OutofHisCloset wrote:

Buzzybeez: 

 You say your husband's transition will change him...but really, hasn't he changed already? 
This is a very good point. If she wants to transition it is because she is already female and needs to present as such. Unless of course, he would like to transition because he likes the idea of being a woman. The former being a reality. The second being a result of ideation fantasy. Hence the results. The former being stable, the second, more likely to be unstable.Meaning the second version will require constant affirmation and validation.

 To answer your question of whether it's "too early" to leave, you will need to specify what you mean.  Too early in the process?  Too early to give up hope he might stop?   Transition is not something you can do with him.  Transition is not something you can do for him.  Transition is an intensely personal and intensely felt experience for him.  You can't share it.  And what he tells you about it will likely shake you and probably hurt you to your core  If you believe it's your role to stay and be his shock absorber, then you will stay, being his emotional caretaker while piling up hurts of your own, with no one to do the same for you.  

Ending a marriage is hard.  It means severing the bond that joins you, and emotionally detaching while relinquishing your earlier role as the person he turns to.   It hurts like hell  But the only way through hell is to keep going.  

Ordinary guy wrote:

You say he believes he is transgender? He is literally a long way from transitioning. Those who transition do so because they know that is a fact and not a possibility. He sounds as though he needs a lot of specialist counselling before he can make that decision. I don’t think that even in a world of private medicine, any clinician would dare to risk starting a transition even at the anti-androgen stage if the client simply believed they were transgender. They need to know it. It isn’t the same as putting some underwear and make-up on. Actual phenotype transgender people know they are. It has plagued and shaped them in their lives. He may have been taking little vacations to ladyland in the past. It is a big step for him to move there permanently.
 As OoHC has honestly stated. Threats of suicide are not uncommon from those who are in a do I, don’t I quandary. They can use this in an abusive manner to negotiate what they want. This is coercion. It is a big step to take, big in respect to their marriage and relationship with their wives. Only bigger still with children involved. It won’t necessarily destroy the family. It definitely will change it. As I have pointed out, the transition of a partner requires the transition of everyone invested in the original relationship at some point. Things will not be the same. What you have to be aware of are the effects that it will have on you and others. 
The best path to follow is his to choose. With his therapist and or counsellors. These are the people he needs to speak things through with, they are the subject matter experts. You can’t make decisions about this for him. If you could, you would invariably prefer to keep things as they are. If he did this, he would eventually resent you for it. if it prevented him from being her. Have you told him that you will leave if he transitions? Or, does he simply see this as an  unavoidable reality?

Thank you for your response. I wrote it as "he believes he is transgender" because that is what he thinks, though he of course fits the transvestite/autogynephilic profile you describe. He has struggled with dysphoria for years, but only in the past few years has it become overwhelming for him. He wants to start hormones within the next year.

I have told him we will have to separate, and we have discussed the overwhelming details of untangling our lives after 23 years. It will take a while to figure out, but there is no going back, and we both know that. 

This is the absolute worst crisis of my life, and I'm so sorry for me, him, our kids, Buzzybee (sorry for hijacking the thread!) and all of the rest of the spouses on this board who have to deal with similar traumatic experiences.

Annalisa,

  Formulating a plan is such a good step.  I think it's a step forward, in the sense that it transfers your action, and your need to get a sense of control to what you actually can control--what you do.  After my ex's declaration, which upended my world so utterly, in so many ways, from concrete plans and goals for retirement, to wondering what part of my husband and my past with him was even real, and so much more, I needed very much to have a sense that I could do damage control.  I needed to stop my world from spinning out of my control, and because my husband was the cause of the upheaval, I did tend to focus initially on him--how I could help him understand himself, help himself, etc.--even while I was dealing with my own sense of betrayal and disbelief and sorrow. 

  Because I am an academic, and research is how I have been trained to "get a handle on things" I don't know about, I also did some deep dives. Like you, I was the one who introduced my husband to the work on autogynephilia, because he had been immersed only in trans ideology.  He was initially very defensive, read Michael Bailey's book and that of Anne Lawrence, but didn't want to accept it.  His take was a little like your husband's--"this may be true but what am I supposed to do about it."  He took the position of "ok, it's a sexual paraphilia, but it doesn't hurt anyone (unlike pedophillia)." He also thought that if autogynephilia is a sexual paraphilia, he could confine it to the bedroom (with me as helper).  I took the position that there were other ways to approach "managing" his urges, including by investing in the women around him, instead of envying or resenting or copying them.  So even there we differed in the approach, which is not surprising, really, as autogynephilia comes with such powerful urge to believe one really is a woman.  (Here I part company rather forcefully with "Ordinary Guy" with his "phenotype" and distinction between those who are "really" or "already" women and those who "just think they are.)

Good luck navigating the inevitable pushback you will experience from your husband as you seek to separate.  And as you've read up on autogynephilia and are no doubt familiar with Anne Lawrence's term "wounded narcissism," that can help you as you deal with his upset.

Wishing you all the best.

  

My

Jupiter1, I'm struck by your comment "I've wasted so much of my life worrying over this man. It has not been reciprocated"  I, too, spent so much of my life--too much of my life--worrying over my ex, and it was a shock to realize, finally, that all the time, worry, energy I spent worrying about, or anticipating, or catering to his emotional and psychological welfare was not reciprocated.  In fact, not only was I focusing him, so was he! He never gave a thought to me except in relation to how I could serve his needs.  Oh, sure, he might when I pushed it give lip service to caring about me, but when it came to his behavior, there was no follow through.  (I also see that same dynamic in what many of those who post here say about their own spouses and marriages.)

My ex and I lived apart for some months early on after he declared his transness, and like your stbx, my then husband had a field day on his own giving free rein to his impulses.  We had also lived apart for some months in the previous year, in the same town, after he had fallen down the trans rabbit hole, an entire year before he made his declaration to me, and during that time, I was never invited over to the place he was living, although he came over once a week to our house, where I cooked him dinner, and he sat on the couch with a drink going through the week's mail, waiting for me to serve him.  At the end of that time, I had made up my mind to divorce him, but then, after he moved home, came the trans bomb drop, and my susceptibility to his neediness suckered me in for far too long.  

Knowing how little he thought of me when we were married (in both senses of that phrase), I am quite sure he has thought even less of me--if at all--since the divorce.  Thankfully, he is taking up less and less real estate in my own head these days.  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (July 24, 2024 10:39 am)

Yes OOHC and  Ordinary guy! It is wild how you can have two people in a marriage, both worried over the one person. What can help Echo to free up mental real estate?  Your story OOHC about your ex coming over, reading mail and eating a home cooked meal from you exactly matches my experience and the last umpteen weekends since he moved out. Step 1- don’t serve up the home cooked meal, eh? My obsessive comfort with caretaking needs to change.  The behavioral changes precede the emotional,  I know.