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28 January 2012 by kathleen.
I wrote a few days ago about contra dancing. The dance was a powerful experience for me, as you might guess because this is my second blog post about it. Despite being tired from 3-1/2 hours of nearly constant movement Saturday evening, I couldn’t sleep when I got home.
I never danced very much as a man. I was in high school when the Twist was popular, but my Twist always turned into a tangle! My family used to kid me that I looked like I was doing the Lumberjack Waltz. It sounded funny to them, but they actually picked up on the stiffness and clumsiness I felt; my feet seemed to be blocks of wood. So even though I took a few lessons in ballroom dancing in the mid-70’s (I was in my early 20’s), I never got confident enough to try to actually use what I learned.
My female cousins tried to teach me to dance when I was in college, but they weren’t much help. People kept telling me that I should just move however I felt, but when I did, women laughed out loud. My heritage is Polish and German-Irish; polka was what I saw my parents doing when I grew up. I felt OK doing the polka, though I was never very good at it, and there’s not much polka music playing in southeastern Virginia.
Because the contra dancing cycled me through nearly everyone in the room over the course of the evening, I had the chance to touch a lot of men in non-threatening, non-intimate ways. Wow! What a difference from one man to the next — what a wealth of information you can pick up in just a few seconds. I was surprised how quickly I could identify a man who just wanted a piece of meat to show off his dancing, versus a man who respected both himself and his partner, regardless of how well he danced.
That experience gave me a new perspective on choosing a life partner. I realized, too, that nearly all the men who made good dance partners were already married.
Posted in Being/staying married, AutoBiog | 1 Comment »
20 July 2011 by kathleen.
I do not like yard work in the summer — especially in the summer. I’ve mentioned my hairpiece before; well, it really gets in the way when I’m doing yard work. If I tie it back, the piece gets soaked with sweat very quickly. I usually take it off completely and wear a headscarf instead — and expect to wash my hair when I’ve finished working.
My hairpiece is not human hair, and it is washable. It was, however, not made for frequent washing. I try to wear it at least 10 days before washing, and in cooler weather I can go at least two weeks between washings. If I were to wear it while I worked in the yard, I’d have to wash it a lot more often than that.
I’m thinking of yard work today not just from the hair perspective; I’m also thinking of the married-partner perspective.
I was married over 30 years when I transitioned. My wife had expectations not just about connubial bliss, but about housework as well. While it is true in the general case that I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, marriage entails a whole lot of expectations. It is appropriate for you to negotiate — or rather renegotiate — expectations when you transition.
I mean both your expectations and her expectations. Some parts of your lives will be the same, but a lot will have to change. You need to carefully consider what and how you can change without compromising your integrity. For me, weeding the garden does not compromise my integrity. I did it before my transition, and so I continue it now (well, sometimes anyway, when it’s not too hot!), but we hire out a lot of other work that I used to do.
Chores, of course, are easy to talk about. Intimacies are harder to discuss and negotiate and they are as individual as each of the two of you. While public activities are the realm of sex and gender roles, intimacies belong only to you and your partner: negotiate.
Posted in Being/staying married | 1 Comment »
24 May 2011 by kathleen.
There is a distinct problem befriending genetic women outside of family-and-friends circle: how much to reveal of your past and present circumstances. For me this means two minefields to navigate: having a female partner, and being transgendered.
Talking makes time pass more quickly, especially when you’re doing something not too mentally challenging — like walking laps through a shopping mall. A week or so ago, I started walking with a neighbor down the street and her friend from another neighborhood. These are women my age or older.
They talk about their husbands (I don’t have one — I have a wife). They talk about their children and grandchildren (I don’t have any). They even talk about their parents (I’m married but I still have my father’s last name!). So, I mostly listen, asking questions about their children and their husbands to keep up my end of the conversation.
I am conscious of weighing every word carefully, so I don’t accidentally divulge something. Set aside for a moment being trans: being married to a woman is far enough from these women’s experience. To illustrate: a month or six weeks ago, I was walking with another woman through the same mall, and spoke of my partner’s unwillingness to walk with me. Between one pronoun and another, it became obvious my partner was another woman. Well, I haven’t seen that other walker since!
To tell you the truth, I don’t know which is socially riskier: being transgendered or being lesbian.
I am not alone, I know. Every gay man with a partner, and every lesbian with a partner, face the same dilemma, week after week. And in my state of residence, Virginia, they can’t have their marriage recognized. At least my transgender saves me that anguish: I was legally married while I was legally male. If you are married and past your transition, maybe waiting for surgery, you may face these issues, too.
