Good experiences coming out to wife?

[secondlook]

I'm still dreading the biggest conversation I need to have, telling my wife that her husband is going to become a woman. I'm also eager to have that conversation, because I'm big on honesty and also because it's a necessary step before I can make any real progress.

 

What I'm hoping some of you can help me with is this -- what does a good coming out experience to one's wife look like? To be clear, I'm not expecting her to jump for joy or be anything other than shocked and upset initially, and maybe for quite some time. But for those of you who can say it went more right than wrong, what does that look like? Did you feel like there were certain key moments that if you had handled poorly, it could've gone terribly wrong? Were there resources or links that helped her understand? Are there support groups for women whose husbands come out as transgender? Bottom line, are there respectful, gentle ways I can help her understand that this is a journey on which I want her to come along, and it's not me leaving her behind?

 

And of course this is a topic I will discuss with my therapist, hopefully as soon as this week. I just was thinking maybe someone would have some relatively positive stories to share.

[Jackie C.]

OK, firstly yes there are support groups for families of transgender people. In our community, it's about twenty minutes from here. Susan went once, did not care for the vibe and never went back. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

 

So as to the actual conversation. Have a plan B. What do you do if she takes it poorly? Spend some time thinking about that. I didn't and got lucky. There's no guarantee that you won't need someplace to crash afterwards. Now, I don't personally know anyone that's been immediately kicked out of the house (extreme example), plan for the worst, hope for the best, right?

 

My therapist told me that I should walk my wife into this. I was supposed to start with cross dressing and say it was a purely sexual thing, then work my way up to coming out as trans. I didn't do that. I sat down on the bed and said I had something important to tell her. That immediately put her on the defensive, so you might want to ease into it a little more than I did. Next I opened with a joke. Not a great joke, but I thought, "Let's walk back the tension." That was an awful idea. Don't do that. I came straight out after that and said, "Well, I'm trans."

 

That took her a minute to process. I let her have it. I sat beside her and waited. After a very long pause that felt like hours, she slowly nodded and decided that she was OK with it. In so many words she said, "I think I'm OK with this. I like boobs." Then we kissed. She had more questions afterwards. The first one was, "Have you been wearing my underwear?" Of course I wasn't. There was no possible way I'd even fit into her underwear. Besides, I'd bought my own.

 

Then came a couple of ground rules. At first, she wasn't ready to see me dressed until she had some more time to process things. I was fine with that and asked that she give me a warning call when she was on her way home so I could change. She had more questions, so we came up with a system where she'd write down what she thought of during the week and on the weekends I'd answer all her questions to the best of my ability. During this time I reassured her often that while I was finally moving ahead with my life, I very much wanted to take her with me. To some extent we're still doing that and I'm coming up on GCS in ten days. She'll be accompanying me to the doctor and changing my catheter bag until the doctor takes it out a week later.

 

The ground rules lasted about a month before she asked to see me how I wanted to be seen. She gave my (very fake) breasts a squeeze. I wasn't on HRT yet. Not that they're much to look at even with the hormones. I could really, really use a visit from the boob fairy. Then we hugged, kissed and that was the end of that. I could be Robyn full time. She still has questions sometimes and I always do my best to answer them, but it's not like we ever really finish turning into the person we're supposed to be until we lay down to die.

 

I hope you find some of that useful. I value honesty too and it was killing me not to let Susan know.

 

Hugs!

[KathyLauren]

I understand that my experience may not be typical, but it went about as well as one could imagine.

 

We were walking the dog, which is a good time for us to talk.  I said I had something I wanted to talk about and that it wasn't going to be easy.  Then I said I was pretty sure I was transgender.  She had some immediate questions like why thought so, why I hadn't told her before that, and what I planned to do.  I was  as honest as I could be in answering, and I caught the "trick questions" lurking in there, i.e. had I been hiding something from her, and was I going to leave her.  It went well, and within a minute or two, she said, "Whatever you decide to do, I will support you."  Wow!

 

What could have gone wrong?  I could have started seeing a therapist before talking to her.  She would have seen that as a betrayal.  She deserved to be the first to know.  I could have missed the trick questions, i.e. "What are you going to do?" means "Are you going to leave me?"  Fortunately, I anticipated them.

 

Once I got set up with a support group, I brought her along to their "+1" sessions where significant others are welcome.  That helped her a lot.

[ShawnaLeigh]

My wife was about as positive and accepting as I could of hoped for. After a short while as it took getting past the shock of it first.  Like Jackie said.  Definitely have a plan B just in case it goes terribly wrong.
I did not do this and was basically facing homelessness due to being almost completely dependent on my wife.  My fear and anxiety was threw the roof over that.  I was lucky she was understanding to what being trans meant.  

