Trans Widows Escape Committee 3: Rise of the Trans Widows

I have wondered that too tinsel He's in his 40's and no one (including me) has picked up on his behaviour before so I don't think he autistic as severely as some people. He is making a lot of other changes to his behaviour successfully. I'm not going to explain them as they are not relevant and possibly outing. So he is capable of change in some areas. I think the possible autism diagnosis is relevant as it may help explain why he started in the first place (love of textures & then creating new identity as not 'fitting in' as a boy). The question is whether he can now become a 'detransistioner' or whether the autism will keep him cross dressing.

As social said, I'm just enjoying the respite while it lasts.

Good to hear from you Tears. I'm glad you have some respite but yes, your realism is probably wise. Sounds like you're biding your time. I hope you can get some good bits out of Christmas and 'right now'. It's hard not to think too far ahead.
Welcome racy. Sounds like you're out the other side with a CD ex. Hope life has got better for you since those disturbing times

Welp, my ex wanted to breastfeed our baby so I guess he wanted to assume the female duties. While we were married and I was pregnant he used the whole pregnancy belly simulation thing to cross-dress then he would clean the house like mad all in a ruse to convince me henwas trying to relate to me. Reality was he was just cross-dressing and making me nauseous.

I'm still here.

It's very hard to say how I feel or what is going on. I feel like it changes daily. DH's therapist has raised the possibility that he is autistic. We've talked about it and tbh it does make a lot of sense and an awful lot of of his behaviours fit that profile to the point that both of us are almost wondering why we didn't see it before. I think he is going to request a formal diagnosis in new year.

Cross dressing and general 'trans-ness' does seem to be a lot more common amongst those people who are autistic (My apologies in advance if I phrase something clumsily to do with autism, it's a very new area for me and I wouldn't want to offend anyone. If I have/do please correct me). He himself though has said that a diagnosis wouldn't excuse his behaviour.

He has had a lot of other mental health issues to deal with and although it will still be a while before he stops seeing his therapist he is much, much better than he was. To my knowledge he hasn't cd since February and has been in many ways a better husband and father than he has ever been. Less selfish and self centered, more helpful around the home and more interactive with the children. It all sounds like it's going wonderfully and all can be right with the world again.....only it can't. I can't forgive him. I worry that we are just in an extended purge part of the cycle and that the perfect dh and father role is just another identity he's trying on before he returns to being 'stunning and brave'.

This Christmas will be a strange one but it's a real one. I'm trying to be positive that it's not another one that I'm kept in the dark. At least now I can plan my own future.

Thank you all for your support. I hope you all get some joy from Christmas.

oh festive thanks is not a thing!!

Hi all you wonderful women. I am not a trans widow but I lurk and occasionally de-lurk to say anything that pops into my mind because I find you all very inspiring.

We've got a trans person in the family which means I do understand some of the issues.

Anyway, I've caught up on your stories and I just wanted to wish you power and strength and peace for Christmas.

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Alone .....I read your harrowing account and delurked straight away.
I have nothing new to add to what these wonderful supportive women have said to you but , golly , I'm glad you made it to here xxx

I would no more tell my DC's about their dad that I would tell them about the details of the CSA I was put through. They know I had 'an unhappy childhood' and thats all they need to know.
Being forced to manage everyone else's expectations and their relationship is one way you get used as a beard, and another type of wife work.

Beautiful piece, made me cry. I am thinking a lot at the moment about all the women at Christmas who feel sad, alone, left, bereaved, abandoned, rejected, discarded, exhausted, overwhelmed, pretending, putting on a smile....
But we escape. We start again. We go it alone for a while or forever.
And life is so much better having done that.
It's like a road in my mind's eye; I have friends ahead of me who no longer care, and can even laugh about what happened to them, and no longer need or want to know about their ex.
Behind me are friends in great distress, divorce, betrayal; they ruminate and rage and their health is affected.
But we will all move through and escape from these men.

My ex is a miserly, petty, proud, vain, self-absorbed delusional individual. He may spend Xmas playing the victim with his family, suddenly being super-uncle to the nieces and nephews he had little interest in before, and spending long periods grooming, preening and dressing up in finery. He will spend time with his 'allies', half-brave victim, half entirely new person playing female.

Meanwhile I spend Christmas with his estranged children, who I've raised through all the misery and trauma, and all the friends who supported me. I know who I am and I don't every day have to turn myself into a woman. And I didn't leave my family, or lie for years, or treat others with contempt. Nobody thinks I treated my children with appalling disregard. Nobody thinks I'm a terrible parent. Nobody thinks I'm delusional or a pathetic human being.
These men are toxic. We are all better off without them.

@Quinn

I think it must not be uncommon for us to hope that once our spouses are able to "be themselves" that they will be freed to be the partner we'd always hoped for.  I know I thought this--a form of what you call "buying in" to "the lie." 

Also common that we discover exactly what both of us did: once selfish and self-centered and self-absorbed, always so.  

