Trans Widows' Escape Committee 4 - A New Hope

@MaureenJSL

Have you talked about mother's day?

@socialworker222 I so want to be the person in that image you posted. Going to work on it.

I avoid any phrasing in his earshot that requires pronouns. DC is small and still says Daddy so I say it as well. I told him never to take the name Mom from me. DC also uses ‘he’ pronouns. He’s stated annoyance about people on the phone or workers at the house using sir but had not come out and requested a use a specific name. I know the name I just don’t say it. I don’t know that person and even if they are quite nice I didn’t marry them.

I wish so badly to be able to wish it away or wish my problems with it away. I have no idea how it is to do shared custody and worry greatly about not having my DC (singular so not sure if I’m using that right instead of just DD/DS) full time.

I realized why they refer to themselves in the third person: because there is no gender in "I". They sound demented some times. It's an excuse to say "she/her" and to use their new name.

I have very little contact but I try to word communications in a way that avoids me having to say 'Dear...'
I have no doubt he shakes his head with his 'allies' and bemoans my lack of acceptance, and narrow-mindedness.
The picture opposite just about sums up where I'm at!

It is silly that the vast majority of them pick very feminine girly names and some times names that weren't even a thing when they were born. Some times its like they are picking stripper names.
Does he get upset with you about it?

The women who stay are rather remote from those who don't and I haven't seen much cross-over or sharing of experience. The media certainly has an enormous bias towards their experience despite (I think) around 50% of relationships breaking down.
I guess politically people want to be seen as cheerleading this stuff, celebrating, being rainbow. Exposing the other side and the reality/impact/damage isn't very popular.
Woman & Home published a piece by a transwidow and a responder the following month told them off for 'doing trans people no favours'.
Silencing us is greatly preferable to all involved.
(However it hasn't entirely worked thanks to the Tinsels of this world!)
As for names, I can't use my husband's new and faintly ludicrous choice. It isn't a spiteful or political decision, I just can't do it.
Nor can I call him 'her'; he is him, I married him, I don't know or like/respect/believe in the new person, so I have no problem using the language that reflects my experience and life history.
Nobody gets to tell me I married a 'wife', as someone online once tried. Quite absurd. And of course ironically very much oppressing my right to define who I am!

@MaureenJSL it's ok if you don't want to use that name. You married a man. He is a man and nothing can change that.

@MaureenJSL

I don't know if it is seeing other wives be ok with it or if they are so narcissistic and delusional that they truly expect us to have no problem with it. I hate that the media only does stories on happy couples and leaves us out. I don't believe most of them are really happy anyway. I think they have Stockholm syndrome and/or have been financially abused and can't afford to live alone.

I don't know where you live, but some religions and some states consider this marriage fraud and will give you an annulment. The fact that these guys don't understand that they falsely entered into a legal marriage contract is beyond me. If nothing else, that is enough reason to divorce. Just because they didn't have the balls to transition when it wasn't fashionable doesn't make it ok.

They have been leading a double life and conning us. It's no different from being a bigamist.

From what I have seen, women do better when they live apart from these guys. Having to watch them transition is traumatic and quite often they make agreements that they won't take this or that action but then they do what they want when they want.

I have a friend whose husband calls her a TERF because she won't go along with it.

@MOLLYJO987 I was writing my other reply and hadn’t seen your recent. My reasons for having a hard time with it being “less than” comes from him. Like being upset that my vision of growing old with a “husband” is just selfish and being intolerant. Not those words said but feels that way. I’m sure he is only hearing about the wives that were fine just flipping to having a wife now.

I have to figure out how to detach from this and keep my finances and my sanity and my DC safe and happy. It may mean staying in this situation a while, I just don’t know. DC is my primary concern.

It’s terrible but I’m still waiting for the self obsession to carry him off off and away. Very much just to take the responsibility off me. I recognize the cowardice of that but feel it none the less.

Too many “should have”s in mind today. Like at one of the anger blow up as DC claiming to just take off that I should have encouraged it and not had to face this.

Would be so much easier to just be fine with all this but I can’t. That lack of sex already keeps being brought up as a reason for how it shouldn’t be a big deal! Attraction is more than that. I realize he was never macho or that stereotype but still.

And I keep thinking of DC and if they really will be ok. They are young and the dressing is age appropriate so still confusing I imagine but this is all without the play acting femininity. He’s been the same but dressed. That I could handle but I know the goal is more play acting and a new name. I can’t bring myself to use the name. Would be simple if it was a friend or other family member. Whatever name you want sure thing. This is so different though and I hate that it has to make me the “bad guy”.

@socialworker222

I didn't have kids with mine, he was my 2nd husband. I'm now apparently unable to date. I haven't been in anything close to a relationship since the divorce. I don't know how I could trust anyone again. There were so many lies, it has taken me three years to unravel them all. I wonder if I would have found some one better than him if I hadn't met him. I feel broken when I try to date.

@MaureenJSL

Who is saying that it is petty? One thing I have learned is that people who haven't been through this just have no idea at all about what we go through. Even the most well intentioned, supportive people just can't get it fully.
I have found that straight people who were married to gay and lesbian people are more able to understand but there is still a whole other level to this. It is assumed that we have a choice in this, that we can first of all change our sexuality to be attracted to men pretending to be women, and that we can just forgive them for lying to us about their intentions. Also their libidos are greatly reduced so are we supposed to just not have a sex life for the rest of our lives?
You have every right to be angry, feel betrayed, and to not be attracted to trans identifying men.
If some one finds out their supposedly straight spouse is gay, we don't tell people to stay together and just forgive and tell the gay person to sleep with the straight person and like it.

