Trans Widows Escape Committee 3: Rise of the Trans Widows

You have done us all a great service by creating and maintaining these threads.
It is every woman's right to kink shame.

Abbey, I'm sorry you're dealing with this in addition to the pandemic. Your story is very similar to mine and others here.

About the "I wasted my whole life" idea... I also thought this, but I know know that it is possible to recover from this, you can have a terrific life on the other side of this even if you choose divorce. It will take time, but you'll get there. It's taken me years to get past the grief, but my life is so much better now.

Can you find a therapist? Or talk to a medical practitioner about the anxiety?

Thank you all for your advice and support. It means the world to me x

Welcome Abby. Your experience is familiar to many posters here. I can't work out if you've been together 10 or 20 years, maybe a typo. Either way, it's a long time. You don't mention children so I assume you may be free to 'run away'.
Putting aside the detail of his behaviour which sounds typical of fetish stuff underlying older men's transitions (in our repeated and established experience), what do you want to do?
Sounds like you don't like the behaviour, don't want to participate in it, and are not able to stop him doing it.
You may have a choice between tolerating it, setting some limits on when and where it happens, and whether you are part of it, or leaving.
If you do the former, you may choose to live with someone who has a fetish that is separate from your relationship; some people manage this fine but others feel it is too distancing and unintimate and upsetting. That's a tough road.
Do you want to leave? Is this important enough to make you leave? I certainly would not stay and would cut my losses. You seem to acknowledge that his behaviour is not going to change; if anything it will escalate.
If you can tolerate that because there are other great things about him/your relationship, this may be something you have to accept to stay.
If you want to leave, lots of people on here have experience of making that tough decision, planning for a new future etc.
Crucially, taking him and his wishes/behaviour completely out of the picture, what do you want to do?
The one thing it sounds like you can't get is your husband back as you thought you knew him before his secret was exposed and established.

We're here if you want support. Good luck.

www.transwidowsvoices.org/

Take care @Abbey5, you are a valuable person, you matter. This is nothing to do with the suffering of others and C19, your empathy and kindness are part of why he is exploiting you. Please take care of yourself. Post on here, read the threads, form your own strong identity and separate yourself from him. This time will pass and he must leave. Thinking of you.

Abbey5, my heart is breaking for you. And being on lockdown with him, it truly must be unbearable. This partner of yours has been hiding these personas from you and acting out online. He probably has some cross dressing tendencies but you may not know it. God knows what else he is up to.

I know how it is, my husband of 10 years came out 2 years ago and told he was transgender and had to begin his transition. I was in shock, disgusted, so very angry that he had kept this from me. I was in a terrible state and could not believe my husband was not who I thought he was. I could not imagine life without him, and to say I was devastated would be putting it lightly.

Now, after he has gone thru full transition and started meeting men online and in person (behind my back no less), I am done. My husband doesn't exist now and if it wasn't for the lockdown, I would have already filed for separation.

Please know, many women have gone thru this and worse. Do not let him use your sexually or financially. Take care of yourself, he is not concerned about anyone else right now.

Hello, I'd be so grateful for your advice... A few months ago I found my partner (male) of over 10 years, chatting online in a lesbian chat room, pretending to be a lesbian. He was using a photo of a pretty woman in her mid-twenties, and chatted and personal messaged lesbians, transgender women and shemales. I've caught him countless times and each time he promised never to do it again. He always breaks this promise. He insists that he’s doing nothing wrong, that it's nothing sexual - that he's helping people with their problems, and also having a joke and a laugh. He literally could not see that his lying to me IS something bad. He's mostly drunk when he does this, but not always. He says he's had some 'close friendships' in this chat room and insists that they weren't sexual, which I find hard to believe as he likes lesbian porn. I'm sure he's living out his fantasies online, but I'm also wondering how it might progress further. He insists that he loves me and has always found me attractive. Our sex life had been 0 for years, until recently when we tried to make a go of it and I tried to trust him again. He expressed that he likes to be dominated and he paid 'special attention to my bum hole' which he'd never done before. But then I found his new persona is a trangender woman. He watches transgender and shemale porn and uses anal dildos on himself. How can I help him if he can’t help himself? I can’t control his actions. I can only control my own. I feel terrible for even mentioning this because of what’s happening in the world right now with the coronavirus. All that he’s done and his refusal to talk about it, or listen to what I have to say is making everything so much worse. I just want to run away, but I can’t. I have no close friends that I feel I can talk about this with. I was a virgin when I met him. He's the only man I've ever had sex with. We've been together for over 20 years! For god's sake - I feel like i've wasted my life!!!!!! Before the corona virus I was on the brink of leaving him. Since lockdown he's started to talk to me about using the anal dildos, which he's been using for 10 years. 10 years ago i had breast cancer and he supported me through that. He told me that he didn't think i had a sexual libido any more because of the tablet i take every day to stop it from returning. I'm not sleeping properly, having panic attacks and anxiety to the point where i throw up.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you can help x

