BattyBattyBats said - "Reasonable to Inform of the choice and maybe even the contemplation of the choice yes, I already said as much myself but Need to Involve in the making of the choice? No. Discuss with? Sure thats an option. Even ask the opinions of. But allow the other to have a say in the decison? To have a veto? To require negotiation about? No. Not with cancer treatment nor with dental work nor with a haircut. The principle is clear and unchanged from the minutia to the ultimate life and death decisions. This is a legal point, its a human rights point, its a philosophical point."

Well yes and no. I agree with many of your points but some aren't quite as clear cut so I'll take them one at a time.

"Need to involve in the making of the choice". No, absolutely not and yet if we don't then we have no reason to cry about it when our SO is unhappy about being cut out of the decision-making process. While the choice is ultimately that of the individual, to say it doesn't affect anyone and their opinions and needs can be ignored seems.....odd.

"Discuss with". Again, this really seems to be the same point as the one above .

"Ask the opinions of" is again sort of the same point so let's group it with the above two points.

"Allow the other to have a say in the decison To have a veto". I'll say again that I think that ultimately it's the choice of the individual to make but if they have an SO e.g. a wife, then they have a moral obligation to discuss such a fundamentally life/relationship changing event. The SO may not be able to exercise some form of veto but they can make an informed decision as to whether they choose to remain in the relationship. Apart from anything, consider what has apparently happened here. There is now a divorce in the offing. Under these circumstances, the TG will be eaten alive by the SO's lawyers on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour and everything will end up in the SO's hands. If there had been discussion and honesty, the whole separation might have been far more amicable and less destructive and possibly even avoided entirely.

"To require negotiation about". Actually what if the SO had said she would support the transition but asked if it could wait for six months until little Johnny was past his exams and so wouldn't have the extra strain of dealing with the events. Would that not be a justifiable type of negotiation? That's one example, I can think of several.

So let me repeat. While it is the right of the individual to make any final decision, if the making of such a decision will affect the lives of others to such an extent (comparing it to a haircut is ludicrous, sorry) then there is a moral obligation to keep all affected parties in the loop at all times.

I try to look at situations and imagine myself in them. I imagine myself taking action like this and then imagine how my GF would feel and act. As much as I try to see both sides of an event no matter what it is, in this case I know that she'd be absolutely gutted that I'd kept her out of the loop, she'd realise that the relationship existed in name only and she'd quite rightly decide to cut me out of her life as is her right and frankly I wouldn't blame her.

The person in question, IMHO and admittedly only based on the few facts we have, has shown nothing but utter disdain for the SO and their marriage and deserves the coming repercussions. They obviously weighed up the pros and cons of their decision and made their choice accordingly. I respect their individual freedoms to do so but I think they forgot that any decision they make has an outcome; in this case the outcome was the loss of their marriage. We can only assume they realised that possibility beforehand and decided to go ahead anyway and that speaks volumes. If anything, my suspicion is that this was done to force the situation into a position where it had to be dealt with one way or another rather than linger as a possibility :2c: