My Perspective (I'm the the redheaded sarcastic wife) Part I

My wife (she's the trans woman - in a marriage of two women, reading our story can get confusing) was struggling with some issues after being evaluated for PTSD.  We discovered some things that were, well, odd, and some that seemed out of place.

She continued to experience things that caused us concern, and we knew some things weren't typical, about her experience. When things started to seem more heavily piled on, she called and left a message to a therapist that she had a card for.  Although we didn't know it, this person turned out to be the LGBT coordinator for the VA.  The therapist set up an appointment for us to sit down and talk with her.  I knew something was bothering my wife.  I know her very well.  I am usually able to tell her what is going on within themselves before she even realizes it.  We met with the therapist and started talking about how my wife felt like they were going crazy.  She talked about not feeling right in her own skin.  The more we talked and the more we learned about Gender Dysphoria and trans-gender stuff the more the pieces of the puzzle, so to speak, fell into place.

We realized that my husband wasn't really my husband but my partner/wife.  At that time my wife felt she might be Non-Binary Transgender.  I was skeptical of this because of the way she would react with certain things.  I felt she was not non-binary, but rather female. She was much more girly than she realized. Her face would light up if she saw a piece of clothing that was pink. She was, and is, drawn big time to anything pink.  It was fun teasing her about this. She exhibited a lot of feminine characteristics, and the only remotely masculine thing I saw was her body, and even then, she was pretty feminine. Her gestures were feminine, and the way she talked and the things she was interested in were not typical for a man.

One thing I noticed right away was that as we talked more and more, over the next few months, and she began to understand things about herself that she hadn't before, she was so much more relaxed than ever before.  I was glad to see this.

We moved forward, making sure that we met regularly with our therapist.  It was important to both of us that our marriage, which has always been good, remained strong.  It made sense to us that if we were moving forward together, then the transition, whatever that ended up looking like, would be much more smooth.

At this time we felt we should tell our daughters what was going on with "Dad".  Thus my wife wrote letters to the girls telling them about the real person she was.  There were a lot of tears.  If you have read the post about telling your children, you know that it wasn't easy for her to do this.  One thing that really stood out though was that after they knew, the girls said they loved their Optimus Beyonce Dad and that she was more millennial than they were.  It was pretty funny, that the girls came up with that name.

One big concern that the girls had was how is Mom handling this.  Am I okay? Are we, my wife and I, okay within our relationship?  The girls were very concerned that we might be going to divorce because when you read stories online, that is the typical result.  I made sure to reassure them that I was okay with this and that I was on this journey with their Dad.

To be Continued

Compliment at Church

2017

As I grew more confident in how I was expressing my gender identity, I began dressing in a much more androgynous fashion at church. Now, this was a huge step for me, because the church we attended at the time was very conservative. I had not, to this point, dressed in anything remotely approaching "non-dude".

One Sunday, I was wearing an outfit that I felt good in. First, we had been allowing my hair to grow out. This was very unusual for me because I was still in the Army Reserve. But recently, haircut regulations had eased considerably, so there was some leeway. Though I had known that for a while, I hadn’t considered growing my hair out. But by this point in my life, my wife and I had decided to let it grow. At this point, my hair was so much longer than people I had been going to church with for years didn’t recognize me at first.

So, my hair was much longer, though still relatively masculine in appearance. My eyebrows were waxed as well. I had on a pair of tight khaki pants that had straight legs, with no pleats or cuffs. I had on a purple and white checkered shirt with very small squares, and a pair of brown women’s boots that looked fairly androgynous. Overall, I was dressed as femininely as possible, while remaining clothed just masculine enough to get by. I felt both nervous and at the same time, happy because I felt much better in these clothes! There is enormous freedom in putting on clothing that makes you feel more like “you”.

As I walked through the church building, I turned a corner, and there was a very conservative woman who I had known for a few years. She is a nice person, but also, not someone who would likely accept me for who I am. She looked up as I approached, looked me over from head to toe, saw the clothes without it registering who I was (I think), and said “Hi! You look really cute today!”

I was completely surprised. I could tell from her expression and the way she continued conversing with the person she had been talking with, that she didn’t even realize what she had said. The other person in that conversation, a wonderful friend of mine who knows the truth about me, just started chuckling and gave me a hug.

It really shouldn’t matter. I know it shouldn’t. But wow, did it feel good, hearing those words spoken to me by a woman, at the sight of me in the same way she might have told any woman. 

He, They, She

2018

As we progressed through the transition, many things have changed, and to us, changed for the better. But along the way, there have been hiccups, speed bumps, and odd moments.

