Trans Widows Escape Committee 3: Rise of the Trans Widows

@walkedaway I understand that and I'm not saying you are actually looking after your mum for any other reason than you need to.

Please, all I am saying is that caring for others is a great way of not dealing with your own issues. I didn't understand this until I got into counseling and my therapist literally guessed that's what I do.

I understand our circumstances are different and I mean absolutely no offense.

I did not agree to care for my mother in order to avoid dealing with my own "issues." I agreed to care for my mother because her caregiver left and she was without anyone to help her.

@WalkedAway

"...I have had some counseling. I am trying to focus on the now, but "the now" is that I am currently caretaking my 93 year old mother, and that is a "now" centered around her needs and not my own. For the moment, I am trying to hang on until the end of the time I said I would do this for my mother..."

I used friend's issues, work and volunteer work to avoid dealing with my own personal issues. Did it really well until it didn't work. I get that you're juggling, just remember though, you must look after yourself FIRST to be able to look after another.

You might find, that once you start looking at your emotional needs first, you will be able to better manage looking after your mum as you're in a better headspace.

Sending you love and hugs.

Rettstar,
Thank you for that gem from your therapist. It's true also for me that if I'd known from the beginning about his early cross dressing, and that he'd told me lies about himself from the very beginning (one of these liesrevealed as a lie only in the last year of our 35 year marriagewas actually important to me in deciding that he was the type of person I wanted to know better), I would not have become involved with him. That is, if I'd had the truth then, I would have interpreted some of his actions early on differently, and chosen differently. So in that sense my decision making is sound.

I think my worry about knowing I'm capable of making the right choice, of when I can trusting my instincts, my judgment and decisions, comes from being at a crossroads in my own life: I've divorced, my son is grown, and I've just retired. I know I don't want to stay in the location I'm currently living, but don't know where to go. I know I can't retain some of the joint friends and colleagues we shared, because it hurts me that he is still in his closet and those of our friends who do know pretend they don't, and are friends with him still.

I have had some counseling. I am trying to focus on the now, but "the now" is that I am currently caretaking my 93 year old mother, and that is a "now" centered around her needs and not my own. For the moment, I am trying to hang on until the end of the time I said I would do this for my mother.

@walkedaway

I struggled with this when I left my ex. I knew he liked cross dressing, he'd introduced it into our relationship. He would make me do stuff during sex that I felt awkward about, but he said he liked a bit of kink and I went along with it, because that was what he wanted.

When I found trans porn on the computer after he kicked me out of our shared office space, I realised there was something else going on and I was in shock for a few days. I didn't talk to him about it. The clothing he bought for "me for my birthday" was actually 3 sizes too small and for him, but again, I didn't know that.

I asked my marriage therapist about this, because I just feel like I am incapable of making the right decision when it comes to loving men in my life.

For example: I have an ex that I still love, he's still in my life (best friends), but he's histrionic, traumatised by his past and we never worked out because of poor life choices and timing, he reminds me of my ex, but the good stuff. Intelligent, kind, funny, empathetic, but he's moody, prone to making quick decisions based on emotion and not logic and dismissive about other's issues.

My husband on the other hand, steady, consistent, a great father, but not communicative, not demonstrative, logical, calm. He's the complete opposite to my Ex, and to my best friend. The marriage therapist asked me with the benefit of hindsight, would I have chosen my Ex (the trans mtf) again, if I knew then what I know now. I said no. She didn't ask me about my best friend, but I feel if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have had a relationship with my best friend. My husband on the other hand, I would absolutely choose again. My therapist said to me, if I wouldn't make the same choices again, then there was nothing wrong with my judgement.

I still sometimes struggle with the head games that ex played. He gaslit me so well that sometimes I was unable to distinguish truth from lies. He told me he liked to dress up as a kid, but was told off by his parents (true), he told me he'd been married before but she died in a car accident (not true), told me he'd been injured in the army (still don't know if that's true). The sexual stuff he made me do, I can barely think about without feeling ill.

In the end, for me to heal, I have to focus on now. What is currently real now. You also need to focus on now and not the past. Everything we have been through, we have survived. The next step is to get therapy/counseling if you haven't started already. That is something I didn't do after I left my ex and I am paying the price for now.

