We’re pleased to have gained permission to republish this article by which originally was written for Lesbian and Gay News Website which subsequently closed. Liz spoke to Jo Bartosch. Swimming helps clear Liz’s mind, it’s one of the things she does when she wants to relax – and to forget. Now in her mid-twenties, Liz was just out of her teens when she met and fell in love with K. By the end of the relationship Liz was left grieving for the woman she had known – she recalls that K already had plans for ‘top surgery’, the next part of her transition. “I had already checked-out but I did not know how to leave… being together as she planned her transition was stressful – I was expected to smile my way through it all.” Liz met K in an online community for lesbian and bi women; it turned out they lived in the same area and the pair immediately hit it off. But less than two years later Liz found herself isolated from friends and hiding the truth from her family; she was forced to carry her doubts about K’s transition alone. Liz didn’t think much of it at the time when a few months into the relationship K began to drop hints about wanting to be male. “She made a throwaway comment which I believed to be a joke at the time because she was on her period. Something along the lines of, ‘I’d really love to wave a magic wand and be a guy. At least their bodies don’t suck.’ I didn’t see anything weird in that. I used to have the same wish when I was younger. “I’d gone through a period of time where I rejected the reality of myself growing into a woman during puberty, and up until I was 16 I’d gone as far as fabricating a male alter-ego, including a new name. So in the beginning, I thought that this was normal, that we all (almost all women, almost all lesbians) felt that way at one point and I shrugged it off.” But the comments about being uncomfortable in her body didn’t stop; 18 months into the relationship K started identifying as trans. K and Liz weren’t living together, but they used to telephone each other before bed. One night K called and announced her decision to transition. “It was short: K was informing me; letting me know. She told me that nothing would change because she had always been this person, and that she was just going to be even more authentic from now on. She told me about the process, and what changes she wanted for her body and for us. She had already picked a name she asked me to use. I, of course, agreed. “K sent me links to FtM Tumblr blogs talking about how great they felt after their mastectomies, and she told me she would do it tomorrow if she could. She had obviously done her research for some time. I asked her if she was sure, and she told me she was. She’d been planning this with her therapist for a while, unbeknownst to me. “Then she told me she loved me and asked me if I thought that I would still love her after. I was, by that point, feeling completely overwhelmed. I told her that we’d figure this out. I wasn’t ready to entertain a break-up over something that sounded, from what she said, so inconsequential. I already felt uncomfortable, but I figured that would pass. I just needed to grow accustomed to the idea. “After we hung up, I remember staring into space for a bit before I started crying. For all her reassurances that nothing would change I still felt like I had just lost something I couldn’t really describe. And I knew that I had lost the right to call her by the name I had known her as. I didn’t really sleep that night, my mind running in circles and coming up with question after question.” Liz isn’t sure whether K really thought of herself as a man. “When she first broached the topic, she seemed very aware of the fact that she was female, and it felt more like she was rebelling against her female body rather than it being about a male/masculine identity. K wasn’t butch and had never acted particularly masculine, either. Further down the path of transition, though, she started telling me that she finally found herself, and that everything up to that point had been a fake version of herself. I think that at that point, she really came to believe that she had been, so to speak, born into the wrong body and her real self was that of a man.” Liz felt like she had nowhere to turn, and that she was wrong for feeling so distressed. Coming out to her parents had been tough for Liz and so she kept the news about K’s transition from them. “I lied to them a lot during that time, and they did not know that I was having issues in my relationship. I did not want to give them any ammunition against my relationship or sexuality. I think I just wasn’t ready to give up the lesbian label I had fought them so hard for. It was a very lonely time.” Transwidows are one of the most marginalised groups – reduced to props in their partners’ new identities, their feelings and desires are missing from the popular narrative. For those who are lesbian there is an additional pressure – most of the groups which were founded to support people in same sex relationships now aggressively perpetuate trans ideology. When Liz confided to her local LGBT women’s group that she was struggling to accept K’s new identity, she was made to feel ashamed. “I got chastised and was told she was going through something so very difficult that none of us could understand. I felt like I had definitely said something wrong, and it stopped me from reaching out to them when I couldn’t cope with the transition any longer.” After her experience within the LGBT group, Liz didn’t feel like she could be open with her friends about her doubts. “I was afraid of being the bad guy, of being called a bigot or worse. I had already said too much and people had not been happy about it. How I, for instance, kept slipping up about her name and pronouns.” Liz says it was expected that they would stay together through K’s transition: “I never felt like she, or anyone, was asking me for my opinion or for what I wanted. It was always just the unspoken agreement: if I really loved her, I would of course stand by her. In the beginning, I was optimistic despite feeling uneasy about the pace of things. “She asked me to use her new name and pronouns. Her family sat me down one day because we were supposed to talk about how we could all do our best to support her through this process. “It was never a question of, ‘If you are comfortable with this’ that day but rather a ‘and this is what we all are going to have to do’. Her mother told me ‘We are all in this together’. No-one asked me how I felt about it, and I thought it was inappropriate to make it about me.” K’s decision to identify as a man had ramifications for everyone around her. Liz was expected to change her identity to complement K. “Within weeks of her telling me about her plans, we had our first fight. For her, it was clear that she’d always been straight because she was only into women. And, almost in passing, she said that she didn’t think it was such a big deal if I was straight or bisexual after all. “I got really mad at her for that because it had taken me so much time and pain and disapproval from my own family until I could even say, ‘I’m gay’ without feeling myself burn with shame. I felt really sad, too. I had come to see myself as a lesbian after years of searching for an explanation of everything I was feeling and felt like I was losing some part of my ‘own identity’ even though she hadn’t even changed anything yet. She was mad because this meant I wasn’t accepting her as the real man she felt she was within. “In the end, I just stopped referring to my own sexual orientation at all. I figured it was easier to just stay with her and keep my mouth shut.” What added to Liz’s intense isolation, was that “everyone else seemed so happy” about K’s new identity. “Her parents in particular. Her mother was ecstatic to talk about ‘her son and his girlfriend’ to friends and family. She never boasted about us when we were still, for all intents and purposes, a lesbian couple.” This still impacts on how Liz talks about herself today: “To this day, if I’m in an LGBT setting, I don’t mention that my ex was trans identified. I don’t want to go through this again with endless discussions where people try to tell me that I must be pansexual or at the very least bisexual. “A friend of K’s actually told me I was just in denial about being bisexual/pan. This insecurity stayed with me for a long time, and I wasn’t sure of myself for quite a while, always second-guessing myself. What if I just wanted to be a lesbian but was lying to myself? It was as if this one relationship suddenly changed everything that had been true about myself and continues to be true – that I have never in my life felt attraction to any man/male. Whatever my ex-girlfriend might identify as, I met her as a woman, and she’s female.” Once K made the decision to transition, she changed her dress, name and mannerisms immediately. “Even before taking T, she became more aggressive towards me. I often felt like she was trying to emulate some kind of macho-persona that, in her mind, would give her new identity more credibility.” It quickly became clear to Liz that if she questioned any aspect of K’s new identity, there would be a fight, so she shrank back into silence. “She started retconning a lot of her life’s history. The way she told it, it sounded like I had always just met and fallen in love with a guy who just happened to look a bit different from other guys. The fact that we met in a wlw [women loving women] community? Almost forgotten, a small inconvenience. It felt like we had lived different lives for those one-and-a-half years we were together without her being trans. “It is a very lonely experience to be the only one to remember a relationship while the other seems to remember a different reality altogether… I know this is cliché but it really felt like the girl I knew, in part at least, had died, and I was the only one left to remember her. Actually, the only one that wanted to remember her. Everyone else was busy celebrating her new identity as him.” Liz recalls how K tried being “one of the boys”. “Some of her guy friends started making jokes about us that were very sexist, as if I was the little housewife for her, and also about us in bed, too. I had a huge falling out with one of her male friends because of that. She often just laughed along and kept telling me it was just all in good fun. I felt humiliated and betrayed.” But it was not just when they were in company that K put Liz down to bolster her masculine image and assuage her insecurity. “She started making disparaging comments about the female body which were, I believe, mostly aimed at her own body.” Liz admits it had a “devastating” impact on her self-esteem. “I began feeling insecure in my physical appearance, and I couldn’t connect with her physically at all anymore because I did not know how to express my sexuality in a way that wasn’t, at its core, an open appreciation of all things female. “It was further complicated because her sex drive was heightened by the T and she started pressuring me into things and afterwards got mad at me for it, because she was mad she’d liked ‘it’ and she felt like it all made her ‘less of a man’ and ‘more of a woman’. It was all about her by now. “Seeing her look and talk about her female body with so much hate and disdain, I couldn’t help but feel like a part of her must have seen mine in a similar way. I felt conflicted. I was still very much a lesbian but at the same time, I was almost disgusted by it.” By now, Liz’s attraction to K was “dwindling away” but K was “caught up in her own whirlwind of transition.” “It seemed like my opinion didn’t really matter to her at all and she started downplaying whatever I was saying half the time, not taking me seriously, talking down to me. Eventually, I realised that I needed to get away from the relationship. I felt like I was broken, and I was beginning to get scared that I might not be fixable.” Liz regrets not being “mature or experienced enough” at the time to have questioned K more about her decision. But ultimately, Liz reflects that the end of the relationship allowed her to begin to take pride in who she is once more. “No relationship experience with another woman has ever made me feel this way. While I cried over the end of the relationship, I didn’t really argue or fight for it. A part of me was relieved. At least, I had tried.”

