Trans Widows Escape Committee 3: Rise of the Trans Widows

And my answer will always be that when those 'people' are children, their needs, welfare, 'comfort', and pace of adjustment take priority over a middle-aged parent's reinvention. Every single time.

I saw this Twitter post and thought it perfectly explained why I started the divorce process only a few months after my ex announced his transition:

"What people don't realize is when they tell LGBT people that the world needs us to take it slow or be patient you're literally telling us to wait away years of our lives so other people can be more comfortable.
My answer will always be No."

And my answer was: "See ya in divorce court!"

Wow, that is some world class twisted fantasy bullshit there.

As you can no doubt guess, what was in it for me was not something he ever considered. If he had, he would undoubtedly said that I would have the satisfaction of helping him on his journey.

And, even the body dysmorphia was sexual in nature. He wanted to shave his legs--but not just because, as he put it, "women are smooth." He had an entire sexual fantasy built around MY shaving his legs and then putting stockings (tights) on him!

Social Worker,
Yes, you're right. The sexual underpinnings are regularly denied, or minimized, by saying that although that might be an initial reaction that sexual excitement "goes away," or it's recast in euphemism, so that sexual excitement is re-labeled "gender euphoria," a supposedly non sexual response to "finally be free to express one's inner longing."

I don't doubt my now ex had gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia. He did. But it's also the case that his fascination with being a woman was EXCLUSIVELY cast in sexual terms. In his initial conversations to me, the FIRST thing he did was tell me his sexual fantasies: to be penetrated and dominated.

Isn't there a crashing silence on these experiences? Where is comment on the genuine dysphoria supposedly underlying men wanting to dress in lingerie for sex, or wanting to be dominated/'sissified' by their straight female partners? It's ignored and avoided by trans commentators, but all over this thread and the previous two. Partners of late-transitioning men repeatedly report fetishistic, lingerie-obsessed, stereotypically sexist role-play... but everyone pretends that is not a driver for these 'transitions', and not the central focus for so many of these men. It is just extraordinary. The hidden, fetish, arousal stuff is just ignored. They are all victims, 'in the wrong body', at risk of suicide if they are immediately free to do this stuff. I'm not quite sure how stupid these men, and many activists, think we are.

I hate the clothing thing. My ex used to say that he used it to "bring into being the woman he had inside."

But the whole idea that dressing in women's clothing makes the woman is negated by research.

Just this morning I read in Frans DeWaal's book "Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves" a section in which he recounts an early experience he had with chimps, who could tell female from male humans even when the males were cross dressed. He also details how this immediate identification of whether a human being is male or female is common to many other animal species, and describes experiments in which researchers attach only three sensors (to arms, legs, and pelvis), and people can correctly identify whether the three points of light they see moving on a screen are males or females (no outlines of the bodies). (Pages 80-81 if anyone has the book and wants to look it up.)

Also: Social Worker
I so agree with your comments about the woman who has stayed with her trans partner. I was one who at first after he revealed to me that he'd decided he was "a woman in a man's body" had a lot of sex with my trans partner, and who experienced a great deal of pressure to act as "a lesbian" or to see our sex as that between two women. Even with my now-ex dressed in the women's lingerie he wore when we were having sex (so he could feel like a woman), I never felt as if he were a woman, only that I was allowing him to act the way he wanted to. Over time, when there was ONLY that kind of sex, I felt increasingly as if I were accommodating his sexuality but he would not do the same, and, in fact, saw my need to have my own sexuality validated and accommodated as an attack on him ("I feel like you're asking me to be more male," he said angrily once; another time, after a session in which he hadn't dressed, but had raised his knees to his chest and panted out, "I need you to fuck me," as if he were a stereotypical fuck-me doll woman in a porn film, he actually said to me "Was that hetero enough for you?").

I cannot believe that in order to stay in a relationship with a trans identified spouse that you can retain your own sense of yourself and your own sense of your sexuality. It does feel to me like both re-education camp and sexual abuse. That therapists try to "help" women undermine their own self interest and sexuality ought to be grounds for censure in the profession.

Kit,
I agree that dealing with one's spouse after the trans reveal is "like dealing with a mental patient with multiple personality disorder." And that you are still feeling unhinged yourself is a perfectly normal reaction to the trauma this inflicts on us. Here's a reference to an article I found useful (full text available on the web if you google it):

Journal of Systemic Therapies Vol. 31, No. 2, 2012, pp. 36–53
“Attachment Injury Resolution…”

Donna Chapman and Benjamin Caldwell

Sorry this is so stressful and anxiety-provoking Kit; I remember feeling so churned up and derailed every time I had contact with my ex. Estrangement has its benefits...
Decent therapy should have no direction, teaching or agenda; I hope your kids feel able to vote with their feet as they absolutely do not have to go. The older they get, the easier this will become as they get to choose and have to be heard.
Really important that you can identify a little chink of improvement with feeling slightly less hopeless. This process is excruciating, and you're having to manage 1) a regular break-up and loss of your partner/future/plans/hopes/dreams, 2) the bombshell, the isolation, the uniquely awful revelation about your partner, 3) all the questions that raises for you, who you are, your judgement, your future, and 4) the usual crap with most divorces and break-ups, money, house, kids.
It's a huge load, oh, and no doubt you have a job, life, stuff you have to do!
One step at a time. Slow it down, see it as a series of tasks. I hope you have support and can use it.
And yes, legal advice is just crucial.
As for ever feeling 'normal' again; I'm not sure it works like that. It becomes part of your history. I felt very isolated, probably weird/dysfunctional/flawed because my ex clearly is, and forever marked by this experience. However, I think as time goes on it becomes part of your history, just as most people have trauma/adversity at some point, and you start to notice normality in you and your life. You will absolutely get through this but it is a long job and your story is particularly fraught and your ex particularly difficult it seems to me.

