOT to know what a crazy mindfuck I have been through and still am struggling to come to terms with.  It is so crazy that I still am sad too.  It is like an emotional rollercoaster and those who care about me needed to know to give me the support I needed to stay AWAY from him.  And I need to tell it to see and experience how other people react to it.

Because in a way I have tried too hard to be compassionate with HIS difficulties with his SSA and not had enough compassion for myself and how difficult this all is to process.  He has had many many years to get comfortable with his choices.  I had no preparation for the shock of learning of his double life and endless deceit.  The whole narrative of 'coming out' and how difficult it is blah blah blah.....actually really enrages me because now I feel ZERO sympathy for my GIDX who has explored and now made a choice all in the safety of his marriage.  Meanwhile I was just a chump.  And treated like one.

I shared my story pretty liberally: if he had left me I was going to make sure everyone knew why. I wasn't having anyone speculating that there was something wrong with me. I even told his family when he did not have the courage to do so within the time frame I'd set. He wasn't happy about that last one and at least one of the children wasn't either.

It all worked out fine though. His family didn't throw him out or me. They appreciated the honesty that he hadn't provided. Some told me they'd suspected. He got over it because they accepted the new reality. His friend is welcomed and so am I. 

When I told one female friend the reason we were separated she immediately blurted out "You must meet ____" and then she told ____ about me and he figured out a way to meet me a few months later. He was a widower and both of us were raw but we've helped each other heal. I didn't expect to fall in love so soon but sharing can have unexpected benefits