I should have known the first Halloween. I had seen the pictures of him before when he was in the Navy. Dressing in a sexy red dress that was still in his closet with a blonde 80s rocker girl wig, makeup done well, fooling everyone until you saw his hands which gave it away instantly. It was only for Halloween, he said. He was ever so proud that that guys had bought him drinks. But I was a theater girl! It was fun! A man wasn’t any less of a man because he could pull off dressing as a woman. We did that all the time with stage effects. It was cool on Halloween! What better day to do it? Right? I should have seen it. But I didn’t. There were other flags and I ignored them all. Everybody outside of our nuclear could be the enemy if they didn’t believe the way he did. Even my own parents became the enemy. And my friends. Only his friends and family remained. I loved him. It could work, right? Then came the autogynephilia. First it was him wanting silky underwear. He appropriated mine when I brought them home. Then he had to shave his pubic hair, underarms and legs, just like me. Then pedicures. And why shouldn’t he get acrylic nails as well, he was there already you know? We had two beautiful children. I couldn’t leave because what would that do to my girls? It didn’t matter that their father belittled me. That he was a functional alcoholic who drank a fifth of vodka in two days. Our family was intact. It was going to be ok. Right? He went on travel for work. I noticed one of my nice skirts was gone. I thought I had just lost it in the closet. When he returned, he confessed. He was a cross dresser. He went to a place that sold wigs to Drag Queens. He didn't buy one, just talked options with the lady. He brought my clothes and looked at himself in them with a wig on. He loved it. He was afraid that I would leave him. I felt cold inside but assured him it was OK and we would deal with it. I would be a good wife. He said he loved me. We would be OK. Right? The process sped up. He wanted to know what it felt like to have breasts. I made him fake ones, but that wasn't enough. It was my bra he needed and real breasts. I got a prescription for birth control pills to develop his moobs. He had to be professional at work so I bought him sports bras for work to contain them. On the weekends he wanted makeup – but I had to apply it. It made me cringe inside. It felt so wrong and I did everything I could to beg off. He didn't want to buy his own stuff. He WANTED MINE. He liked MY things. He wanted to look like me. Wear my clothes. Wear my shoes. Have me put my makeup on him. It made my stomach churn. Then I broke. I will never forget that night. He wanted to wear my lingerie. He wanted me to wear a strap on, to get on top of me and ride me. I let it happen, feeling numb. I will never forget the look on his face as he straddled me riding the dildo, wearing my red corset, hurting my pelvis with his bouncing. I tried to not cry as the last pieces of my heart broke. I went through the motions as I repressed everything. I needed to talk to someone. I couldn’t stay married to a woman. I wasn’t a lesbian! But our family code of silence was to continue. I already had 15 years of obeying him. There were no resources for me in the early 2000s. Nowhere to turn. Eventually I confided in an internet friend who would understand. She walked into her marriage knowing her husband was an autogynephile and it didn’t bother her because she was bisexual. My husband found out. The argument that followed lasted days. I betrayed him! How could I do this to him? I cried for days. After I groveled enough to "allow" him to still be my husband, I cried myself to sleep almost every night after I knew he was asleep. I cried at work. I cried in the shower. Everywhere he couldn't see I cried. I felt completely broken and despondent. He then said that he wanted bottom surgery. He was ecstatic because he knew that he would have no issue at his job with acceptance – someone else had already blazed the way before with HR. But we would have to save up thousands of dollars for the surgery – insurance companies hadn’t gotten woke yet. It would never happen because of how horrible he was with money and I smiled a bit inside. He was playing a phone MMO as if he was female in real life, flirting with men. It took the pressure off me to play into his fantasy, so I was happy for it. When asked for proof of being a girl, he used pictures of me. Then it happened. I fell in love. Not with my husband, but with someone online who actually was the man I needed. We got caught and this began a year-long cycle of me being sneaky and talking with my online lover, my husband finding out and browbeating me into submission only for me to start all over again. My husband sought to get back at me and started talking with a girl online. It didn’t work and I ran even harder towards my lover. He convinced me to go to a “Christian” counselor. We had a joint session first, focusing on the emotional affairs. Then came the separate appointments for more detailed assessments. I finally spilled my guts. The shock on the therapist’s face when she heard me detail everything and my issues with it all told me that it was so far beyond her ken. Too far. I began to get a sinking feeling. When we came back for the next joint session, it was if my session had never occurred. We just rehashed the first session, with more focus around my emotional affair. How I needed to start to try to love my husband again because that was the way to heal our marriage. It was all about fulfilling him. But what about me? What about the elephant in the room? I instead began to speak back to my husband in ways I never had before - openly defiant, no longer afraid of causing a fight in public. He seethed more and drank more. Eventually his anger over losing control moved the emotional abuse to physical - he smashed his fist through a door next to my head. I told my lover about it and we began to secretly plan my escape. We knew it was only a matter of time. One day a few months after our 20th wedding anniversary, I said I was going to drive into town to get something. I took the $3000 in cash that I had hidden and the car that I had already packed with my clothing and instead drove three hours to the airport to pick up my online lover and drive back across the country to start our new life together. If I had thought the verbal and emotional abuse was bad before I left, it went through the stratosphere now. I was a whore. I hurt him so badly. He did everything for me. He couldn't understand why I left. He turned my children against me. Almost turned my mother against me. Made all his evils - alcoholism, emotional abuse, physical threats, financial incompetence - into mine in his stories about how everything exploded. The divorce. I testified in open court for our divorce at a hearing. I began to tell my story and take my power back. He had either a panic attack or a mild stroke as he realized I would expose everything. The hearing was abruptly ended and he didn't contest anything afterward. Four years after I left him, our divorce was finalized. My ex-husband married his new girlfriend the next day. She is bisexual, so if he ever decides to go back down the road of transition she might not mind. My children came back to me eventually – the older within six months after I initially left, the younger took five years. They saw through their father's lies and now no longer have relationships with him. They bear their own scars though. I didn't get the therapy I needed until Bruce Jenner made his transformation. I began having all the classic signs of PTSD after reading the tabloids. Panic attacks, hysterics over nothing, horrible nightmares. I saw a therapist who believed me, who validated my anguish over it all, and who helped me do the hard work to get myself under control and not let my ex still control me. I eventually learned not to punish myself for all the what-ifs. Just this past March at the age of 50, I married my online lover. He stood by me through years of recovery, hoping that I would come out ok on the other side. I did and we did, and I couldn’t be happier. My girls were by my side when we got married. My family was made into a new circle with a new beginning. I survived and thrived. You can too. The nightmare can eventually end. You aren’t alone.

