Trans Widows Escape Committee 3: Rise of the Trans Widows

Huh.. I just read about Caitlyn Jenner finally finding shoes that fit.

"She went on: 'I'd always fantasised about having beautiful clothes that fit, but here's my dilemma in that department. I feel like, on the one hand, I've got to dress age-appropriately because I'm 70 years old, you know? On the other hand, little Caitlyn's only five years old and a girl's gotta have a bit of fun. And so, I go back and forth on that. I want to be a cool chick.'"

I don't recall little me wanting to have fun and wearing high heel shoes or cool clothes at the age of 5. I was too busy playing on swings or throwing my teddybear around.

@TinselAngel

I'm doing very well. And how odd it feels to be able to write that. At any other time in the past four years, if not five (my ex made his trans declaration in March of 2015; god, coming up on five years!) I would have been able to say, at best, "okay," or "better." But today I can say with certainty: very well.

I just today completed an essay grappling with my ex's declaration he was "a woman in a man's body" and the subsequent effect it had on our marriage (I divorced him) and my psyche. I hadn't been able to write anything for three years (not a good situation for an academic and creative writer), so this represents a huge step forward for me.

Now I'll start looking for someone to publish it. I'd prefer to place it somewhere else other than a gender critical site like "Feminist Current" or "4W," but if I run into a brick wall with more traditional venues, I'll make it available that way.

@WifeOfTiresias my ex was definitely the second type.

He had stashes of trans porn, wore female clothing, put on make up, did it all when I was at work or out. This is why I was never permitted a front door key, I always had to ring home when I was leaving work and tell him when I would be home.

I was locked out of the bathroom when he was using it which could be up to an hour to two hours at a time. He kicked me out of our shared office and relegated me to a corner in the bedroom with my computer, I wasn't allowed to be in his office, it was always locked.

It's hard to deal with, but I've parked all the issues I have with him at the moment, as I need to grapple with my childhood trauma first before I look at what happened to me as an adult.

Reading that article I think my H is the first type of trans, the non AGP type as thinking back over our years together he never really enjoyed sex and had never slept with any other woman before me. He now claims the hormones have changed his orientation to be attracted to men but I feel he was always this way and was afraid to admit it as his controlling father would never have accepted it.

So he was just using me to create a family and blamed his lack of enthusiasm for sex on my unattractive personality
Luckily I had partners before him so didn't believe this but hanging onto my own sense of self worth over the years has been hard.

@TinselAngel

See, if I finished my Behavioural Science degree, I could go into research and look at transwidows, however, due to my own experiences, I literally could not be unbiased enough in my opinion, to be fair to both sides. However, a basic premise of research is that if you are aware of your own bias' you need to bring in others to help balance the research so that all points of view are covered. I would do that, which I guess means, I'd be more objective than I feel right now.

Both degrees I"m studying emphasise how to conduct research, how to do the readings to challenge your hypothesis as well as support it, and you must always include a counter argument, because if you don't acknowledge the other side, then how can your research stand up to scrutiny. There was a lack of diversity in the sample. There was no checking if the sample of representative (which must be done). I took that person apart because anyone without a basic understanding of research principles, which lets face it, is most people, would think that the research was valid and legit. It wasn't.

@TinselAngel

I am doing so much better. Meds have really worked and counseling has been great. I had to deal with the deaths of a family friend and 2 good friends of mine over a 3 day period and I could only go to one funeral. I was worried that my emotional reaction was not appropriate. However, it turns out I am having an appropriate reaction and the grieving I'm doing is normal.

I got really irritated by that exchange on twitter last night with a person who did their own 'study' and claimed that AGP trans are not abusive. I wanted to give him/her the benefit of the doubt, but the way she conducted the study was so amateurish. I won't link it here, because ppl can track back referring websites and I don't want him/her finding us here and telling us that we're wrong and our 'anecdotes' are not valid or reliable.

So, today was a mix of crap. I went to a funeral today, I've lost hearing so I have had to get a scan to see if there are issues in my sinuses, I went and fixing up a friend's house that I'm looking after while they have relocated to another town. That friend has hurt me deeply over the last 3 weeks and I'm unsure about continuing our friendship. So, I'm seeing them tomorrow and I'll make my decision then. I've had nearly 2 weeks of no meltdown, but today it became too much and I broke down in the afternoon but pulled myself together and read books to my 2y/o. Even this response is an indicator of my mental disarray. sigh!

Glad you are talking to someone Rett; it's so helpful if you can find the right person.
This thread is often about distress and pain; it is good to remember that we also share if not joy, relief, freedom and fresh starts from women who have managed to leave these situations and establish good new lives for themselves. From several years on, I now experience intermittent joy in areas of my life, and a profound sense of independence, resilience and integrity. I'm optimistic that there is joy to be had for women who decide to leave these relationships, with time, the right help, and of course the essentials (family/friends, financial independence and stability, a roof) in place. I'm aware not everyone has that, and many are unhappily staying, but along with our support for one another, I hope we can celebrate the positives of not staying/moving on/walking away/saying no/holding boundaries/going it alone, as having this kind of life event doesn't have to mean enduring pain, distress, bewilderment and despair. For those of you 'in it', it can be impossible to see a good future; I certainly couldn't for years, but I took great comfort and strength from women reporting from further down the road, where life was much better. Sorry if that sounds trite; I was just struck by the 'narrative of joy' you rightly note Rett, and that things can get a whole lot better.