Posted in Being/staying married, AutoBiog | 1 Comment »
14 May 2011 by kathleen.
I celebrated my 35th wedding anniversary last weekend, and a day or so before, I went to a local Hallmark store to buy a card. I didn’t expect much — my expectations were greatly exceeded!
There are two classes of anniversary card: to the couple from a friend or relative, and from one member of the couple to the other. I was seeking a card that one woman might send to her wife; I didn’t know if there was a lesbian section or not. Did they keep the lesbian cards behind the counter?
As it turned out, I didn’t need a lesbian section: among the cards with the tag WIFE on the rack was one with the heading, “To the Woman I love….” It was free of any gender-specific noun or pronoun. No “husband”, no “wife”, just “I still love being as close to you as possible”. It was perfect.
Thank you, Hallmark.
Posted in Being/staying married, AutoBiog | 1 Comment »
27 November 2010 by kathleen.
I have written Parts 1 through 4 already about things to do — and things not to do — if you want to stay married through and after transition and surgery. Here is another: don’t continue to exercise husband’s prerogatives.
Sex on demand is one of many husband’s prerogatives; others are the television channel, time and content of dinner, beverages. Of course, how you’ve worked out sex over the course of your marriage is personal. If you are still expecting, or even insisting on, sex when you want it despite what I said in Part 3 you need to do some reflecting. If you’ve been the sort of husband to call out, “Bring me another beer, will you!”, you really need to think about what you’re doing because that behavior will not fly when you’re a woman.
Then again, maybe it is appropriate: some of us under the transgender umbrella never desire to become women. Some of us are living through autogynephilia; that is, we may be sexually aroused by the thought or image of us as a woman. There is no judgment here. If that is where you are, it’s OK. Your wife, however, may feel discounted and diminished if your interest in things feminine goes no further than sex, because she may take it to mean that her sexual performance is unsatisfactory.
If you do not have any desire to actually live as a woman — if you only like to fantasize about it — then you need to reassure her frequently:
If you really are making plans to transition, then if you are to stay married your relationship can become a partnership of equals. For your own capacity to pass, you must also get into the soul of being a woman in the society in which you live. In the United States in 2010, that means sharing both privilege and responsibility with the person to whom you are still married.
Posted in Being/staying married, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »
5 November 2010 by kathleen.
At Fantasia Fair a few weeks ago, I attended several wonderful sessions with Dr. Sandra S. Cole, a retired sexologist from the University of Michigan, and founder of the Comprehensive Gender Services Program there. (I could not find “home page” sort of link for her — sorry.) For years, she has been moderating sessions for couples and for partners of the transgendered attendees of Fantasia Fair.
During one of the sessions she made the distinction between secret and private. When your transgender or your crossdressing is a secret, all kinds of negative behaviors can arise. I am remembering Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. They maintain a secret fantasy about a non-existent son, but when the secret is exposed at a party, the emotional pain is excruciating.
Another approach to your situation when you choose not to come out, is to regard your transgender as a private matter — not as a secret. All kinds of things are private between a husband and wife. Private things are not encumbered with emotional chaos or trauma as secret things are. If someone makes an innuendo or accuses you of femininity, you can hold your head up and say, “Some things are private. I’m not willing to talk about that right now.”
We can speak with dignity and self-respect when we refer to private things. Too often secret things are secret because we are ashamed of them. Feeling shameful, we hang our heads if someone’s comments are too close to the mark. Shame robs us of our power.
And so, when you must consider revealing your transgender to a spouse or other family member, see for yourself if treating the situation as a private one, not as a secret one, makes the duty less terrifying.
Posted in Being/staying married, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »
1 November 2010 by kathleen.
There is one blog above others in which a woman celebrates her continued marriage to a transwoman: TransMarried. I don’t often advertise for another blog (I’d rather promote my own!), but the site’s owner, Jonni, does nothing to hide her joy and enthusiasm for life with her partner, Angela. Helen Boyd’s blog, en|Gender, also discusses marriage from time to time, but Helen’s range of interests is enormous. Jonni’s blog focuses tightly on the marriage.
If you are the partner of a man on the verge of becoming a woman, you need to know that neither your marriage nor your life have to end with your partner’s transition. There can be life and happiness after surgery.
I wrote in the post We Didn’t Know that we weren’t necessarily hiding something from you all this time. More than that, the decision to transition is not the same sort of free choice that, say, choosing a wine is: “I’ll have the Riesling, not the Chardonnay” — that’s a free choice.