All those years ago, I'd not an inkling that this end of my life would still be an exploration of my ex-husband's lies and deceit--this time, the financial fraud. The discovery of the shocking diaries was way back in the early 1990s, on a vacation. The handmaid period, when I stayed, was for two years after that. I kept my young children, only one and four at the time, in the dark, and worked mightily to maintain some semblance of normalcy. After I found the details of the secret cross-dressing, filling three sketchbooks, I took the children and left, temporarily. A month later, my ex said it was all a mistake, the secret sessions with the cash-only nonprofessional constituted "a Mid-life crisis. I am still me." He went so far as to write this to my father, then threatened that if I didn't come back from the bolt made in the fall, he'd sue me for custody and tell the court I made it all up. I had no proof. It was my word against his, with only my parents and a few friends who could have supported my narrative. The shocker which ended the marriage, despite his promises to be forever open and truthful, came, after the beard was, of course, again, shaved off. I discovered his breast development the night before our younger son's fourth birthday, proof he'd been on synthetic estrogen for months. I still remember the out-of-body dissociation I felt at the party, as I set up a half-dozen children with cupcakes, sprinkles and frosting, for the decorating activity. I plastered a frozen smile on my face. Behind this facade, I calculated how many times he must have gone out cross-dressing, on "business trips" in the last two years. The sense of his extra curriculars in my mind’s eye was an overwhelming cloud, one that I have poked at, even in recent days. My sons and I did not exist in that milieu. The divorce took several years and cost me thirty-thousand in legal fees. We don't have the option of automatic dissolution of the marriage in the US. The children were gas lit and deceived, over and over. Our younger son cried every afternoon for the first half of Kindergarten. Our older son expressed suicidal ideation at the age of eight, requiring emergency therapy, dictated by the school. My ex refused to participate in any child-centred therapy for our children, despite the fact that our son had said he wanted to jump off the roof of the school building. The repeated stints back in court started a year after the divorce was granted. Two years later, the child support was legally lowered, as my ex claimed to be underemployed, working "temp jobs", and had stated in court that a bias case had been initiated against one of the former employers. This gave credence to the story of endless discrimination, but it was entirely false, as I found out from the employer directly, just a little too late to do anything about it. There was no lawsuit. Just last week, I discovered that my former spouse is now holds a very senior position in the multi-milllion dollar corporation he works for, and has worked for, since before the last time we were in court. Prior to this I had taken my former spouse back to court, for non-payment of college tuition, responsibilities clearly stipulated in the divorce. I ended up granting an advantageous change to my spouse's share of these expenses. Recently, the glow of their father's place in the executive suite, the power and wealth now achieved, have lured my adult children into a demeanour of forgetfulness. "You cried so much and it made me feel guilty" and "everyone has their own truth", are phrases I have fielded from my sons in the last year. I also found out that many individuals in that side of my children’s' lives think that my ex is their biological mother, as that is implied and stated at all times, and my sons did not correct that. "Everyone has their own truth"

A story from before the Gender Recognition Act It was Monday night and Coronation Street was just about to start. My husband was having a bath and I wanted to ask him something. I walked in to find his leg sticking out of the bath, covered in shaving cream, and a razor in his hand, poised to shave. “What are you shaving your legs for?” “Because I want to be a woman” With those words, I found that the 12 year relationship I’d been in for most of my adult life was built on lies, my world fell apart, and my ability to trust disappeared forever. He came from a dysfunctional family unit and had severe issues with self-esteem growing up. He’d never had a girlfriend before he met me, but I knew from the start had a couple of brief gay encounters which had arisen through him being interested in a lesbian who took pity on him and introduced him to her friends. Some men hit on him instead, and he was desperate for human contact so he went along with it – he told me it did nothing for him so he didn’t continue. Our sex life was fairly disappointing and limited by his libido I thought, but he gave every indication that he was only interested in women. There was absolutely no indication given throughout the time I was with him that he was anything other than a man with heterosexual interests and gender conforming hobbies till he announced he wanted to be a woman. That Monday night was hard. “You are not a woman!” Tears and snot running down my face as I tried to comprehend, but couldn’t. We went to bed and I needed him to hold me whilst I couldn’t believe the nightmare I was now in - and it was only to get worse after I urged him to speak to his GP. I went to work the following day and left to come home within minutes. I couldn’t speak to anyone about what had happened, much less do a job. He went to the GP and, instead of telling me more about what he had been told about his desire to become a woman, he told me that he fantasised about BDSM sex constantly with a decidedly masochistic streak, and masturbated to his fantasies daily – this was pre-internet days and he owned a total of 2 soft porn magazines, so it was all in his head. I now understood why we had such a poor sex life. He went to numerous doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and counsellors in the 9 months till I filed for divorce and, throughout that time, his only thoughts were for himself. He became consumed. He was not prepared to rest until he had gained the necessary agreement to have his penis removed and my feelings were never given any consideration. During those 9 months, his narrative about his feelings started with him wanting to become a woman, to hating his genitals, morphed into him wanting to be a sexless robot, and then veered towards wanting to swing with me and other couples, or have BDSM sex. On one memorable Sunday morning, he went through all of those options in the space of an hour before returning to stating he wanted to become a woman. He rejected any suggestion that his upbringing had repressed him sexually and was, perhaps, the basis of his belief that his penis had to be removed. He was encouraged by healthcare professionals to meet with other transsexuals at the local Transvestite/Transsexual group (remember this was all a long time ago and LGB didn’t exist – much less LGBT). His social life expanded as he started to be egged on to go out dressed as a woman. He bought many outfits which could only be classed as overly revealing and would generally not be acceptable on a woman of his age, nearing 40. He was dressing like his sexual fantasies. He was aroused by wearing women’s clothing, and masturbated in changing rooms when trying it on. He was “coached” by his new friends about what he had to say to have medical professionals believe that he wanted to become a woman and treat him. He threatened suicide on a daily basis. He made a guillotine and rigged it up to an anvil in the garage and attempted to cut his penis off. He wanted me to stop pleading with him not to self-harm “but to take me to the hospital when I do it again”. He had no concern for what this was doing to my mental health whatsoever; he just wanted to have the operation, take the hormones, and ultimately live with me as a lesbian. He couldn't understand why I couldn't accept this. That’s simple: because I AM NOT A LESBIAN! Through his TV/TS group, he was put in touch with a psychiatrist, Dr R, whom he saw privately (after he had rejected the diagnosis of an NHS psychiatrist). He was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and permission was given for him to proceed with the removal of his penis as a private patient by his second appointment, which was within a year of his coming out as “transsexual”, and without any period of living as a woman. I sent written protestations which were rejected by Dr R., then decided that I could no longer live with the person he had become so I started divorce proceedings. I truly believe it would have been easier for me to bear if he had died because he changed completely after making his declaration. It should be noted that Dr R was subsequently found guilty of misconduct of his handling of people with gender dysphoria. The operation to remove his penis went ahead and a few months later, I received a letter from my ex-husband blaming me for forcing him to go ahead with it because he had now discovered that he had just wanted to have wild sex and had been repressing those urges. Looking at his behaviour through the lens of time, I believe he was an autogynephile. I don’t know whether he detransitioned fully or just had immense regret. If I had stayed with him, there is no question that I would have had a complete nervous breakdown. As it was, it took 4 years of counselling to come to terms with what had happened, and many more years before I felt it no longer defined me. I chose to be secretive about it because I was humiliated that I found myself in that position; I did not want people to gossip about me behind my back, I didn’t want to be seen as somebody who had been so misguided to have married a man who wanted to become a woman – or worse, that I had driven him to it. Today, I still have those feelings of guilt and shame, but I’m also angry that if he had those feelings from childhood, as he claimed, then he lived with and married me purporting to be something else and his actions were fraudulent. Whilst the people I told at the time were supportive of my position and horrified on my behalf, transwidows now face the prospect of being considered transphobic bigots for not accepting their partner’s “true identity” or wanting to remain in a sexual relationship with them when the goalposts of their relationship haven’t just been moved, they have been taken and put up on a completely different pitch. ­­­­­ If you have also been affected by any of the issues in this story, please view our Resources page.

It was always my fault. Or so I was told. I was wooed, pursued and I was swept away. I never saw the truth or what was to come. He spent the first ten years of our marriage building his career, and what a career it became! But between that and his hobbies we saw little of him. To the outside world he seemed attentive and engaged, the perfect husband and father. I was the willing accomplice, as I was told it was for our family's future. I felt like single parent. Once he was established, we seemed of even less importance. The night before our last daughter’s birth I found pages and pages of information about cross dressing clubs in London. When I asked, he shrugged it off as a silly discussion at the office and they didn’t feel if appropriate to leave it lying around, so he had brought it home. And so it started. Not long after, our baby daughter was now almost one and I found out he was trying to spend a night with a girl, I think, at a hotel. There had been talk of a business meeting and the need to stay over. I found out by accident. When asked he went into a rant. As usual it was my fault, but also the fault of the lady involved as she misunderstood the invite to spend a night in his hotel room. Our four children took up too much of my time and he felt neglected! I did what I was told to do. If you are told often enough that you are the problem then you come to accept it as true. The next 15 years followed a similar story. I was told on many occasions that the reasons for his bad behaviour were always down to my shortcomings. When I found out he had joined a dating agency.....well you can guess and you would be right, and yes I complied and did as I was told. When he had an affair, it was my fault because I gave his brother a bottle of Brandy, from us, for his 40th birthday and yes I know how little sense that makes. The affair was the turning point, I started to see that his logic was not quite normal. I threw him out, but you don’t throw away 23 years of marriage. We were supposedly working on our problems but he refused to give up the flat and made the argument it made sense to have a city work base as we were trying to grow our company. That was the beginning of the end, for almost 2 years it gave him the freedom to do as he wished. I soon found out that late night business meetings were the cover so that he could enjoy his ‘other life.’ He started going out to dinner and bars with other women. When confronted about his lies he drove a car at me, it stopped about 2 centimetres away from me. The truth emerged. He had told them he was single or in a marriage with the ultimate bitch... can anyone else see the theme? As I’ve always maintained I was not his only victim but he was the only denominator. As I said, the city base was supposed to be for our business and our socialising. Our children and I were in and out of it constantly and if I’m honest I enjoyed the freedom, it gave us (we lived in a rural community and I don’t drive). Then the day came, he obviously felt uncomfortable leaving me alone in the apartment and as any woman would do who has been in a similar situation, of course the alarm bells start ringing. I expected to find evidence of another woman and I suppose I did in a weird way. What I had come to realise over the years, was that the red mist descended over him when he was caught out, and I had to be careful. We drove home together, my mind was in turmoil and finally I started asking questions, I knew that we were returning to a full house and couldn’t talk. The ‘red mist' descended once again and he tried to push me out of the moving car, I was tight against the door. I shouted “What do you want me to do?”...the response still chills me to my bones...”I want you to die, bitch!”, he screamed still pushing me tight against the car door while bombing along at about 70 miles per hour. As you can guess that was the final straw. He came to the house twice more at my behest over the next year, otherwise he had made little attempt to see our children and when he did come he used it to remove his philatelic collection from the house. When he was there, a feeling of doom and walking on eggshells came over us all, while he went to his study and didn’t interact with any of us. About a year later, one of our daughters broke down in tears and it came out that she had been raped. I rang him, and he said not to call him about horrific days until I had spent a day as an expert witness in the witness box. From there it went to how he had been raped for 22 years by me. How when I called to make sure he was safe, that the sound of my voice was like torture. That’s when it transpired that many of the nights, while I sat alone at home with our children, he was dressing [as a woman] and walking about in car parks. I know many will be screaming how awful his life was for him, believe me it wasn’t. One of his friends once commented, how lucky he was to have a loving wife and 4 beautiful children, I couldn’t understand his bemusement at the time. In fact at our eldest daughter’s wedding as part of his speech he called me ugly. The wedding planner jumped and took me to the bar store room/fridge. I was so cold and distraught that I couldn’t pour the bottle of rosè into my glass and as any lady would do, under the circumstances, I took a swig from the bottle! The next time he was in contact was the day he informed our two oldest children that he had changed his name by deed poll and was already in transition. He then appeared on TV, without warning any of our children. He has never officially told our two youngest anything. I finally went to Women's Aid and found Trans Widows and that’s when I realised I was not alone. Thank you to all those brave, wonderful women who opened my eyes to the coercive, psychological and emotional abuse my children and I had suffered for so long. My coercion continues through the divorce process but for the most part I’m free, I can breathe and I don’t have to worry about the red mist ever again.

