Out

[PaulaQ]

Paula, I can't help but think that your wife is really incredible to even think you can stay in the house after transition.

She won't make it that long. Transition takes a really long time. She'll put up with me as long as she can - I've helped her a lot over 20 years. We have an entire house that we don't use now that she "had to have to be happy", as an example.

She never signed up for that. You really have to think of this as a best case scenario and nothing to dread.

And I signed up for this? Are you suggesting that I'm the "bad guy" in this? I signed on for "until death do us part." However, how she feels is how she feels, and I don't blame her. I understand her reaction and I predicted it, if you will recall.

BTW, I think this is the best case scenario:

Can we talk?" I asked my wife, Heather, on February 6, 2012, three days before her birthday. Maybe this wasn't the best timing, but I couldn't wait any longer. The pressure that had built up inside me for 31 years was about to burst. We lay down on our bed, Evelyn, our 3-year-old, napping in the other room, and looking into my wife's beautiful brown eyes, I made my confession: "I'm a transsexual." I buried my head into her chest and explained that this was something I'd been struggling with all my life.

I wasn't sure how Heather would take it. She said something like "That's all you were going to tell me?" She later told me she thought I was going to say I had cheated on her or wanted a divorce—which she said would have been worse for her. She told me at that moment—and kept telling me—that she wasn't going anywhere.

If my post about my conversation came across as "dread", please allow me to disabuse you of that notion. I dread the idea of killing myself. I dread the idea of losing my mind. (My therapist thinks the latter is unlikely.) I'm saddened that my marriage is, with a very high order of probability, unwinding. We are working together constructively to make sure my wife is prepared.

I don't believe our marriage would survive even cross dressing to the extent that many on this forum practice. Anything else I do to feminize my body will just make things exponentially worse. It is probably already too late for the marriage to survive anyway, unless I can just give this up altogether, which seems unlikely.

I do think, given her sexual preferences and upbringing, that she's handling this very well - actually better than I'd anticipated. She'd actually be pretty OK with this if this was one of my friends - just not her husband. I get that.

I get the impression that you think I'm just terribly selfish in all of this. I'm sorry you feel that way.

I am not at all sure, depending on what happens with me, that staying together is the best case scenario, at least for me - there would be sacrifices on my part. We do NOT live in an area where it is particularly easy or safe to be transgendered.

BTW, I'm going out of town tomorrow to visit my best friend. I'm going to come out to him. I'll post about how it goes.