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