One Anxiety

I woke up this morning with a lot of anxiety for my husband. I suspect it is due to a lot of things, including dreams last night. So this morning I have been working out in my head my first anxiety.

I have noted some of my anxieties have increased since my husband decided to transition. Like I have said earlier, I am a big guy, and I have always been protective over him. When we got married, he was a small girl, who had been assaulted in the past and because he was both a loud dresser (punk clothes in 80s, and almost always some variant of alternative after that) he got a lot of flack. This doesn't even count the sexual assaults.

So when we married in 1992 I was always concerned when he would walk home alone, or pretty much walk anywhere if it was dark or in a rough neighborhood. Don't get me wrong, I am sure he can take care of himself, but he is so much smaller than I am and he hasn't really been in a lot of fights, so I am still overly protective.

Now that he is transitioning I have found my anxiety for his safety is even higher. Not only does he deal with the fact that he dresses alternatively, has a loud personality and is fairly small. Now he has to deal with being identified as gay (since before he was considered a heterosexual female by outside viewers) and what makes me even more nervous, if he gets called out for transitioning. Transitioning seems to freak a lot of people out when they realize it's happening. I understand its unusual and therefore remarkable, but couple that with him being identified as gay does worry me.

Take for example day to day problems such as when he has to start choosing which bathroom to use depending on the situation. Is the situation one where he has to worry about another male in the boys bathroom might freak, or should he use the woman's bathroom until he can fully pass? These situations vary per place he goes to and I worry about one of those fluke situations going wrong.

I know he is worried about me as well, and now that we walk down the street showing any public affection I will be called out for being gay (which I don't mind). However, unlike him I am not small and I am fully looking forward to the first stupid person to get in my face. This is the advantage of being a very large and masculine body, not many people at all have an intimidation factor for me. However, Jello is different, he is small and I am worried easily broken.

The crux of the matter is I am anxious for him. I haven't figured out the best way to deal with that worry, so this post is mostly a ramble by me about the anxiety itself, not really any solid approaches to handle it. I am sure there will be many more posts about this fear. Just thought I would share this morning.

Even though it has been awhile (a few weeks) since my husband came out to me that he wanted to transition from being my wife to being my husband. I wanted to give a little feedback about that from my perspective on that situation.

First, let me say it wasn’t a huge surprise that Jello wanted to transition. Jello has always been an overly masculine tomboy per our cultural norms. Jello has always been the one to work on cars, to talk loud, to take sex as a one night stand situation (Jello has always held the iconic male view on sex). I also know that Jello has been crushed in the past because Jello was treated differently then the other guys because he had boobs.

Also, we are tabletop/videogame/LARP role-players. I have ran games for Jello for over twenty years and over that time there have been dozens of characters he has played that rode the gender line or completely jumped across it. Our fantasy life sexually has been the same, we have reversed genders in role-play (it sounds weird, but it can be a lot of fun).

Jello has always talked with me about his worries. He started slow; by saying he wasn’t sure if being a woman felt right. Funny thing is, I already knew that. Twenty years of marriage to your best friend leaves both sides understanding the other far better then the other thinks. I told him I loved him no matter what.

He then came to me one Sunday night, after I had ran a role-playing game session for him and said he wanted to transition. It wasn’t a surprise, and I have always believed a person’s body is their own property. When he decided to get a tubaligation early into our marriage I originally ok’ed it from my side purely because it was “her” body and her right (since then I have determined I am happy without kids myself so it was win-win situation).

Jello expressed to me that he was worried that once he started taking testosterone, that I wouldn’t love him anymore. Up until this point, while I have played with both boys and girls I have ever only sought out relationships with girls. That did give me a little bit of a pause. Not a “will I leave Jello” pause, but rather a “how would I handle sex with him” pause. It took about 10 seconds to determine that this could be a completely new and fun exploration.

I do want to say that I totally realize its one thing to say it is ok, and another after he has been taking testosterone for a year and looks like a boy, not like a well-endowed woman. I have no doubts though; I will just take it day by day. I think the key here is to keep communicating with each other.

Jello was so surprised that I hadn’t even really hesitated and that I already knew. I mean there was a surprise that he had actually, finally said he wanted to transition, but I knew it had been coming for a long time. The only sadness I had about him saying it is I wished he had said it ten or twenty years ago. It bothers me he has lived in a body he doesn’t want for so long.

Jello stated up front that he would not go through transition if it meant I would leave him. I stated clearly back that if someone tells someone else to not be whom he or she feels they are, then they should leave. I would fully expect (and hope) that Jello would leave me if I refused to accept him. People deserve better, and keeping yourself unhappy just for your spouse or family is such a bad thing that I would counsel anyone to leave.

I want to address the fact that your mileage may vary. Our situation is very unique, and I realize a lot of spouses out there will be hit out of the blue by this revelation. Each case is unique and I don’t think I can do anything but empathize with someone who didn’t see it coming.

Beginnings

I have been pondering how to start this blog for a while now. I figure I need to get it going so maybe since it is my musings about my spouse transitioning from female to male that maybe I will introduce myself and my marriage in a short (hopefully) post.

I am a cis-gendered, white male in my early 40s. I grew up in a very low socio-economic house (as in lived in a car with a family of five and two dogs for over a year of high school). I grew up around an MC (motorcycle club) and on a normal night saw drinking, violence, drug sales, etc.

While that sounds extreme (and it was), I did grow up in a household that loved me. They were not capable of providing me with stable living, but the love was there. I know that if I had come out as gay as a teenager, it might have taken awhile but my family would have accepted me.

At the age of 21 I married my best friend (I will refer to his online name, Theocratic Jello) and began a life of what was assumed would be the normal bliss, as a man and a woman (I was the only man at the time).  However, shortly after being married we tried the poly lifestyle (and still do on occasion) and we decided we would not have children.  

We have been married now for over 21 years (and even though we are in an open relationship I haven’t been with someone else for over ten years by choice). He is a complete atheist while I am a mix of Buddhist/deist with a tiny sliver of paganish Catholicism.

I am personally bisexual, but in the past I have leaned more towards women. With my wife transitioning to male I continue love him with all my heart, his junk is irrelevant to me (well it’s a fun-time play toy no matter what, otherwise, whatever makes him happy makes me happy).

An important side note is that I also have my own gender identity issues. I am a very large male (6’4” and about 275-280lbs) and would be classified as nothing but masculine. However, if I could snap my fingers and become a small woman (5’2” or so) I would do it in a second.

I am not fully comfortable with my body and I know that I would be very happy as a woman (even if I kept my current sexual organs). However, since I am so masculine I know I would never pass to my satisfaction. It is not that I don’t think others should try, I absolutely think a person should be who they feel they are. I unfortunately will not ever be able to reach a place as a male to female transition to make me happy, so instead of beating my head against a wall, I am trying other avenues while I join my husband on his journey.

So here I am, and this is my journey as a spouse of a female to male transitioning person. The idea of this blog is to give my feedback and to write about my own trials and tribulations on this. Unfortunately when I was first looking around I didn’t find much about the spouse of the transitioning person, and I thought maybe recording my ups and downs, frustrations and happy moments, that I could help someone in the future.

Oh, and evidently I lied, this post isn’t short at all J