Right after my ex disclosed his feeling he was "a woman in a man's body" to me, and I told him that this news had screwed with my past, and my past was a lie, he actually told me that my past was real, that it happened as it happened. Well, the events happened, yes, but if one of the people in that past is misrepresenting themself, then how could the past be "real"? It was only real insofar as I experienced it, but it wasn't real in the sense of honest. If he was lying about who he was, either to himself or to me, or to himself, then how could the past be anything other than dishonest and therefore not "real." I was real; I was honest; I wasn't hiding. But that HE was dishonest and hidinglying about who he was, and I didn't perceive that-that is what is fucking with me now.

I think what you are both describing is actually another facet of this whole thing. And that is their own timelines as they have described them to you. My ex did something like what you describe, too, telling me at one point that he didn't really "know" until three months before telling me (but also saying he first asked himself the question "could I be trans?" three years before telling me), yet also saying he'd first crossdressed at age 8 or 10 (I forget which). I took that for his remaking the narrative of his childhood to make himself trans from the beginning. I wonder about that, too--what did he know and when did he know it, and when did he begin repressing it, lying to me, hiding, etc. So there's that aspect of it

There's also the aspect of looking back on our pasts and seeing them anew through the lens of what we were later told about them. Did my husband know when our child was born that he felt this way? How did he explain his feelings to himself? Was he hiding it? All I knew was what he presented to me, and that was heterosexual male father. And that's the lens through which I interpreted his actions. When I look back now on that period of our life, it feels tainted. Instead of seeing that time and those photos as a time when we were bonding as a new family, I see those photos as an expression of his paraphilia and the whole episode is tainted for me.

And if I couldn't tell then that my now-ex was creeping on me, how can I trust my perceptions now? It's like he knocked my sense of being able to conclude anything with any certainty right off balance. And that is making it hard for me to recover.

*Walked, my heart goes out to you. I'm at a similar stage, also about two years out from divorce, and still dealing with the mindfuck of this whole situation. This is the specific cognitive dissonance item that still gets me... my ex said that he couldn't wait even a day later to start transition. Then he later told me that he wanted to transition ten years earlier, but never said or did anything, because we would have divorced and he would likely get only the standard "alternate weekends plus one weeknight" custody of our children. So which one was actually true? A desperate "I can't wait" or "Yes, I can wait ten years until child custody is no longer an issue"?

I'm still resentful. I wanted the future with my husband that I thought I would have. I can intellectually recognize that my life is better now post-divorce in so many ways, but I'm still angry. Especially now that I've learned it was basically for nothing, my ex is not happy, apparently she didn't get the butterfly life she wanted and that I paid so much for. All of this for a fantasy.

I need to talk about the way that even though I've been divorced from my trans-identified ex for a year, and am almost two years from moving out, I'm still affected by the way that my ex's revelation that he had decided he was "a woman in a man's body" made me reconsider and question past events. And, worse, that it has made me feel uneasy about my ability to make judgements about the present--if I was so very wrong then, how can I be sure I'm not equally wrong now.

I am currently reading Sarah Hall's "The Wolf Border," a very good novel, whose main character becomes pregnant and gives birth. I'm currently in the section that details her life with her newborn, and it is bringing up such feelings and memories, which are all altered and conditioned both by my own post-menopausal state (the end of fertility and the possibility of pregnancy) and by the trans trauma.

One awful and ongoing effect of my ex's trans reveal was that alteration of earlier incidents, the questioning of his motives, the remaking of what I thought I understood. So, for an example, his interest in my breast feeding, his desire to watch and photograph the baby on my breast. I used to think his desire to watch me feed the baby was family bonding, his attempt to be included in what would otherwise be a mother-child experience, and although at the time I longed for time alone to bond with my baby, just the two of us, I considered that it was important to bond as a family and that I facilitate my husband's bonding to our child, so I went along with it.
After the trans reveal, it became clear that of all things female, my ex wanted breasts--he would palpate himself (fondling himself), he wore a bra, including during sex, he took selfies of his "breasts" in a bra, etc etc.
After that, when I saw those photographs, with their focus on the baby's face, latched on to my breast, gazing up, but in which there is nothing of me but the breast, and I think, "Was he projecting himself into this picture? Was he imagining himself as the one with the milk-giving breast? Was he imaging himself as the mother? Was he imagining the face into which our baby was so avidly gazing his own?"

