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.

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 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.

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*~

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.

Yes, I remember you Dellie – thanks for saying hi.

Amanda, most days, Betty would take the pill, too.

& Lizzy: tell me about it.

“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

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

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.