People always ask “Didn’t you know?”, or “You must have seen the signs?” I always thought the answer to both questions was “NO!”. In hindsight, I think there were signs I just didn’t see. You be the judge and determine if I should have realised the man I loved, would later declare he was really a woman. The first sign came on our wedding night when he said “I know you will leave me”, which cut like a knife. I loved this guy with every fibre of my being, so why did he think I would leave him? Little did I know! He took me to a flash hotel for the first two nights of our honeymoon and we relished each other’s company. Honeymoon over - it was off in the “truck” to some God forsaken place in the middle of nowhere for ten days of camping. No running water, no toilets, lots of dirt and dust and millions of flies. I had endured camping with him before and although I disliked it immensely, I acquiesced in an attempt to have the perfect relationship. [Australian] Friends who described me as a “Five Star Chick” realised I was definitely in love with him, as why else would I go camping with him? Was the fact, he adored his truck and loved camping yet another sign? After the honeymoon and back at home, his ego was fragile as he was out of work. During this time he spent endless hours, day and night, playing violent computer games. In between games, he would avidly read from his enormous collection of war and science fiction books. When he wasn’t reading these, his head was buried in a super hero comic, of which he had thousands. Was this just blokey, or another sign? Not much changed when he was employed, except we would regularly meet after work for drinks before going home. To the outside world, we had the ideal marriage and although I would have preferred he spent more time with me than his computer, I thought we were happy and that our marriage was strong. When I had peritonitis and had to spend six days in hospital to have antibiotic infusions after my surgery, it all became about him and how he couldn’t cope if I died. He broke out in a rash all over his body and blamed me. He was convinced I had changed the brand of washing powder. His doctor later told me he believed, this rash was psychosomatic. Surely this was a sign? The most obvious sign must have been his regular sojourns to the big hardware store on the weekends. Most times he would disappear for a few hours and return with a new boy toy. He had a bespoke wooden tool shed made to house all his treasured tools. Ironically, his shed was the only place where he kept any form of order. Funnily enough he was the most un-handyman I have ever met. Six years into our marriage, I was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, which turned out to be the beginning of the end of our relationship. Once again, it was all about him and how he had to handle the stress of it. The first surgery was not a complete success and I needed to wait six months for the healing to complete before they could finish what they had started. It was imperative my blood pressure was not raised and therefore, sex was forbidden for a whole year, which nearly drove me crazy. Oddly enough, he seemed to cope okay with that. Definitely a sign! He was present with me eighteen months after my second op, when I was told a third operation was necessary, and that I needed to avoid stress. Two weeks after this, he told me about his real persona who was called Harriet. I really thought he was joking. As it turned out, the joke was on me. I was totally devastated to learn the man I loved, warts and all, was telling me that he liked to dress up as a woman. Apparently Harriet had an entire wardrobe of clothes in the storage unit he rented. The penny finally dropped! I am positive he would go to his storage unit to become Harriet and then race over to the hardware store and buy the first thing he saw to bring home. So ladies, please beware of the husband who goes to the hardware store too often, as you never know where he has really been or what he has really been doing. Or am I wrong, is this just another manly thing to do? Once the shock wore off a little, and with the advice of a mutual friend I decided to let him bring Harriet’s belongings home. As the dutiful wife, I was trying to be supportive, whilst at the same time wanting to be sick. I washed every article of clothing and lingerie before hanging the dresses and storing the lingerie and hideous oversized stilettos into boxes in my wardrobe. Mistake!!! I had opened Pandora’s box and life was never the same again. Instead of Harriet coming out in small doses, (as he claimed to be just a bloke who liked to dress up occasionally) she suddenly ruled the roost. Harriet told me the man I married was dead and he had never existed, effectively making me a Trans Widow. Our entire marriage was a sham and Harriet is now a fully blown and fully transitioned, Trans Rights Activist. Knowing he would transition, I had no choice but to leave. He later wrote to me saying, at the time we married, I could never have known he would transition as he had not been diagnosed then. The proof of his deceit which crippled me, was his Facebook post where he revealed he had thought about transitioning a few months before we married. If you have also been affected by any of the issues in this story, please view our Resources page.

It was a song called “These Chains” that saved my life. It was the soundtrack to the months before and after I left my husband. The song asks whether you will die in your safe cage, without ever knowing what it is like to live free on the outside? Before I left, I would sit in the bath, crying, with the door locked and the music turned up. It was the only place I could be sure my daughter wouldn’t see and hear my grief. After I left, I would listen to it on repeat on the car stereo on the school run, and it gave me the strength to get through another day. Dropping her off at school wondering who knew about why we had left her Dad and moved to the next village, wondering if we were being gossiped about and if today was the day that her peers would find out and she would be bullied? I left a month before our tenth wedding anniversary and a mere few weeks before he began “living as a woman”. I should have left five years earlier when he dropped his trousers in our living room to show me an insect bite, and had forgotten he was wearing pink lacy women’s knickers under his work clothes. This was one of the many times that I accidentally found out he had broken his word to stop cross dressing. I was determined to do everything I could to save the marriage. A cycle had developed of lies being discovered, promises being made, promises being broken, compromises being formed, boundaries being put in place, boundaries being pushed, and further lies being discovered. I lived in a state of constant fight or flight. I loved my husband and wanted our marriage to last forever. I thought I would not be able to manage on my own. I was terrified to leave. I struggled on for another 5 years trying to find a third way- a way to make it work- something between him stopping altogether and him living full time “as a woman” but once he was referred to the Gender Identity Clinic I should have realised that the writing was on the wall. I went to see a counsellor in the months leading up to my decision to leave. As part of the induction I had to do a tick list of how depressed I was and how anxious. My anxiety score was so high that the counsellor said, I was too anxious to treat at that time and that she had a duty of care to inform my Doctor in case I harmed myself. I ended up on a dose of anti-depressants high enough that the next Doctor I saw wanted to reduce it. I think I would have staged a sit in in his surgery at that point if he had insisted. I had kept this secret for the 13 years that we were together. Unable to get advice or lighten the load. There was no support available and I had been too ashamed to tell my friends and family. I begged and pleaded for him to stay as the man that I loved and married, but as he came closer to transitioning a cold, detached stranger seemed to have taken my husband’s place. I recall him saying he was no longer sorry for what he was doing to us. I thought leaving would be the end of me, but it was actually leaving that saved me. Imagine if I had stayed and had to cheerlead the slow death of the person that I married and the emergence of a stranger? Not long after I left he had facial feminisation surgery. I had to prepare my daughter for her Dad coming to collect for the weekend, looking different than the last time she saw him. “He’s still the same inside” I told her, to try and reassure her. It wasn’t true though. He wasn’t the same inside. The person I knew was gone. When he came to the door that evening my daughter hid behind an armchair and had to be coaxed out. When he had “gender reassignment” (“bottom”) surgery even though we had been divorced for a while, I felt a strong sense of loss that the part of him that had enabled him to father our daughter and that had given me a great deal of pleasure during the good times, had gone. Imagine if I’d stayed and had to nurse him through it? There were times in the months after I left, doing the school run, listening to “These Chains” that I thought the grief would overwhelm me, but I had a daughter and friends and parents and a job, so I had to carry on. Yes, it was leaving that saved me. Once I was out of the cage that my marriage had become I was free to live my own life. I had spent years being dragged along in the wake of somebody else’s whims. Lurching from crisis to crisis, none of which was of my own making. In separation I found peace. I will teach my daughter to have boundaries and to be confident in maintaining them and not allowing them to be drip, drip dripped away. Women: decide early on what your boundaries are. You are in control of your own life. Don’t let that control be taken from you. It turned out the one boundary that I was not prepared to compromise on, was being married to somebody who identified as a woman. There were so many lies and the one that still bothers me years later is - was it a struggle for him as it seemed to be at the time, or was I just being used as his beard, concealing his gender issues from the world? I was his second wife and at the time of our marriage he said to me “It’s good to get married this time without being worried I’m making a mistake”. After we split he said on twitter, referring to our marriage “Have you ever stood in a chapel knowing you’re making mistake?” Which of these is true? They cannot both be. If you have also been affected by any of the issues in this story, please view our Resources page.

