My gender story (con't)
Unlike my my last entry that covered a fairly long period of time in my life (around 10 years), this section here is more around an intense short time period where my gender perspective changed or was corrected depending on how you look at it. During the busy time after my marriage where I settled into some stability, and then through the first several years of my daughter's life, I was able to compartmentalize my gender confusion and ignore for most of the time without issues. That putting away of thoughts didn't seem to last and eventually the noise of this started preoccupying my thoughts to the point of exploring them. A new world online had opened up and this seemed to feed my desire which seemed to build rather quickly. I became more emboldened in my actions based on these feelings and started to become obsessed with a world that I did not understand. I needed help and reached out with what I thought was the correct thing to do. In hindsight, I was setting myself up for a huge disaster.
In was early 2013 by this time and I had started seeing a gender therapist to try just to understand why I was doing the things I was. She did a good job explaining what transgender meant and turning me on to a very good book that I thought described me in the gender dysphoria section fairly accurately. I started making it an outing to go to see her dressed as Jaclyn, taking more and more care in my outfit and makeup. As I was working harder on this process, it was getting more difficult to hide and sneak everything back and forth, find some isolated parking garage to change and apply makeup and then reverse everything and sneak back into the house. My mental state was getting worse and worse and I felt that soon my wife would catch on or something would implode.
I decided then that I needed to come clean and try and confess to my wife despite the worry of her throwing me out of the house. Her and my eight-year old daughter were everything in the world to me, and imagining life without them was impossible. But I also felt like it was going to be impossible to keep going at the pace I was without being caught or completely losing my shit. So I started talking with my therapist on a path to come out to my wife.
I remember working through this coming out story and my therapist's advice that I wasn't ready. I probably should have waited but I also felt so stressed out at the time and needed to get things out so I was torn. I worked and wrote and rewrote out the words several times to try and organize my thoughts.
I reflect now and wonder what possible desired outcome for these actions I was hoping for. I think I had read so many stories where these sort of proclamations was showered with support and love and believed in the fairy tale ending. I dunno, but got stuck on doing this.
When the week arrived prior to when I was going to come out, I sat my wife down and tried to ask her to come with me to see my therapist. From there, my plan went completely sideways and not towards a positive outcome. The news of going to see a therapist in a few days to talk about something I didn't want to go into at the moment started a major panic attack on her part.
I didn't think of her perspective (or enough of it at least) and looking back I can see why she got hysterical. However, at the moment her panic and hysteria feed into my anxiety and fears and this combination was like dumping more gasoline onto a bonfire. We were both not in a very good state when I tried to sit her down and read to her my letter and come clean to her about my gender confusion.
I have repressed most of her reaction because it was too painful to me, but suffice it to state that it involved her crying alot, screaming at me about being some sexual deviant and pedophile, and clearly telling me that she could not be married to a non-heterosexual male in all aspects.
How do you communicate to the love of your life that all you want to be is with her when she only wants to be with you if your physical appearance and actions are what you hate. In my case, you don't but only accept that my love for my wife and family was more important than anything else. I told her this and it was still a very painful retraction from my original words.
We did keep the appointment with the therapist a few days later, which was another painful rehashing of what I thought was my truth. Afterwards, we sat outside of her office and my wife convinced me of all the ways the therapist was putting these thoughts in my head and how unqualified and dangerous she was. My wife probably sounds demonic in this retelling, but honestly I agreed with her and I am still unsure to this day what my truth really is.
The next few months were very difficult times in our household, I tried to go back from what I said and my wife needed constant reassurance just for us to stay together. I purged most of my clothes and makeup, keeping my wig and a few sentimental items that were too hard to get rid of. I tried a new therapist (a man therapist picked out to help me develop my sense of being a man), but that didn't last long as I found him phony and couldn't find agreement with him.
Looking back now, I second guess alot of things but also don't know if it the similar mindset how I would have done things differently. I know that this experience validated most of my feelings of shame and guilt still today and I still relive it from time to time. My wife has apologized for her reactions being over the top and hurtful, and I am still working on accepting this apology and also apologizing to her for the pain I caused her as well.
During our reconciliation period later while not knowing anything of the reason for our stress my father-in-law gave me the advice that somethings we should just keep to ourselves. In the wake of the disaster that was in mind supposed to release and not cause stress, I am really not sure how to take this advice.
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