I also think about how he used to undermine my breast-feeding; he would, for example, feed the baby a full bottle before I could return from work, even though he knew I would be home in just a few minutes, and when I complained, my breasts full and aching, he'd attack me, reminding me that he was the one who had to hear the baby cry, and bottle feeding him could comfort the baby.
I know I'm on the road to recovery, but I'm still stumbling over this issue of having my past remade in light of the trans reveal, and worse, I'm still struggling with the feeling that I can't trust my own perceptions of a situation or my own judgement.

I'm sure I'm not the only one of us who has experienced this or something like it.

And very keen to promote herself and her book
Support for people with different experiences, and speaking out about the need for it, is 'hate', apparently...
She seems to be enjoying a lot of self-publicity, and book revenue, from her stance. It would seem important to her therefore to label any differing experience or opinion as 'hate'.
Women seeking support here can rest assured we're not making money or individual profile/following/publicity out of this space.
Hope the rest of you survived/enjoyed Christmas. Let's hope 2020 is better for all of us, particularly those of you in difficult 'stuck' situations, experiencing abusive behaviour, or feeling sad, bereaved, bewildered, scared.

I think she, like others, is in 'survival mode'.

Perhaps like the wife (or husband) who sticks by a cheating partner and then says 'our marriage is better than ever'.

If she really cared about others in the same boat she would be engaging, IMHO.

She cares about herself and this is her way of surviving, IMHO. But then I am not a trans widow, and I may be wrong.

I just know all the parents of trans youth I speak to on the surface are so accepting and positive.

Scratch the surface and they are terrified for their beloved children, did not see this coming and have not encouraged it (despite what the media says about parents of trans youth).

How bizarre that the defiant Amanda (who I think perhaps needs to get out more) doesn't think partners of transitioning people ever feel bad, or ever need support. Fingers in her ears methinks.
Transwidows resources exist primarily because so many women DON'T feel positive about this experience, and are not treated well by their transitioning partners. It may be an uncomfortable truth, and go against the rainbow-joy message, but just blocking everyone doesn't really make us go away or delete our lived experience. Plus I love the fact these people like to delete/block/dismiss, yet 100% expect the world to respect the lived experience/feelings and titles of trans people and their 'allies'... what a contradictory nonsense.
Meanwhile, we can remain focussed on support.

How sad Amanda takes glee in belittling women.

"I have discovered it's possible to love more than one man. I have discovered that you can save a marriage if the other partner wants to save it as much as you do. That I am loveable and I can love. That I am not an emotionless automaton that I thought I was. I am the luckiest woman alive. These are the things I build upon :-)"

You are an incredible woman. I think your story could help others too. I hope you journal and write tour life story. Evenifyou never publish it. You are a survivor. It is awful that you have needed to be, but you are turning coal into diamonds. XXxX

Rettstar my heart goes out to you. Xxxxxx

@tinselangel who is amanda ?

Sorry about the post above, but I have had to accept that my upbringing contributed to what I went through with my ex.

I am a woman that has experienced trauma for decades and never dealt with it.

Literally the only person in my life who has not abused me has been my husband. The only source of pure love I have experienced has been my daughter. Husband loves me, but the love of a child, is unique. I am grateful that despite the internal damage to my uterus I experienced at the hands of my ex, that my daughter was a strong enough zygote to implant and foetus to grow and become my newborn rainbow child.

