My Marriage

In The Face of Stolen Tomorrows
A Survival Guide for Transgendered Husbands and their Wives

Looking back
on the memory of
The dance we shared
'neath the stars above
For a moment all the world was right
How could I have known
that you'd ever say goodbye

REFRAIN:
And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end
the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'd of had to miss the dance

Holding you
I held everything
For a moment
wasn't I a king
But if I'd only known
how the king would fall
Hey who's to say you know I might have changed it all

REFRAIN

Yes my life is better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
but I'd of had to miss the dance.

In all my wildest dreams I don't think I ever really believed my marriage - the symbol of the love and commitment that my wife and I felt for each other - could die. But it did.

It had always seemed so strong; like a rock. For a significant portion of my adult life it was the centerpiece of my entire existence. I had vowed to Love, Honor and Cherish my wife, and it was a vow I felt confident I could take to the grave. I sometimes had a hard time considering myself outside the context of my marriage and my family, as we had come to seem like one and the same sometimes. I almost felt cheated when it all ended - as though real, true, love had passed us by somehow.

Perhaps my naiveté was based on hopelessly romantic notions that the unconditional love that I thought we had could find a way to see past a person's exterior body to the real core of their soul. Perhaps I hoped I could convince her that sharing my deepest secrets actually provided the opportunity for a deeper, more intimate relationship. In the end, though, none of that could overcome the feelings of anger, betrayal, and deceit that prevented the seed of any explanation or understanding from taking root.

Although I've reconciled the fact that it wasn't all my fault, and that I did everything I could to save it, I still consider the death of my nearly 20-year marriage to be the single-most devastating failure in my life. And looking back over it all now, with the benefit of hindsight, I suppose I always knew that once Pandora's Box had been opened, there was really only one ultimate outcome. Everything dies.

Certainly, the premature demise of my marriage was not because I didn't love my wife, or my son, enough. There's nothing I loved more. I'm sure there's a world of people who've never been through what I have ready to challenge me on that, but I'm comfortable in what I know to be true. To those people I say: I'm not writing this to justify what I've done, or to convince you of anything. My need to be me is paramount to my need to be anything to anyone else.

Rather, the reason I'm writing this is to share some history and perspective hoping that both transgendered husbands and their wives will be able to use it in their own lives. There seems to be very little in the way of support or guidance for married or otherwise committed couples dealing with the potentially devastating effects that the disclosure that a partner is transgendered can have on the relationship. This is my attempt to address that. I've spent years considering it in the safe confines of my own head, and I'm taking this opportunity to try to document and share in the hope it will prevent you from experiencing the same pain that I experienced not all that long ago.

Pain. Loss. Disappointment. Fear. Anger. Whether you want these things is not really not the issue here - neither my wife nor I wanted them either. But, they're part of the package so identifying the reasons for them, finding ways to deal with, and identifying opportunities to minimize them will play a significant role in determining not only the future of your relationship, but also your long-term emotional and psychological well-being as well.

It is important to for me to state at the outset that I'm not on anyone's side. Whether you choose to believe it or not, know that I am as sensitive to the perspectives of wives as I am of their transgendered husbands. There are no winners here. I'm here to help both parties realize things that they may not have considered before in hopes of helping them work through some very difficult and emotional issues with each other. Having been there before, and having learned my lessons the hard way makes me uniquely qualified to discuss this very difficult and complex topic.

There are no universal cures. There is no magic formula to make it all go away. Once it's out in the open, there's no forcing it back into the box. If you're not careful you'll find yourself dwelling on things that did or didn't happen in the past, or lamenting stolen tomorrows that never happened and now never will. None of that will solve the issue at hand, that there's a transgendered husband and a wife who need to consider kids, futures, love, themselves...an entire world of things suddenly turned upside down.

Also, realize the ultimate goal of what's going to happen may or may not be to prolong your marriage in its current state. In fact, I'd be so bold as to say that as soon as this revelation is made the marriage, and the underlying relationship, is fundamentally changed forever. These are words that, once said, cannot be un-said and what happens next depends on you two and nobody else. Certainly, society has opinions, and family and friends have advice, and all are more than willing to share them with you. Part of your ability to set your own direction will depend on your ability to make up your own minds about what's right or not right for you and the people in your lives.

If I've learned anything over the past couple of years of sharing my story it's that there are many consistent aspects to each of our unique situations, but each of us is unique and has unique challenges. If you've been here, you'll probably notice that much of what I share may sound all too painfully familiar. And, if you see yourself there on the horizon, the time to start preparing is now. You have nothing to lose by reading, even if only to consider love lived and lost....

Before I get too far into discussing specifics of spousal relationships, I want to share some common themes I've observed when dealing with any relationship involving a significant disclosure such as this. These are not rules, only observations.

I firmly believe that some people (actually, many people) are actually incapable of accepting something like this in a spouse or a loved one, no matter how logical or passionate the argument or how bad they may want to be supportive. That may sound like a cop out, but I am convinced that some people are so driven by absolutes, traditions, "rules", structure, and normalcy that anything that challenges those fundamental principles necessarily become unacceptable. They have been trained their entire life to think in structured ways, and to think that they can get their arms around something as huge as this would be futile. Just as it is ridiculous to expect a kindergartner to understand the concepts of advanced calculus, so too is it unrealistic to expect structured people to think in unstructured ways.

