I guess I can do Part Two here on this thread, too, so here it is: 

I allowed myself to get angry at how unfair it is that he flies under the radar and uses me for a beard.  I already allowed myself to get angry at what I suffer being in his closet, so this is the other side of that coin.
 
I have started seeing a vision of the life I can live not in the shadow of his transness.  I realized I will be taking responsibility for my own happiness, and that in doing so, I will have the power to work for my own happiness, which is not the case while I live in his closet.  This allowed me to begin to plan for it, and to look forward to it, and not just mourn what I thought I’d be losing.
 
I grieved: that I won’t be a partner, that I won’t move into the future as a partner.  But I also see that I don’t actually have a partner, I just appear to have one.  I have the form and semblance of a marriage and a partner, but without the function of either.  I thought about how this is what transwomen have: the form and semblance of a woman’s body—a faux vagina and hormone-and-surgically created breasts, but all without context or function.  That has helped me heal from the assault on my womanhood. 
 
I came up with a few phrases that help me laugh:  my Marine nephew’s Marine’s Christmas greeting, “ho-fucking-ho,” I transformed into a phrase to express my impatience with my husband’s sadz over not being a woman: “boo-fucking-hoo”; and, from the comments by someone on Chump Lady, “chuck it in the fuck-it bucket.”
 
I took an online retirement “quiz” that helps you find a place to retire that fits your interests, and articulated for myself what I want in a place to live—both in a town and in a house.
 
It took two full weeks for me to stop obsessing.  At the end of those two weeks, I’m no longer bargaining with myself about the necessity of divorce.
 
I power walked at least 5 k every day, by the ocean, with two amazing Amazon women who pushed me.  And on many days, I took an additional walk, just to listen to music or enjoy the beauty of the place where I am.  I emptied my mind and let the waves and clouds and light fill my eyes and the water and wind and inspiring music fill my ears. 
 
I realized that I am grieving—also grieving—the loss of my identity: 30+ years of being a wife, part of an extended family I will most likely lose, expectations of a shared future, memories of a shared past.
 
In the space of time it took to drink my morning coffee I saw myself as useless and unlovable and old and ugly, and then realized I was smart and creative and funny and active—and that the best things in his life were there because of me.  I saved him from being a drug addict, I prodded him to return to college and then graduate school, I made sure he didn’t spend all his inheritance on toys but put money down on a house, and I gave him a son, a son that in one of my husband's petulant moments of bemoaning how he was born too early to take advantage of today’s atmosphere of supporting transition for pre-adolescents (“boo-fucking-hoo!) he wished away!  
 
I worry about my son.  I will continue to worry, after I tell him, because this information is going to be a blow.  But I also refuse now to lie to him, because I want an honest relationship with him.  
 
In making friends here and seeing how accepting and welcoming people are, I realized that my fears of being alone are just that: irrational fears.  I have observed how people integrate themselves into a new community, and I learned from what I saw.
 
I realized how pitifully desperate were my early attempts to accommodate his desire to act like a woman.
 
I feel like I have had a “Kel” moment: “I’m done.”
 
I’m approaching real acceptance.  I’m no longer projecting onto him my own values and ideas about being partnered, so I’m seeing him and his values and actions more clearly.  I’m no longer spending mental effort trying to figure out what happened to him, to try to locate the beginning of the onset of symptoms, the outbreak of trans-fever.  In the end, I’ve realized, all that doesn’t matter.  It was all just a form of denial and bargaining.  In the end it doesn’t matter why he’s this way; what matters is that he is.  After you’re done with all the untangling and the bargaining and the denying and the making excuses, done with the hope, done with the “I have to understand this!”, you realize none of that matters.  When you finally accept things as they are, you know that all that agonizing, all that mental effort, all that time and focus on the other, was unnecessary and doomed to failure, that what it really was, was all just you, talking yourself into accepting reality.  The reality was always what you saw in front of you and refused to accept.  The only option I ever really had was “what am I going to do?”  Sometimes, I’ve decided, we have to just act, and let the emotions catch up.   “Figuring it out” is a delaying tactic that just postpones the inevitable and keeps us from having to do what in our heart of hearts we know we have to do.
 
I drew a boundary: I told my husband that when he left for a trip to his father’s he was not to hide his women’s clothes in my closet or my drawers (our son is housesitting), but that he had to take them to his office. 
 
I have begun to realize how staying closeted warps the personality of the closeted, and that he has no qualms about sacrificing me to keep his secret.
 
