Trans Widows Escape Committee 2- The Trans Widows Strike Back..

I feel the same way Tinsel!

That's why I'm so hesitant to say anything. I don't want to kill hopes or squash dreams of the women in relationships with these men. By the time they reach out for help, they are often confused, anxious, and depressed. Leaving a long-term relationship, breaking up your family, placing yourself and kids at financial risk, losing your home, your friends, your partner...these are big, irreversible steps. And ones that can never be taken lightly.

I have a very hard time knowing what to say to women caught up in this mess. I want to help them, but I don't see a way clear without a lot of pain. But there are different kinds of pain. There is the pain of leaving and the pain of staying.

If I had stayed, I would have ended up in a mental hospital. I would have lost my kids no matter which choices I made. My husband was very abusive, manipulating, and demanding. I would have been gaslighted to the point where I would have broke. I was almost there. This was not about clothing choices. It was about messing with my mind. He was capable of doing whatever it took to keep me there with him and isolated. Suicide threats, accusations of child abuse, threatening to take my kids from me, deliberately causing me to doubt my memories, my thinking, my values. It took me a very long time to get back to a new normal.

I guess my position is that if a woman wants to get out, I will encourage her. I did not stay because I was strong. I stayed because I was weak. I was afraid...of everything. And the longer I stayed, the weaker and more confused I became.. I only became strong through leaving, come what may. I will never again allow someone else to do my thinking for me, to coerce me to go against my instincts, to dismiss my feelings.

But the women who want to stay? I can't offer them comforting words, but I can urge them to trust their instincts and their eyes over the words they are told. I can offer them my story. I can let them draw their own parallels, if there are any. I am aware that my ex is perhaps an extreme example of an abusive autogynephile, but the underlying dynamics, the manipulation involved are just shades of grey IMHO. I have seen too much to be taken in by righteous anger or protestations of innocence. Just keep your eyes open.

I can't get over how things have changed in 20 years, maybe they haven't but I do believe that at least then the general public would have been more sympathetic to our plight! If one more person makes the stupid thoughtless remark of, well at least he's happy now and all I want to do is scream back with every fibre of my body, what right did he have to rob me of 28 years of my life. We were his beard, our children didnt ask to be the victims of his subterfuge.

I spoke to a lady from the the 'Beaumont Society' once she said it would be difficult coming to terms with who he now was but that my life would be richer and the relationship although different, deeper. SERIOUSLY!

I read the gaslighting chapter last night and OMG! That poor girl. I can see similarities in the manipulation but that was horrendous.

Today I discovered that he has drawn monies from his business accounts to pay for his gender reassignment and facial feminisation surgeries, I am seriously in disbelief. I wonder how HMRC will view that.

Since the TV program, 'The Making of Me' several ladies have contacted me with how difficult and intimidating they are finding working with him. They live in fear that if they make their discomfort common knowledge that their jobs could then be at risk. Why has the protection of the few been allowed to impact and shadow the lives of the many. Political correctness seems to have destroyed common sense.

I spoke to my mother in law, first time in 3 years, he has told her that I was the one who led him into this life he has chosen. That I was the one who purchased his clothes, make up etc..... She actually said to me, that according to him, I had full knowledge and was wholeheartedly supportive of him. That they (his family) couldn't understand why I was so devastated, destroyed and broken just going by what he had told them and he had advised them to distance themselves from us. He obviously didnt want us lifting the veil on his secret life.

He told me, along time ago that he would declare himself bankrupt rather than let our children and I get anything. He also told me he would discredit me to his family, as it turns out he almost succeeded but our truth has fewer holes and is more credible. Funny that.

His poor mum, doesn't even know that he's had the ops. She thinks he's purely living as a woman. God love her! I didnt tell her, she's in her seventies and she deserves her innocence. She told me that she gave birth to a son and he will always be her son.

No Tinsel, you are on the money. I divorced a man I was married to for less traumatic reasons than this but it was a very profound decision to make and your words are absolutely true about imagining life free of them and how much your health will recover. It's all true. You are right Tinsel.

Feel the fear and do it anyway. The rest of your life belongs to you.

Thanks for recommending that Tinsel and abby. I definitely need to read this. I’m a bit scared to tbh because I am still married and the more I find out about this, the more depressed I am about the future and our children. We’re one more lie away from me walking.
To be fair to my Dh, he has never ever suggested that I am involved in any cross dressing. But he lied to me by not telling me about it for more than a decade and he is now putting pressure on me to let him do it when i’m not around. I agree with his therapist that it’s not healthy denying who you are but I’ve told him that it’s something I won’t tolerate at all and I mean it. I don’t feel guilty in the slightest about these boundaries. Once he starts, he’s out of control and needs to do it more and more, and the lies get worse. I don’t want that in my life so it’s cross dressing or me.