If a person becomes so rigid in their rejection of someone or something as to preclude any opportunity to consider it differently, you can wait an eternity and their rejection will not change; in fact it can actually increase as anger and disappointment over stolen tomorrows festers. This rejection can be based on any number of religious, ideological, moral, or cultural "rules" that form fundamental barriers of acceptance to anything that seems to fall outside, or not explicitly accepted as being inside, the boundaries. Not surprisingly, this is the same issue many transsexuals must overcome in themselves, on their path of self-acceptance, before they have any hope of asking others to accept them, as well.

Unconventional problems often require unconventional solutions. This requires unconventional thinking. If you can't (or won't) think outside of traditional boundaries, there may be no way to find some sort of workable (although perhaps less-than-desirable) relationship. Please keep this in mind.

I've learned the hard way that most people are unaware of what they're capable of doing until they're tested, or forced to do things that exceed their limits. Some people enjoy these kinds of challenges, that allow them to continually grow and feel challenged throughout their lives. However, these people are the minority as most people are inherently change-averse; the general tendency is to find stability and, once found, maintain it. By the time we've reached middle age many of us have become so complacent we've come to believe that good enough is good enough, that a stale, dead-end relationship is better than no relationship, that life is inherently mundane and routine. If you think this way, you'll soon be forced to learn otherwise.

Earlier I mentioned that Loss is one of the ingredients in this complex mix. Have no doubt, loss is inevitable. As a result, dealing with loss is a skill that you'll need to develop. And, if this entire proposition were one of loss then there's little or no reason to read further as loss without gain is unrealistic to ask for. But there is gain. If you consider things carefully you may realize that the things you're gaining are really worth more than the things you're losing. And, the things you think you're losing you're not really losing at all. They're actually still there - they're just different. Finally, perhaps the things you're losing are falling away because they had outlived their natural lives anyway - you'd just grown comfortable holding onto them until something happened that forced you to let them go.

Any relationship is only as strong as the weakest link. That's not to say that one wants it more than the other, or one places more value on the relationship than the other (although that might be the case, too). Rather, there are two sets of needs here that need to be addressed - needs that often appear to be directly opposed or contradictory. You may need help in successfully finding a solution that works, not only for the short term but for the long term. Through it all, however, know that the key to finding solutions is to WANT to find solutions. If that's not there, it doesn't really matter what else we discuss from here on out, because this is going to take work.

One of the key ingredients to handling this issue, on both sides, is empathy. As we move through this discussion you won't be able to help but to notice the huge difference in perspective that pervades the entire relationship once the truth is out. The wife feels the husband is making a terrible, misguided mistake and does everything she can to "save" him. This often involves what she considers to be tough-love tactics: threats, ultimatums, rejection, name-calling, any number of things to get him to come back to "reality" and end this foolishness. He, on the other hand, hardens in the face of this perceived onslaught, ultimately angered her continued refusal to even try to understand the true nature of his plight and the depth of his pain. Neither side will empathize with the other until in the end, either one side capitulates because they can't stand the emotional torture, or continued "attacks" on both sides have hardened positions that refuse to find any middle ground, and the relationship dies a long, painful death. It happens over and over again. But, it doesn't have to be this way.

My ex-wife used to tell me that she could accept this in others, but not in her husband. I'm no psychologist, but this kind of contextual acceptance appears to be fairly common. Those in our life truly may be generally accepting, however what they're being asked to accept is often far too personal and emotional to be considered devoid of passion.

My ex-wife (Elizabeth) and I met on November 2, 1989. We were both waiting in line outside a "Get Lei'd" party in the lobby of my dorm at Syracuse University. Elizabeth had a natural outgoing nature that made her the life of the party (which, I must say, intrigued me), while I tended to be far more reserved and quiet. We were a perfect match. From that night on, nothing was ever the same for either of us.

Ask anyone who knew me back then and they'll tell you I was one of the most masculine, manly guys they knew. Less than 6 months earlier I had competed as a collegiate wrestler at international levels, finishing in the top dozen in the country. I lifted weights religiously, and my muscular frame was topped by a ruggedly handsome face. Yet, despite all the opportunity for collecting women, I remained relatively shy and inexperienced around girls.

It's not because I had any question about my sexuality. Lord, no. I loved women. I loved everything about them. I think my appreciation for women bordered on awe as much as anything. And I think part of me was scared to actually be around them for too long, as it provided far too much opportunity to release what I knew to be hiding deep below the surface. It made me ache for things I could never have; things I could never be.

Throughout high school and college my sister's friends constantly followed me around in hopes of catching my attention, yet I never once even considered even flirting with them. I could count on one hand the number of real girlfriends I had had, more out of some deep-seated need to establish long-term relationships than any lack of opportunity. I rarely thought of things in terms of one-night stands, or of dating more than one girl at a time. I found that I was far more interested in the sense of intimacy that I received from the relationship as any physical gratification that came along with it. And not to be lost in this complex equation is the fact that I don't think there's anything that made me feel more masculine than being the "man" in a sexual relationship with a woman.

I know many friends who react to this paradox by going overboard, having sex with as many women as possible in hope of convincing themselves they were really men. I took the opposite approach. I avoided it.

By the time I was 19 I had never really been in love before. There was a high school sweetheart (who I still think about from time to time, actually) who I think was the first person to whom I said "I Love You," but I really don't think that was love. The more time I spent with Elizabeth, the more time I wanted to be with her. And as I struggled to control this incredible flood of new emotion that made me happier than I had ever been before, I didn't have to ask myself anymore. I just knew it.