Having a good understanding of what’s going on with yourself helps too.  I told my wife when I was basically clueless to what was really going on with me.  i was scared and confused and I did not know I was what I ended up being.  My coming out followed s significant mental break over my internal struggles and I was just trying to reach out for help.  I had no answers for her questions and it was a very emotional and stressful thing for me to do. 
Therapy is key here.  Knowing you are going will help ease her fears for you.  Most will be glad to invite your wife in too to answer some things.  
There is also Transcouples therapy too if it’s needed.  
once my wifes initial shock had subsided she got very stoic and logical about it all.  Which helped because I was a blubbering mess for three days.  I truly was not prepared.  
be prepared ahead of time would of been so much better.  
Youalready sound to be getting yourself prepared and also getting resources lined up and this is excellent.  
Good Luck❤️

[Carolyn Marie]

I sat down with my wife and looked her in the eyes and told her my story.  I went chronologically from my earliest childhood memories, through my cross dressing years, what I felt when we got married, my thinking that it would "cure" me, up to the (then) present day, and what I planned to do.  I told her that I would understand if she wanted to leave me, but that I hoped she wouldn't.  I said that she could ask me any question, and that it was important that we continue to communicate with each other.  She agreed with me that we should not tell our son at that time.

 

She was shocked, scared for our future, angry, confused, and every other emotion you could imagine.  I won't bore you with the details of the next 8-12 months, but in the end she accepted it, continued to love me, and eventually told her family.  It was not easy for either of us, but she has come to see how happy I am now, and that our lives have not (for the most part) changed for the worse.

 

Give your wife lots of time, be honest, be empathetic and understanding, and be prepared for the possibility that it might be the end of your relationship.  Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.  That's about all you can do.  Good luck!

 

HUGS

 

Carolyn Marie

[Susan R]

4 hours ago, Carolyn Marie said:

She was shocked, scared for our future, angry, confused, and every other emotion you could imagine.  I won't bore you with the details of the next 8-12 months, but in the end she accepted it, continued to love me,

Carolyn Marie, I had no idea your coming out to your wife went very similarly to my experience with it.  I can only add that we canceled all appointments and obligations shortly after I dropped the bomb and talked nearly non-stop for 4 straight days.  It was a slow process to go from understanding to acceptance to eventually affirming my decision to become the woman I am.

 

Susan R?

[Krisvm]

Me and my wife are now in a good place about it but was tough when I first came out. It took a lot of time and therapy to work through.

 

The things I found, for me, was not as much the actual gender identity she had to get used to but that I had kept this secret from her for so long and what it meant for the relationship. It resulted in a loss of trust and we had to build it back up again.

 

It is now a positive experience and we are much happier than we were before.

[secondlook]

Wow, so many great stories, thank you all for that. I don't expect it to go perfectly but I needed some hope that there was at least a chance it could go more or less OK.

 

I think I want to start by sitting her down and talking about my generalized dysphoria, which she is aware that I have been experiencing since long before she knew me. I'll talk her through the many ways I have tried and failed to address it, which mainly amount to the careful construction of a false masculine persona over the course of the past 25 years, and how the more successful I was at building that persona, the more convincing it became to others but the more false and upsetting it felt to me.

 

I think up to this point she's going to be right there with me, it all tracks with conversations we've had over the years, though I've never connected the dots so directly before. And if I lay the groundwork carefully, she might make the ultimate connection without me having to say it. Then I'll tell her I want to start questioning this false masculine persona and see if I can connect with my true self. And maybe I leave it at that for a few weeks and take some baby steps that I think she'd find acceptable. If it some point she asks if I want to fully transition, maybe I respond with "How would you feel about that?" before I give an answer.

 

What's working in our favor is that she already has a lot of the information that has led me to my realization, though of course not all of it. Working against us is that she has a lot of wrong information that I was feeding myself, and indirectly to her (and everyone else) as well. It was never intended to be deceitful, it was an effort to be what I thought was the best possible version of myself. It amounted to self-deceit in the end, but I wasn't conscious of that when I was doing it. If I can help her understand that, and I do a good job being sympathetic to her point of view, I think we've got a real chance.

[ShawnaLeigh]

1 hour ago, secondlook said:

And if I lay the groundwork carefully, she might make the ultimate connection without me having to say it.

My wife picked up on this instantly when I was failing to come out the proper way.  Like after the second sentence she interrupted me with a "Are you trying to tell me you are trans?"  

They know more then we give them credit for.

Many people I have come out to had admitted to knowing "something" well before I had told them listing all the indicators of not being as male as I thought I was being.

I guess I was not as stealth as I thought I was.

[Jackie C.]

1 hour ago, ShawnaLeigh said:

I guess I was not as stealth as I thought I was.

 

Yeah, people that know you really, really well might have their suspicions. For example, when I came out to a group of friends they said, "Well, duh," and we went back to what we were doing. Complete non-event.

 

Hugs!