
By Julie Freeman
Julie Freeman is a significant other who has been active in the gender community for over nine
years, particularly with significant others and couples groups. Julie is a regular colunnist for
the DVG newsletter and has also contributed to the ETVC newsletter, Tapestry and the Femme
Mirror. Julie was ETVC Member of the Year for 1995. Her e-mail address is julie39@ibm.net. She
may also be reached through the DVG hotline at 510-937-8432 or by snail mail to DVG, PO Box
272885, Concord, CA 94527-2885
.
Abandoned
Recently I read a very sad article from a significant other who along with her
children had been abandoned by her husband. Deciding that the transsexual route was
best for him, he chose to make a new life for himself only one year after telling his
wife about his crossdressing.
In the beginning, she said, she was determined to become an "A wife" (obviously she
has read Virginia Prince). She joined Tri-Ess and tried hard to understand her
husband's desire to crossdress. She read literature, thought of herself as
open-minded, and even wrote a column for her group helping other wives and partners.
Eventually she told her children as she thought she should. She thought that she
was doing the right thing. She loved her husband and wanted their marriage to last.
But what she did not expect was his involvement with transsexuals on the Internet, in
particular transsexuals who helped him to find hormones without the proper medical
protocol, convincing him that transsexuality was the only way to go, and eventually
encouraging him to make the choice to leave his family. According to his wife, at
this time he was also seeing a therapist experienced with gender issues who did not
believe he was a transsexual, and she believes deep down inside her husband knows
this as well.
Her article continues on angrily and bitterly. She believes that her husband only
wanted more opportunities to crossdress and did not care about her feelings or her
children's. She believed he deliberately set out to destroy the marriage so that he
could dress more. She also believes the "community" was not very supportive and that
her husband is being applauded for his courage in leaving the family.
Unfortunately we do not have the husband's side of this particularly disturbing
situation. We certainly do not know if he was "egged" on by his Internet buddies to
leave or if the situation was irreparable from the start.
But what we do know is that one year is NOT enough time for a crossdresser to decide
that he truly is a transsexual and that all caution and considerations for his wife
and family no longer need to be carefully thought about. There are responsibilities
and concerns that both wives and husbands should have for each other and particularly
for their children that should take precedent above their individual needs.
This particular husband should have allowed his family more time to adjust to his
crossdressing; he should have taken more time with a legitimate family therapist to
explore his gender needs. He definitely should not have taken as gospel advice from
his Internet buddies.
This scenario, unfortunately, is repeated over and over. All of us probably know of
a similar situation in our own groups. This is why so many wives remain fearful and
intolerant; they too are afraid that if they become supportive, they may be opening
the door to such behaviors as this "A wife" reported. This is why significant others
new to the gender community are reluctant to get involved; they fear their own
partners will move too fast.
It is going to have to be the responsibility of the transsexuals and transvestites
themselves to try to find a way to prevent this sort of situation from happening if
they are going to continue to get support from significant others. The Internet now
seems to be where education is most needed at this time.
(This article originally appeared in Devil Woman, the newsletter of the Diablo Valley
Girls.)
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