livy_m_b
10-14-2007, 06:03 PM
As many of you know, Friday's Oprah was about families with transsexual mtf dads where the marriage had survived. Oprah did a nice job, as she often does, of asking the questions the average person would want to ask and being open and tolerant of her guests and our condition. There are other threads discussing the program generally if you want to comment on your experience of it.
There was one moment in Sydney's life that I found particularly poignant. That was when Sydney's wife commented on her changed experience of Sydney when Sydney went full time:
... Joan says she misses the man she fell in love with. "You know, once Sydney transitioned, that was it. My husband never came back. It makes me sad. It still does," Joan says. "It's not that my husband's left. My husband's still here. It is a really weird thing. You can't really close a chapter and move on. It's the same story. … The character hasn't changed. But how they look and how the act and how they sound is really different."
The phrase "My husband never came back" was particularly poignant. Joan recognizes that it's still the same person, but somehow it's different too. It reminds me of the story in that autobiographical book when a genetic male underwent electrolysis and lived as a woman for a period of time. He made a good friend in a woman who attended the church (s)he attended while living as a woman. When his exercise came to the end, he wanted to maintain the relationship with the woman, but interestingly the woman didn't want a relationship with him as a man at all and the relationship ended.
These different experiences of the same personality as man and as woman probably underlies a lot of the difficulties many spouses have.
There was one moment in Sydney's life that I found particularly poignant. That was when Sydney's wife commented on her changed experience of Sydney when Sydney went full time:
... Joan says she misses the man she fell in love with. "You know, once Sydney transitioned, that was it. My husband never came back. It makes me sad. It still does," Joan says. "It's not that my husband's left. My husband's still here. It is a really weird thing. You can't really close a chapter and move on. It's the same story. … The character hasn't changed. But how they look and how the act and how they sound is really different."
The phrase "My husband never came back" was particularly poignant. Joan recognizes that it's still the same person, but somehow it's different too. It reminds me of the story in that autobiographical book when a genetic male underwent electrolysis and lived as a woman for a period of time. He made a good friend in a woman who attended the church (s)he attended while living as a woman. When his exercise came to the end, he wanted to maintain the relationship with the woman, but interestingly the woman didn't want a relationship with him as a man at all and the relationship ended.
These different experiences of the same personality as man and as woman probably underlies a lot of the difficulties many spouses have.