Awesome Weekend

Last weekend was fantastic... scratch that make it double fantastic.

As a tradition, my family generally celebrates multiple birthdays at one time (so we avoid having more than one party a month). This last weekend we celebrated my father's 66th birthday, my sister in-law, and both my little sister's kids, the nephew and niece.

Jello has been stressed about this party. He hasn't seen most of my family since he came a few months ago. To make it worse my family are a pack of feral dogs. I grew up with bikers and you could never tell if things would go smoothly, someone would freak out and throw the table over, if cops will be called, and as a child we generally had a tradition of my dad getting drunk and tossing the Christmas tree out the window (ex Vietnam vet, biker, and always in trouble with the law always resulted in a very memorable childhood). However, no matter how "eccentric" my upbringing, our family is incredibly close.

Now, my family has been sober since Christmas, things have been going great and I had a lot of hopes. Jello, understandably, did not. His family is pretty horrific, they would never have accepted him (fortunately he had split off from his family years ago). We arrived at the house, provided the cake and got to hanging out with my family.

The first few minutes Jello was tense, but within twenty minutes my family were going out of their way to use the pronoun he. They would forget occasionally but they have known him as my wife and their daughter in-law for 22 years, I am surprised and pleased with how hard they were trying. So was he.

My brother joked with him about shaving, and treated Jello just like he treated me. None of the kids reacted badly or strangely to having the adults refer to Jello as my husband. My dad and mom joked with him, and treated him just like they treated him before. There was absolutely no freeze, no hesitation and they repeatedly told Jello they loved him.

The biggest way we could tell he was accepted was they were just as brusque and joking as they are to everyone else. You know you are loved in my family if they are picking on you. When we got out of the apartment after a fun birthday party I noticed Jello was crying and I couldn't figure out why. My first thought was I had done something wrong.

Jello then made it clear to me they were happy tears. He had not expected to be accepted so easily. He knew my family would accept over time (they sometimes react in a weird gut level, but always turn it around and accept people for almost anything). Even I had thought it was possible that they may have to warm up to the idea. After talking for a while Jello made it clear that he was just caught off guard that they didn't even blink when he came out. They accepted him, loved him and would do anything for him.

It was a great birthday party, and that made the weekend great.

Christmas Eve 2013

I am a little late in posting, but I wanted to say my first family gathering with Jello and his in-laws went extraordinarily well.

I don't want to sound horrible by saying I was worried, but I was. My parents and siblings have all been supportive, but I haven't seen my siblings since Jello came out (especially my sister) face to face.

They were incredibly good to Jello. My family isn't what you would call respectful to anything, our jokes are always inappropriate, and balances just on the edge of unacceptable.

Not much detail to go into honestly, they asked a few questions and were quite clear the whole time that they still loved Jello. They apologized that it would take time to change the pronouns, but even I still make mistakes when I am not thinking.
It was a good Christmas Eve (sorry that's all I have this morning).

Silent Partner

First, before I get into my post, I want to make clear that my husband Jello is supportive of me. He sometimes is overwhelmed with his own situation of school, health and transition and that I understand. Sometimes he is distracted by his own fight and this post has nothing to do with that or him. He is not who I am talking about in this post.

There is something I have noticed since my husband came out. That the spouses of transitioning people seem to be in a weird area that leaves them the silent partner. I have done a lot of research online and in the real world and support groups for the non-transitioning spouse are either sporadic or non-existent. I see very little writings about/for them (hence one of the reasons for this blog) and when I do find things, most of them are long out of date and from the point of a wife being supportive of her transitioning partner. Very little of their writings deals with the support they get for themselves, it almost seems like they don't actually get much support for them.

I found this translates into my personal life as well. My husband has an incredibly supportive group of people. Our friends and my family both are incredibly accepting of his transition. All of them continually inquire if they can help him, or if there is something he needs. This makes me incredibly happy for him. He is undergoing a tremendous amount of stress and nothing but positive coming back, even from schoolmates that we didn't expect it from.