Born transgender, we have a choice of living constantly on the edge of depression (when we stifle our nature) or risking life as we have known it for a chance at happiness. Please come with us on our journey toward happiness!
Posted in Being/staying married, General MtF topics | 3 Comments »
30 October 2010 by kathleen.
When I posted a response to Elizabeth Marie’s comment I left out the hardest part: that the spouse becomes lesbian after the husband’s transition.
I discussed my comment with my partner a few minutes after I posted it. She immediately pounced on my omission: the social component of a two females living together. Physical intimacy is no more public between two women than it is between a man and a woman. But couples are together publicly: at a cookout or a picnic; at the company Christmas party; at the neighborhood Halloween party; at birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and funerals.
I have been a woman at work for nearly three years now. I see that I am not the same as my heterosexual coworkers. I am not taking care of children as the 20-somethings and 30-somethings are; I am not devoted to my grandchildren as the 40-somethings and 50-somethings are; I am not constantly dieting so my husband won’t run off with a younger woman. And I see that those women in the office who do not deny being lesbian, have very little social interaction with the apparently heterosexual women.
The social situation isn’t bad, but it is different for two women living together. A woman who is fundamentally heterosexual has built a life and created a circle of friends around the interests, needs, and desires of other women who like men. So, yes: if her husband becomes a woman, she will experience a monumental disruption of social relationships.
I put this post into the category “Sex and Gender Roles” because I can observe what Deborah Tannen described in her book You Just Don’t Understand — that women need and value their relationships with other women more than men value or need relationships with other men. Relationships are what women do. I am still learning that skill; transwomen have to learn that it is a skill.
I don’t have an answer for Elizabeth Marie’s spouse. My partner and I are still working out just how a woman and her transwoman spouse will function in society. The result is not necessarily ugly or painful, but at this point in our lives together (we married in mid 1976, I transitioned in late 2007) we are still discovering how we work together socially as two women.
When I was still a man, I had no important relationships with other men; I had very little to lose when I transitioned. My partner risked many relationships; she survived, but how well or poorly she did is not my story to tell. I will encourage her to write her own post on the topic or to comment on this one.
Posted in Being/staying married, Sex & Gender Roles | 1 Comment »
26 October 2010 by kathleen.
Here’s a common incident from the days when I was hiding, and only dressed at home:
I have washed, shaved, made up my face, pulled on my pantyhose, hip enhancers, bra and slip. I am getting ready to put on a pull-over blouse, or dress, and I want to make sure that the colors I’ve chosen will work. I need to decide on the colors before I put on my wig, because the wig is likely to be dislodged or at least rumpled if I pull the dress back over my head with the wig on my head.
My solution is to walk, blouse or dress in hand, half-way to complete, and ask my wife for an opinion.
Although she has been fully supportive — since before our first date! — she really hates seeing me half-and-half. In particular, my partially-bald head with makeup on my face really sets her off. Without my wig I look too much like the man she married, a man with whom she has many years of fond memories.
Here’s what I try to do to minimize my wife’s discomfort: always be one or be the other, male or female, but never half-and-half. I don’t know how well your wife copes with your gender changes, but I think you can minimize her discomfort by making a complete switch from male to female before she sees you.
Posted in Being/staying married, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »
4 October 2010 by kathleen.
Most everything I experienced at Southern Comfort 2010 was positive and affirming. There was one sour note. I was speaking with a transwoman one afternoon, and suggested to her that my partner (i.e., my wife) would have been disappointed at the lack of activities for spouses at the conference.
The transwoman said something like, “Well, there’s shopping.”
I cannot tell you how far that thought misses the mark.
In all fairness, this transwoman was not and had never been married. The attitude expressed, though, is not rare among MtF: a lack of appreciation for the earthquake of emotion that a woman is likely to experience when her husband of 10 years — 20 years — 30 years — says he wants to become a woman.
Suppose the situation were reversed: your wife comes home one day and tells you she wants to have an operation to be a male. What would you do? How would you feel? Is there any way you could go on living together with this person? Doing so would make you both look gay. How could you explain it to the kids?
Sure, being trans of one variety or other is natural for us; it is our nature. We’ve been living with that nature for as long as we have been alive. Our loved ones, however, have not been aware of it as long or as intensely. They have questions; they have fears; they have uncertainty.
Shopping is not enough to answer the questions; to calm the fears; to resolve the uncertainty. Women — especially the women who love us — are much deeper than that.
Posted in Being/staying married, General MtF topics | 1 Comment »