KitKat, my sympathies. I've been there and done that. For me it was "tell me that keeping a promise to me is more important to you than wearing a bra." It is appalling how similar these men are in their dysfunctional lives.

All I can say is that for me, it's gotten easier as time passes post-divorce. I hope you can get to that point soon. Also, if you don't already have a good divorce lawyer, you'll need one, if your ex is already being unreasonable in mediation.

I swear as time goes on I just become more and more angry with the soon to be ex. I can see the gaslighting but it still gives me so much anxiety to have to deal with him. We went through mediation in December which was a waste of time and money. He doesn’t want to give me anymore than half his money when I have the kids 95% of the time. He also wants the kids to go to family therapy but exclude me in that. He found one office and of course picked the only LGBTQ+ person in the entire practice. I have to sign a consent for that to go forward but none of my kids want to go especially after I told them her specialty. Everything is agenda driven and blame shifting for him and I’m so sick of it!!

When he called last week to tell me about the therapy I kind of got emotional about everything and cried and told him so much of what I’m feeling. He was crying too but also stated in that conversation that he just wanted patience from me during his revelation. What?? Patience for what, for me to be gaslit and adjust to whatever you decided? I told him I wanted to be more important and mean more than his clothes. It’s like dealing with a mental patient with multiple personality disorder. You never know who you’re going to deal with in that moment.

I’m 3 years on from the sex addiction revelation and 2 years since cross dressing came out and 1 1/2 years since the trans bombshell. I still feel like I did years ago, maybe not as hopeless but still just as hurt! I don’t know if I’ll ever feel normal as my basic foundation has been altered. I trust no one because the person I should have been able to trust the most broke that. I just want to heal and not feel traumatized and broken anymore!

Sorry.. should read 'terrible when it happened to MEN'

Interesting podcast. The woman herself noted that women don't all stay 'and that's okay', and how difficult it has been for her; I also thought it useful that the clinican noted she has had to 'transition' too, and compromise, and experience profound and shocking loss.
However, yes, the question about sex led to an assumption on the part of the clinician that 'internalized homophobia' is the likely barrier to this woman enjoying lesbian sex. A bit like saying that lesbians who don't fancy transwomen are transphobic....
Whatever happened to sexual orientation; yes, some people are fluid but this woman may not be. There were hints of her own failure/religious belief (homophobia)/a generational issue, driving her 'not being gay' (which she very clearly stated she isn't).
The whole drive was towards her not having a sexual orientation at all. Very odd, reminiscent of conversion therapy I agree.
But that was terrible particularly when it happened to me; when it happens to partners/wives, we all need to get on board so they stay.
Interesting that her partner hadn't pressured her to have sex at all.

So she's left with a large part of her life missing and advice to use sensate focus to get back in the saddle despite her core sexual orientation.
It was slightly refreshing compared to the celebratory Love Lives Here/daytime tv brigade telling the world how marvellous it all is and how unchanged their lives are, nay improved.
But very disappointing for a telly psychologist to not at any point acknowledge that she might actually not be gay, or able to 'unstraight' herself...

@TinselAngel

That is horrendous - this is what my ex wanted me to do and tried the grooming thing with me. That poor woman. I hope she's OK.

And Walked, I hope you get published. And great that you're doing well. Your timescales are very similar to mine and I'd say the same. After about 4 years I started to regard what's happened to us as in the past, and him as a bit less relevant/important.. all progress.

The clothing obsession is so tedious.
Rett your experience of the secrecy resonates greatly with me. I'll never forget the 'click' every time I went into our spare room where he was on the family desktop computer.
Or the feeling when I tried to sort out the desktop after he left, and found a mysterious data stick, and that he had installed software to allow secret browsing.
He spent many hours not engaging with his children, but on the desktop, in the months running up to his 'announcement'.
He created a fake user on a 'women's website chatting about shoes and make-up.
Living with someone with a secret is quite traumatic afterwards, particularly when it overwhelms them, takes them entirely away from interest in children/partner, and manifests itself as an obsession with appearance, clothing, make-up etc. It throws our sense of reality and trust into question; I don't really know what went on or for how long, and that is very strange looking back, after years of marriage. The trust/reality issues badly affected one of my children who developed derealisation and anxiety to a clinical level afterwards.
She experienced her father as a clown-like stranger, who didn't feel safe any more, because of the make-up, clothes, voice, weird behaviour.
My ex really believed that the clothes make the woman. Hence the spending, debt, and hours spent on 'grooming'. It's really not an okay way for a father to behave, the overwhelming obsession with self.