So the first thing my wife said to me tonight was: "You know we're going to end up getting a divorce, right? I'm just not strong enough to deal with this."
She asked my how my visit with my therapist went. I told her about it. I omitted telling her that I prayed for death a lot - I didn't think that would probably help make my case for why we should stay together. (I do pray for death a lot.)
I did give her the name of a therapist / conselor she could meet with, independent of mine, who will maybe help with this issue, if it can be helped.
I told her my therapist and I mostly talked about my anxiety, which we did in fact do.
So she asks "what does wearing clothes do for you? How can that relieve anxiety? What if that isn't enough someday?"
I told her that it didn't make much sense to me either, and that this wasn't well understood scientifically. I told her that I believed this helped me express the feminine side of my personality, and that this part of me was fighting to get out. I told her I couldn't predict the future, and whether or not cross dressing would always be enough. I don't know. I do feel pretty sure that I don't want a sex change. (I omitted mentioning that I'd really ultimately like to have no body hair, and I'd really like breasts. Maybe I'll change my mind about the latter - it isn't a real practical idea.)
I explained to her that I seem to have two personas, and that switching between them is a little weird, and that this is hard to understand for me still. (Maybe that isn't even true - but I think it may be.) I told her that I felt like Lon Chaney, in "The wolfman", this really nice guy, really sad guy - feels cursed. He is cursed, because he's super nice, until he turns into a monster that eats your face. I at least don't maul people. I just put on women's clothes sometimes.
She asked me bluntly "Do you want to look like a woman? Because you DO NOT look like a woman?" So this was a hard question - I temporized, because the answer is "yes, I want to look like a woman, at least part of me IS a woman, I just got really crappy raw material to work with", but I didn't think that would go over well, so I told her "yes, sometimes I want to look like a woman - I need to express that. I know I'll never be pretty - If I can get to 'Mrs. Doubtfire', I'll feel pretty good about it."
"Are you going to want to leave the house - what's the point of looking good if you just stay here?" This was a perceptive question, and the obvious answer to me is "hell yeah, I want to look better and go out of the house, are you kidding me?!?!" But I lied and just said "I dunno hon, I'm not remotely ready to leave the house yet (true), and it's too early to say whether or not I'll want to. (probably a lie)."
In my defense, I feel that refraining from speculation about the future is not quite the same as a lie. (Go easy on me here - re-read the opening remark.)
She asked if this was ever going to stop - since we'd gone through most of our marriage without my cross dressing. I told her that given that this had happened to me a couple of other times in my life, and based on what I read, that I was not optimistic that it would go away. I told her not to count on it, that it was extremely unlikely.
I told her that I was willing to hide this from her so she didn't have to deal with it if it meant I could keep her. I'm hoping we can get past that, but if we can't, I'm hoping that I can mostly keep the cross dressing out of her face. I am willing to try - I don't know what I can promise though, and I told her that, too. There's a very real possibility that there will be no really acceptable middle-ground here. I'm hoping, though, that with some counseling, she'll ease up a little bit. Maybe not though.
Oh yeah - I'm out to another person now. She told one of her friends. Hope she'll keep her mouth shut. If not, well, I hope it's OK for my wife. For me - meh - I don't care. Her friends first words were "this doesn't change how I feel about him." We'll see how it goes. If I lose some friends, well, I'm used to isolation anyway. My wife is not, so I hope it's OK. I did tell her that I didn't mind that she told her best friend - that I didn't want her to feel isolated by this, as I've always been. That isolation is a horrible feeling. I told her this was one of the things I felt guilty about in telling her the truth - the fear that she'd be isolated as well. I still fear this. I hope her friend is discrete.
I did tell her that she should consider the possibility that my feminine side (Paula is as yet unnamed to her - I think that's still too much), has been present all along in our relationship, and that it's likely the part of me that cries in movies, is really sentimental, and is good at shopping. That while this side of me coming out on its own is admittedly weird and new, that if she really thinks about it - it all has to still be me. I think she's still skeptical on this one!
So we finally circled back to the start of the conversation.
I told her that if we just couldn't find a middle ground, if she was physically repulsed by me now, or if she just could not live with me and be happy, that I'd do everything I could do to make it easy on her, and to keep her life here intact. I told here I didn't want to go there, and I'd move heaven and earth, at least the parts that are within my grasp, to keep that from happening. But if it had to happen, I'd rather she be happy, and I'd do what I could to make that happen, even if it was without me.
She did allow that she knew I couldn't sacrifice everything either - that it wasn't right or possible for me to carry the entire burden of this.
We hugged at the end. She told me she hates feeling distant from me, but for now, that's how it has to be.
This is mostly going about as I expected. I'm not optimistic. I intend to keep trying - but I don't think she'll ever adjust to this part of me.
Still, early days. Maybe the counselor will be magical or something. He is supposed to be the best in the state for these issues. Hopefully he doesn't try to convince her of the beauty of helping a man transition into womanhood. The information she's found so far has been all about that - and it scared the hell out of her. (For the record, at least so far, I do not want to have a vagina.)
Originally Posted by arbon
