For me, the sign that Betty was kind of transitioning under my nose was when she didn’t want to act as a male anymore. She felt she wasn’t transitioning. I called foul.
Sometimes it’s like trans folk do everything except SAY you’re transitioning.
& Since we just heard from yet another person who formerly identified as a crossdresser who then started using transgender who now worries she’s truly transsexual, I want to see any marriage that ends because of transness end without the kind of bitterness that’s too frequently the case. I’d rather be more optimistic & say my goal is to keep the marriages from ending, but I’ve gotten to a point where containing the damage seems like more than enough to accomplish.
It’s as if there is something built into transness that makes it especially hard on partners: trans people don’t want to be trans, don’t want to hurt their loves ones, don’t want to up-end their own lives. Who would? That part is easy to understand. Trans people don’t want to be trans but are sometimes still actively but subconsciously moving toward transition and even beginning to without saying “I have made up my mind to transition.”
Unfortunately that gives lie to all the hoo-ha about trust & communication that we’re all always hearing about. When the trans person isn’t accurately communicating what we, their partners, see going on right before our eyes, we can’t trust what we’re hearing, and start to judge the situation beyond and despite what the trans person might be saying.
Some of the problem of course is defining what transition is, exactly. As Caprice pointed out in the thread on the boards where we’re discussing this, “Partners may see ‘transition’ differently than the transperson. A TG may think that transitioning is changing to be a woman. A partner may consider transitioning to be becoming anything that is not-man.”
But of course for someone like me, “not man” is entirely acceptable while “woman” is not. For others, “not man” is unacceptable. Judging the difference between the way the trans person defines transition and how the partner does seems like a huge part of this, but it’s not all of it: some of it too is about the trans person recognizing the change.
I remember Betty & I looking at our wedding pictures one day after months of me remarking about how “not male” she’d become, and finally, it registered. She finally saw how much she was male when we got married, and how much she wasn’t anymore.
It was a relief to me, much like when an umpire/referee agrees with your call on a close play. “He must be blind!” fans yell at the TV set. “He must be blind!” partners post in their support groups. It’s knowing that when someone looks in the mirror they are seeing what you’re seeing. It’s about perception itself, wrapped up in how we define gender and in how we recognize it and mark it on ourselves. It’s the no-man’s-land where the line between “feminine” and “female” is gigantic to me, but not so much to Betty.
One of the reasons I wrote Chapter 5 of My Husband Betty despite the myriad protestations of crossdressers was because I don’t think wives leave when they learn that crossdressers sometimes transition. They run when it gets personal, when they start to see their very own crossdresser husband research HRT, or finding out what it takes to legally change names, i.e., doing things that look more to them like transition than crossdressing.
I feel like we, personally, ended up on the brink of transition just by exploring and trying to navigate a middle path. When it comes to trying to find a compromise between closeted crossdressing and medical/legal transition, we are all standing at the edge of the wood, machetes in hand. There are few paths. The people who went before – Virginia Prince comes to mind – thought she was forging a new path, and probably still insists she was. But to her wives? If I were her wife, I’d say she transitioned without GRS. I’d say she did more than live as a “transgenderist” when she took the hormones that gave her breasts and started living full-time as a woman.
Having a trans woman who is long past transition around has been critical for me in even addressing this, or realizing it. Suzy, much to her chagrin perhaps, confirms my worst fears – and thanks to her for doing so. Are trans people who hope to find a middle path fooling themselves? Or are they just putting themselves at greater risk of transitioning without intending to? Do they have an extra burden of being more careful about making decisions without making them?
Is there a reason that partners see the first permanent body mod as a warning sign? Of course there is. I felt petty and unsupportive (and a ton of pressure) when I objected to Betty removing her facial hair permanently. But in retrospect, I was right to protest, because permanent facial hair removal was all she needed to make living fulltime possible. Possible slides into probable slides into done slides into irreversible quite quickly in trans land. For others, possible might happen as a result of taking hormones, or crossdressing fulltime, or even just accepting one’s transness.