I remember a conversation that took place between us two years before he dropped his trans bomb, but one year, I discovered later, after he'd begun secretly "exploring whether he might be trans" (as he put it).
We were discussing divorce, and whether we could fix our marriage, and my now-ex said that he'd thought I I was unable to change, but he'd decided he was wrong, and that I could change and he couldn't. Turns out he was right: I was far more willing than he to change in order to remain married, and he was unwilling to change at all (unless it was clothes...those he could change.)

@TinselAngel
Thanks for posting that link. I identified with everything she listed, and so appreciated that someone has spoken our truth and supported us publicly.

@WalkedAway, I think I had the reverse... "This person turned my world upside down and I've had to completely rebuild my life, but at least one of us is happy." And now I realize that this was also a lie, just as I feel like my life is finally starting to be back on track again. It's very freeing and there's definitely a sense of justice to it.

Because I did buy at least a little into his lie that my ex would become this wonderful person after transition and if I just stayed in the marriage, eventually he would be a decent spouse to me.

But it was all a lie. Because someone who acts selfishly and without any concern for others is going to transform after transition into... someone who acts selfishly and without concern for others.

@QuinnMovesOn
Your confirmation that your ex continues on as he was before comes at a necessary time for me.

I am occasionally tormented by the thought that my leaving freed my ex to become the person he always wanted to be and therefore he must be flourishing at a time, while I am struggling to imagine what the next phase of my life will be and where it will be lived after his trans bomb drop blew the life I thought I had and the retirement for which I'd been working for 25 years apart.

Yet I know that his actions and his decisions have left him ever more isolated, and that the more he indulges his fantasies in private, the more self-referential his world becomes.

Walked I guess you can set out your stall with your son as being a conversation that you want to have to explain what happened. I'm sure you can frame it without being seen as a terrible person; if he does in any way react against you it probably won't last. It's much easier to be angry with Mum than Dad who did this to your family.

Quinn it's great when you discover that they remain awful selfish idiots later on down the line. My ex remains in his communication as selfish and unempathic as he was when he dropped the bomb, and it's fascinating. If he was really so liberated and happy and true to himself, he wouldn't behave in the ways he does. And would certainly make an effort to re-engage with his children. But he doesn't. And you're right, it's really validating when you find that out, as I think we all harboured the idea that these men might become happy lovely people, but they don't, the self-absorption and lack of care for others just rumbles on. Glad you're doing well; time really helps.

Also, I'm reconciling myself to the fact that my ex is not dealing with his serious medical problems and probably will die at a relatively young age as a result.

Hello, all. I'm doing okay. Or really, I am better than okay: my ex did the whole "you shouldn't divorce me because after I transition I'm going to be this amazing and wonderful human being" ... and now I have third party confirmation that now two years into transition, my ex has become even more selfish and uncaring of others than before. So any tiny amount of doubt of whether I shouldn't have divorced this narcissistic ass is completely gone.

"Clear the way of acceptance"? Not sure what you mean. I do know that any discomfort I ever voiced was met as an attack and a sign that I did not "accept" my ex's transness. (Or my ex as a transgender person.) The fact is, I extended myself in ways to him that few people ever do, and he wouldn't extend himself to me at all. When your spouse thinks a session of sex in which he doesn't dress up in women's lingerie and change several times, but during which he lies on his back and lifts his knees and cries out "I need you to f*ck me" is "heterosexual," you have nothing to work with.

By the time I left I understood that a man who wanted 100% acceptance from me, meaning him acting as a woman 100% at home, and my treating him and "enjoying him as a woman," but who continued to enjoy his male power and privilege at work didn't fully accept himself.
What my son does with the information is his to deal with, and my biggest regret is that I am going to have to place him in the situation of having to process this information about his father because his father is too much a coward who wants to have his cake and eat it, too. I fear very much that my son will reject me as the bearer of the news, because, "kill the messenger," and I will end up being the one to decenter his world while his father cowers at home crying "some things are private" and turning me into the meanie who outed him to his son.

Apologies, sent too soon.

... because this is your truth, and your truth alone.

#istandwiththetranswidows

I know I was meant to be lurking again... but just for you all. There is no right time, and I think that's why the hurt experienced by the trans widows is so great - I get the feeling that you (plural) feel that you are inflicting it on others, including your children. You are not. You did not choose your grief. You did not choose to lose your husband. All you can do is help to clear the way of acceptance, if you feel that you have the strength.

Please know that lurkers like me are on the sidelines, cheering on any and all decisions that you feel you can make, because this (unlike everything else "owned" by your husbands)

I understand the sentiment that I don't owe my ex secrecy; nor do I believe that telling the truth is "outing." I know I have the right to tell my story, and I have said all alongand told my exthat I want an honest relationship with my son (his enraged reaction to that told me all I needed to know about how precious his closet is to him).

However, at the moment I have my reasons for waiting. I'm currently away from home caring for my aging mother, and my son is in the final terms of a degree program which my ex's sister is helping pay for, so I don't want either to derail my son or endanger that support. But by summer's end, when I have returned home, and my son has his degree in hand, that conversation will be had, come hell or high water.