I will never forget our wedding day. What should have been a long-forgotten comment would haunt me for years later. I woke that morning and called my groom. I informed him I was off to my bridal brunch and would see him at the church that evening. I joked, “Is there anything you need to tell me before we do this?” He paused, I reprimanded him for teasing me. Then he said, “No, nothing. I am just playing”. Soon after I was married, odd things happened such as finding my bra was packed in with my husband’s luggage on a business trip. I found pictures of unattractive women in lingerie on our computer. There was always an explanation and sometimes it was even my fault according to him. My husband insisted he needed to shave his legs. He had what he thought was a good reason to do so. I informed him this would be such a turn off that I would have to sleep in the spare bedroom. Our sex life was not my idea of normal. He bought a book with a different role play fantasies. Most of the scenarios things I felt uneasy about doing. One scenario, which was not in the book but he suggested, was for us to each dress up as sexy women and pretend we are lesbians. At this point I was done with any attempt to play along with these fantasies as I felt he was getting carried away with it all. He often acted submissive in the bedroom which was a turnoff. He often wanted to be tied up and that became just too much of a hang up so refused to do it. One day, I came back early from shopping to find he had applied a few fake fingernails and hopped into the tub to shave his legs, where I found him in a state of arousal. At this point his “cross-dressing” was emerging from the closet. He said doing these things made him feel relaxed and he blamed me as a source of the stress and loneliness. I thought we had a great relationship, but that this secret was what was stealing away intimacy and our friendship. I was just graduating from university and had a job offer in another city. I shared with my family that I planned to leave and divorce. The family didn’t understand because I had not shared any of these issues with them until this time. They weren’t convinced he was a cross-dresser and neither was I really. I believed my husband when he promised not to do it again. Soon my husband insisted we start a family. Our first child was born and within months there was an instance of me discovering evidence of cross-dressing that caused us to have conflict. Some weeks later our baby ended up hospitalized with a severe illness. While I was at the hospital with our baby my husband chose to reveal that he had been cross-dressing since he was a teenager. He again blamed stress and loneliness and agreed to see a therapist. My husband promised to never cross-dress again. We began to see the counsellor which he had found for us. This counsellor advocated for “girl’s nights out” for my husband with a group of cross-dressed men in addition to his many other hobbies which pulled him away from me and our baby. She said he could better relate to me because he has a feminine side and we could do girlfriend things together. I disagreed with this and for this she told me I was very close-minded. She said I was a lesbian because I had fallen in love with a man with an inner feminine side. The counsellor had said my husband would not know if he was male or female for three months. This was a shock to me and I asked my husband about this and he said she was putting words in his mouth. We agreed to no longer see this counsellor as it was not helpful for our marriage. He promised to never cross-dress again. I became a pro at ignoring the giant pink elephant in our house. During my third pregnancy my husband wanted to experience what I felt like. He fashioned a pregnancy belly with boobs. He wore it around the house doing chores so he could feel what I feel. I began to sense this was about him more than me. Our son was so disturbed by it that he took scissors to it one day while his dad was at work. My husband tried to convince me that he could breastfeed our baby so that I could rest. He even went as far as to send articles to back this up after I rejected the idea. I became a pro at dismissing my concerns and my gut and focused on entirely on our children. When I did find he had cross-dressed on occasions he would promise to never do it again. I would believe him. Rinse, wash, repeat. Eleven years later and several instances of finding his fake nails and other evidence of cross-dressing, there were now three children and my husband met someone online who shared his cross-dressing fantasies and convinced him to pursue a sex change. I found all of their sexually explicit messages. He described being married to me as torture. All these years I thought I was the one being tortured. They even discussed murdering me. I filed for divorce, but he would convince me he wanted to be the man he promised to be when we married and all of that fantasy was behind him. Again, I chose to believe his words even though my eyes saw breast development, outgrown hair, pierced ears and longer fingernails. In the final year of our marriage I learned many of his secrets. I learned he hid female clothes in our attic, in his tool box, at his mother’s house. I learned he would buy clothes and throw them away so I would not find them. I learned he had borrowed my clothes. I had sensed that and had a methodical way of organizing my drawers but I would still find my panties or boots stretched. I learned clothes he bought for me were really items he wished to wear. I also discovered that he had been seeing the same therapist that we agreed not to see all those years ago. She had written him a letter to begin transition and he had been taking hormones since the birth of our first child. Those prepubescent bumps on his chest that he always hid with a t-shirt at the pool were on purpose. They were such a turnoff but as his wife I felt sorry for him and I felt responsible because he had said the bumps were from OCD medication which he took at my urging to stop the cross-dressing. I learned that the lack of sex in our marriage was not because of the way I treated him or my lack of desire for him which was often blamed, but that he had no libido due to the hormones he was taking. I found out that the ugly women in lingerie I had seen on our home computer when we were newlyweds weren’t women at all, they were men he was looking at cross-dressed in lingerie. He admitted he was going to tell me on our wedding day that he had struggled with cross-dressing when I had asked him if there was something he needed to tell me before we tied the knot. After I left him, I felt like myself for the first time in many years. I had been lost to policing his cross-dressing and not triggering him to cross-dress. I was finally able wear clothes I liked without worrying that he may be triggered. The children had to grieve the loss of a father, no longer allowed to call him “Dad”, the saddest factor of all. It was all very traumatic for me, but it has been far harder for the children.

