The elephant in MY room is starting to make some noise

[ReineD]

Sorry that I missed your response to my response earlier (lost sight of the thread), but better late than never:

It's society that has constructed the binary, for better or for worse.

I disagree with this. I do not believe that gender is a construction, and the reality is that more than 95% of individuals in our society feel aligned to their birth genders. At the same time, there is a small percentage of people whose gender ID is not quite so clear cut and there is an even smaller percentage of people who feel they were born in entirely the wrong body.

I have shared with many others, both IRL and in these pages, my commitment to stay on this middle path.

Yes, from her POV I am on that proverbial slippery slope. She has no idea what next week, next month, or next year might bring. Heck, neither do I. But the fact remains that I am committed to staying on this path. The reason this is lost upon her? It's really quite simple, a lack of communication when it comes to this huge elephant in our relationship.

People are either fully congruent with their birth genders, or they are transsexual and feel they were born in the wrong bodies, or they know that they are gender non-conforming and in their psyches there resides characteristics and affinities of both genders. I understand a period of time when people are exploring and do not know who they are, but you've been freely expressing Sara for a while now, and so you must know how you feel in the deepest part of yourself?

If you are TS, you should NOT pretend that you aren't nor should you give the impression that you are staying on a middle path "for her". I don't think she wants to be married to a transsexual who is a reluctant male since as you describe, this condemns her to living a life with a male who is not fully present in his male life and also waiting for the other shoe to drop, not knowing when your proverbial bell will ring and you will feel compelled to pursue transition ... as happens with other TSs.

If you are not a reluctant male and you feel that you embrace both male and female aspects within yourself and you cannot fathom the idea of full transition at any time in the future, then you should tell her this and also believe it within yourself, which would mean putting things back into perspective for yourself.

You said earlier (post #30) that you would transition in a flash and by this I take it that you mean, had you known about yourself before a commitment to your marriage, kids, and your male life, you would have taken a different course. You also said that you are attached to the things you have built in your male life. To me, this means having built an appreciation for aspects of your male self and the things in life that revolve around your male self, in addition to wanting to express femininity. But to live a life having an insatiable desire to transition (which you also said) all the while living as a male a significant portion of the time seems like an unsatisfactory way to live a life while sitting on the fence. This translates, as mentioned, to not fully being present to your family members who know you as male and to also not know what might happen in the future and this is unsettling and stressful for any spouse to live with if she knows within the deepest part of herself that she is not lesbian and she cannot be married to a woman.

Does this make sense? You need to make up your mind which way you will genuinely live your life in the future. If it involves an insatiable desire to live as a woman you need to be honest with your wife about this and accept the outcome. If it involves appreciating the things that revolve around your male life and living in both genders alternatively because of this, you need to accept and honor this and not pine away for something else.

In my opinion.