Exactly. Your pastor is not a proper therapist. He has an agenda, and that agenda doesn't take your well-being into account.Originally Posted by Helen Waite
Exactly. Your pastor is not a proper therapist. He has an agenda, and that agenda doesn't take your well-being into account.
My name is Carol.
I can only echo what Trisha has said. May you find a way through this with as little pain as possible.
Joan, I'm very sorry you're going through this right now. I don't have much advice to add to what anyone else has said. Obviously you can't depend on that pastor for the support you need. I don't suppose he's even a trained counselor, and when you're so much in need of validation, he's poison to you. If he seriously told you "there's no place in the world for Joan," he sounds like an ignoramus at best, or a bigot, or possibly both; the two often go together. Whatever else, he must be lacking in empathy at the very least.
You did post a few weeks ago that you were seeing another ("real") counselor. I hope he or she is more gender-friendly than that previous one two years ago. If so, that's the person you need to lean on right now.
Obviously all this is a heavy burden for your wife to handle too, so it's hard for her to give you the kind of support you need. If your relationship with her seemed to take a sudden turn for the worse recently, I get the impression that the triggering event may have been the Facebook page you created for Joan. I'm wondering if what that means is that as long as the two of you were working out your future privately between yourselves, taking your time, your wife was able to cope, but as soon as you started going public, with everything that implied about the way friends and relatives would react, it all became too much for her.
I'm sure the loss of sexual relations between you is another blow for her. While this could be a consequence of the stress you're going through, or your discomfort resulting from her changed attitude toward you, unfortunately I get the impression from things you've said elsewhere that you may not feel like continuing your sex life at all in a male role. I don't know what your wife was expecting to happen, but all these things are major losses she's having to face. Losses in life need to be grieved, and grieving and adjustment take time.
I gather from her asking you "What does the Bible say?" in response to your crossdressing activity that she could be deeply religious. It's not that the answer matters one way or the other (a sympathetic reading of the Bible is entirely valid), but if she's been contemplating staying with you through transition, how far is that because your relationship is close in other ways, and how far is it due to a strong sense of religious obligation to the permanency of marriage? If it's partly the latter, she must be feeling very conflicted herself and will have some sorting out of her own to do.
I imagine that both of you could benefit from joint counseling with someone other than that pastor. This is all very painful for you right now, so my sympathy to both of you; but with faith you can get through this. Good luck!
We have let this go for awhile now but just a warning, it is getting really close to violating religion rules here. Keep it broad based. No slamming any religion and no specific religion OK? Thanks
(PS no quoting the book either)
The earth is the mother of all people and all people should have equal rights upon it.
Chief Joseph
Nez Perce
“Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” - Fred Rogers,
Joan- what seems clear is that you are on a path of discovery about yourself.
People do change, evolve, move on. You didn't plan to change, the change sprang from within you, from a place of healing, from a strong compulsion to acknowledge and own something that was missing inside you.
That others find this disturbing and threatening, and I don't just mean your wife, is not surprising at all. Change is always controversial, even change for the better. That others fail to respect the need for change doesn't mean the change should not happen.
Only you can provide the key to your future.
Lots of hugs,
Nikki
I used to have a short attention spa
I'm sorry that you and your wife are going through this.
Some people have suggested going to a gender counselor. I think you should consult a marital therapist, hopefully one who has experience with sex therapy.
You look to be in your 40s(?) - too young to call a halt to a sex life with your wife. I can understand why she avoids going to bed with you, if she knows that you are no longer interested in her. I would feel the same way. I would feel utterly rejected.
In the above quote, you say "Honestly I want to be with her but not sexual with her. I cant be sexual without help, and then it's just not full filling." What sort of help do you mean - are you saying that dressing-up helps with your arousal, and without dressing-up you have no interest in sex?
If this is indeed what you mean, then we get back to sexual incompatibilities. Your wife is aroused by you, but you are aroused by the CDing. Maybe a good sex therapist can help with that. And maybe this is what your pastor was trying to tell you ... that this sort of incompatibility is very difficult in a marriage. I'm guessing that your pastor has limited experience with CDers, and he might well think that if you stop dressing, then you and your wife can resume marital relations. It's not that simple, you'll need extra help from someone who is trained in the various things that arouse people.
Reine
First thank you all for the kind words.
I think I'll do my best to answer a couple of questions that have come up. First I do have a gender therapist, she is great and is encouraging me to find my true-self. I've been seeing her since the beginning of November. Secondly, I'm attracted to men. It's taken a long time for me to own this one, I've been fighting it since middle school. I had a sexual relationship with a guy my own age during middle school, I think he was playing me. Because he left me for a girl, it took me over a year to get over him. I then tried to put it behind me and be "normal" and get a girlfriend. This whole time dealing with wanting to be a girl.
Thirdly it has been asked what I mean by "without help", hmm how to put this without getting in trouble. It takes a lot of fantasy, toys, & trying to look interested in her. She knows I'm attracted to men, has known for some time just about as long as knowing about my gender/cross dressing (being years ago she found out). Fourth, I believe that I was in the "pink fog" for the last month so I was pushing harder than I realized. So I was driving my wife crazy with all the talk about transition, skirts, leggings, ear piercing, etc. etc. I since have come out of the "fog" over the last week. I apologized to her last night for my pushing, and pushing, thinking that on a scale of 1 to 10 I was a 5. She said I was a solid 10. I have been able to talk about other things other that transitioning this week, which has been helpful to her she said.
I'm hoping that her going to our pastor was a knee jerk reaction, but now I've got to deal with the church as I move forward a lot sooner than I wanted to.
Also I'm wearing my wedding ring this morning, but it didn't start out that way. I'm friends with my wife, there are times I feel that if we were not such good friends our marriage would have been over a long long long time ago.
I hope this clears some thing up for some people. I also hope that this doesn't cause the thread to be closed due to going out of bounds. Again thank you for your kind words, and advise.
Joan Meredith,
Slow to live the dream
I'll get there when I get there
by moving forward to you mean that you are transitioning?
Moving forward would be finding a balance of my true-self and my maleness... I don't know where the stop line is right now. It feel like the rules changed, so I'm going slow and see how far I can go till I'm told "if you go any farther we're done." I want to transition all the way surgeries and all, but I've got a lot to consider before I get there.
Joan
[SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE]
Doing my best to help keep it in line..
Joan Meredith,
Slow to live the dream
I'll get there when I get there
Rules? What rules? There are no rules. Not any rules that gender dysphoria plays by, anyways. Therein, of course, lies the difficulty of it all, and the real reason why you have found yourself in your current dilemma. Because you, your wife, and your pastor are trying to play a game by rules that simply do not exist. And as you seem to be discovering, it doesn't work that way. As Arbon pointed out, this is not easy stuff. But this doesn't mean that it's bad stuff, either. What it would seem to mean for you, based upon the desperate tone of what you have written, is that you really have your work cut out for you somewhere further down the road, if not already.
Joan
I hear so much of my story in your struggle. I knew I was a girl at 5 or 6 years r old. My first sexual experience was with another boy, we were on the basketball team. It really messed with me as I knew I was a girl but yet had to act like it never happened. It would occur several times over the next years always instigated by him. I never knew how to sort all my feelings out.
So I spent the majority of my adult life suppressing what I knew to be true. I have been through addiction, success and failure in differing degrees. After getting sober I tried to be the best man I could. Ultimately I failed. I too love my wife. She is the strongest, bravest woman I have ever met. She surely deserves a wonderful man.
In the end I couldn't fight it anymore. Once I let a little,light into the closet the door was flung open. I have transitioned and had SRS and live as me now. With my wife and son in a wonderful and fragile world. I can't tell you what to do. However, I can tell you that there is hope. Some of us find an inner strength we didn't know we had. The ridicule, the pain,
and the fear have been faced. Let us know if we can help.
Suzanne
Last edited by Suzanne F; 02-03-2017 at 01:01 AM.
Life Is One Big Dilation
In reference to your comments in #32, you also need to consider what your wife is going through. Wearing women's clothing is one issue. Telling a wife you are attracted to men is another? How do you really expect your wife to react to those. Years ago a friend of my wife told her about her husband's infidelity with a man. She said, "If it was a woman I could fight for my man" meaning using her femininity to woo him back. "But, how do I compete with a man?"
I will readily agree a pastor may not be the best person to consult, but, that's your wife's spiritual well being. Can you expect her to throw it all away to appease you? Your prior posts of last year seem to suggest your wife was trying to accept your desires. You seem to have overloaded her senses. Transitioning? Homosexuality? I would think your marriage degrading to a brother-sister relationship is not really going to improve to a level it was before. There is always going to be your suppressed desires. If you had a sexual relationship with a male already, are you sure you were subconsciously suppressing those desires and using a woman as your "beard?" There is always going to be a nagging feeling of what you said to her in the back of her mind.
I've seen this before. The husband wants and gets it all, while the wife is unfulfilled. Your really need to sort this out. Divorce may be the wise option for the benefit of your wife and children.
Well, that explains it. If your wife is hoping that you will become interested in her if you stop dressing, it won't work.
Is she OK with being married to a spouse who is interested in men? Can your marriage survive this? I should think that whether or not you dress at this point would come in second when dealing with your marital problems?
Also, is she perchance religious, of the kind that believes men will go to h*ll if they wear women's clothing? If this is her belief, this sort of thing is deeply ingrained and it is, IMO, as difficult to change as asking a CDer to want to stop dressing.
And last, if your wife is OK with you wanting to be with men and if she should eventually reach a point where she was willing to compromise with you on the dressing, would you be willing to compromise as well? Or is it more all-or-nothing for you?
Reine
I would ask, is it fair to your wife to remain with you even though you are not attracted to her, and desire to be with men? You feel like she is more of a sister to you rather than a wife, I am thinking she is still interested in being a wife not a sister. For some of us, once the door has been opened, it is only fair for us to let some or all of our life go, and the people we had in it. It simply isn't fair to them to be with us when we cannot be there for them as we once were.