To paraphrase Will Ladislaw from Middlemarch (played in the early-’90s BBC miniseries by the delectable Rufus Sewell), there are some things a person can only go through once in her life. Finding out that the love of my life was not the person I believed him to be - that ought to be one of those things. It started off with small steps. A few hormone tablets, some hair removal, subtle changes in body shape and skin texture - nothing that felt like a significant departure for a man who had, since I met him, always seemed refreshingly able to express femininity. Then there was the name change, then came the talk of sex reassignment, then came the full-time presentation (in public, at least) as the new identity. And the sudden realisation that this new person didn’t smell like my lover. Blame poor communication, blame the fundamentally confused nature of genderist discourse, blame my fear of confronting the hard truth of my loss - for these and probably other reasons as well, it wasn’t until very late in the day that I began to understand the truth of what my partner’s transition would mean - for him, for me, for us. This was the bill of goods I had been sold - and it was nothing like what I wanted. Disconcerting seems too mild a word for the realisation that your partner, your lover, is doing everything in their power to make themselves unattractive to you. I went through all of the self-recrimination one could imagine: why was I being so shallow? Couldn’t I get past that and allow my sexuality to adapt? Why should it matter to me anyway if my sexual attraction to my partner was no longer a feature of our relationship? Weren’t there so many other facets to our partnership? Surely it was never just about sex. It’s funny how you sometimes don’t miss something until even its very possibility is taken away. There is far more to sexuality than mere physical attraction - and I have learned the hard way that no, I don't "like dick", as I once flippantly said - I like men. Women just don't feature in my spectrum of romantic and sexual attraction. Conversion therapy is rightly decried as an inhumane, even barbaric practice. I would never have imagined there might come a time in my life when I would find myself wishing it was a legitimate thing and that I could access it for myself. It wasn’t until a couple of years into the transition that someone finally asked me how I was coping. When I responded with a modest account of my misgivings, my friend’s response was, “Oh - but I thought you were bisexual?” And in truth, it is by no means just the physical alteration that has driven the wedge between us. People who transition may say that they are still the same person underneath that they are becoming more fully themselves. While that may feel true to them, from the outside, the person who once existed is gone and a relative stranger stands in their place. People’s personalities can and do change, sometimes dramatically, in the process of transition, not least because of the cognitive dissonance required to maintain the belief that their new identity is really who they were all along. So here I was. I had lost my lover’s body to synthetic hormones; and I had lost his mind to the cult-like tenets of queer theory and transgender identity politics. But of course, none of this was ever about me and what I might think or feel. Until, that is, I stopped trying to be nice about it. Then, virtually overnight, everything became my fault - all the hurt, all the miscommunication, all the disagreement. It was all on me now. And why? Because I had learned how to use my words, while my partner never had. And suddenly there were so many people who wanted to communicate with me about my transgender partner - people who had never uttered a syllable of concern for my thoughts or feelings before, now were piling in to tell me that I was wrong, that I was a terrible person for not uncritically affirming my trans partner's identity, that because I was not on-board with the trendy new gender agenda, I was no better than a Nazi. Where were these people when I was struggling in silence to accept the fact that I was losing the man I loved? Maybe it’s just more fun to get involved when you can indulge in some self-congratulatory virtue-signalling while you’re at it. I thought my questions were reasonable - what does it mean to “feel like a woman”? How does a person who has only ever existed with male anatomy have any notion of what it actually feels like to be female? My partner never had answers for these questions - indeed, seemed to feel it as an affront that I would even dare to question the assertion of transgender identity. Cue the accusations of “erasure” and “denying my existence!” I should not be surprised by this, of course. So much of the rhetoric surrounding transgender identity now is designed to obfuscate, to confuse, to shut down any communication short of bald assertions - usually expressed in the form of Twitter-style soundbites like, “Trans women are women!” or, “Penis can be female!” or, “TERFs think women are just vaginas!” Critical thinking not required - in fact, actively discouraged. It’s rather like reciting a religious creed. The aim certainly appears to be very similar - one must profess in order to be accepted into the embrace of the faithful. Doesn’t matter if you really believe it or not, as long as you just say it. Finally there is always, lurking beneath the surface, that old question: how did I not see this coming? Shouldn’t I have known, somehow, that my partner was really a woman, deep down? But this is, at its core, a breathtakingly sexist question. What signs, beyond straightforward anatomical features, could possibly indicate that a person was male or female? The challenge would be to answer this question in a way that did not rely upon gender stereotypes. No-one has met that challenge yet. I know there are women who have been disgusted by their husbands’ cross-dressing proclivities, who have been deeply shocked by the discovery that their husbands have a desire to express femininity. But a man is still a man, even in a dress and eyeliner. I see no incongruity between my enthusiastic embrace of my (male) partner’s feminine expression; and my subsequent sense of gut-deep disappointment at his apparent surrender to the idea that expressing femininity required him to actually be a woman. All this makes me wonder - does he even exist, the man who is happy to embrace femininity but still accept his maleness? If he’s out there, he’s becoming harder and harder to find - and I’ll probably never meet him again. Sadie has allowed Trans Widows’ Voices to re-publish this piece which she previously published on her own website.

"I am transgender and am immediately going to start transition. But I am also your husband, so you have a say in all of this." That was the first lie. It was maybe a week before it was made clear to me that I had no voice in this at all. That nothing I said mattered, and that my ex would continue to make and break promises to me. The next several months were lie after lie. Many months of lies. A lot of lies were gaslighting and revisionist history, like what my husband told our friends and family: "My wife always knew I was transgender." No, I knew my husband liked to wear women's clothing only during sex and be pegged by me wearing a strap-on. That's a fetish called autogynephilia, where a man gets a sexual thrill from pretending to be a woman. That's not an identity. After my ex came out to me, I tried to be supportive. We went to transgender support groups together, which in retrospect were utterly appalling. I remember the facilitators telling a father whose young daughter wanted to start hormones that he must go along with it, even though this girl would likely be sterile and potentially have other negative health effects. And people telling me "how beautiful" it was that I was supporting my spouse in transition, while inside I felt like I was dying from it all, so stressed that it felt like I was always about to have a coronary. I as the wife didn't matter in those groups, other than as a politically-correct favoured ornament on my spouse's arm. It was all and only ever about the transgender person and them doing whatever they wanted. As this went on, I realized how lonely I had been in my marriage, for many years. I was basically living the life of a single mother, hoping my husband would want to spend time with me and our children. After the transgender announcement, the neglect became worse, and it was very obvious how irrelevant our children and I were to my spouse in this newfound quest. And then the massive expenses began to rack up: clothing, wigs, electrolysis and waxing, voice training. Eventually I realized that this stressful situation, where I had no idea what my husband would demand to do next or what the next broken promise might be, it was physically killing me and I needed to leave. I told my husband that I wanted a divorce. He told me I was making a terrible mistake. He explained how he would become this amazing person after transition, when he is free to be his true self as a woman. That the drinking and being an absentee spouse and parent, all of that bad behaviour was because of his gender dysphoria and would be cured by transition. Fast forwards several years to today. My ex-spouse pays child maintenance but otherwise barely interacts with our children. Mutual friends tell me that my ex lives in state of hoarding and filth, and has become an alcoholic. That's my ex's life as their "authentic self". For a brief time I bought into that fantasy that somehow taking hormones and wearing women's clothing would turn my ex into a better human being and parent. But that is not what happened. If anything, my ex's worst traits have magnified since transition. I try to feel compassion for my ex, but it has been difficult to feel anything but anger and resentment. All of this transformation came at a very high price for myself and our children, both financially and emotionally. I expect I will be paying for counsellors for many years. But a lot of what I feel now, many years later, is simply relief. I am glad I am no longer entangled with this person and never shall be again. I feel as though I am still reconstructing my own life, but even so, my life is better now than when I was married. I am able to be a good mother to my children. I have done well in my career, and I have time for my children and to engage in hobbies. I cannot bring myself to date anyone, though. I do not think I shall ever trust anyone to be a romantic partner to me again. And even now, I still grieve for my lost husband and I think I shall always do so. But I want nothing to do with who this person is now. It is very clear that the person I fell in love with, my former husband... that person effectively died many years ago, if they ever existed at all. For anyone else in this situation: please ask for help and find a way through this. Read available resources on narcissism and autogynephilia, both of which appear to be very common in these "married and transitioning at or beyond the age 40" scenarios. Find a counsellor (and likely a solicitor) who can help you. Do not fall for the lie that everything is all about this transgender person and that you and your life and mental health is irrelevant compared to what they're dealing with. Please do not ignore the fact that you are going through life-changing trauma and yes, there is a high probability that you shall divorce your husband. It is one of the many odd similarities I have learned since meeting other trans widows: along with the sexual obsessions and profligate spending and narcissism, we are also almost always the one in the marriage who initiates divorce proceedings. You do not have to live as a prisoner in a marriage with a neglectful or abusive spouse. There is a life waiting for you on the other side.