Here is where I feel like an asshole. Once Jello came out, there were a ton of questions to me, how was he feeling, did he need anything, etc. Of course I replied appropriately to whatever question was asked, ensuring they knew what he needed or wanted. However, I felt like I was in a weird shadow. As if I only existed as an extension of him. One friend did ask if I was going to stay with him, of course I answered yes. Once I said yes, then the questions went back about Jello. I am happy they assume my love is so strong for Jello, that I had absolutely no problem with the transition, but I found I felt hurt.

I couldn't figure out why I was hurt until my family asked me how I was doing, and what did I think about the transition. They wanted to make sure if they could do anything for me to make it easier during the transition. They seemed to understand it was going to take a lot on my part to change. While Jello is going through the physical/emotional/societal changes of becoming a man, I was going to have to undergo the changes in my 21 year marriage and on my own sexuality as well.

To my family, I had been fully heterosexual when I married my "wife" and now 21 years into my marriage I was going to be married to a guy (my dad mentioned he was glad Gay Marriage was approved in my state last year). Of course my parents don't know that I am more genderqueer then that. Jello says I am "just gay enough". Although I could fall in love with a guy, I am more orientated as a bisexual towards women.

My parents are right, I am struggling a lot with the loss of my wife, the gaining of a husband, and the fact that I was now in a de-facto gay marriage with an even more unusual situation of being married to a transitioning husband. I already addressed the awkwardness of the future coming out to my coworkers. I was saddened that my family recognized that, but not my friends. I feel alone a lot. I know I could go to a friend and they would listen, but it was the fact that I wasn't taken into consideration that hurt.

I realize as a person I am generally closed off. I don't talk a lot about my feelings in general. In fact, I haven't even cried since I was 16, (I am now 42). I usually shove my feelings into a deep dark hole inside me. That is what makes this blog sometimes hard to write in. I feel like I am a bad person for feeling hurt or frustrated and I don't want to seem like I am taking any of Jello's support, because he needs all he could get.

My feelings are battling each other right now. Part of me is sad and a bit disappointed with the situation above, and the other part of me is disgusted with myself for being sad by it. The disgusted part of me feels like I am betraying Jello or trying to take away from the focus on him and that I should shut up. Honestly, maybe I am being a whiny baby about it.

Part of me wants to delete this blog post. I am embarrassed that I even feel this way by something so little. I am a little worried that by putting out there my frustrations like this, I will seem like the asshole jealous husband. The few blogs I have seen out there are almost 100% support blogs for the transitioning partner with no posts about their own frustration. It makes me worried that I am messed up in the head and being unreasonable.

Unexpected Support

First, I want to just say that my parents (Jello's in-laws) have been supportive of his decision to transition. However, no matter how supportive they have been, I hadn't expected this call.

About three nights ago I got a call from my father who was a bit tipsy. Whenever he is in that condition I am very aware of everything he says. Having grown up around him and a dozen bikers I knew that some of the most horrendous things could be said without thought (with much apologies the next morning).

He first confirmed with me that I might get a job that would require me to travel for training. It would require me to travel during the week down to the capitol and stay in a hotel for two months of training. Jello and I have already worked through this and accepted it might be needed.

I confirmed this to my father, and to my surprise I got a lecture from him. He lectured me that Jello would need me, and I better make sure if the job gets in the way that I quit that job and be there for my husband. He then reiterated it several times, and then wished me a good night. He politely hung up, leaving me stunned.

I sat there stunned for a few seconds, Jello asked me if anything was wrong and I told him what happened. I swear his jaw dropped like a cartoon character's jaw would. We both recovered quickly and recounted how unexpected that was. We both knew my father loved Jello, but the quickness they accepted and his firm belief I need to be there for Jello was unexpected.

My family has a lot of problems, but evidently support for a transitioning spouse is not one of them.