Chickens should be allowed to cross the road without having their motives questioned
I'm sorry to hear of your struggles and wish you well. Some here have mentioned finding a marital counsellor who has some skill and understanding of these issues and I believe that would be a good idea. You don't have to suffer through this alone and neither does you wife. It's time to open up but find a skilled and supportive environment first.
You obviously are experiencing a lot of anguish over this issue. I hope you are managing to enjoy your trip.
If I understand your pastor, and if he understands himself, his point is (or should be) that anything 'in this world' is merely a sort of 'windsock' or puppet that you fill with a spiritual or emotional energy and it it always going to be a much lesser imperfect 'representation' of what it truly is that which you're expressing.
If he's a Christian pastor, then Jesus would be the perfect analogy for this. (Not slamming by a long shot, but this is pertinent to this issue) He was essentially a non-material being brought into this physical world a manifestation of something else, whose more 'natural' state is a form of energy on the other side of some metaphysical veil. It is a temporary but agonizing ordeal to exist like a fish out of water, and then to suffer and die, but it is essentially what we call living. Maybe the purpose of that particular teaching was to serve and illustrate that aspect of the human condition by example?
Viewing ourselves in reference to our other selves, etc and trying to reconcile all of this with some sense of identity is ultimately a stroll into the jaws of a never-ending paradox. No therapist will solve it for you, no pastor. At best you will find peace with the paradox and then apply it in your life and with your interactions with the other temporary inhabitants of this place.
"No place in this world for Joan" could ultimately mean what I discovered about my own life, and that a lot of this animatic femme 'side' we long to express is in essence the spiritual content of our own souls, and actually IS our soul, and it's our place in the trinity and our connection to divinity, etc.
In the Jungian terms, your anima is your inward facing self, your doorway to the collective unconscious, and it's place is not as much to force its way into your conscious world, but the part of you that is the portal into that other world.
It could rightly be that we are all equal parts lion, witch and, um, wardrobe.
And as well, I have personally found, for myself, that insisting that this energy be manifested, trapped, if you will, here in physical form by my dressing as it and emulating it, and wanting others to validate it for us, is at best a form of worship, and at worst, is essentailly holding my 'spiritual fish' out of its natural ocean and forcing it to try to breathe air. There are moments like a drug when we have done all the work and feel the bliss of the identity posession, and this moment will of course seduce us into further pursuit, but there is no threshold you can cross where that identity will be constant and you will feel good and like yourself from then on.
Insisting that this part of myself exist here and now on this physical plane is also potentially self-degrading in that it is forcing it into an infinitely small box that it just so much less worthy of its true place, just for my own temporary comfort. Ever felt like a tortured mermaid forced to breathe air and walk on daggers?
I still dress a few times a year, but its been dwindling, and becoming almost purely an artistic pursuit. (Meaning that at one moment it can be an all-consuming passion and at another it sits on the back burner while other pursuits or aspects of life take precedence.)
Regardless of whether I am dressing, I always have, after a certain amount of age and experience, feel, somewhere, the existence my own(?) feminine presence, whether it be right there next to me whispering in my ear when needed, or far away and longed for, or right inthe centre seat of identity pushing all the buttons.
I still occasionally look for a 'venue' to exist as a CD, but I realize on a day-to-day that it's more convenient and streamlined for me to carry that energy within me than to wear it upon me. I think modern society has created niche identities for those who wish it and are willing to sacrifce greatly for it, but for myself, I find that I am no where near enough consistent with my dressing to warrant such immense loss for a gain that I know I could well lose conscious interest in for the next couple months, despite how elated I feel in the moment. A lot of people take these options, but it's not for the most part of CD's.
It's a lifetime of plate spinning for most of us, but the point is that 'not dressing' in no way equals not being true to self, "Joan having no place in the world" doesn't necessarily devalue Joan. It could actually mean that Joan is the part of you that is far, far greater than anything on this temporary plane, and trying to make her exist here is a cruelty akin to trying to keep the holy spirit as a genie in a bottle on a shelf for you to admire.
I hope things are well in Florida, try to love your family, and keep a benevolent temper on those parts of yourself which are straining for expression. My experience is that when not given good expression they will, being as ambivalent and beyond labels as anything ethereal, gladly take the bad road, and damage the things in your life you care for the most.
And so we go, on with our lives...
We know the Truth, but prefer Lies.
Lies are simple, simple is Bliss.
Why go against tradition, when we can admit defeat,
Live in Decline, be the victim of our own design?
Joan, hang in there. I wouldn't cross any point of no return right now, you know what those points are in your situation. The intensity of you current state of mind will ebb and flow. Right now you have a wife who loves and cares for you, try to see things from her side and express empathy with her feelings. she deserves that. You can solve this any time soon, but you can express the love and understanding you wife deserves. I agree with others here that you will need to encourage her to see a professional. You do know this side of you cannot be repressed, so burying Joan has got to be off the table. Best to both of you.
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