I’m shifting from the model of “a couple” to “a woman alone,” and thinking I need to seek out the company of other single women, so I can learn from them how it’s done.  I’m beginning to imagine it, what shapes I will give it, where I will live it, how I will find and make meaning for myself.  Letting go of the false to face the real frees me to act.  It also can fill me with sadness.

As Thelma (from the film "Thelma and Louise") said,  “Something in me’s crossed over, and I can’t go back.”
 
Today I was less preoccupied by the trans crap and the drama of whether to leave, why I should leave, why I have to leave.  I would like for today to become the norm. 
 
I’m almost feeling impatient now, to get back and get it done.  I’m at the point where I just want to get away from it, to walk away from it and begin the slow process of reconfiguring my life.  

Today it’s been one month that I’ve been here.
 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (July 20, 2017 6:12 pm)

OOHC,
You are a strong and amazing woman, and an eloquent speaker. Look how far you've come! I too was married over 30 years when I had enough, and am 2 .5 years out now.  The life I have now is not what I ever expected, but it's a good life filled with many, many blessings, as will your new life. I sleep easily and soundly at night now, free from an unhealthy and toxic relationship. I wish you continued peace my friend.

OOHC,

"..The scale is beginning to tip: the financial ease of staying no longer outweighs the emotional costs..."


That about sums it up.  There comes a point when money and fears do not matter...anything will be better than the way you are being treated.

Being away from the hurt is worth it.  I miss the person my ex used to be but thank God for getting me away from the person she became.

Walk forward away from the hurt.


 

Deleted

Last edited by Duped (November 11, 2019 3:18 pm)

Everyone,
   I didn't know whether to make a new thread or not, but none of the existing ones seemed quite right, so as I am the thread starter here, I thought this was probably the best place.  Maybe you can think of it as a fall update.

   On Friday (which actually was the equinox, and so the actual first day of fall), I saw a lawyer.  And this entire weekend I've felt terrific.  Energized, lighter, more optimistic, less beaten down by the weight of living with my husband in his closet.  

   Ever since I made the appointment, about a month ago (I had to wait because this lawyer has a busy caseload), I have felt as if I had made a move on my own behalf, on behalf of my emotional and physical health.  To have made that move enabled me to feel as if I had worth, that I counted, and I was then able to do some things on my own behalf--to resume and recommit to an exercise program that an injury late this summer sidelined, to make an appointment to have a health problem seen to, to order a bed frame so that I didn't have to keep sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the spare bedroom.

   After the meeting with the lawyer, that empowered feeling was intensified.   I even went home and put together the bed frame, and that night I slept on a bed of my own.  I was finally able to tell myself that I didn't deserve to sleep on a mattress on the floor like a homeless person in a flophouse because I had left the marital bed and didn't deserve a real bed.  I finally was able to say, hey, I didn't abandon my husband; he froze me out, rebuffing all my attempts at touch and intimacy.  I left out of self-preservation, because I finally realized it was emotionally damaging to lie longing for comfort next to the man who was making me long for comfort.  

   The time frame after filing will be much shorter than I had thought, which I'm actually glad of.  I'm waiting to file until next month, because I have scheduled a heart procedure, something that's needed taking care of for years, but that I've just lived with, just as I've lived with being squeezed into my husband's closet.  Until then, I'm staying in stealth mode.  

    Finally, I feel as if I'm not just reacting, but acting.  I've taken the power into my own hands.  I'm doing, instead of being done to.  All that time I was bargaining and hoping and in denial, I was aiming for control, for damage control, to fix things, to get the problem under control, but, I have realized, I wasn't in control, and I was focusing on the wrong things.  Now I feel like I am in control of my life, the first time I've felt this in too long.  

   Not until I actually saw the lawyer and felt the resulting surge of energy on my own behalf was I able to see just how beaten down I have been for the past two and a half years.  Having my womanhood assailed and my femininity appropriated, having my husband tell me how much he hated his male body, and feeling as a result that I was such a miserable woman my husband didn't even want to be a man!; living in his closet, closed down and isolated and distant from everyone around me.  My self-esteem was so very low.  

   Seeing the lawyer was for me such a positive act with such far-reaching positive results!  It was just the right step to take after finally telling my mother, in August, what was going on.

   I think my husband sees the difference in me, and doesn't know what to ascribe it to, and it's making him uneasy.  And you know what?  I'm rather enjoying the shoe being on the other foot!

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (September 24, 2017 1:23 pm)