Hi everyone. I’ve been a lurker for a while, but haven’t had the courage to post before. Here is my story (I will be using the pronoun “He” since my husband still presents as male). Sorry this is long...

I feel like I have this huge secret inside and I have no one to talk to. 

I’ve been married to my husband for almost 3 years. When we first got married, he was what seemed to be the perfect “man.” Extremely handsome, athletic, romantic. He had a good paying job that, combined with my modest income, was more than enough for the two of us to live on. That being said, I always knew he wasn’t perfect. We were dating for almost 4 years before we got married and had several ups and downs during that time. He had a bit of a temper and some control issues that took hard work, dedication, and several months of therapy, for us to get through. In the end, we survived, become a stronger happier couple, and eventually got married. 

About 6 months into our marriage, we were cuddling in bed. I looked at his perfect eyes, and I told him I would love to put eyeshadow on him one day. At that time, I had no idea that I had just opened up Pandora’s box. Soon after that, he started researching makeup...like all the time. He started going shopping for shoes and clothing. And it almost became an obsession. The first time he dressed up and I did his make up, he was the happiest person I’d ever seen. He loved feeling sexy and I will admit it was kinda fun...like playing dress up. I wasn’t too worried at the time because I knew he had a very stressful job, and I thought dressing up was more of an escape for him to pretend he was someone else and not have to think about his problems for a night.

Things got worse when he got laid off. He was unemployed for about a year. During that time, he applied to hundred of jobs and was continuously rejected after about a dozen in-person interviews. This took a toll on his self esteem and put him in a deep depression. He started shopping even more for women’s clothes. He would even shop for things that he was never going to wear...like women’s swimsuits and gym clothes. He would pay for make up classes and spend hours chatting on an online community where he would get tips on transitioning, despite telling me he had no intention of actually transitioning. 

He then started taking supplements to decrease his testosterone. He said his main goal was to reduce male pattern baldness and lose some of his excess muscle. He said he was tired of having so much muscle because his joints were really starting to hurt with all the weight on him. So, he stopped lifting weights and started working on improving his flexibility. He then started laser hair removal on his face. He’s always hated body hair, and was already lasering his body with an at-home laser. But, now he wanted a smooth face, as well, and decided he wanted to get rid of his beard. At this point, he also gave up on his 10 year computer engineering career and decided he wanted to get into a profession where he could help people. He eventually did get a job, in entry-level healthcare, but it paid less than a quarter of what he was making before. He is also back in school taking classes so he can eventually get into a nursing program.

Sometime during this year, we went from wanting kids to not wanting them. The financial stress, depression, career change, and going back to school, made it seem impossible. Since I’m already in my late 30s, I figured the door to biological children was slowly closing and I wasn’t going to force having children if we weren’t ready. Since we talked about not having kids and possibly adopting in the future, he somehow decided that it was ok to start estrogen. He stopped his supplements and started estrogen. When I found out he was taking estrogen, I was furious. He says he talked to me about it, but somehow I must have just “not remembered” or wasn’t “listening completely.” During this talk that I don’t “remember,” he mentioned something about switching around some supplements and going from “organic” to “synthetic”...but come on! I didn’t realize organic to synthetic meant he was going to take actual HRT! I was furious at him, because I thought he tricked me and mad at myself for blowing off the conversation when he was trying to tell me. 

So now, at this point he has changed careers, is taking HRT, is losing weight, and has no body or facial hair. As of now, he is still presenting as male, his temper is significantly better, he is a happier person, his male pattern baldness is almost completely gone, he has a softer face that makes him look about 10 years younger, and best of all he still has his libido. In general, these all seem to be good things. But, for some reason, I still have a lot of resentment inside me. After two years of self reflection he has told me that he believes he is trans, but does not want to be a woman. He says maybe if he was a teenager or in his early twenties he would consider it, but at his age, he would never end up “passing” and doesn’t want to live his life as a “man in women’s clothing,” especially, if it means losing me. So, now, he just wants to live his life in a more gender fluid way...non binary he calls it. At this point I still find him attractive. But I’m worried about him becoming more feminine or gender ambiguous. He is also growing out his hair long, which I’m not crazy about. He is starting to develop some breast tissue (like a B cup) which is very disturbing to me. He needs to wear a sports bra under his clothes now. Seeing my husband walk around the house in his sports bra, really bothers me. He says if they get worse, and I’m really unhappy with them, then he will get them surgically removed, but it makes him sad because he really likes them and doesn’t want to “mutilate” his body. Yet, he still fantasizes about how it would be like to have a vagina and complains that his doesn’t like his penis because it “just gets in the way.” I feel like he says one thing (by stating he doesn’t want to transition) but his actions say another thing.

Not knowing what he will end up looking like or how far his transition will actually go is stressing me out. I married a man....I want to be with a man! I don’t want something in between! Oh....and apparently, this makes me transphobic! He tells me that he loves not just me, but also my soul. He says he would love me regardless of what body I’m in (male, female, skinny, fat, etc) and somehow makes me feel like I don’t love him as much since I don’t feel the same way. He says looks don’t matter, they eventually fade, and that in 50 years we will all be wrinkly and old anyways. I tell him, well if looks don’t matter, then why does it matter if he is in a male or female body, and why can’t he love himself regardless of the body his in. He says, dysphoria is not something he can change. 

All this stresses me out so much. I cry about this almost everyday. One day I feel like I want to get give up and leave the marriage and the next day I want to keep fighting because I love him so much. I have no one else to go to with these thoughts and problems. I would never dare tell my friends and family. I feel like I’m all alone to deal with this.