Okay, this is going to be a long story, but please bear with me. So I recently discovered/accepted that I was transgender a couple months ago, after so many years of not really knowing or understanding this aspect of myself. I've been married for over a decade now, almost since I graduated high school. My wife is pretty liberal and open-minded, so I thought that, while there'd probably be some difficulty with it, that she'd be pretty accepting, or at least would want to try to make an effort to accept me. I thought our love was strong enough to withstand anything. But it didn't end up going that way. She completely rejected me. She said she was going to leave me, and that I had completely disgusted her, that she found me repulsive. She didn't leave right away, but made it clear that she would as soon as she had time to get her affairs in order. The first couple of days I spent trying to get her to understand, to elaborate on things I maybe hadn't been clear on. I told her that I didn't want surgeries or anything like that. I told her that all I wanted was her to know who I am. I tried to explain gender identity. None of it helped. Then, on the third day, I woke up feeling as if the person I had been before was a complete stranger. All of the feelings and thoughts I'd had that I was female had disappeared. It was, and still is, even in retrospect, a very bizarre experience. So I told her this. I tried to rationalize what I'd revealed to her, saying that I wasn't really transgender, and that it might have come from low self-esteem issues. I feel sick as I type this out, since I know how horrible that sounds and is; but I wasn't lying. Those feelings had completely vanished, without a trace. And for about a month and a half, they never returned. I felt completely like a man. I started working on my low self esteem issues (which were real, by the way), and started becoming a more healthy person overall. She saw this, and eventually decided to trust me, and not to leave. It's taken a long time, but I think our relationship is more or less back to normal. She doesn't want to leave anymore, and she seems pretty happy. The problem is... for the past couple weeks, my sense of gender has started to change again. I don't know what happened with that month or so, and can only guess that the shock of her rejection, and the fear of losing her, had something to do with it. Now I feel more genderfluid than fully trans woman. I feel like female is more of a baseline gender, the one I feel the most strongly and colorfully and vividly. But there are days when I go back to feeling like a man, without any dysphoria at all. And there are days when I feel in between. So...long story over. My question is this. Now that I've worked so hard to save my marriage, and now that these trans feelings have come back so strongly...should I tell her again? I feel like telling her would end our marriage. I don't want to risk that. She's more important to me than anything. I feel like maybe I can keep it hidden from her, without necessarily being dishonest, since part of the time I do still feel male. And I feel male most strongly when I'm with her. So her image of me as a man isn't false. It's just not completely true. Or am I deceiving myself here? I know my situation is probably pretty fucked up. Please be blunt and tell me what you think. It's hard to know what to do without anyone else's outside opinion, and I feel like I can't come out to anyone now, as it'd be too big of a risk.
This is one of those unfortunate situations where you have two things that cannot go together, and you need to make a choice. Either stay as a male and be with your wife. Or, become transgender and lose her. There doesn't seem to be a single thing you can do to change her mind - she has already decided that if you were to turn female, that she would leave you. So you really need to ask yourself what would make you more happy. Would you be happier staying as a man and staying with your wife, or would you be happier being a woman? If I were you, I wouldn't be so hasty about decisions yet, as you seem unsure as to whether or not you actually want to be transgender. You did mention being genderfluid. I would explore within yourself first and identify what exactly it is that you're feeling, and then make a decision based on that.
Thanks for your advice. I guess I should clarify something I said. I'm sorry, I'm really horrible at this. In the first instance, when I came out to my wife and she rejected me, I did mean transgender in the commonly understood sense. What I'm saying now, in terms of whether I should come out a second time, is more that I'm trans* (emphasis on the *), using the term more as an umbrella term for non-cis gender identities. So in that usage, if I'm understanding it correctly, genderfluid would still fall under the trans* umbrella. I know I can't make any steps toward transitioning as long as I'm with her. And I think that's something I can live with. That doesn't, however, stop the fact that I often (not always, hence the genderfluidity) wish I could be female. So I don't know if it's accurate to say that my choice is stay with her and remain a man, or be trans* and lose her. As I see it, the choice is between keeping my trans* identity a secret (staying in the closet) and be with her, or come out and risk losing her. Sorry if I did a terrible job explaining all that. I guess mine probably isn't a very common situation, and my original post was probably poorly phrased.