I have always found writing therapeutic. I know I am healing when I can focus enough to have a good scribble about something. If I pile enough words in just the right places, I can hide the painful bits enough to trick my brain into scooting right on past them. I know I'm where I need to be when I can find the humour in a situation and make it into an amusing antidote. But some things just aren't amusing no matter how you try. This is a story about a man dressed in fishnets, PVC mini skirt and stilettos, forcing his exhausted wife/hostage to participate in violent, porn-inspired sex games every night after she gets their three young children to bed. I know that's pretty heavy, I just had to blurt it out in one go. I've tried dithering about and hiding it in other stories but I'm finished covering it up. When I met my husband, I was smitten by his charming accent, intense blue eyes and wild long hair. I didn't particularly like the heavy metal style, or the men who sported it, but he was different. That accent! Those eyes! I was 24. I had a confused but robust libido. It made me do really dumb shit. Anyway, I thought nothing more of the hair until he flounced past me in a miniskirt and pigtails shortly after we moved in together. I was shocked, but I was also in love. We opened up, that night. I told him of the sexual abuse I experienced as a child, my bisexuality, my general wariness of men and he told me about his cross-dressing habit, rooted in his own troubled childhood. He said when he was about six years old, he ran away from home. He eventually came upon his auntie's house. He was captivated by the sight of her underthings on the washing line. He had a bit of a crush on this auntie, he told me, she was young and very pretty. He decided to put on her clothes to see what they felt like, her knickers and skirt over his short trousers, her bra and frilly top over his jumper. He never made it to the main road where he intended to hitch a lift. Instead, he fell asleep next to a haystack, where his frantic grandparents found him a few hours later, still dressed in his auntie's clothes. He said he'd never been happier than when he was in those clothes. He told me that's why he often wore women's clothes - to relax and to feel better when he struggled with depression. He later used the things I shared with him that night to coerce and abuse me. He insisted I should have no objection to having sex with him dressed as woman because I was bisexual. This did not jibe at all with what I found attractive, but when I tried to object he said I was being a hypocrite and a snob. He accused me of trying to shame him when I gagged at the smell of his silicone toys mixed with alkyl nitrate fumes and bodily fluids and said I needed to get off my high horse, that just because I was born into a female body did not mean I was a better woman than him. Weren't we both damaged women? If I really loved him why would I cause him more pain? I forced myself to override my feelings to prioritise his. I loved him, and he was very nice and so cuddly after I did what he wanted. I confused his grooming with love. We married after I became pregnant with my first child. He stopped pestering me as much for unwanted sexual things because he no longer found me attractive. He didn't like fat, he said. When I did refuse his advances, he would say I had no right being snotty about his appearance, the state I was in. I was resigned to all things sexual being confusing and horrid at that point, the hopes of healing the abuse from childhood and blossoming into a healthy, happy being were gone, along with most of my self-esteem. My default mode again became pretend it was happening to someone else, make the best of things and carry on. We plugged along peacefully enough this way, and I had two more children during the next six years. He did not help at all with the kids but he did not interfere with my slightly off-the-beaten path parenting. I took his passive disdain for support and thought it was balance enough. Looking back I was so very lonely and exhausted. I've often longed to retroactively shake some sense into the sad stupor of that young mother. After my third child, he sank into a deep depression and was in bed for months. He began to dress as a woman almost every evening. Or, I should say, what he considered to be a woman. It was not my idea of womanhood. In fact, his version offended me. It was degrading and violent. He clearly thought being a woman meant wanting to be raped and tortured. I told him wearing strap-ons was very sore on my c-section scar, my "turn" being tied up frightened and hurt me, I expressed my preference for gentle, nurturing sex. He told me complaining was very manipulative and selfish and that I was trying to stifle his womanhood. He said I couldn't handle him being a woman because I was jealous, that it wasn't his fault that he wasn't fat and I was ,that I was barely a woman at all but more like a wizened balloon. I tried to avoid it all after that and focus on the children. When we were married ten years, we moved our family to Ireland, back to his childhood village, a move I'd always dreamed of. He said it would be great for the kids and help pull him out of the years of depression. He'd been so homesick, he said. We would have the adventure I'd always wanted and finally be a happy family. I was hooked by the idea of leaving the bad memories behind and starting fresh. I put the hundred or so red flags out of my mind and walked right into it. Not long after we arrived, my husband began to wear his woman costume every night. He told me I was the only person he trusted to see him as his true self. He told me to call him by his female name. He started talking to me in his female voice all day. I was afraid the kids would hear and be confused, especially because he often took on a pleading, begging tone, but he seemed to be totally unaware of their presence. He'd be on his laptop all day, looking for inspiration for what he'd make me do that night and I'd spend all day dreading it. He stopped buying fuel to heat the house, and I had to dress the kids in three layers and put them all to sleep in one bed, so they could keep each other warm. I read to them for hours every night, and they seemed happy and oblivious. Those times with my babies were sweet even with the sickening knowledge that he'd be out there waiting no matter how long I stayed after the kids drifted off, no matter how long I held my bursting bladder before giving up and going out to use the bathroom, he'd be out there ready to pounce. I knew no one, I had no money of my own, I couldn't drive nor could I safely walk anywhere with the kids. He was the only adult I saw unless his burly bully of a brother stopped in or one of his childhood friends came by for a chat. The roaring misogyny of his brother frightened the hell out of me. He kept reminding me how I was now on "their territory" with a decidedly menacing relish. One day when they were having tea and the sugar bowl was empty, the brother growled at my husband "you'd better get a stick for that woman!" and my husband stared right into my eyes and slowly nodded and then joined his brother in uproarious laughter. I went into the bathroom and vomited. I was completely trapped and ashamedly responsible for landing myself in such a horrible situation. The enormity of it paralysed me. He began calling me mistress all the time instead of my name. He liked to play a shackled, subservient woman begging not to be beaten and raped and forced me to act as the sinister dominatrix, then insist we switch roles for his final thrill. I was losing my will and completely withdrawing into myself. I felt like I was disappearing altogether. I was exhausted and sore and suicidal. I began drinking heavily in the evenings to numb myself. I remember one night shaking and sobbing, snot and drool running down my face, telling him that he was snuffing out the tiny flame that was left of me, to please stop, he was killing me and the kids needed me. He responded in what he thought was a submissive female voice, kittenizing his baritone, "Yes, mistress. Is that an order?" and then proceeded to ignore me and the needs of our children for days until I became so desperate that I engaged again by speaking to him in the stern taskmaster voice he insisted I use. I hated myself for stepping back into it, for going around and around again. On my fortieth birthday my sister-in-law insisted they take me out to a local pub. He tried to stop her, but she got his friends involved, and it would look too conspicuous if he didn't allow them to throw me a little party. I paid for it dearly for weeks after but it was there I met my first friend in my new country. She saw a haggard-looking woman, sitting with a group but somehow alone, and she came and sat by me and said "I see a real sadness in you, are you okay?" I said I was okay, just tired. She gave me her number and told me to ring her sometime, that we could meet for a cuppa. I was afraid to ring at first but then I did and she came to see me at the house, much to my husband's fury. After a few visits, she told me the way my husband treated me was unacceptable, and the kids and I did not have to live like that. She said I could get out and she would help me. She did not know about the sexual torture, she just saw the signs of domestic abuse. That woman saved my life. When I told my husband I was leaving he said he was going to kill himself. He said I was punishing him for his depression that was caused by the pain of not being able to live as a woman. He said I thought I was better than him, that I was a cruel snob, that I was being coached by “lesbian feminist bitches” and destroying our family and hurting our kids. For years after I got out, he kept trying to control me through threats of suicide. He said he could not live as his true self except with me. When that didn't work, he recruited his brother who gleefully threatened and intimidated me daily for two years. I had escaped the sexual abuse but I was still desperate and bedraggled with three children now 4, 8 and 11. I did the best I could to build a happy new life for me and the kids. I struggled with alcohol abuse, but I thought my kids were generally thriving. My younger two seemed like happy toddlers, my oldest acted out a bit but was easily enough distracted. I don't know what, if anything, he took in of my husband's sexual proclivities or his abuse. I still don't. What I do know though, is that he has his own struggles with his gender identity which have made our relationship difficult. It's been about 9 years since I got away from my now ex-husband with the help of a few good friends and a domestic violence service. I can breathe in full, deep breaths most of the time instead of shallow, jagged ones. I have been able to mostly wrangle my alcohol use into something fun and social. I have a nice life with my two younger children. I have a partner who is respectful and kind. I can even enjoy sex. I'm thinking of writing an amusing memoir about adjusting to life in a new country. The sexual abuse part of the story won't be in it. My ex now lives in the Philippines where he "rescued" an impoverished woman less than half his age to be his grateful maid and sex slave. He and his brother coerced me into signing for a no-fault divorce and kept everything. He does not support his children, financially or otherwise. I do not know if he lives as a woman, a man or as his true self, an abusive, deeply misogynist, homophobic autogynephile. What I endured at the hands of my husband almost killed me. I know there are many women out there experiencing the same kind of abuse, maybe not to the level I did, but on a level that is harming them and, often, their children. Their stories need to be heard. A supposedly well-intentioned society insists that men are now women, simply because they say they are. Men like my husband. These men are lauded as stunning and brave. Women injured by these same celebrated men are shamed, silenced and further abused. I and my children are not fodder for men's fetishy whims or the virtue signalling of their enablers. I will continue to tell my story in all its ugly truth. I hope others will tell theirs.

