Where do I start? I met my husband, we’ll call him Bill, who was a real gentleman and treated me very respectfully. He was completely without judgement. When I look back, he actually had no opinion on anything other than music.
We had been going out for about 6 months when he came round one evening with rather a large bottle of wine. I should have known something was happening that evening, but I wasn’t expecting to be handed a letter telling me that he was a cross dresser. It had taken him all that time to tell me he liked wearing women’s clothes and he had done from being a very young child. He needed to be drunk to tell me this and only told me because he could see a future with me.
Now personally I don’t see an issue with this. Clothes are clothes. For him clearly it was a huge thing to be disclosing. He must have been relieved that I didn’t see it as an issue for me.
Ultimately, we did get married and spent about 13 years together. We also had a child. He was an amazing Dad; I used to get quite jealous of their relationship. I didn’t have one with my dad. I could never fault him as a dad or as a husband. He was kind and considerate and worked hard.
All through those years I would go shopping with him to buy women’s clothes, go out to clubs. There was a secret society that we had to be vetted to enter so that this large group of men could get together and dress up and dance. I felt sad to see that they couldn’t do this with their wives and family. There were very few women in this group. They were men who liked to wear women’s clothes. I still don’t see an issue with this.
I used to speak to transwomen when out with my husband, most of them told me they had childhood trauma. I felt that some of them had really dark unresolved mummy issues or had been abused. On the whole they came across as nice people.
Sadly one of them committed suicide due to mental health issues and his realisation that he “shouldn’t have transitioned” because that “wasn’t the right answer” for him and “there is no going back”. I felt very sad to see someone going through that process of realisation and thinking their only way out is death.
It was odd that I didn’t fancy Bill when he was dressed in his women’s clothes, I did try. It felt fake. His personality changed too. He wasn’t quite so anxious in his alter ego; he was more confident, which was great for him and I appreciated this. It worried me though that he couldn’t be this confident all the time, and why couldn’t he wear any piece of clothing all the time and go about his day? It never stays that way though. He has an addictive personality so women’s clothes on their own wasn’t enough, he felt it stopped him from being his true self.
We had discussions about Transwomen and how that related to him. He went through therapy and made the choice to be my husband and not transition. We bumbled along for another year or so and eventually we broke up. He moved out and we kept in touch. He was my friend as well as my husband and my child’s father. We talked about reconciling, and then he had a health scare.
Once he recovered from that he went full on into transition. I told him that if he went down this road, that would be the end of our marriage as I had married a man. I was still supporting his choice. We were still friends and shared a child after all.
We agreed a strategy to tell our then 12-year-old child. He went off and told them on his own after having a Daddy Day (Sunday) with them. They came home devastated. They thought they were going to lose their daddy. My friendship with their Father ended that night.
I have been forced into the same room together for our child’s birthday etc, no other contact though. I remained civil and will continue to do so, that is my nature. I hate him for what his choice did to our child.
I have spent the last nine years supporting my child into adulthood helping them* slowly coming to terms with what their Dad is going through and helping them to understand. At the same time trying to keep their confidence up so that they never feel that his choice is anything to do with them or anything they have done, this is completely their Dads’ choice on his own, independent of them. This was exhausting. He has chosen his road without considering our child and the impact on them at such a crucial time in their lives. Typical man really!
Our child didn’t cope with the transition at all well even with my support. I have brought my child up to decide not whether they should have boundaries, but rather what their boundaries are, as they grow into adulthood and relationships. They are truly an independent thinker.
What impact has this had on me? Well……. That’s easy. After all these years I now have time to reflect. I no longer trust men to be honest with themselves so they can be honest with me. I have come to the conclusion that although transwomen profess to be women, they have all the empathy and compassion of a stone.
My husband was with me when I gave birth to my child. He still won’t have a clue how that felt. I had a hysterectomy due to Endometriosis. He will never feel that physical or the emotional pain, of what felt at the time like me losing the essence of me as a woman. He has never, and will never possess a womb. In fact when I came out of hospital he felt that was the time to take an online test to see how female his brain was as I hobbled up the stairs after the hysterectomy, mourning the loss of my womb.
On occasions, usually Pride events, he wears one of those t-shirts saying transwomen are women. What an insult to women! Being a woman is more than putting on feminine clothes and make-up, something most women don’t do as much as transwomen think we do.
What frustrates me most is that they feel so hard done by. They don’t have all the misery of being female, they only have the nice bits of being a woman, but then they claim to be just the same as any other woman.
I remain calm and kind because that is who I am. I feel that as soon as I let them make me lose control, they have won. I’m not letting that happen. They go low. I go higher.
And I will continue to call him a him, because no matter how he presents he will always be male. Women cannot father. Humans cannot change sex.
*Jessica has used neutral pronouns for her child to help maintain their anonymity.