Partners aren’t crazy. We are not willfully putting our heads in the sand. For the most part, I think we’re just able to admit what’s going on sooner, and more clearly, than our partners can, the Cassandras of transland. And like the historical Cassandra, we’re often both disbelieved and forced to stand and watch, hopeless and unable to prevent the thing we’ve predicted and feared, come to pass.
Heavy sigh…… and another chocolate chip cookie……. and so it goes.
First of all I would like to mention that I received your new booklast Friday. I have not finished reading it as of yet, but it is giving me great insight as to what the spouse of a transgendered person goes through.
I should first say that I am a deeply trangendered m-f who is concerned mostly about what my spouse is going through and not my transition issues at this time. I am seeing a gender therapist who has diagnosed me as transsexual, but I am not sure how far I want to go. I have a deep need to be somewhere on the continuum of transgenderism, meaning that I need to put aside some of my maleness which does not just feel right anymore.
This phenomena has caused a strain(putting it mildly)on my marriage, but for the first time we are really communicating to each other about our needs. I have a good feeling that my spouse would not leave me even if I fully transitioned. She is not a lesbian, but she is open to being with a trangendered woman.
This is just sooo complicated and heart wrenching. If I can take a pill tomorrow so all of this will just go away I would in a heartbeat.
Hi Helen,
I’m not sure if you remember meeting me last Halloween, but I wanted to say “re-hi” and leave a lil input on your blog too.
I think, first of all that every situation is different, every girl seems to take a different route, even though many are trying to reach the same place. Many of us realize wether its before or after we begin to transition that we must be willing to leave it all behind in order to move forward, because the majority of people out there are not as open-minded as yourself. Some of us are forced to live in a turtle shell as we take one step at a time, not knowing if the outside world is aware to what is going on within us. I personally dislike the labels and the steps and classifications of it all, I think just to be considered Human, and be accepted for what we are is what we cry on the inside for, no matter which area of transition or label we fall under. Anyhoo, I think that what you are doing for spouses and transgendered people is very remarkable. I hope you are staying warm this winter,
Dellie
Helen
“Standing at the end of the wood, machetes in hand” … Did you mean to write ‘end’ or is that perhaps your fingers trying to please by typing in a view of the sunny open meadows you truly wish for. Should it perhaps be ‘edge’?
So often Transness seems to me like a spell which defies logic. We can define it. We can look at it from so many angles. We can think for a few moments that we’ve ‘got it’ and then it slips through our fingers again. Would finding a cow as white as milk or a cape as red as blood break the spell and make everything clear?
I’m in a somewhat different part of the wood to you and Betty but I can hear your voices coming from a path that cannot be too far away through the trees. They have been and continue to be a great comfort as are your determination, the sharpness of your machetes and the sunny clearings, which you have fearlessly hewn in the tangled undergrowth and which I often stumble into.
Thank you. I found this passage incredibly moving. I’m looking forward to readint the whole book.
Sarah
SL, it was supposed to be “edge,” not end, & i’ve fixed it now. thanks. i love the idea of us hearing each other’s voices even when we can’t see each other; that’s a very comforting thought.
Yes, I remember you Dellie – thanks for saying hi.
Amanda, most days, Betty would take the pill, too.
& Lizzy: tell me about it.
Out of everything I’ve read so far on this subject, you have most eloquently and cogently expressed some very complicated emotions. There are things I have not been able to quite put words to, and I’m so SO very thankful you have exposed yourself, made yourself so painfully vulnerable… I’m sure its primarily for your own sanity, but your doing so has helped countless others, myself included. Thank you, THANK YOU.
Helen…hi from England
Do you go back and read the replies to things you said a few days ago? I hope so. Because you have said something here that is about the most insightful and useful thing I have read for years. The different tracks we as trans people are on to our partners…the different meaning of all the symbolism, the different definitions we give to the things we do. You have in these paragraphs laid bare one of the central reasons for the tension, the pain, between me and my wife, and it’s about the different understanding of what I’m doing, and how she decodes it. As opposed to me. She can cope with some ‘not man’…not much, but some. She despairs (literally) if she thinks of me as ‘woman’. And I’m sure you’re right – the big watershed moment would come in the first ‘permanent’ action by me. It would be a declaration of intent by me, even if I didn’t believe it was.
