I'm so sorry you find yourself in this situation.  You feel crushed because your husband's revelations have fundamentally altered the terms of your relationship.  Please do not berate yourself for being "stupid" for not seeing it.  You were and are not stupid; you are a woman who married a man who represented himself as a man, and who lived, as far as you and anyone else could see, as a man, and seeing his actions in that context is a perfectly appropriate thing for you to have done. 

To give you some context for reading what I'm going to say: I am the ex-wife of a man who declared after 32 years of marriage that he had decided he was transgender, hated his male body, and was going to transition.  He said he wanted to take hormones and have his testicles surgically removed (an orchiectomy).  At the time he disclosed this to me, he also said he'd been wearing my underclothing for years without my knowledge, and had in fact first worn his mother's underclothing when he was a boy.  He later decided to stay in the closet and only "express" himself at home, and told me he would not make irreversible changes to his body with hormones and surgery.   When he was planning to transition, I told him I wanted a divorce, because I did not want to be married to a transgender woman.  After he decided not to transition, I decided to see if I could stay, but after three years the pressure of living in his closet with a husband who appeared to the world as he always had, and then came home where he expected me to accommodate him as a woman, including sexually, became too much for me to bear.  I realized that I was the only person who was making any accommodations and bearing any consequences for what were his decisions and actions.  I am also the former director of a women's studies program, with a grounding in feminist theory, including gender theory, but the experience I had with my husband, and the interactions I've had with other wives who've gone through this experience, gave me my real education.

Gender dysphoria does not rule out the reality that your husband's dressing up can also be a sexual turn on, and that sexual turn on may in fact be the driving force behind his desire to dress up; your husband's predilection for women's underclothing throughout your marriage and in your intimate life suggests this may be true for him.  There's a sexuality called "autogynephilia," which translates as "the love of oneself as a woman."  Below I've included some references to the psychological literature that discuss autogynephilia, both by health professionals for whom this is their area of expertise and research.  My ex fit the profile in Bailey's book and Lawrence's typology so exactly it was eerie.

  Anne Lawrence, "Men Trapped in Men's Bodies/Becoming What We Love."  Lawrence is a trans person and an MD, a psychologist who treated (now retired) trans identified males.  Lawrence maintains an online presence and there are articles there, including:
 http://www.annelawrence.com/autogynephilia_&_MtF_typology.html
 Autogynephilia: An Underappreciated Paraphilia Anne A. Lawrence Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alta., Canada
 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3eb9/a449b840ef525436454c4f658b8d364d194f.pdf

Michael Bailey, "The Man Who Would Be Queen."  It's available online and downloadable (you can google it).  Bailey is a research psychologist at Northwestern University.  

You talked about learning to set boundaries with your husband, and you will need both strong boundaries and the willingness to level consequences and act if/when your husband crosses them.  As you are uncomfortable with his moving forward quickly with physical changes while you are still spinning, you need to decide what you can tolerate and set boundaries.  However, and this is a warning based on my experience and on the experience of many wives caught in this situation, your husband's feminizing will likely work like a drug on him and he will behave like an addict: the more he gets, the more he wants, and he will live for the drug and do whatever, ignore whoever (including you and your children) to get it.  This includes making you feel guilty about wanting some time for you and the children to accommodate yourselves, acting behind your back, spending household money on his activities, and more.  In other words, he will want to move full speed ahead, whether you are comfortable with it or not, and even if he says he will respect your boundaries, it is likely he will push them (while acting behind your back).  

I would suggest you get a therapist for yourself, not a "gender specialist" who might see his/her role as "helping" you "accommodate" yourself, but one who specializes in trauma--because that's what you undergoing.  Here is an article you can read (and suggest to your therapist): 
 Donna Chapman and Benjamin Caldwell: “Attachment Injury Resolution in Couples  When One Partner is Transgender”  Journal of Systemic Therapies, Vol 31, No. 2, 2012, pp36-53
(full text of article available online)

I would also suggest that you see a lawyer to inform yourself of your rights under the law if you decide you need to divorce.  Look at it as gathering information, and in the spirit of getting some certainty in an uncertain time.  Knowing what your rights are helps to counter the fear and uncertainty of the situation you are in.  

  Again, so sorry you are in this situation. It's difficult, and there is no easy way forward.

 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (December 14, 2020 7:55 am)

Clothes, clothes, clothes!  I'm so sick of clothes!  Why do people accept that a desire to wear women's clothes--so often lingerie--is a sign one "is" a woman?  
Why isn't the measure that one is a woman some other socially determined cue?  Why isn't the measure of whether one is a woman a desire to put others first and always to put yourself last?  Why don't they feel "right" doing that?


 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (December 14, 2020 11:42 am)

"your husband's feminizing will likely work like a drug on him and he will behave like an addict: the more he gets, the more he wants, and he will live for the drug and do whatever, ignore whoever (including you and your children) to get it." 

You wrote exactly the nature of what is going on in our relationship right now.  It is like an addict! He had gone from buying underclothes, now to women's jeans.  From no transformation to learning about hormones, talking about surgeries, and us moving to a different state after our older kids graduate high school so he can be more free. Thank you for your well informed and educated advice. 

@LB73- I am so very sorry you are going through this nightmare.  I too am the wife of a man who out of nowhere declared he was transgender.   Now, the decades of lying about his crossdressing have come out.  I have made it clear he is not welcome to stay in the home and transition. 

The resources from Out of His Closet are very good.  You may also want to check out Home | Trans Widows Voices.  Mumsnet has a thread for Transwidows as well if you are looking for additional support.  
If you are looking for religious support, there are a few Christian groups that are not in line with SSN's positions so I will respectfully not post them here. 

LB I do not have much to add that other have not said already. I’m about half as long in the relationship but in the same position. So very sorry you are going through this. I’m about 6 months in though things escalated over time. Some days there is still grieving and some day hope that there will be a day when this is all just the past. It is a difficult rollercoaster but know you’ve many here in a similar spot and can understand. The resources OOHC posted are all very helpful. 

OOHC -Yes with the clothes! Clothes and an obsession with body hair removal. On top of the loss of the person I though existed 10 years ago there is this feeling of complete invalidation as a woman. Reduced to costume.