Recently, I noticed something that I thought was pretty funny. My wife, a super strong supporter of me, was all over the place in how she referred to me in conversation. I would say that the funniest thing was when I heard her refer to me as "he", "they", and "she", all in the same sentence.

She is trying really hard, and to be honest, changing from three decades of calling me "he", to calling me "she", is not an easy thing to do at all. She is sincere and means well, and she knows what reality is, but sometimes, habit takes over for a moment. who knows? She might well be messing it up off and on for years to come. You know what? That's okay!

Caitlyn Jenner

2015

Caitlyn Jenner Horrified Me

Caitlyn Jenner horrified me. But not for the same reasons she horrified most people. In 2015, Caitlyn Jenner burst upon the world. She was previously known as Bruce Jenner, an athlete known in pretty much every home in America, and many across the world. Jenner’s coming out as a trans woman shocked people from coast to coast, and caused some others to stand and applaud. As in any other dramatic change, some people were thrilled, some people were offended, and most others had no idea how to react.

I had a strong reaction. I was horrified. Not because of some sort of religious objection, though that appeared quickly, and just as quickly was discounted, because the honest reaction was something much more visceral. Fear. Horror. Abjectly uncomfortable distress. While I knew this sort of thing had been done in other people’s lives, I had managed to ignore it. But now, for the first time, I was honestly confronted with the unavoidable reality that a man had become a woman.

Parts Is Parts

Caitlyn was born as a man. Caitlyn had “man parts”, looked like a man, had competed in sporting events as a man. Good grief, Jenner was one of the most athletic men in the world! If even that man could have this happen to him, what did that say about me, and my concerns? Caitlyn Jenner represented everything that scared me about gender!

I was vocally against Jenner. We had conversations about her at church, and at home, and I firmly denounced what she was experiencing. People shared jokes on Facebook making fun of her, and I laughed. I insisted on calling Jenner “he”. Doing so made a lie out of what she was saying, and doing. I desperately needed Caitlyn Jenner to be a lie. I honestly didn't even grasp how very badly I needed it to be a lie.

It Wasn't True. Was It?

It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be real. Jenner was certainly making the whole thing up. So, that made it safer. If she wasn’t real, then all the stuff I had been feeling and thinking and experiencing wasn’t real either. If Jenner was pretending, lying, still a man, then I was still a man. Right? I WAS a man, darn it! Thus, she was clearly lying.

Once you make up your mind about something, it is much easier to deal with it. So, Caitlyn became a non-entity to me. Why? Because Jenner was lying. The problem is, as discussed elsewhere, pushing away your problems doesn’t really get rid of them. It didn’t change anything about the reality of my life, and me as a person. It was a band-aid, something that made me feel better for a time. I was able to convince myself, primarily from the strong negative reactions of people around me, that Caitlyn Jenner was a fraud. But in reality, nothing  had changed. It just got swept under the rug, for a time. It was hidden, even from myself.

But now the clock was ticking. There would come a time I would realize that she was telling the truth.

The Rhythmettes

5th Grade, 1979

My elementary school had a gym teacher that was a bit of an unusual person. No one really knew how to take him, but everyone seemed to like him. His name was Mr. Legg, which I admit, was a name that made me smile every time I heard it. He was the sort of teacher that students opened up to.

Mr. Legg created a program at the school called The Rhythmettes. It was a girls dance team and was only open to 5th-grade girls. Being on that dance team was the ultimate status symbol in the school, for the girls. They had cool looking uniforms that resembled cheerleader uniforms of royal purple and white. They were the popular girls. These girls were in the position in elementary school that varsity cheerleaders are in high school. The Rhythmettes performed at school functions.

When I became a 5^th grader, there was a boy who joined The Rhythmettes. I can’t recall his name, but he was short for a 5^th grader. There had never been a boy on The Rythmettes before, but Mr. Legg allowed it and got him a uniform of purple shirt, and bell bottom white pants, and white shoes. The boys made fun of him, and so did many of the girls. He was actually a pretty good dancer, though, for elementary school.

Toward the end of my 5th-grade year, we were out in the school yard doing a sports and activity day. We had a “picnic”, which was really just eating the school food outside. At one point, we were standing in a circle, around The Rhythmettes as they performed. The boy was out there with them, of course, and I remember there were two boys near me making fun of him. They were saying he looked like an idiot, and they were really being cruel, and suddenly I was horrified to hear myself say “I don’t know, he looks pretty happy. Sure, he’s dressed like a girl, but it might be fun.”

The boys weren’t sure they had heard me right. There was a shocked silence. “What did you just say?!?” they asked. I mumbled something, and turned away, and walked to another part of the circle, glad they hadn’t heard me well enough to be sure. But that boy looked like the happiest person in school.