They were an ordinary couple

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Ran across this again. The last time was several years ago. I'm sure some of you have seen it. This couples story, less the full time coming out and resulting full transition, could be mine. Makes me wonder just where my journey will end.

My husband became a woman

Comments

Dated

It appears this article was written in 2007.

A lot has happened.

Despite MAGA, we are seriously thinking about electing a gay man our president.

Trans people are being elected to public office.

If their friends quit calling them, maybe there are other reasons.

I'm trying not to be biased but it sounds like this woman could use a little marriage counseling.

Jill

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Maybe, just like ...

Mantori's picture

... we as people who transition have that choice to do so. So the people in our lives have the choice, no the right, not to buy into that choice and not change to accommodate us.

Sorry to be the dissenting 18-year post op T-girl to make such a statement.

A lot of T people seem to live in their own hype, they think they are special, and should be treated as such just because of this 'thing' we go through. I made that mistake myself for a long while.

And then you grow up in your altered self and realise, just like we have rights cis people have rights. The rights to be just who they are. In this case, a straight woman married to a lesbian T-girl. A recipe for disaster if all is taken into account...

Freedom cuts all ways, not just yours.

"Life in general is a fuck up,
but it is the rare moments of beauty and peace
in between the chaos,
That makes it worth living."
- Tertia Hill

My straight wife

Patricia Marie Allen's picture

My straight wife married a lesbian T-girl. Coming up on 54 years in August, we're making it work. Oh, don't think it's been easy. We've gone through many trials related to my trans nature. She has, many times, felt despair at her situation. She has come a long way from just putting up with a cross-dressing husband to accepting my HRT. We are together and happy. I give her a lot of the credit for making it so.

On my part, I'll admit to letting her think things had settled, only to push the envelope again. I knew that she couldn't be expected to jump from believing she married an typical male to embracing a fully transitioned trans woman. But then when we first started dealing with the issue, I didn't consider myself trans. Cross-dressing was a hobby. Something to do when I got bored, or to relieve stress. Yet, 40 some years later, I'm doing HRT and she's accepted that her husband has a femme side that (to borrow a CBer's phrase) is "wall to wall and treetop tall."

It's been a struggle for all those years. Me trying to find a balance between masculine and feminine that satisfied my ever growing need to express my feminine nature and yet provided the kind of husband she needs to be happy. Frankly, it's a lot of work. She has made great strides in accepting and recognizing my needs. It's been a great sacrifice for her and I've put my agenda on hold, waiting for her to catch up many times. But our love has carried us through.

I don't expect that we'll live out our lives without any more struggles, just because I reached a point where I'm able to express myself fully as me for the most part, only dressing butch (though totally in women's clothes) when I'm around the few people I know who need to see me as male can do so without my putting myself totally in the closet. I just allow them to misgender me according to their preconceived notion.

Hugs
Patricia

Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt

No One Has the "Right" To Be Bigoted

While I agree that everyone has the right to be themselves, that "right" stops at the point when it infringes on the rights of others.

Sixty years ago the power in the U.S. South had the "right" to demand that "coloreds" drink out of their own fountains, eat at their own restaurants, and attend their own "separate but equal" schools. The KKK had the "right" to lynch uppity-Ns.

EVERYONE has the right to be treated with respect and dignity.

The woman in the article sounded like she needed to apologize to their one-time "friends" for her spouse's oddity. That is bigoted nonsense. My spouse isn't perfect and neither am I. I don't expect everyone to accept my ideals. Hell . . . at least half of my friends don't puke at the thought of our Commander in Cheat. We're still friends. We just don't talk about it. I expect them to teat me and my baggage with dignity and respect.

If your T - nature is dominating your life, you need to find a way to be more compassionate and caring so that you're thinking of something positive.

BTW - if sex were the reason that marriages survive or fail, mine would have failed years ago. Yet, here we are looking forward to our fiftieth anniversary in 2014. The sex was once great but after I developed heart disease my sex drive got up and left.

Why couldn't a straight woman love a lesbian T-girl?

Tale as old as time
True as it can be
Barely even friends
Then somebody bends
Unexpectedly
Just a little change
Small to say the least
Both a little scared
Neither one prepared
Beauty and the beast

Jill

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

You seem to be...

Mantori's picture

... painting me as someone who is pro-bigotry.

The problem we sit with is everyone and his cat claims their freedom of expression, in all ways possible. Be it gender, sexuality and spirituality. And the clincher, RELIGION. That is why I say FREEDOM CUTS ALL WAYS.

Bigotry has one main origin. Religion. Divine Decree. Archaic laws clung to by a mentally ill group of people who believes they have a skydaddy who actually speaks to them. And this skydaddy tells them through his so-called word, a book with severely dubious origins, who has the right to live and express themselves and who does not.

According to them, we the LGBTQI+ community fall in the 'who does not' category.

I have experienced enough religious bigotry in my life, be it friends, the public and my own fucking family, to want to go out and slaughter the whole damn lot of them. But alas, because I am a person who fully chooses to believe that we ALL have the RIGHT of freedom of expression, I can not stand in the way, even of idiotic nub sculls to show their true colours when all they want is to destroy me and my kind.

I have lived an open TS life now for close on 31 years( as I have mentioned coming out to my mother in 1988 at the age of 16). Fully transitioned 22 years ago, so I have been around this block for a very long time.
Many of my friend when I visited them made the choice to inform other guests about me because I do not hide the fact that I am trans, I do not look it, but my voice has always been questionable. So I am rather upfront about who and what I am. And that is in no way my friends being bigoted but rather pre-emptive in preventing any problems at social gatherings. Some nub sculls just cannot seem to stop asking the most pathetic personal questions, so pre-empting that to me is a show of friendship rather than a proof of bigotry.

But hey, maybe I am just a realist and have realised that this life, the TS full-on transition in the open life, is not for sissies. My one friend who transitioned in the late 1980's after being a highly decorated special forces soldier always said: "It takes balls of steel to become a woman". And skin as strong as a diamond cutter to wade through the bullshit of other people and their fucked up perception of who and what transgender people are.

Me being T does not rule my life, but unluckily it goes with you everywhere you walk, run or crawl. And like your own shadow, there is no escaping yourself, ever. And there truly is no way of hiding from it either.

"Life in general is a fuck up,
but it is the rare moments of beauty and peace
in between the chaos,
That makes it worth living."
- Tertia Hill

Absolutely Not

In no way am I saying or implying that you're a bigot or pro-bigotry. I apologize if I inadvertently made you feel that way.

I'm suggesting that tolerance for bigotry is a bridge too far.

Bigotry must be dealt with firmly. It must be identified as such and called out at every turn.

I agree that organized religion seems to be a well for hatred and bigotry. I've written several stories here that have that as a central theme. However, perverse "religion" isn't the only well. Much of the bigotry rampant in the US today springs from greed and thirst for power.

Jill

Angela Rasch (Jill M I)

Freedom of speech and religion

0.25tspgirl's picture

Please remember Voltaire on freedom of speech: (to paraphrase) I may despise what you say but I will defend your right to say it to the death.

Freedom of religion is a new concept pioneered with the birth of this country and was born of compromise. The hatred and intolerance espoused by conservative religious groups is as old as religion. I believe it is prima facie evidence of an active evil in this world. (Just, you know....)

Part of our test is to reject the hatred (lest it poison our soul) and to oppose the intolerance. David Weber, in his Honor Harrington novels, posits a church where Deity is known as the Tester and life as the great test of each of us. I believe he has articulated a piece of truth.

BAK 0.25tspgirl