So it also helps to explain why she won’t listen to my protestations of ‘innocence’ that these things don’t ‘mean’ what she thinks they do. Do they? I don’t know. I only know that the sort of meaning she applies to me shaving my chest, I would apply to something much more profound and ‘big’. But she is translating my actions from a different dictionary. And maybe hers is more accurate?
You know Helen, I think you are the only writer I have come across who is actually unearthing anything new and helpful to say on this topic. You challenge me and make me think.
Thank you.
Hi Helen (and Betty!)
I hope you are both doing well since we met in January. Thank you for posting this. I showed it to my honey and asked her what she thought. After reading it she came in to the room I was in, crying, and said, “I feel like I’m the referee all the time, making the call and your not listening”. It was sobering moment for us. For her, being with someone who is “not exactly male” is discomforting by itself and her accommodating me for the sake of my sanity borders her on Sainthood. Her being with someone who is a “woman” cannot work It is not who she is.
I looked at some pictures of myself, from about 18 months ago, as a result of this. I look alot different. My wife has said for a long time, “You are continuing to look more and more feminine”. She’s right. I am. And, I didn’t want to admit it. My wife and I don’t like to talk about my possible transitioning or, as your essay so spot on says, that I’m actually slipping into it without admitting it. We only talk about what makes our marriage work, what brings balance to me so that I can be healthy. So that we can make a marriage we grew up together in work; something we are both desperate to do.
Our partnering together to “combat this GID” has us finding it isn’t combatible. Our efforts to accommodate “it” together as team and live life well morphs, unintentionally, into an effort to stop “me” from living. I look at that and say, “how can I be so selfish”? She looks at it and says, “We are slipping away. I can’t stop you from living”. I turn and shake my head in disbelief, surely there is some balance someplace in this?
I thought this part of your post was especially insightful:
I don’t even know how to respond to that statement, or maybe I’m just afraid to. My wife would say, “our machetes are no longer sharp and I’m tired.” We’d both look at the woods and think, how did we ever get here and where are we going?
Thank you for presenting this subject to the community at large Helen,
warmly,
~*Becki*~
You make several valid points of which were entirely true in my past relationships -any permanent physical change is transition, no matter how I tried to rationalize it.Electrolysis/laser one of my “well I just don’t like the scatchiness rationale” it was all denial. Totally fear based who wants to lose their relationship and really who wants to deal with the hardship of transition.And I’m doing it anyway.
My partner today new I was transitioning before we ever went out, yet it is still difficult.We are together 4 years .If anyone is entering a new relationship it is with my most dire plea, tell them before getting invoved.It will undoubtably save a lot of pain latter. Beverly
Dear Helen,
I read this almost a month ago now and it went straight to my heart. So much so that I was unable to respond immediately.
When I first got to know you and Betty electronically and read about your life together, I said to myself, ‘this is never going to last’. That is, without being smart , halfway across the world from you two I could see the transition under way. I didn’t dare comment as this would have been insensitive as a stranger. You would have to find your own way through this business as we all have. Nobody should criticise Betty for being covert about the steps she may have taken so far. We transition almost as a rearguard action against our personal masculine tradition and this is lubricated by denial. Others see the girl within us before we do.
If you feel relieved and comfortable as you go, then you’re doing the right thing for yourself and much as it may be selfish to say, our dearly beloveds have to cope as best they can. To stop a genuine transition is unfair and destructive to that individual. However shifting the gender goalposts is usually too difficult for the sex partner and separation follows but happily sometimes a reconciliation with changed definitions may follow. The fear as always is that each one of us finding ourselves alone may find that our loneliness is overwhelming.The field is restricted for those new women seeking an intimate and so it is essential to develop the skills to live alone happily.
None of this is easy for either party but to do nothing is worse. I do so dearly wish the team of Helen and Betty my deepest love for them in their struggle.