Tinsel, Gaslighting was my contribution. I see the same patterns over and over. And I hear the same arguments. It's enough. Going to an agp for insight is like going to an addict for help in understanding addiction. I hope it helps someone.

I love the idea of a book. I would be glad to contribute (I'm a published author and did a successful Kickstarter), but would have to do so anonymously, as this could endanger my job in academia.

Financial Dispute Resolution

Hi everyone, a lot of you know my situation but something new has come up and I wans wondering if anyone else has experienced issues within FDR and hidden or non transparency?

Wow abby, that is such an inspiring and interesting story. I am increasingly incensed that we believe victims of domestic abuse, and victims of sexual crime, but there is a feeling that victims of this kind of emotional/financial abuse are/will not be believed more widely, for political reasons. Hearing your experiences, and again the depressingly familiar nature of it all, is so valuable for us - thank you to all the new lurkers who are contributing. It feels as if we are growing and mobilizing. All credit to Tinsel - without you overseeing this we would not be talking.
Looking at the research trial, it seems we really should get involved, as it claims to be looking at the support needs of partners of transitioners. I have a bad feeling about it all (and that it will end up concluding that we primarily need educating... my workplace are bringing in GI to do a training day presumably to tell us the difference between sex and gender, and the horrific damage inflicted by misgendering… sigh). I would love a large number of transwidows to join it to shine a light on the hidden abuse element of all this.
Interestingly I've found out that my ex has now moved into academia (one of many reinventions) which has to be the safest, most cosseted place for someone like him to work, surrounded by people wearing pronoun badges....

Another lurking widow chiming in. I'm also outraged on your behalf. I don't mind the term Transwidows in the least. to you all.

Hi! I'm from the US and I've been lurking here for a while. I just joined and I'm not very computer literate, so apologies in advance!

I used to be married to a narcissistic AGP. I can't even describe my mental state by the time I was able to get out with my small kids. The lies. The coersion. The rewriting of history. The denial and anger and blame. By the time I left, I couldn't trust my own mind. Decades have passed and my health is still impacted by that period of my life.

I have spoken out before about the inherent abuse that can happen when an unaware woman finds herself in this insane situation. I used to be active in a very small forum, the only one that dared to actually question the "experts" of the time (this was back in 2009?). I had gotten out of my marriage years before, but I was reaching out to these women that had nowhere to go. I was outraged for them. The stories were horribly familiar to my own. The guilt that was heaped on them by their partners, their therapists. They are often in isolation, held quiet by threats of suicide as I was, love-bombed when they acquiesced after unrelenting coercion.

AGP takes over the entire life of the male partner. The deception, the money, the missing time, the hidden motivations. The selfishness, the manipulation the absolute anger and rage when a woman has the nerve to question obvious lies. My ex turned into someone without conscience, without empathy, without mercy. I will never allow myself to be dependent on a partner as I was back when I was a young mother with 2 babies.

The forum that I was involved in eventually got discovered by the hordes. They put it out of business, bombarded us with so many taunts and threats that no one felt safe anymore...and that was the end of that. We did write a book, though. About our lives and how we survived. About what we learned after the lies were sifted out and the truths were staring us in the face. And what we discovered through living with this for years, through watching our partners feed their obsessions while their lives - and their family's lives - spun out of control. I think the book is still available on Amazon books. Do a search for "Crossdressers Wives Secret Lives" - I think it's free on Kindle prime. I know that the terminology is dated, but this was back in the early 2010s.

I do not expect anyone to understand what I and many other women have gone through with an AGP partner. I know that I would never understand if I hadn't gone through it myself. It's a mindfuck of truly epic proportions. But as isolating as it was for me to cope without any support 20-some years ago, I cannot imagine trying to hold my own against the tide of propaganda that partners face today. My thoughts are with you.

Iworkmiricles my husband is adamant that it is purely cross dressing and he has no wish to be a woman. This was a big issue for me when I first found out. As far as I am aware, he has only been out in public as a woman on occasion and this was before I was on the scene. I honestly don’t know if this is true though. I would like to believe him but pretty much everything he has told me about it has been minimised and the truth has only come out when I have discovered the lies. I don’t think I will ever find out the full extent.

Out of interest, does anyone's partners NOT cross dress or show any signs of external changes until a long way through the process? Everyone seems to have had cross dressing and part time females, but at present, my husband isn't showing any signs of wishing to live as a woman.