I chatted to my therapist about Transgendered pepople and my experience with them. My group of friends is pretty eclectic and one of them is an MTF. Her name is Olivia and I realised that when I knew Oliver, the transition to Olivia was seamless. No difference at all pre and post transition.

I considered my ex, he was like night and day. Shit human, saw the clothes, hair and shoes as part of his fantasy. I told the therapist that there were women out there like me. That had negative experiences and were not allowed to share them because we were seen as TERFs. That there was a narrative of joy for those who transition, but not for those left behind.

But I'd far rather read something of yours

I'd always rather read the authentic voice of a strong, honest women, than fashionable lies.

100% there for your ethical decision, Walked

The author is a Stonewall campaigner. Not a transwidow, not a child of a transitioner. So fairly obvious what she is trying to achieve. Her research has only involved families who stay together; we are of course rather hard to reach safely even if someone wants to talk to us. Which they don't, because we report lived experience they want to delete and overwrite. So you can see it really as like all the other propaganda; it's particularly ill-informed and insensitive as is likely to be given to young people and children whose parent is doing this, by well-meaning librarians/professionals, and of course I can totally imagine my kids' father enthusastically buying them it to help his cause. We shouldn't be telling kids how to feel, but of course they are surrounded by that. Mine feel guilty enough about their feelings, without this sort of shite.
And you're right Walked, you could have done a Love Lives Here and made lots of money and gained lots of strokes for your tolerance and loving the inner person.
But I'd far rather read something of yours. Well done for getting it onto a prize list. There have been bits and pieces of transwidow stuff published/broadcast thanks to some braver editors, and more would be good.

I haven't read this book (nor will I), but I do write (and a manuscript of a memoir of mine was a finalist for a national prize), and I remember thinking, when I was in the midst of all this, that if I capitulated to my then husband's wishes, I could write a book that would certainly be picked up by a publisher and the liberal cheerleading industry would make me a paragon of right thinking virtue.

I don't know this woman, and I don't know what motivates her, but you'll have to forgive me if I'm skeptical of her motives as well as of her "all-in" stance.

The author refers to 'myths' about trans family life... Herself keeps the myth alive that all families are like this/can do this/just need to love enough/children and young people are at fault or flawed or bigots if they don't accept/embrace/believe/tolerate.... This one can itself be shelved in Mythology (it is after all fiction) I think.

Reading around it, blurb, review, it's a happy tale of acceptance, inclusivity and challenging transphobia. Very predictable. Maybe my unconvinced, estranged and unimpressed kids will write their book one day about their view of their father and his mid-life urgent need to find himself. Predictable, inevitable, not reflective of all experience...

No one could pay me enough to read that book. I read Jennifer Boylan's "She's Not Here" at my ex's insistence, where the "happy ending" of the memoir is the wife deciding to stay on in a sexless marriage with the trans husband. I don't need to read more memoirs or novels, which is what I'm guessing that book is.

The bewilderment is profound and longlasting. I completely relate to not understanding what reality I lived during my quite long marriage. My ex was restless and perpetually dissatisfied, and each fad/thing he tried didn't last and never fully delivered whatever he was looking for. I don't know if he 'knew' on our wedding day, or on the day my children were born, or on the day his latest fad cost us more money, or a major home move to make him at last happy, or the 'several years' before he announced he was a 'woman', which he told friends, or the shorter time he told me. I don't know if he tried on my clothes, or used trans porn, but it seems very likely from the signs, or was jealous of me when he tried to deter me from looking too 'feminine', or when he bizarrely adopted some of my lifestyle and hobbies when he 'transitioned'.
The only freedom - rather like with people whom you can never satisfy, so you need at some point to stop trying - from not knowing the truth or reality you lived, or whom you lived with intimately but apparently never knew, is to accept you will never know. I came to realize that even if I was able to sit down and ask my ex for honest answers about timescale, why he married, when he knew, the secret life he lived, I wouldn't believe him anyway. He became an adept and secretive liar, and took on a whole new identity which necessitated him cutting off from those who knew the 'old' him.
I no longer trust him, which frees me to not ask.
Accepting not knowing is quite liberating.
I don't doubt my own judgement much, as I see him as a very f*ed-up individual, then and now. He is an inadequate parent and spouse, and a poor friend to those who knew him previously. He remains, despite supposedly having arrived at self-actualization, a dysfunctional adult person, and a self-absorbed and sad little man.
So I see the deficiency in him, not me, and regard myself and my children as simply unlucky to have had him in our lives, rather than me as foolish or flawed to have 'not known'.
Men who do this are often by necessity highly secretive and blaming of others. Women are enmeshed often for years while this plays out, their self-confidence and sense of reality eroded.
But you remain who you were before, with all your qualities and potential.
I see it as rather like being with any liar, or con-man, or fake person. My mother now refers to him as 'Walter Mitty' and much of the impact on me has mirrored that of friends whose husbands had other secrets or double lives.
I can't imagine what it's like to have a parent do this; I can somehow separate myself as time goes on, but he is my children's father and that more than blows their minds.
It is an outrage and an offence to relabel and rewrite the lives and identities of others, and many of us resist this here. We are told we must respect the titles and labels and lived experience of our exs, but ours do not matter.
Reclaiming who you were before your toxic and damaging relationship, and separating yourself from that person, is really helpful in moving on and feeling less distressed.
My heart goes out to you Walked and I hope you can find an independent life as just you, and start again. It's tough and takes time but can be done.