[bryony]

I have very mixed feelings about the article. On the one hand I think the author has very good reason to feel deceived and betrayed. On the other hand she strikes me as being very insecure with her own femininity.

Hmm... I don't really see those as being alternative "hands"... they are different issues.. .. and we aren't in a position to consider whether her insecurity was extant or caused by her situation.

I feel grateful that I warned my wife about what I thought was a transvestism fetish before we got married... at least that is some kind of warning - but this poor woman got a bolt from the blue.

"I was shocked. I never knew he’d questioned his gender."

That's got to rock anyone's confidence.

I get the impression she fears that she's going to be replaced by her transgender husband as the 'woman' in the relationship. In her situation I think she has two choices: leave her husband if this is too overwhelming for her, or come to accept the situation and make the best of it.

Either of which destroys her life as she know it. Seems a bit harsh. I see men like her husband as analogous to any other typical male facing a mid-life crisis:
In "normal" males, they go out and have affairs with other women who thrill them in a way that their wives no longer are able to. In this instance this man is selfishly pursuing his own desires and disregarding his wife's pain and suffering.

You see, I think that society is so used to couples splitting up and divorcing over relatively trivial issues, especially the "celebrity" crowd, that they don't care a jot over something as serious as this.

To this woman, her husband has died.... yet he is walking around as someone else entirely.

I find it absolutely astounding that these people who proclaim to the world that they are women are unable to feel any empathy for the women who have been with them for decades seeing their worlds fall apart.

The thing is that late-stage transitioners are almost always totally uninterested in men. They are so consumed with self-loathing of their own maleness that they cannot understand that that is the very thing that attracted their wives to them in the first place! Far from being the "real women" that they say they are, not being sexually attracted to men totally removes them from their wives in every respect: they may be able to share fashion tips but could they have a sensible discussion of why, for example, picking names at random, Hugh Jackman is more or less attractive than Johnny Depp?

Here's the kicker... a thought experiment that I always like to employ when I want to see things from a woman's perspective: Suppose a heterosexual man with no interest in women had a truly beautiful wife, whom he loved to distraction.

One day she discloses over breakfast that she always wished she had been born a boy, and that she had been prescribed testosterone. However she still loved him, and hoped that her voice breaking, beard growth, male pattern baldness (her father was bald) and phalloplasty wouldn't put an end to their relationship, and that she was looking forward to him fellating her later and allowing her to take him from behind, as she had always fantasized.

Think that one through for a while, and maybe you will see it from her perspective.

I can't help but wonder if she might find a little solace by making a decision rather than languishing between what to do or what not to do. Maybe I'm wrong, but I sense it's almost as if she wishes her husband would give up transitioning and go back to acting like the husband she knew for 21 years. Perhaps that is way she doesn't want to make the hard decision of choosing between those two difficult choices?

Of course she would want that! And if her husband had an ounce of empathy, he would see what he was doing to her and stop. It's not like he's under a compulsion. He just wants what he wants and that's all that he wants.

There is nothing to stop him getting estrogen to help the mental problems that cause him the most distress and continue to present as a male to avoid his wife's distress. This presupposes that he actually loves her, which I am convinced he does not - not as I understand love, anyway. I know for a fact it is possible. Before I took up PM, the compulsion to dress was irresistible, along with pornography and compulsive "self abuse". Now I have none of those problems.
The anxiety is gone, and the constant depression is now a dull ache for a desire that can never be satisfied... whatever I tried to do about it.

Bryony,

I'm not sure how women could hide such profound feelings in the long-term. Sooner or later, I suspect such feelings will come out either gradually or in one big explosion.

You'd be surprised what cis-females are willing to put up with to save a relationship. Think about the ones who do not report physical abuse, for a start. Sure, a good percentage are too scared to do anything about it, but others don't want to break up and are prepared to deal with the odd beating. It's even built into the muslim culture! Google Islam how to beat your wife sometime.

B.