Lost...

Hello! My name is Erin and i'm new to Empty Closets. I found myself up tonight, thinking and rethinking things that have been on my mind for many months now. I found myself lost, as I often do when thinking over these issues, and decided to Google them just to see what came up. And here I find myself, after having read similar posts, seeking some perspective on my situation.

I'm 31 years old. My husband and I have been married for nine years and we have two beautiful girls, ages eight and four. My husband came to the realization about six months ago that he is transgender. My initial reaction was an overwhelming well of emotions. Since then, we've come a long way, I'd like to think. We've had many discussions, both in regard to our relationship as well as with our children and significant family members and friends. Almost everyone has been supportive, myself included. Yet I find myself at a loss at times like this because I really have no one to reach out and talk to.

I love my husband. He's a wonderful person and as I saw someone point out here on a similar thread, all of the qualities that I would point out as positive things that I absolutely love about him are genderless. I came to the realization, in recent weeks, that I don't care if he's a man, woman, or martian. My love for him will endure. At the same time, as I've related to him, I am going through a grieving process. In a sense, the man that I married has died, yet I am glad to say he's being reborn as a wonderful and confident woman.

I find myself having two difficulties, though. For one, this... process... feels like when I watched a good friend suffer and eventually succumb to a very aggressive ovarian cancer. Some days I wish it would just be over and done with. In which I mean to say, I wish the transition was finished. Unfortunately, he is in the military and wishes to finish out his career track. This means a lot of going way out of our living area for his support groups, for which he dresses as a female. It means a lot of having to be the emotional rock for him during the large chunks of time he has to play the role of the man people at his job or in public perceive him to be. It's difficult. Sometimes I just want to break down. Sometimes I feel like he's being selfish, because I am forced to bear this burden, but I know there's no other way. I've told him about these feelings but talking doesn't help and it doesn't change the burden either of us have to bear.

The second thing I found myself thinking about tonight. Let me start by saying that he makes an absolutely beautiful woman. He's come a very long way from wearing ten pounds of make up to cover his five o'clock shadow to making his make up look subtle and natural. And yet, I am not attracted to him as a woman. We've talked about this and I have agreed to see how things go throughout and after his transition. I even agreed to be intimate with him while he was dressed as a female, to give it a chance, and I have to say I wasn't disappointed. And yet, I'm not physically attracted to him as a woman.

I love him more than words can describe and I want our relationship to work but i'm terrified of this feeling. I don't think this would bother me so much but intimacy has been an ongoing problem in our marriage/relationship since we began dating almost 13 years ago. I was sexually traumatized at a very young age and grew up with a very strong aversion to intimacy and sex. As a guy, this was a real problem for him. So much so that he has cheated on me multiple times, both before and after we were married. He tells me now that he would be fine with a celibate relationship once he transitions, but I guess a very large part of me is skeptical because i'm terrified. He hasn't dressed up in a few weeks now due to outside circumstances, but we have not been intimate in that time either. He brought up this fact in a conversation earlier today and made the offhand comment, jokingly (I hope, i'm still not sure), that if I didn't take care of him, he'd find someone else to do it. I don't believe he was serious, which is why I haven't broached the issue with him (I don't want to imply a lack of faith by reading too much into a joke). At the same time, I fear that once he transitions, celibacy in our relationship will not be something he's okay with.

I'm not sure how to feel or what to do. I love and respect him for the individual that he is. I love his manly mannerisims and that's one thing I had to put a lot of consideration into over these past few months and that we've discussed in depth. I will miss his masculinity, not to be cliche, but I married a man because I wanted to have a husband, not a wife. I will miss being able to lay on his chest at night or oggle his physique as he gets out of the shower, but it's something I can deal with and adapt to. I know that about myself and I'm confident in it. My concern comes during times like these past few weeks where I realize that even when he's not dressed as a female, I see all of his feminine quirks, mannerisms, and eccentricities, and while I love them all as much as I love his masculine ones, I am not stimulated by them and thus even when he's playing the role of a male, I'm not sexually attracted to him.

I love him and I am committed to this relationship but I am very concerned about his need for intimacy and my inability to fulfill that need. Is it wrong to be terrified of enduring all of this only for him to transition and leave me because I'm not fulfilling his desires? I guess it's not, in the sense that both the good and the bad that we will endure together will help us grow as individuals. The butterflies in my stomach and tears in my eyes seem to disagree with that logic, though.

I'm sorry for the long, rambling post. I guess I need to vent as much as I need to get some outside perspective. Thank you all for your time.

 

Thank you very much for your response and the laughs! I'm feeling better today... or at least a bit more collected. Hopefully I can clarify a bit.

I have really come to terms with him being transgender. It did bother me in a lot of ways for a while but it's not an issue and I would love to continue our marriage regardless of whether my partner identifies as a man or a woman.

My concern, then, I suppose, has less to do with losing him than with being hurt. I don't know a lot of people in the transgender community, though I have many LGB(if not T) family members. My issue is i'm VERY introverted. He's asked me to come to his support groups and meet people but I just kind of brick wall with it. Not because it's LGBT or a support group or far away but because PEOPLE. :bang:

I kind of have the same problem with a counsellor. I've talked to mine about it but they tend to be more "listen and stare at you seeing dollar signs" than actually provide anything in the way of emotional support, etc. Yet I stay because I've already gone through the severe discomofort of finding them and dealing with them and opening up to them... :eusa_doh:

I think more than anything I just want to gauge outside opinions and advice on the situation. I definitely don't want to lose him, but I've lost him before and I know as much as it may hurt, i'm happy for him as long as he's happy, whether it's with me or the man on the moon is irrelevant to me. At the same time, I'm scared of failing, I guess, in a very large way. I support him because I love him and he deserves it.

Yet I come down to this: At what point do I cross the line and say "No, I have to take care of me." Unfortunately, taking care of me is something I have a huge problem with. I've gotten much better in the time we've been together and I'd be lying through my teeth if I said our relationship and his teachings didn't have a great deal to do with it. But since he's the one I learned and am learning from, I find it very difficult to ask him to judge a correct answer to that question.

What's too much? Where does the supportive sacrificing end and the (selfish) regard for my own feelings begin? I don't know and that is where I find myself stumbling.