I have discovered it's possible to love more than one man. I have discovered that you can save a marriage if the other partner wants to save it as much as you do. That I am loveable and I can love. That I am not an emotionless automaton that I thought I was. I am the luckiest woman alive. These are the things I build upon :-)

@tinselangel

I babysit for a close friend and this year, in January his kids started disclosing emotional abuse experienced at the hands of their mother (my friend and his ex have not been together for 11 years). He tried to protect them but the family court forced them to return to her and we've had to deal with family court stuff this year. This started to trigger suppressed memories of my upbringing. I experienced emotional childhood neglect by my parents, both of whom were abused as children physically and emotionally. I was to blame for many things that happened including y sister not doing her chores, I was blamed for fights that we had, when she was beating me, it was my problem to solve, not theirs. Beating continued until she ran away from home when I was 19. (she was 17).

Then in March 2019, Cardinal Pell was convicted of child sex abuse. During the sentencing, the defence said it was only one instance, and on the lower end of the scale. I was raped as a 4 yr old, only one time, by a teenager living next door to my parents. So, I guess one time is OK right?

Then in August, my friend with the abused kids declared his love for me, I was drunk and reacted badly and told him in public, no. He took this badly and in September, told me where to go, started a new relationship with an old sweetheart and said that it was my fault that he had to leave Uni and I put his children in danger and that their lives depended on my statement.

Also in September, we were studying oppression at Uni, domestic violence was used as an example of oppression and the gaslighting was discussed in detail. I felt like my lecturer had cut me open and was showing everyone my life. Then memories of the abuse I experienced by my ex started to surface.

Also in September, my husband crossed the only not negotiable in our relationship around drinking, so I walked out on him and took my child to a friends house where we lived for 2 weeks. In that 2 week period, I started to find my emotional self control disappear and my "friend" told me not to leave my marriage for him, or we'd never speak again and then he told me to find other friends to talk to and left for his hometown. All of this triggered abandonment fears and issues, which stem from my shitty childhood.

October started with me having flashbacks about my ex and what he did to me, the sexual assaults, being used as a masturbation tool, being groomed (also something happening to my friend's teenage daughter atm).

Husband and I managed to talk and he stopped the behaviour (drinking) that was my not negotiable. I went to Uni and told them I was falling apart and needed help, so I started intensive counseling. I started marriage counselling and then finally trauma counselling. I have lost count of the counseling sessions I've had since late October. I have had a complete mental breakdown, I have been disabled, for many weeks I have been unable to do normal things like drive, go to the shops, exist without having panic attacks. The counseling is helping me manage my thoughts.

Due to my upbringing, I had no idea what I was getting into with my ex. My parents taught me to accept being spoken to badly so I thought it was normal. I thought it was normal to be subservient. I thought it was normal to submit to angry people. I didn't tell anyone I was being abused because I was taught not to tell anyone about anything that happened in my family. I had no idea that I was in an abnormal relationship.

The only reason I came out of the fog was because I watched gran die, and realised if I didn't leave my ex, I would be dead within 5 years. I then went to a friend's wedding 2 weeks later, was alone for the first time in 9 years and realised that I could survive without my ex.

When I left him, I had to learn how to pay the bills, how to negotiate with creditors. My credit rating was black marked because of his actions. So, 2019 was my epiphany year because I finally had the breakdown I probably should have had 15 years ago and didn't because I had to survive leaving my ex and learning how to function as an adult with literally no support. Now I am doing everything the hard way.

I have to learn how not to dissociate, how to ask for help, not self harm, to let myself experience emotional pain for the first time ever. Even when I was having my baby, or when I've had pancreatitus, the physical pain is nothing in comparison to what I have had to endure over the years and now I'm no longer using food, or pain to deal with my emotions.

I'm not as bad as I was a month ago. I know it's improving but it's hell and I hope to god, I never go through this again.

It's very confusing, wondering whether you were involved with an entirely different person or not. Mid-life transitioners tend to tell the world that they are unchanged 'inside', and still the same person/husband/father. (This helps to fuel the idea that women who leave these relationships are superficial and simply freaked about by the clothing/paraphenalia). However that doesn't seem to be the experience of women on this thread; my children experienced someone behaving in entirely alien and un-child-focussed ways, yet affirming all the time he was 'deep down' still Dad. Certainly felt like I and they were dealing with a stranger; one of my children felt very frightened and unsafe around the 'new' person to the extent that they stopped all contact. So Rett it makes sense that you feel bewildered about whom you are/were dealing with. It's mindblowing.