Trans Widows Escape Committee 3: Rise of the Trans Widows

[TinselAngel]

Less than two years have passed since the first TWEC thread and now its time for a third.

This is a support area for women who are, or have been, in unhappy relationships with male partners who are transitioning, or exploring their "gender identity"

If you are in that position-

1. You are not alone
2. It is not a situation that you should be expected to tolerate, let alone celebrate.
3. There is always a way out, if you want it. The thread is called Escape Committee for that reason

Remember: women talking to each other is a powerful weapon!

Regulars- do post here to get the thread going.

Lurkers- now would be a great time to de-lurk.

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

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

He had an entire sexual fantasy built around MY shaving his legs and then putting stockings (tights) on him!

What on Earth is supposed to be in that for you?

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.

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

It was rhetorical as you guessed Walked .I know I've said this before, but they really do become at their most patriarchal once they start to identify as women.

I think your perspective is interesting @AGPrecovery but we can't keep it on a support thread just because some of us might (partially) agree with you (in some aspects).

You should consider starting your own thread as there may be women on FWR interested in hearing the perspective of a "reformed" AGP.

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!"

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.

So many posts that are powerful in their content this week.

I wish people would let trans widows speak our truth. What was asked of us by our former spouses, what has been asked of us by many others, is fundamentally wrong..

Support to Philip Schofield's wife, she must feel a bit like us TWs.

The reporting is just the same,

Wife and children standing by their partner - tick.
How very brave he is for sharing that he is now not attracted to his wife but to men - tick.
Coming out after he has nothing to lose, career intact, wife of an age where it's virtually impossible to separate her life from his - tick.
Wife only mentioned as an emotional prop for his troubled emotions - tick.

I understand that it might have been difficult back in the 80s to be an openly gay man in the media and I sympathise with that.

But the wrong done by using a woman's life as a human shield to feather his closet is wrong.

Great respect to openly gay men, who live their lives with real courage, rather than being a coward as I feel some of these closeted men are.

The reactions to Phil's announcement on MN are interesting.

Lots of sympathy for Stephanie (she deserves her own identity - not 'Phillip Schofield's wife' as if she is his property and her identity is only to serve as an extension of him).

I do wonder if this thread has made people question the 'brave and stunning' narrative across the board.

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)

Remember this? The Batman and Catwoman model swap video?

twitter.com/juanbuis/status/1199651576236957697?lang=en

So glad to see you back @EmilyHowardsWife. How are you?

Doing good. I'm now financially independent, which has helped me a lot. Doing my own thing and living for me a lot more.
DH in the purge part of the cycle at the moment. I know it will be back at some point and am more able to disassociate and to remove myself emotionally when it does.
Hope you all are well.
Hate seeing stories of "brave" men like PS. No regard to the families emotions at all. This is no different than a hetro man "coming out" with his affair IMO.

I'm absolutely fucking furious about women queueing up to say how brave PS is.

I'm glad your doing OK @EmilyHowardsWife although I wish you'd keep us more updated as we do worry about you

furious about women queueing up to say how brave PS is.

Can't quite work out what I feel about Hadley Freeman's comment that still centres him and his compassion/fabulousness:

This statement is so loving and generous about his daughters and especially his wife. It’s not just about him, it’s also about them, and that says a lot about him

twitter.com/HadleyFreeman/status/1225721857397137408