Elizabeth loved my masculine nature, which I suppose is certainly natural for a heterosexual woman. She loved the fact that people got out of my way when the saw me coming. She loved the feel of my rock-hard biceps right after working out, when they were so tight I couldn't even bend them to button the top button of my dress shirt. But I think she was also drawn to our unique connection, our ability to relate on a much deeper level than I think she'd experienced in her previous relationships. We could talk for hours and hours, never running out of things to say. I think she was enamored by the unique balance of manliness, and of gentleness, that made me me.

We were engaged after 6 months, and married a little over a year later - shortly after we both graduated from college at the tender age of 22 in 1981.

Over the next several years we did the things most young couples dream of doing: we spent time with each other, we traveled, I built my career, we planned for the future, we bought a house, and we had a child.

The issue that was to become the wedge that would eventually pry us apart was the fact that I never disclosed my transgender nature to my wife prior to our marriage. (read my Bio to learn more detail, and more on that to follow in this essay). Although I did make at least a partial disclosure a few years after we were married, my wife indicated that this had no place in our marriage and I just needed to forget it. So, an uneasy truce took hold for the next 12 years - years where she hoped it had gone away because we never discussed it, while at the same time I secretly found ways to release the bothersome tension that would occasionally boil..

The fact that I had not been totally forthcoming in disclosing my "other self" continues, even today, to be the source of outrage and bitterness. She considers the fact that I was not totally open an honest with her at the very beginning to be the ultimate of deceit and deception - that I had never been the person she thought I was. She will not hesitate to say that, if she had known about my "other" self, she never would have married me in the first place. I know this is true.

Once something so fundamental as your true nature is called into question, suddenly everything else upon which it is based gets questioned as well, and all the good somehow gets tainted by duplicity. She decided that I had been using her to convince myself that I was a man, and that our entire marriage had somehow been an elaborate effort to appear to be something I'm not. She saw my need to be me as a personal attack on her, a betrayal of my love for her somehow proving her contention that I had never really loved her in the first place! And her unabated anger at feeling she had been duped into "wasting" 20 years of her life with a "freak" (her word, not mine) and that I "fucked her over" (her words again, not mine) with no regard her feelings continue to form an insurmountable barrier even today.

The emotional drain of failing to live up to her expectations of me, and being the target for her blame, were the hardest things to endure of my entire transition. As if getting changing genders wasn't difficult enough, even under the best of circumstances, dealing with her rejection and the heartache we were both feeling was crippling.

Today, she considers her husband to be dead. And, she considers me to be the person who killed him....

In order to demonstrate just how painful and angry this can be and to provide an insider's glimpse at what I'm talking about, I am including an e-mail string that my ex-wife and I exchanged beginning on August 30, 1999. At that point I was just beginning of my journey - I had just left my house a month before and had not yet spent even a single day as Donna. I had just come back from excruciatingly difficult Facial Feminization Surgery which took 13 hours in the operating room to accomplish, and was facing weeks of recuperation. I spent hour after hour at the electrologist, having each hair on my face killed follicle by follicle, upwards of 24 hours or more each week. At work, my management had announced my situation to my co-workers and I was living in a difficult nether-world between genders until I felt I was ready to live full-time as Donna at the beginning of October.

Please note: these are very personal excerpts from my own life. For those who have been through what I have they may take you back to a very unpleasant time. I made a special point of NOT including them in my book because it can get way too easy to get bogged down in all this trauma. I share them here not to scare you, or to entertain you, but to help couples understand the impact that this can have on an otherwise loving, committed relationship and to hope that they can avoid doing this to each other. For those who have Wrapped In Blue, this would be included somewhere around page 233.

How convenient for you NOT to answer ANY of the questions I had asked of you. I WANT YOU TO TELL YOUR SISTER NOT TO WRITE ANYTHING IN HER JOURNALS ABOUT THIS, AND IF SHE HAS, RIP IT OUT, TEAR IT UP AND THROW IT AWAY! You think you are so smooth dodging around everything I ask....well, don’t think I don’t notice that you never answer anything I want to hear....you only say what you want OTHERS to hear. Well, that doesn’t fly with me. You are STILL very sneaky and deceitful and I won’t have that. So, when I ask something, I would like You to fire away with your answers. HONESTLY!

I will not tell my sister what to write in her journals. She can write whatever she pleases. It is HER journal, not yours. You say YOU WANT this and YOU WANT that. Well, not everything happens the way we always want. It’s ridiculous to even ask.

You say I dodge answering everything you want to hear. I have no answers for you. You ask me how far am I going to take this. I don’t know. You ask me how long. I don’t know. Most of the answers I DO have...you do not WANT to hear.

Of course I'm an absent father right now. That's because you kicked me out of our house! You will not allow me to come home until I have made promises that I cannot make. You feel it is ME that is keeping me from coming home. I feel, in a large sense, it is YOU as well.

I am moving forward. I am learning about me, and who I am, and where I fit in this world. With your support and understanding, or without it. In two weeks, I will change the name on my driver’s license, and my social security card, and on at least one of my credit cards. I will start at work. I am preparing for what I need to do, and being Donna more and more and more. I was Donna for almost my entire trip in Rochester. Shopping at the mall. Going to Wegmans. Out to dinner at Daisy Flour Mill. AND IT WAS WONDERFUL.

You will disagree with almost everything I have to say, the same as I disagree with most of your letter. It is just an indication of the huge barrier that exists between us.

You want me to be what YOU want me to be, and if I cannot be that, I am not welcome in my own house. You make yourself out to be some kind of martyr or saint, and me to be a piece of shit. Piss on that. You have been hurt. You are a victim. So am I.

You refuse to learn ANYTHING about my situation. You are so sure you already know everything. Piss on that, too. As long as you think you do, we are going nowhere.

I will not have you talk about my family as a bunch of fucked-up lunatics. You should be ashamed of yourself. They are accepting, loving, wonderful people. They are not self-righteous, judgmental, superficial, narrow-minded bigots. That’s what others think of YOU. They accept me for me.

You tell me that you pray that I find joy and peace and happiness. You don’t wish that. You want me to come back home. Period. The way YOU want me to be. Regardless of my own happiness or peace. To me, THAT is being selfish. On YOUR part.

You think you know what God wants. I guess all I can say is I am comfortable in my relationship with Him, so preach to me all you want.

I am a wonderful father. I was before, and I am now. I don’t need your validation to know that. I will not let you take me out of out son’s life, or poison his mind, or use him as a weapon against me. Ever. The same as I would never do that to you. That’s the most unfair thing that could possibly happen out of all of this. And if you try to, that alone will break us apart.

You tell me that all you see now is a much worse person than I was before. How the fuck would you know that? We don’t even talk for God’s sake. You DON’T see me. More accurately, you WON’T see me. Period. I like ME better right now, and that’s what matters. If I don’t like me, how can I expect anyone else to? YOU, on the other hand, won’t even give me a chance...

I have not done you wrong. That implies that I have gone out of my way to do something to you, and actually I have one out of my way to be as gentle as I can. I know this sucks. For all of us. But it is a reality of life right now. I am here. I have always been here. You make it seem like I have decided to stay away - to abandon my wife and son and duties. You are wrong. I have decided to learn about me. And the thought of that is so unacceptable to you, that you have convinced yourself that this is a decision I have made, and that I want to be away from you. But that is so far from true.

I could go on, but what’s the point? I can see that it was better when we didn’t talk. I refuse to get into a name-calling contest with you. You call it venting. I call it vicious. If you continue, I will delete your emails without reading them. I will erase your voice mails without listening to them. I will NOT let you call me names, and make fun of me or my family, or judge me, or purposefully try to hurt me. So if that’s what you want to do, it will fall on deaf ears here. I refuse to let my memories of you be tarnished by bitterness and hate. That’s unfair for us all. I hope your “venting’ at me made you feel better. Mine made me feel like shit.

After thinking about the string of nasty emails for a day, I wrote to Elizabeth to apologize:

I am sorry for some of the things in the email yesterday. Our perceptions of things are so totally different, and there is so much anger right now, that it just comes out. You said your email was venting. Fine. It certainly didn’t come across that way. It was hateful. I don’t know what you expect from me in return. I suppose I should have let it go. But I didn’t.

I try to be gentle with you. I try to let the love that I feel do my talking, not my own anger or fear. I try to say nice things, and all I get is name-calling and insults and accusations back in my face. I can only take so much of that. I deal with my pain and my fear and my loneliness as best I can, and I don’t let them spill out all over the page in nastiness. You tried to hurt me in any way you could think of...through my son, through my family, through my friends, through God. And I responded in anger. I suppose I need to develop some thicker skin. We need to be helping each other, not hurting each other. There is more than enough of that to go around.

I’d better get back to work. I have a lot to do. I won’t write again unless you want me to. It’s just too painful.

You are SOOOOO wrong in your perceptions of my e-mails. You act like everything is MY fault, and you are just some innocent guy doing nothing wrong. You were WRONG about everything you commented on. It’s clear to me we no longer see eye to eye on anything. It’s so hurtful to me that you never felt you could be open and honest with me while we were DATING, while we were ENGAGED, or even when we were MARRIED. I take that very personally, and it is VERY hurtful. Everything I say is judged and analyzed in the WRONG way. Everyone makes me look like the BAD one here, and I’M NOT!!!! I am just going to have to shut myself off from people who hurt me and cause me pain. And right now, that’s anyone who you know or who knows about this. And you too. Life is waaay to short to be miserable, and right now, it is YOU that is causing my misery. You say you have to continue doing what you are doing....I don’t know why? What is it you’re trying to prove to yourself?

That’s the very core of what this is all about! I have been miserable for a very very very long time. I have been confused, and scared, and tortured inside. I absolutely absolutely need to work this out for myself. I cannot continue to be miserable. The cause of my misery has nothing to do with you. In fact, you have been the sunlight in an otherwise very gloomy world. You should be proud of that. But that does not change the fact that I am tortured right now. And he nasty emails you send to me only make that worse. I don’t think either of us needs to prove to ourselves that we can hurt each other.

A person's life is 10% of what actually happens, and 90% of how they react to it.
-- One of my life mantras

How does someone disclose their deepest, darkest secret to the people they love most in the world? How does a person find the courage to overcome paralyzing, blinding, terrifying fear - knowing that their revelation can put all they've ever known and loved at risk? How does a person disclose something about themselves that they know will hurt the people that they love, and will make them a target for anger and bitterness at the hands of those same people they love most? Considering it all, is there anything else more profound a disclosure than this?

I remember a time not all that long ago when I used to sit in the room we used as an office at our home in Scottsdale, surfing the internet and reading other people's stories of self-discovery, somehow uplifted simply by reading how other "every-day people" like me somehow found the courage to explore his or her authentic gender-self. At that point I was barely beginning to believe that maybe, just maybe, I could do that too. I really didn't know what the end result would be (or at least that's what I had convinced myself at the time), but seeing other "normal" people who were able to face their issue with dignity and courage filled me with the slightest flicker of hope. My growing confidence would dissolve, however, the moment I thought about disclosing my secret self to my wife - what it would do to her; what it would do to us. My heart would sink and my stomach would knot up into a tight, twisted ball - the mere thought of it made me physically ill. I came to realize that I could bear sharing my secret. But, I couldn't bear hurting my wife.

I once posted a message to a usenet message board (on the internet, like soc.support.transgendered et al), asking for some advice, asking how other people had disclosed their True Selves to their wives. The responses I got were almost universally cold and shockingly bitter and angry: "Take her for everything she's got before she does it to you!" "Take as much as you can and leave in the middle of the night." "Let a lawyer do it all." The feedback was so unfeeling and calculating...how could these people actually do these things to someone that they professed to love? I could never be so heartless. I think this little exercise did more harm than good, and things like this sometimes made me feel more alone than ever.

Soon, I began to actively investigate options where I felt I could have both - maintain my marriage and my family and my life as Dave, and at the same time; to actively explore this need to express Donna that had caused me so much difficulty in the past. Slowly but surely a plan emerged, and I embarked on a road that allowed me to secretly explore my gender self without having to explain to my wife. Some might call it cowardly. Some might call it deceitful. If they could spend a day in my shoes back in those dark times they'd realize that my original motives were far more pure.

In the end, though, I suppose her ultimate reaction was inevitable. I had just been prolonging it. I had just delayed whatever eruption was waiting to happen upon hearing the news. And my stomach turned itself inside out for months on end....

Perhaps not surprisingly, long-term acceptance by a spouse is often is often strongly influenced by just how and when they find out about your "secret". There is often a huge difference in reaction based on whether you were able to somehow discuss this prior to marriage, whether you disclosed several years later, or whether you were somehow caught by accident - for example, wearing your wife's clothes when you thought nobody was home.

As you can see from the email chain above, my ex-wife was (and remains) very hurt that I hadn't told her about Donna before we got married. Let's talk about this for a little while, as it's very important for both transgendered husbands and their wives to understand all the complex dynamics is going on here.

Should I have told her? Perhaps. Probably. From her perspective, Absolutely! Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I think I can say with some degree of certainty that I would indeed have handled things differently. But maybe not. At 22 years of age I did not have a clue about any of this so to think I had reached any significant level of emotional and spiritual maturity in order to be able to share my secret at that point may not be realistic. Certainly, I could have told her something, but in reality, I have no idea what I would have told her. At that point in my life my secret was something that was a minor irritant to me, like a bad knee that flares up when it's cloudy outside. I had always been able to deal with it on my own, and expected that I'd always be able to do that. In my wildest dreams I never imagined what has happened was even remotely possible, so to think I could have told her anything resembling what turned out to be the truth would be unrealistic.

Perhaps I would have told her what I thought she wanted to hear. That would have given me some sense that I had done the right thing, even though that may or may not have prevented what was to eventually follow. Maybe she would have asked me to promise never to do it again, a promise I freely admit I would have made (and broken) because I really wanted to be able to do that for her (and me). There are any number of things I could have told her...but frankly, most of them probably would have been wrong. I would be proven a liar and a prick no matter how things turned out.

Be that as it may, in 1996, after 17 years together, I didn't have that luxury. I found myself neck deep in a marriage that stifled any attempt to explore the "other" personality that inhabited this body, and I found myself rightfully terrified of the reaction it would get when it came out. Symbolically, that's how I envisioned things - two personalities struggling for control over one body. David was normally in control, and when he could force Donna deep into the recesses of my mind things would usually be quiet for a while. But, from time to time, Donna would demand some attention. She'd somehow grow restless in her dark exile, and she'd need some sort of expression and acknowledgement in the world. Once given, she'd somehow go back to rest again until the next time.

This was the struggle that had raged in my psyche for years, and that I felt unable to discuss or disclose to even the people I loved most. And the guilt and fear caused by hiding this thing was just as difficult to manage as the "thing" itself.

Wives need to understand something that is key to this discussion: The moment of self-disclosure is generally the culmination of all our efforts NOT to have to disclose this having failed. Lord knows, most of us would do anything to avoid having to do this - hurting those we love most, disappointing our family and friends, becoming vulnerable and needy. But, somehow, something has pushed us past the limit where fear, or confusion, or reason, has prevented us from going in the past.

Wives also need to understand that our love for them is NOT somehow reduced, or our sense of responsibility to our families has NOT somehow lapsed. Those remain constant. I'm sure we're afraid that this need to become authentic may be some momentary lapse of insanity, but once firmly in place it gains a life all its own. Until finally, like a baby waiting to be born, it's out there.

Initial reactions are not necessarily long-term reactions. Sometime they are, but sometimes they're not - both for the better and for the worse. One thing that everyone needs to keep in mind is that the husband has had a lifetime to consider this in the relatively safe and comfortable confines of his own head. The wife has just had her entire world turned upside down, and to expect her to have an immediate comprehension of what's going on is really unrealistic. Give it time. Of course, in order to achieve some level of understanding of how this can/may affect BOTH of you, you'll need to talk about it - as rationally and as calmly as possible. However, as in my case, once it's out there it has already become so emotionally charged and raw that any opportunity to discuss it is blocked by the hardening positions of people who have already made up their minds on things. If you can't break through this, opportunities for any continuing relationship become severely reduced.

If you're a wife, and you're reading this, then you may be going through some very difficult things right now. Might I be so bold as to say that very few things happen in our lives that really define us as people. This is one of those things. What has happened cannot un-happen, so how you react to it will ultimately set the stage for the rest of your life.

