Ms. Lee Etscovitz, Ed.D.A Letter To My SpouseMy Dearest, When I look at you, and when I think about you, I find myself wishing that my need for gender change would go away. What I am going through is something which I never asked for and which you never expected. But still it does exist. It is a reality which I must face and which, at least in the context of our relationship, you must face, too. As you know, I have tried to remain the man you married. I have worn to work the business suits you like to see me in, have gone to family gatherings for years as your proud partner, have maintained the relationship with my three adult children from my first marriage who truly love you, have been socially active with you as a married couple, and have enjoyed travel vacations with you. But now we face difficulties in all these areas of activity, because, at least on the surface, I am no longer the man you married. I look more like your sister, cousin, or girl friend, and that obviously redefines our relationship and thus the way we present ourselves as a couple to the rest of the world. I realize how enormously difficult the task of such redefinition is for you. To make matters worse, the maintenance of our economic situation is especially difficult, for I have had to approach the world of work from a woman's perspective. I only hope my future earnings reflect more than the number of words per minute that I can type. Moreover, work-related gatherings, which often involve one's spouse, are not always possible for us. It is equally difficult for us to attend family gatherings together. Of my three children, only my daughter continues the relationship with us, while my two sons cannot handle this whole thing, though they have no problem with you alone. My divorce from their mother was difficult enough for them. My gender change certainly does not make things any easier. Socially, you and I do very little together, except for movies and to eat occasionally at our favorite little restaurant where they know the whole truth about us and are friendlier than ever. I wish we could go together to our favorite Chinese restaurant, where we have been going for years, but I understand your discomfort. When it comes to travel vacations as a couple, we have been avoiding family and friends. You always go to your relatives by yourself, even though they know of my change. Since my parents and most of my aunts and uncles are all dead, I have very few relatives to inform or to visit. So far, one of my cousins seem to be very accepting of me. In the light of all this, you have had to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of our relationship in order to decide if redefining it is something you want to undertake. I do know we love each other deeply. We have been soul mates from the moment we met, and when we hug in bed at night, it is as if the whole world could collapse around us, so long as we can be together. But during the day the social reality of our situation stares us in the face, posing all kinds of problems. I guess the fact that we are seeing a counselor together is a sign of hope. As I said at the beginning of this letter, I wish, at least for your sake, as well as for my own, and for the sake of our relationship, that I could erase my gender issue. I wish I could simply appear as the man and husband you so fervently desire, the man you married fourteen years ago. In the wedding picture which we keep in the living room, you look so radiant, and I look so proud. I hate to see either of us lose that radiance and pride. But even though my beard is now gone and my hair is longer and more feminine, beneath it all is the same person, the same love, the same pride. In fact, you and my daughter have both remarked that I am even more relaxed and more giving than before I faced the truth about myself. That truth, the truth about my gender confusion, is something of which I myself was not fully aware at the time of our marriage. I did not know what was wrong with me, only that I increasingly felt uncomfortable as the person I was, and that I sometimes envied women for being women. All of that was terribly disturbing to me. I thought that those disturbing feelings would disappear with a good marriage. The marriage was good, but the disturbing feelings persisted. I kept them hidden, but I was dying on the inside. I gave the appearance of life, but I lacked the emotional substance to keep me going, even though I never felt any less love for you. Moreover, psychiatrists were never able to help me. What was I to do? My choice, as I saw it then and as I continue to see it now, was either to end it all out of desperation, or to try to continue living as a man while at the same time trying to cover up the inner truth, or to give birth to the feelings I had been suppressing all my life but which would in turn seem like the death of the man and husband with whom you were living. For my own sanity, for my very life, and with proper counseling at last, I had to opt for my rebirth as a human being, even with all the marital, familial, social, and vocational risks which that rebirth would entail. Otherwise, you would have had an increasingly angry husband who would simply have been difficult, if not impossible, to live with. I would eventually begin to resent you, for I have to love myself, at least as much as I love you. And so I have made a choice which has liberated me from the bondage of my own suppression and which has freed me to be a whole person and freer than ever to love you and to be fully present to you. It is this liberation, this freedom which I am now experiencing, which has in turn become so difficult for you, forcing you to see if you can somehow find a way to live with the new parameters in our relationship. I must admit that it is also very difficult, if not impossible, for me to compromise any longer my true self. The initial basis for our marriage was to decide separately to be together or not. Two separate decisions, even though discussed together, make for a relationship that is as solid and as soul-deep as ours has been. Whatever you choose to do, therefore, I respect and accept, though just the thought of separation from you in any way is extremely painful for me. But as I said earlier, that pain is one of the risks I must take, for it is still less than the pain of my own self-suppression. If we can genuinely stay together, we will continue to have the warmth of our love with which to face the pain of whatever difficulties we face as a couple. However, if the struggle is more than you can handle, or if my gender change is simply not in keeping with your wants and needs, then we each face the pain of separation but at the same time embrace the integrity of self which can only come with courageous honesty. Want to comment? Send email to Dr. Etscovitz at hmdm@voicenet.com. |
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