All these feelings are entirely valid and normal. My ex was raised Catholic, with a macho father for whom his son being gay would have been the worst... I've always wondered whether by 'transitioning' he managing to utterly trump that (take that, Dad!), or whether it's still better than being gay in that family. I suspect the latter, as they now treat him as a rather special, fragile, mentally ill person, and look after him much as they did one of his siblings who has never fully functioned as an adult.
And sexually, yes, the grim repetitive misogynistic playing-girl crap runs through these threads all the time. It resonates with me, and is the sort of thing I'm now able to be really glad to be free from.
The lost years is very hard; I have found it so much easier because I had (extremely lovely) children with my ex. Some women on here have wanted children/more children and I can imagine the pain of that wasted time living with a liar.
Over time, having survived this and to be inching out into freedom and sanity (I think), gives me great comfort; the strength of women on here is something to behold and celebrate even though we didn't ask to have to step up in this way.
To those waiting and feeling paralyzed, I imagine the wasted years can be a driver to researching options, making plans and taking action, although it is very tough going.

You don't have to feel guilty for being heterosexual, the people who say you do are flying monkeys.

@MOLLYJO987 the lost of years are getting to me too. Like are all my happy memories for me and DC lies now or what?

I’m being made (attempted to be made) to feel (not from here) that having a hard time losing a husband is petty. If I wanted a wife I would have looked for one. I wouldn’t have put looking for men on the dating site all those years ago. Nothing changes for him. All gain and no loss on his end. Why do I have to feel so guilty that the difference between wife and husband matters to me? (Venting)

I made a lost of all the signs he might be gay and they were 52 of them. What was I thinking? I just couldn't believe he would lie to me, he seemed so nice. I was blind.

He also engaged in behavior after his wife wanted a divorce but they still lived together like subscribing to the paper version of Playboy. Who does that? He also started getting the Bictoria's Secret catalog and went to a strip club and got a lap dance (supposedly) from a woman. All to prove how straight he was. I guess I was part of the campaign to prove how hetero he is.

I guess his new fiancee doesn't care much about having a decent sex life because usually they ruin their libidos and destroy their genitals. So maybe if all she wants is companionship, she won't care that he is actually a gay man pretending to be a woman.

I think he started taking testosterone blockers after we moved in together because his libido totally tanked and then he acted so bizarrely about getting his T tested and even more so when I went with him to get the results and they said his was extremely low and gave him a prescription. Or maybe that "new beard high" had worn off.

Yeah, that does sound like he's a very closeted gay man. Your typical AGP using other men as a prop would revel in attention from straight men because it fits with their idea of themselves as women. Attention from gay men really doesn't have the same ramifications. They obviously read him as HSTS.

@TinselAngel I believe so. He was raised in the Catholic church and in a very conservative rural area. I have no doubt that he was obviously not gender conforming as a child and was pestered by people to "act like a boy". I think he took all that feminine behavior and was able to let it out through cross dressing and it is easier for him to say he is trans than to say he is gay.
He loved getting compliments from gay men, which is a red flag. One night he sat in a gay bar cross dressed and let gay guys buy him drinks all night. Then he told me about it like he was so proud of himself. My heart just sank.
Now he probably calls himself a lesbian but I don't know.
I really wish he hadn't stolen 6 years of my life. I'm fairly convinced that his 1st ex must have found gay or trans porn. He made it seem like she just went crazy one day out of the blue.
He didn't have the courage to either stay single or come out so he used me.
He told me that he picked his drag name in the late 90's and that is when his first child was born. It's so common for them to decide they are trans during the first pregnancy.

@tyro

He told me once while we were having sex that he wanted a man to give him anal. And then insisted that he isn't bi and he didn't mean it. I have heard it said that they do use men as props. What could be more validating of the "femininity" than a man topping them.

I hope he is a better person to the new than he was to me. I have reason to believe he knew he was trans in the late 90's but chose to stay in the closet and use me as beard #2. Now that she is with him and she apparently accepts him, maybe he won't have reasons to lie and gaslight, although I suspect he has been lying for so long he is addicted to it.

He is 45 and has a kid in his 20's and a teenager and she has a teen and two toddlers. I can't imagine the chaos that is going to be going on in that house. He always told me he didn't like other people's little kids, so I'm not sure how that is going to work. I cannot imagine living in a mixed family with that many people and such a huge age range at this point in my life.

I pray for those kids.

Molly their orientation is a weird one to pick apart, I think, because the issue is clouded by the sexual focus on a narrow pornified stereotype.

Mine's never been attracted to men, but admits he'd be open to certain forms of sexual activity with them as part of the fetish - I view that as him being perfectly happy to use other men as a sexual prop.

And then with the getting a new wife bit you mention - could be he fancies her, or equally it could be that he wants someone to fulfil the 'wifely' role of cheerleader and washer-of-socks because he's far too busy with his "hobby" to be bothering with the shitwork.

It's pornsickness and internalised misogyny, really. He's still the same orientation underneath as he ever was.