It is important to realize a few things. If your husband is transsexual he's got two basic choices. Either he can fight to reject it out of fear for what he perceives it will do to the people in his life, or he can admit it and try to integrate it into his life somehow. (Actually, there's a third choice - to commit suicide - which is a choice far too many people choose) Either way, that doesn't change the fact that he's transsexual. It's like having a tumor...whether or not you find the courage to go and have it checked to verify whether or not it's malignant, or you decide to try to dismiss it in hopes it will go away on its own. Either way, you've still got a tumor.

Your husband didn't choose to be this way. That was set by events that occurred long before he was even able to walk. He spent a lifetime of denial fighting this, doing things that he didn't understand or didn't really want to do like someone in a trance, following the beckoning of some post-hypnotic suggestion. And, although being transgendered is certainly not a choice, there are some choices involved in how he handles it, just as you have choices in how you choose to handle it once you know.

Although to be angry about it is probably fairly natural, it's like being mad at a child born with a cleft palate, or a deformed limb. Those birth defects are more visible, and as a result seem to have a much more valid explanation. We don't question them. However, unseen birth defects: learning disabilities, retardation, gender identity disorders, etc. somehow have to struggle to actually be real because nobody wants to believe them. The only way we know they're there is through maturity, and by comparing to others who are "normal". This takes time. And even then, so many people would far rather explain them as some sense of weakness in the person as opposed to something that went horribly wrong in the womb.

That sets the stage for an unpleasant and ultimately un-winnable argument whether or not this is a choice. Since you can't see it you become sure that your husband is choosing to give in to his "fantasies" rather than stay and love his family like he should. You doubt that this is even real, and you see everyone connected to it as the enemy - somehow luring and seducing your husband over to the "dark side." If you take this path, not only will your marriage end, your friendship and any connection that you once shared will die as well. Frankly, from my view the one making a choice here is you - choosing to reject something that you haven't even learned about simply because you don't want it to be true. But it is.

One of the very interesting questions that I get asked from time to time is whether I would have carried things as far as I did if my wife had been more accepting. Frankly, it's a question I can't really answer. I can't say that the same pressures that drove me to do what I did would have still been there if I had been allowed to express that parts of me that were Donna for all those years. But one thing I do know is that my wife made it clear early on that any expression of femininity on my part would not be tolerated, and I did what I could to accommodate that.

Keeping a secret like this is like being a child and knowing you've done something you're sure your parents will think is terribly bad. You just know for sure that you'll be punished terribly for it. So, what's the natural reaction?? To hide it. For sure, you're not going to tell them out of fear of being punished. But, if they're able somehow to convince you that they won't be mad, that everything will be okay, that they'll still love you no matter how bad this thing is, you're far more likely to share it than knowing you're going to get your butt whipped. Creating an environment where we feel safe to disclose our secrets is far more conducive to actually sharing them than making it known that you'll be angry when you find out.

Have no doubt, no matter how well he thinks he's hiding it your transgendered husband's secret is seeping out all over the place. You just don't recognize the signs because they're not obvious, and if you didn't know what was happening under the surface there's probably no way you could realize what you're seeing. Actually, many of the traits that our society deems as "feminine" are actually traits that women often like in men - gentleness, good communicator, nurturing, sentimental - so many of the things that attracted you to your husband in the first place could actually be part of his more feminine nature coming through.

Is that bad? Of course not! Somehow, as far as many wives are concerned those traits are a refreshing change from the typical shallowness that they find in most of the men that they meet. But, that's often only true so long as they don't know what's really going on. Once they learn about the gender struggle of which this is a part, suddenly it becomes tainted - bad and sick.

In my own life, when David was in control he did everything he could to make this body manly so that Donna could never have a realistic shot at being. I lifted weights like crazy. I bulked up to ridiculous levels, as though training for a power-lifting competition or something. But, when Donna was in control, I lost weight like crazy. I dieted, and became generally angry and withdrawn to the point where my wife hated when I went on diets as she thought it was the diet making me so unpleasant to be around. I ran and ran, trying to undo all the muscle that had been built by the lifting. People used to ask if I had gotten sick as I'd lose so much muscle mass and weight so fast. But in reality it was just the most obvious sign of battle for this body and this spirit that was raging inside me.

What happens next? I think it’s up to you. If you can continue to love me knowing the full truth, we will be ok. If not, it will be you who falls out of love. But don’t give up on us. It’s easy to make rash decisions when we’re mad or frustrated or confused. But you need to keep focused on what’s really important in our lives. At this time I think we both need support, and I only hope our love is strong enough to be there for us when we really need it. I know mine is.

--Part of my disclosure letter to my wife (February 1998)

My ex-wife once made the comment that she'd prefer that I had cancer as opposed to his. I replied by telling her that I was glad the choice of my "condition" wasn't hers to make. I find it sad to have to admit that sympathy for wives of transgendered husbands is usually offered to those who reject their spouse. "How could he do this to you?" "You poor thing!" "What a deceitful, conniving, selfish ass!!" It all comes out. Your friends, and society in general, will often see you as a victim, and you may actually come to believe that yourself. In that same vein, wives who stay with their husbands are often questioned and ultimately may need to explain things about love that other people just don't get.

There was a time, not all that long ago, that North American Indian cultures held people deemed to be "dual-spirited," or those who exhibited traits of both male and female, in highest regard. The thinking was that these people were obviously blessed by God be wiser and more unique than most. These people (known as berdache) often had to actually prove that they were dual-spirited, surviving a difficult series of tests to pinpoint pretenders. Those who were identified as dual-spirited were often given a special role in tribal leadership, helping to raise the children and sharing their unique perspective with the rest of the tribe. Those who were family and friends with the berdache were held in high esteem, too.