I am writing to document that it is possible to recover from a relationship with an Autogynephile and that women who are in these relationships, transwidows, are here for you. I do have a degree now, in behavioural science, I have learned how to unpack the power dynamics during years of counselling and address my PTSD. While I am frequently on Twitter throwing bombs and making comments, I am, like most transwidows, anonymous, because we have no choice. Our rights and experiences as women who have endured domestic abuse at the hands of Autogynephilic men, are ignored, by many parts of the gender critical community. I identify as a 2nd wave feminist. Germaine Greer is and will always be a hero to me. It has been 20 years since I left the worst relationship I had ever been in. 11 years with a narcissistic man who had a cross dressing fetish. I moved from living in a house with a narcissistic mother and enabler father, so I had no boundaries or understanding of what a normal relationship looked like, into a house with a covert narcissist. What I understood from all the counselling I have done over the last 5 years is that I simply walked into this relationship and was ripe for the plucking. I wasn’t equipped to say no, I did not have the self-esteem I needed to value myself before anyone else. There’s plenty of blame to apportion, but at the end of the day, the decisions I made as a naïve 20 year girl, are the decisions I made and I accept that. The aim here is to discuss what is normal behaviour vs abnormal from the point of view of a childhood trauma survivor that has processed abuse, acknowledges it happened and has grown from the experience. I wrote Simone’s story when I was in the middle of a mental health crisis, 5 years ago. I was reliving my trauma in graphic detail. Self-flagellation here, I'm embarrassed by how poorly it is written, but, it is my truth, warts and all. Flashbacks are weird. For me, I had memories that I knew existed but had attached no value to, because I had dissociated from that experience. So, during the crisis, the fear, the shame, the regret flooded me. These memories were not just from the abusive relationship I had been in with an Autogynephile trans identifying man, but also childhood trauma and it was difficult to unpick. However, a really good trauma psychologist is worth their weight in gold, providing you can find one that is not enmeshed with the gender ideology. Survivor Rule Number 1: Do not do Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Every emotion you feel, is valid, there is no need to reframe the negative thoughts spiralling in your head. Cognitive Behavioural therapy is not useful if you have experienced domestic violence or abuse, it comes across as gas lighting your lived experience. If you are a typical GenX/Millennial woman, brought up by narcissist boomers who tell you their abuse is to help you grow as a person and their emotional, medical and physical neglect will help you become independent, you need a trauma therapist. You need to vet any therapist you see, I saw one therapist through University who told me that the feelings I had about my ex needed to be reframed as I had to be positive about their experiences of transitioning from male to female. I found out later that this therapist was a gender affirmation specialist – guess that’s why he/they were a Uni Psychologist, perhaps touting for business. When you are in a relationship with a narcissist, you do not necessarily know it. Now there has been plenty of information out there on the internet about how narcissists pick their targets, but as someone who was ripe for the taking, how do people like us realise we’re being sucked in. Short answer is we don’t. Not until we’ve experienced it because until you know and understand that this happened to you, denial and self-doubt is your constant companion. However there are signs that something isn’t right. Survivor Rule Number 2: It is not normal to be blamed for everything in a relationship or in an argument or for someone to control your money, your access to the outside world. These are the three things that are targeted the most and this is where the cognitive dissonance rings true. If you are being questioned about where you go, what you do, what you spend your money on, this is the trifecta of all red flags I’ve written a few paragraphs so far and I haven’t really touched on the cross dressing aspect of a relationship with a man. Now, when I was younger, I grew up in a relatively progressive, left learning liberal family and was taught that we should accept people as they are. That whatever they like to do things behind closed doors that is harmless and most importantly, none of your business. Survivor Rule Number 3: Cross dressing is a fetish. It is a gateway to a narcissist who believes that they can dress like a woman to have fun at home. Then it becomes a means to engage in sex while dressed as a woman, and here you’ll be shamed for feeling bad or participating in sexual activity. Here is the issue with consent, you may say yes, but you’re not really consenting, but we’ll discuss that in a hot minute. Then there’s the idea that the person wants to be like you, dress like you, take over your interests, takes your make up, buys you lingerie in the wrong size and “oops” forgets to return it. Then the shaving of the armpits and legs “it’s hot in summer” growing of the hair “I love yours”, then it becomes, "I like being dressed as a woman, what do you think, do you think I will pass?" (I didn’t get to that stage, I left before that point, but we did get to the point where he told me: "I want to live like a woman and be one”. So the cross roads are approaching, you’re seeing the signs, but you don’t read too much into it because that’s not your spouse. You find the clothes that aren’t yours and it’s explained away as “so and so asked me to take it home for washing as their machine was broken” or “I forgot to throw out your old make up/lingerie”. You’re getting blamed for their depression, every mood swing feels unpredictable. You’re being gas lit every time you have a period and if you have PMS or PCOS or Endometriosis, your pain is minimised. Then questions are asked about your own sexual preferences. Who would be your celebrity hall pass of the same sex? Any answer you provide will be used against you, to question your own sexuality. Believe it. Survivor Rule Number 4: Coercion, coercive control: At some point in your relationship requests for sex which is outside the norm start. Will you have sex with your spouse dressed as a woman, will you use tools / items to penetrate them, will you please go on top and squeeze my bra covered fake boobs. Like NO. This is not normal. You do not have to say yes, if at all you feel bad, it makes you feel sick, weird, off, or you’re made to feel guilt. This is sexual assault. Plain as day, you can say “rape”.  It took me 2 years to use that word in context of my experiences when talking with my counsellor. If you say yes, because you feared saying no, feared the consequence of saying no, felt emotionally pressured or blackmailed to say yes, this is not consent. Everyone should look at the cup of tea video about consent and the analysis of coercion which is deconstructing the tea video, and provides further context. At this point I am going look at key point in this essay on how to survive an abusive Autogynephilic relationship with a positive affirmation that all people (because yes, there are gay / lesbian men and women going through this too) should reinforce. None of this is your fault. None of it. Women (more so than men) are socialised to be nice, accept differences and say nothing. I’m going to use Foucault, one of the founders of the bullshit gender theories about power. Someone with power, wields it over someone who does not have power, and this is regressive. Narcissists get in early and create a power difference where you are disempowered and become the oppressed. Weirdly enough, it was this lecture at the time at Uni that triggered my mental health crisis as the lecturer, seemingly disembowelled me in front of the class and described my abuse to me. I went from being “woke” in the new liberal sense of the word, to having my entire world blown up in my face and realise that trans women were men. Because even though it had been at that time 15 years since I left the relationship, the relationship had not left me (apparently). While my degree had been lovingly crafted as an homage to Foucault (or should I say FouCult, because Gender ideology is a cult ideology) and discourse theories, what it did was make me understand who had power and who didn’t. Ladies: WE DO NOT HAVE STRUCTURAL POWER. We’re low on the pecking order in the oppression Olympics – because most woke people will tell you, and for good reason, that women are NOT oppressed. Look, I guess we will, like all victims of our abusers, love them, live with them, agree with them in return for protection, for our children, for food and shelter. However, there is a disproportionate amount of middle aged white men are indeed, Autogynephilic, and there’s the elephant right there in the room with us. The oppressed middle aged man. Survivor Rule Number 5: Make a plan, long term, about 2 yrs. to deprogram yourself and create a way out. You can be inventive, you can use X to reach out to transwidows around the world and we’ll have half a dozen ideas on how to get out, based on our failed / successful attempts and what we would have done better. Deprogramming is harder. You have to emotionally divorce yourself from the relationship. Every night I would whisper to myself three times “I don’t love you”. Because it wasn’t love I was feeling, it was fear of abandonment, insecurity. My ex handled all of my finances and got me into debt, so expect that to happen. I took an entry level customer service job after not working for 4 years (he didn’t want me out of the house). I haven’t stopped working since – aside from study – but I just took the job. Change your phone number, email address, delete your existing social media as he’ll have people spy on you for him, open new bank accounts before you leave (I just changed my banking password). Expect to lose friends when you leave. It will be ok, just google transwidows and find a whole community out there who will provide you with unconditional support, shoulders to cry on, empathy, we are your pack. Survivor Rule Number 6: Do everything the opposite of what you did with him /her. If you start dating, find someone emotionally stable, that doesn’t worship the ground you walk on and love bomb you, that isn’t normal behaviour. That is how I broke out of the cycle. My marriage counsellor was horrified at my story and asked me how I broke the cycle, I did the exact opposite that I did before. If you have normal friends (i.e. people who will still support you after you have left the ex) ask them what is normal for men’s behaviour. When I started seeing my husband, he would remember details, small conversations, be polite, be kind, and be stoic and silent. I pestered my newly made best friend with questions about normal behaviour for blokes who date. My relationship nearly broke down because I never addressed my trauma. I still had behaviours where it seemed like I was reacting to abuse when there was nothing at all to react to, because, I had not dealt with the trauma. My doctor and psychologist believe I had PTSD. It’s not on my medical files. Because they supported me, I was put on SSRIs for 3 years while in counselling and I’ve been off them now for 18 months. I have normal reactions most of the time now to behaviour where my husband is tired, not angry at me. If you want a future forward, deal with the trauma of your past and leave it behind. There is no goo good Autogynephile. No man, who gets turned on by the thought of himself being a woman, is a good man. He will destroy your mental health and that of your family. There’s many women who haven’t been able to break off these relationships, and who might regard women like me, as inconvenient, or an enemy. There are many “academics” who completely disregard transwidows and our collective experience and knowledge. We have firm boundaries in place. This leads on to Survivor Rule Number 6: You are worth your boundaries This was said to me by my very wise and patient husband, and I hold it true. Set your boundaries and maintain them. Say no to anything or anyone who makes you uncomfortable or invalidates your experience. Walk away from those who pay homage to the Autogynephilic men out there, I hope they read this. Autogynephiles, you are destroyers of women and families. You should feel shame. There is no forgiveness until you stop cosplaying women. Atonement might be a concept we should bring back into society because what Autogynephiles have done to women, the LGB movement will take decades to recover.