More Such a Girl
In a recent Cyrsti's Condo post, we took a quick and all too simplistic look into what happens when a husband comes out to her spouse and family. Of course the path is a rocky one paved with all sorts of misplaced good intentions. Lets' check in with Connie concerning her long term relationship with her wife:
"While all relationships differ in an infinite number of ways, so do those in which one person is trans. Any combination of when, why, where, what, with, whom, and how will make a relationship unique. Also, no relationship is really perfect, and I have to imagine that a gender change by one party would not go toward making things closer to perfection.
In my case, I need to add coulda-woulda-shoulda to the list of variables. I met my wife at seventeen, just four months into a concerted effort to suppress my gender dysphoria. There was no need, I thought, to tell her of my perversity (what I believed it to be back then), because I thought it to be completely under control. I didn't tell her nearly four years later, when we married (still under control). I didn't tell her even after the births of our two daughters (Dad's in control!). When I did finally lose control, it was the end of a seventeen year suppression - but I still tried to keep control through compartmentalization - so, still no need to tell. Of course, the activity of cross dressing in secret eventually becomes no secret at all - even if not talked about. Our relationship had to hit rock-bottom before we could start to really deal with my gender identity together, which - keeping with a theme - occurred another seventeen years later. As I write this, another seventeen years have passed, and our forty-eighth anniversary is coming soon. Our marriage looks nothing like what it started out as (few marriages do, even without a gender conflict). I'm sure that it wouldn't have started at all, had I come out when we met 50+ years ago, nor would it have survived, had I come out to her at the same time I sort-of came out to myself, returning to the "shameful" behavior of my youth.
I could write a booklet on "How Not to Be a Happily Married Trans Woman." I was a husband who was this such a girl, then that such a girl, and many such iterations in-between. Consequently, my wife has had to make her own transitions throughout this whole process - to the point where she has given up having a husband at all, but she still has "such a girl."
In my case, I need to add coulda-woulda-shoulda to the list of variables. I met my wife at seventeen, just four months into a concerted effort to suppress my gender dysphoria. There was no need, I thought, to tell her of my perversity (what I believed it to be back then), because I thought it to be completely under control. I didn't tell her nearly four years later, when we married (still under control). I didn't tell her even after the births of our two daughters (Dad's in control!). When I did finally lose control, it was the end of a seventeen year suppression - but I still tried to keep control through compartmentalization - so, still no need to tell. Of course, the activity of cross dressing in secret eventually becomes no secret at all - even if not talked about. Our relationship had to hit rock-bottom before we could start to really deal with my gender identity together, which - keeping with a theme - occurred another seventeen years later. As I write this, another seventeen years have passed, and our forty-eighth anniversary is coming soon. Our marriage looks nothing like what it started out as (few marriages do, even without a gender conflict). I'm sure that it wouldn't have started at all, had I come out when we met 50+ years ago, nor would it have survived, had I come out to her at the same time I sort-of came out to myself, returning to the "shameful" behavior of my youth.
I could write a booklet on "How Not to Be a Happily Married Trans Woman." I was a husband who was this such a girl, then that such a girl, and many such iterations in-between. Consequently, my wife has had to make her own transitions throughout this whole process - to the point where she has given up having a husband at all, but she still has "such a girl."
Thanks for the comment!
With my deceased wife, I became a woman she didn't like so well. She was a very natural woman, she rarely wore makeup and dresses. All of a sudden she had to put up with me being the "Pretty. pretty Princess." Back in those days, I was really into being a beginning fashionista...everything she wasn't. Plus, as she wasn't shy about telling me, I really knew nothing about being a woman. Of course with my male ego, I didn't believe her and was destined to never really understand until years later after her passing. I had to live full-time in a feminine world to understand.
Finally, I came to understand I wasn't kidding myself all those years. I really was such a girl. Unfortunately when I interacted with my late wife, neither one of us knew the real me.
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