Certainly, if our culture deemed this anomaly as a gift, instead of as a perversion, the reaction to those who admit to it and to those who sympathize with it would be much different. But it's not. Our culture is based upon a binary system of right/wrong, yes/no, boy/girl, and that often fears that which it can't understand or prove. This is the culture that you, and your husband, find yourself in. And, this is the context in which you'll have to make decisions for your future.

In such a world to accept your spouse is ultimately the difficult path. No doubt about it. But, know that just as your husband has made finally overcome his fears after a lifetime of hiding in order to disclose his secret to you, now it is you who needs to overcome your fears about this unknown entity that has always been there anyway - you just haven't known about it. You can choose to reject it - and your husband - straight away because that's certainly the easiest thing to do. Or, you can choose to learn about it and, in the process, learn about yourself, too.

One of the first things that often happens, especially when kids are involved, is that threats and ultimatums are made. "You better not tell the kids about this or you'll never see them again!" "If you don't promise me you'll stop this I'll embarrass you and leave you, and I'll take everything with me!" Often times, we take you at your word that you'll actually follow through with your threats and we try to honor your wishes. But know this - eventually, the same power that helped us to overcome our fear and helped us to share our secret with you will most probably push us to overcome any fear of your threats, and we'll do what we feel we need to do.

Frankly, when my wife made ultimatums, I did my best to honor them. She told me that I could not transition at home; that if I had any intention of being Donna that I needed to leave home. So I did. Oddly, the fact that I did seemed to surprise her. But she set some boundaries and I honored them, although I think the goal was to keep me on the other side of the line.

Actually, I honored all her ultimatums but one. I told my son. I tried and tried to avoid having to tell him as I searched for my place in life, trying to believe that he didn't need to know anything until some firm decisions were made. I came to realize that my son was going to find out anyway, so he could learn in a loving, patient, understanding way from me or he could learn in an angry, bitter way from her. That was an easy decision to make. And frankly, if I had it all to do over again that's one thing I would do exactly the same in a heartbeat.

Once the secret is out there, nothing can or will be the same. Ever. And that often makes people angry and scared, especially when they like what they think they have. But change is inevitable. Change happens. And perhaps your relationship needs a change to survive. You may not realize it yet, but something may need to happen to help you both to grow as people, and as partners.

As odd as this might sound, my goal in talking to you is not to preserve your marriage. At least not in it's present state. Just as your husband has needs that have not been met, that he needs to explore, so too will you find that your own needs need to be met and there may be no common connection between the two. Your husband's revelation may force you to question the things you find most valuable in a life partner, the answers to those questions may make your husband unsuitable to fill that role in the future.

The first and best thing you can do is to find a psychologist. You're going to find yourself flooded with a variety of emotions, and finding someone to share them with who can actually give you healthy advice is really important. What about your own hopes and dreams? What about your future? How could this happen? How will this affect the kids? These are all valid and important concerns. One minute you're secure in your role as a wife and a mother, and the next you're a middle-aged woman without a future. Suddenly you're vulnerable and hurt, you'll find yourself asking a number of questions that have no reliable answers. Finding the right one sometimes takes a little work, but once you've found a good one with whom you can establish a connection and deep level of trust can be so important, no matter what the crisis.

Or, I can provide a number of contacts for you to talk with - wives whose husbands came out as being transsexual. Some marriages survived the change. Others didn't. But at least you'll be able to talk directly with women who have been in the same place you are now.

My own wife did what I consider to be the absolute worst thing you can do. She withdrew from anyone who knew about our situation. She was so embarrassed and hurt by it all that she turned her back on dear friends who wanted to support her, but were concerned for my well-being too. In her email above she says, "I am just going to have to shut myself off from people who hurt me and cause me pain. And right now, that’s anyone who you know or who knows about this. And you too. " And she did.

In recent years our culture has become a society of blame. When something goes wrong, the first thing that happens is that we look to see who is to blame. Whose fault is it? Somehow, finding someone to pin it on seems to be almost more important than deciding what to do about it!

What's the number one thing that attracts husbands to their wives? It's not because they're nice, or rugged, or handsome, or intelligent, or rich, or powerful. It's because they're men. For heterosexual women, having a penis is the one non-negotiable trait that a person needs in order to develop some type of sexual attraction. I hate to make it sound so cold, but in reality everything else is just additional detail. No penis = no sexual attraction. Since this role of being a man (both physically and sociologically) is so fundamental to the marriage it follows that anything that threatens that seemingly simple man/woman dynamic threatens the foundation of the entire relationship.

It may seem obvious, so I think both husbands and wives rarely stop to consider the role that both their physical sex (male/female) and their concepts of gender roles/expectations play into the overall man/woman, husband/wife dynamic of their relationship. A very interesting exercise is to create two columns on a piece of paper - one labeled "Men" and the other labeled "Women". Then, write down at least a dozen traits that immediately come to mind when you think of each gender. In the "Men" column you might list: good leader, rugged, courageous, handsome, good provider, intelligent etc. etc. And in the women column, you might list: pretty, good mother, nurturing, loving, etc. When you've finished you have a list that, based on your own thinking and background, identifies your personal deals for each gender.

The physical sex of being male, wrapped with expectations and roles our society has developed for being a man, has many rewards and many expectations in our culture. I can say from experience that those of us who were raised as boys and trained to be men in our culture often forget just how all-consuming a role that is - how it directs our thinking, our actions, our perceptions, and our needs. To be successful in our culture men need to look and act a certain way, and it takes years of conditioning and cultivation to actually be that way - at least on the outside. It's a role that men play 24/7, like actors who cannot get out of character for fear of being exposed as a fraud.

