My Wife Was A Victim Too

by Kim

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We all often forget the price our loved ones pay too. It is a real price for them just as ours is for us.

We have all talked about the initial reactions when we come clean about our gender issues, but there is much more to it than that.

My partner has been through hell with all this, and so have I. We each have our own hells associated with trans issues.

For me, it is all the things I have missed in my life and can never really have, but living true to myself is a huge improvement on where I was. There is so very much that has been missed and can never be replaced. It is a kind of bereavement too. And the Catch 22 is that in order to have some of the things I could/should have, I must lose many of the things I value and cherish.

And so it is for my partner. She is still with me and she tries so hard to do her best and to understand, but she has her own problems. She married the whole package. Both the inside and the out as she recognised them. She formulated dreams of her own that were not for her so much as for us. We had children. She was looking forward to times getting better and more secure financially and to a future with a "traditional" (maybe conventional might be a better word) family structure that she never had as a child. She wanted so much for her children from Mummy and Daddy. She was devoted to her husband and expected him to always be there.

She expected to feel his touch, his warmth, have sex with him, times spent together as husband and wife. Holidays, his strength and support and hers given back in return. A million intangible things. Going dancing proudly with her man, shopping, the odd jobs that always need doing that he always did. I can't even begin to list them all, although I have been made aware of them through long discussions.

The thing is, her dreams, her expectations, her desires are in tatters. She can no longer look forward to growing old and enjoying grandchildren together in the same way. It's not the same. She doesn't see me as a man anymore, but I'm not sure she sees me as a woman either. She doesn't want a woman - she never wanted one. She always wanted a man, masculine, strong, supportive - all the things most women want and crave. Now, ten years on she is back where she started but in a worse position than before. She still wants and craves all the very things I can not give her. She still has those tattered dreams that hurt her when she doesn't blank them out. She misses that masculine touch. That tenderness that is mixed with an underlying strength.

But now she is faced with the task of finding someone else if she ever wants to have those things again. It's not fair on her. She never wanted or expected any of this. It's not even her problem at the root of it, but she is most certainly a casualty of it.

She is forced to re-model her dreams, even question her own femininity and sexuality. It is unsettling just when everything was starting to go her way in life. Life has cheated her just as surely as it has cheated me. I often feel that I am responsible for her unhappiness. I feel guilty all the time that I can't give her all her heart desires, but then so does she. She feels guilty that she can't give me everything that my heart desires too.

It takes a very strong person to be able to cope with the burdens that are placed upon them by transition and gender problems. It's not just the transperson, but their partners and loved ones too that have to transition. There may yet be benefits for my partner, but so far she has had the shit end of the wedge as do all partners at this stage.

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.