Iworkmiricles

What a horror! After years of supporting my ex I can't tell you how wonderful it was to sell up and be free to live my life (he wasn't trans but I thought I would offer my encouragement anyway).

On a helpful note Purplebricks can put your property on the market remotely if you want to take a look. He will have to sign the sales agreement so you might as well start the conversation now.

www.purplebricks.co.uk/how-does-purplebricks-work

Thanks' ladies, I have been looking at selling up, I just felt it was one stress I could do with out, but I agree, a new place would be better for a new start.
This lock down isn't making things easy, and really slowing things down, but I'm sure I can find something without completely freaking myself out.
I have to say one thing - I am getting so much more confident at times at standing up for myself, which is good.

Iworkmiricles, ditto the recommendation for getting legal advice. You really want to make sure you can get completely financially clear. And if you do wind up having to pay financial support, at least get that started, so you have an end date on it.

For me, selling the house was non-negotiable, I knew it was the only way to get him out (and his massive amount of personal belongings, my ex being a borderline hoarder). And it worked, it got both of us out of the house. My personal finances immediately improved after legal separation.

It's a mortgage, both names on it, but he hasn't paid anything on it for years and years as he doesn't work, doesn't claim benefits. I have to sign a thing every year to say I am supporting them for the student loan company

How do you get them to leave? It's a bit role reversal for me, I work, I pay all the bills, I have nothing to lose. However, they don't want to move out because they want somwhete safe to tranistion, that universal credit isn't enough to live off, so can't move out. They now have the bed to themselves because I don't want to share with them. They just don't get it at all. The only blessing at the moment is that do far they have remained presenting as male whilst we are all stuck at home together.
I don't know what to do to get them to go.

@KitkatX4, ditto what others have said. Please be careful of making short term financial decisions just to be done with this. I completely empathize with wanting to be done, but you'll be living with the court decision for years.

Sorry things are particularly hard Coffee and KitKat (I just realized how nice that sounds).
Any women going through this can do without other things going wrong; at the same time as my ex dropping his bomb, I had terrible problems at work. Followed by stressful issues with my home and money. Those of you further back in the process of dealing with your partners now have the virus. You are, women are, so strong and capable, and you will survive this. Certainly your kids' ages KitKat mean you won't have to navigate the contact issue for much longer as certainly in the UK, kind of 13-14 is the age where nobody is going to make kids do stuff they don't want. I was very fortunate that my kids were able to vote with their feet, so I didn't have to navigate that as those of you with younger children do. So hang on to that - it isn't long before they can decide what to do, and you can hopefully step back from negotiating on contact.
Regarding finances/housing... very hard I know. If you decide to make an offer on the house and contact, then yes, the deal is that you get decent financial support agreed. Sounds like the middle ground is to use your lawyer to try to settle out of court as you say; court is really costly.
He can have 50/50 contact but the chances of your older teens wanting to spend that time with him if he is dressing up, are rather slim as time goes on.
Just take it a day at a time. Not all the bad things you fear will happen, and you will manage the problems as they come along. And the virus is not forever.
But I'm thinking of all of you out there dealing with this crap at the same time as the pandemic. Keep your focus on your basic self-care and wellbeing, home, kids, and trying to plan for what you want and need. Those of us in a better position timeline-wise are thinking of you daily.