Trans Widows Escape Committee 3: Rise of the Trans Widows

Saw this and thought of you lovely women

Reading these, I sometimes with my husband would come out with SOMETHING, anything, he just bottles it all up and doesn't speak to anyone about it, no counselling, that I am aware of.It would make it so much easier to move on, if there was something there to show, to say "look, this is what you want, fine, so get on with it" rather than it sitting there in the background, on the quiet. It's like he has told me, but is still keeping it secret from me and my children. All the advice from people is walk away, but that is so much easier said that done. He doesn't communicate with anyone out side our home, expect one person who runs a support organisation, but that's not regular, or I don't think it is, I honestly don't know. How can I kick out the father of my children with nothing (He doesn't have a job) when there is no one there for him? Because it's not about him, it's about what it looks like to my children and the example I setting to them about kicking people out with nothing and no where. This is turning into a bit or a ramble, but if you know what is going on, you are doing better than me.

Tyro I second that - MN taught me about The Script (ex had a number of affairs and shagged lots of ow before he decided he was a new better version of woman himself), gaslighting, narcissistic abuse, FOG (fear, obligation, guilt), going grey rock, CPTSD, and opened my eyes to a lifetime of bloody manipulation.

It's like the matrix - once you can see it, it's obvious.

I guess MN can take the place of a great counsellor for getting sound advice to stand up for ourselves as women!

Wholeheartedly agreed.

If it weren't for all the years I spent in hermitage, seeing no one but devouring Relationships, AIBU, and FWR, I'd be in a far worse situation now. MN recalibrated my brain. I may not be able to implement everything I've learnt right now, but I'm in a much better position mentally than I was before, and I'm much more able to understand and maintain healthy boundaries.

I know we laughingly call this place the radicalisation portal, but it really is. It's a hotbed of good old-fashioned second-wave consciousness-raising. I love it.

If it weren't for MN I'd still be doing my best to be a good little sex-positive libfem, stuck in a messed up co-dependent relationship with an emotionally-illiterate fetishistic manchild, blaming myself for not being able to just accept and be happy with my lot, and subsuming my own sexual needs for the sake of someone else's orgasm while hating myself for feeling shit about it.

And I don't think I could have taken in the information I needed to sort my own head out as much as I have, not from a single individual - it was the repeated exposure to the mindset that we deserve better than this that did it.

I dunno - I feel quite sour at times

spur us on.

Sunkisses good to hear you broke out of that awful situation.I do agree MN can sour us on but professional help is also very good. We think nothing of paying to get our boiler or car fixed but sometimes shy away from professional help for our minds. Well done for grasping that nettle and getting free.

I've had EMDR (and PTSD). The PTSD is related to past experiences, and helps you reprocess the past trauma and see it in a more detached way. The EMDR helped me with one (very significant) part of the trauma that was in the past. However the trauma was ongoing, due to legal fallout. EMDR didn't help with that, but the EMDR therapist was also a shit hot and very intelligent counsellor who talked me through all my ongoing trauma, and encouraged me to break ties with the abusive people who were causing me trauma, and to stand up for myself. I will always be so grateful to her for that. I guess MN can take the place of a great counsellor for getting sound advice to stand up for ourselves as women!

Though less funny is yet another similarity between all of these exes... the sexual submissiveness Yep and that also being fake

Also, laughing at the idea of my ex doing housework. Though less funny is yet another similarity between all of these exes... the sexual submissiveness.

I am so glad to be done with my idiot ex. Hugs and support to all of you who aren't out of the relationship yet. Life will get better.

TinselAngel, cheers for the new thread, thank you for all that you do here!

We know you still love us Tinsel 😁

Weezol that is brilliant. I've, so far, only heard good things. I've had CBT for anxiety but heard CBT doesn't work for everyone.

Just dropping in to say I had EMDR waaay back in the early 00's before it was really know of in the UK. My counsellor had trained in the US on an exchange programme.

It was very, very effective. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

My detrans husband had become very depressed / alcoholic before transition, then doubly so during.

In hindsight he latched on to this identity as a last ditch effort to fight depression and anxiety (he’s a gentle soul really, mistook that for meaning he was trans). He was completely convinced, for a couple years.

Housework is a tough one and always has been. He did less during transition, probably due to worsening mental health.

Just poked facebook. The raping ex who's apparently a woman now doesn't have a lot of public posts, but what little there is leaves me in no doubt he's yet another fetishist.

Talking about cramps; horribly self-centred and banging on about his own painful existence, identifying as neurodiverse; accepting fawning compliments from real women while yearning for better hair; seriously the cramps wtf?; still has a beard, naturally.

Tyrotoxicity "Apparently EMDR is "for people with proper PTSD, like veterans."

I am so sorry someone said such a vile thing to you.

If you Google PTSD and NHS you get to this...

"Causes of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Any situation that a person finds traumatic can cause PTSD.

These can include:

serious road accidents
violent personal assaults, such as sexual assault, mugging or robbery
serious health problems
childbirth experiences
PTSD can develop immediately after someone experiences a disturbing event, or it can occur weeks, months or even years later.

PTSD is estimated to affect about 1 in every 3 people who have a traumatic experience, but it's not clear exactly why some people develop the condition and others do not."

I really know very little of this and bow to superior knowledge by other posters. But please do keep searching for the support you need, whatever the diagnosis and whatever the support I wish you all the best.

Eggotchi sorry you've had such a rough time.

I am not a trans widow so had better start lurking again. Bless you all.

in fact it seems some of them have an idea that ladying means being too delicate and sad to do anything. That, and being dominated during sex. Because you know, that's what women are

No sissy fetish at all, nope, not one that would actually be more fully met in finding somebody in the fetish community to play with

Just adding my experience in ..

My agp ex was never great at any of the stereotypical women's duties either. I knew that the cross dressing was always there, but that was what I always thought it was, despite the 'i like women so much i want to be one' stance, and the latter 'born in the wrong body'. However we had 3 children, and he got worse behaviourally with each one. (The first birth he slept through most of, i remember the midwives having to step over him during my induction!!) There was little caring, no real child rearing, he was an absent parent long before we eventually broke up. The house was always a mess, because I had long term health issues and pnd, and he didn't pick up the slack - he ignored it (and me, and the kids). He liked the idea of the kids but never 'got' the practicalities. (Still doesn't!) He got worse with the birth of each child, never taking the 'womanly' compassion route, and instead becomming more mysoginistic and more abusive. He is an AGP man in a dress. End of.

As far as I can tell, there are very few (if any) who would actually take on a completely feminine role. It is all about their needs/wants/desires.

Yeah, I'd never claimed to have PTSD. I was told by my first counsellor (age seventeen, had recently reported csa to police; I wasn't able to engage effectively at the time) that it sounded like I had C-PTSD, and I looked into it and the description fitted. I've been working on the assumption that counsellor was right ever since.

At the same time I'm aware that, had I come to the attention of mental health services without having disclosed csa, I'd have been given a BPD label.

And had I come to their attention when I ought to have done - when I was a very small child - and had it been recognised that there wasn't just one abusive adult male in my life - then it would probably be a diagnosis of developmental trauma disorder.

Which might have been useful, and gone some way towards giving me the self-awareness to not become a poster child for The Personal is the Political: Trans Edition.