In our culture, nothing is more important to a man than his manhood. Period. It's fundamental to everything else in his life - his key that provides unquestioned access to all the privileges of being a male in a patriarchal culture. The fastest way to get into a fight with a man is to question (or threaten) his manhood or his sexuality. In some places that will get you killed - literally. Men naturally and aggressively defend themselves against any perceived attack to this nebulous concept manhood. And, in a culture where outward appearances of "being a man" are so very important, most men are surprisingly insecure and fragile although they do their best to mask it. As a result, it actually doesn't take much to be perceived as an attack. Men often measure themselves by career goals, by time with other men friends, by how "pretty" and feminine and plentiful the women in their life are, by doing "manly" things. Any challenge to any of these things can become a threat their independence and manliness.

Because of its importance, many men go to ridiculous lengths to prove their manhood, not just to others but to themselves as well. Some go overboard. Psychologists call this overly-masculine behavior hyper masculinity, and contrary to common stereotypes for transsexuals many of us spend years dealing with our gender questions by going overboard, doing things that would deflect any suspicion of what we feel inside. As a result, when one of these "men" finally comes out as being gay, or transsexual, it's such a shock because they had been so successful that nobody had a clue to what was actually going on.

Not surprisingly, the fastest way for a man to forfeit his birthright of "manhood" is to acknowledge alternative sexualities or gender identities. Once called into serious question, or acknowledged as true, a person can go from being a "man" to being something less than a man in about ten seconds flat. Once said, no matter what else ever happens in his life, that acknowledgment can never be unsaid or retracted, perceptions are changed forever, and there is just no getting that "manhood" membership card back.

Have no doubt - there's nobody more important than to appear manly around than our wives. Wives need to understand how important it is to husbands to be able to be the kind of man that our wives expect as it has direct bearing on everything we're going to talk about here. So, coming out to our wives becomes the most difficult disclosure of all. For many, it is impossible. It's not that they don't have enough courage to admit it so much as they a) can't bear the thought of losing the things they love most in life and b) they have doubts whether their life can ever be truly happy, so they're not ready to risk what they have. What's the point? What's to gain? The problem here is that there seems to be so little to gain, and so much to lose.

Wives often seem to expect complete and total disclosure from their husbands as a gesture of intimacy. Men do not have a similar perspective. So, as a man, to expect me to disclose something that threatens the perception of myself that I've created, that calls my manhood into question, and that I believe significantly threatens my relationship with a person that I love more than anything all for the sake of some sense of complete disclosure is totally and completely out of the question. Period.

In the face of just how big this is, I think people need to clearly recognize just how compelling these needs are to push a man to forfeit what many consider to be his "manhood". A choice? You've got to be kidding.

Certainly, some choices are being made here. But, they're not the choices so many people seem to think.

First, the most basic choice being made is a simple one: to disclose or not. Whether you do or don't doesn't change the fact that you're transsexual, or at the very least that you're hiding something that makes you think you might be. So in that context, once could say that the choice being made is to be authentic or not, or to be totally open or not, or to live with integrity or not. But, to say that one is choosing to be a certain way is just wrong.

That being said, somehow once this all comes out the world chooses to think that other choices are being made. That you're choosing some sexual perversion over your wife and family. That you're choosing to give in to delusion over being "normal". That you're somehow making value decisions about the people and things in your life. Again, it's easy to call a game from the sidelines, but people who think that this has any grain of truth are just plain wrong.

Often, we can't choose to be angry or not. We can't choose to be afraid or not. People are not so mechanical to the point that they can manage their emotions like that. In fact, those things are often healthy, natural reactions to the things that happen in our lives.

"It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not."
-- Andre Gide

Of course, sometimes figuring out exactly what you are means that you need to experiment, and explore. You need to be ready to accept things you probably don't want to be true. And you need to be ready to take risks.

But, many of us find ourselves in the middle of a life that is so constricting we have no freedom to explore. We've become comfortable in our tidy little worlds - our marriages, our families, our careers, our ability to be accepted as who and what we appear to be - that there is no room to explore. We stop growing. We stop taking chances. In some very real ways, we stop living.

Somehow, for some reason, this issue often seems to percolate for so many years, but comes to a head in mid-life. I don't think any of us can explain why - and frankly the reasons are probably not as important as the fact that it just is. But, when those pressures start to build and the prospect of shaking your tidy little world to its core looms before you, you've got some serious soul searching to do, and decisions to make.

First, understand that keeping this inside really isn't doing anyone the good you seem to think. If you've reached the boiling point where you're always angry, always edgy, always sitting around with a knot in your stomach - realize that you need to do something. There's no way you can function as a husband, a father, a friend, an employee - any of the roles that you play - when you're as full of pressure and frustration as you are now.

At that point you may or may not really know what's going on, but telling her that you've got a "secret" other self is a big deal, especially knowing that it may actually break the relationship.

That being said, know that there are many people who cannot accept this in any way, shape or form....period. It doesn't matter when or how they learn about it. Disclosure = Kiss of Death.

This statement is not as simple as it might sound. For example, it might imply that if you've been open and honest with your wife since before you were married, disclosing your feminine nature to them as best you can and coming to some sort of a working agreement whereby it fits into your life in an unthreatening way, your wife will be okay when you tell her you're going to become a girl. I wouldn't necessarily make that leap of faith.