I told my (24mtf) wife (24f) that I was trans at the beginning of the year. I wasn’t sure how it would go but I was hopeful that, since she’s bisexual, perhaps we might be able to make it work. Nothing guaranteed, but maybe it’d be ok. Well she cried when I told her, we had a talk about it, and things seemed good, like maybe we could put the pieces back together. I told her that I appreciated her support and she told me she’d do some research and got a “partner in transition” workbook. Then, radio silence about it.
After a week or two I sent her a text just saying “hey, feel free to ask me any questions. I do want to talk about it but I also don’t want to pressure you into talking about it”. No response to that, irl or over text.
I sent her another message about 3 weeks later and she did respond to that, basically saying she’s having trouble imagining our future together. I told her that we didn’t need to change our plans or anything, we could still have the life we had planned but just a little different than we had imagined. She said that she felt like everything would change, like my appearance and the way people treat us, and I took offense to this. I told her it made me feel like she only saw me as an accessory to her since “everything” is apparently the way we look to other people.
She then brought up some other issues we’ve been having in our marriage,
mainly having to do with keeping the house clean. Admittedly, this has been a weakness of mine in the past. I have ADHD that went untreated until about a year ago, so I was pretty disorganized. To be clear, I’m not filthy but I do leave clothes on the floor sometimes or dishes in the sink.
I also had something unfortunate happen at school (related to ADHD) that set me back a year, and this caused me a lot of depression (on top of the fact that I was slowly figuring out my gender identity). I knew this was a problem I had, so I sought professional help and this was something I worked on for well over a year and imo I had made a lot of progress.
Well when I asked her again to talk about being trans, she started going off about how nothing has changed around the house and that she feels like my mother. Again, I took offense at this, because I feel like a lot has changed and she just doesn’t notice it because it’s been gradual change, and it made me mad that she keeps saying she feels like my mother when I’m never asking her to do things that a mother would do. Her “mothering” me looked a lot more like her getting pissed about something around the house while commanding me to fix it. I tried to explain to her that I am extremely depressed, not just because I’m a closeted trans woman, but because medical school was kicking my ass at the same time and I came home not to a partner who was supporting me through it but one that was nagging me to fix up the little messes I had made, and like these “messes” were shit like leaving a bowl on the coffee table or leaving a pair of socks on the floor. I wasn’t expecting her to take care of it, I was going to clean it,
but instead of asking me to do it if it bothered her or just doing it herself, she would passive aggressively move it to my spot at the kitchen table, which frankly made the house look like more of a mess.
I told her that I was trying to be better, but that I needed support, not criticism, then she basically just straight up told me she wanted a divorce. And the weird part? I wasn’t as devastated as I thought I would be. Like yeah I was sad, but also just relieved, because I was so tired of this back and forth and constantly being told I’m not doing enough
(mind you, I have NEVER asked her to change pretty much anything about herself). I asked her how long this has been brewing under the surface and she told me it’s been as long as a year ago (about the time the unfortunate school event happened, which was a whole other can of worms with us) and that we had just been having this same fight over and over, and it sounds like
me coming out was just the straw that broke the camels back.
If anything, I’m just angry because it made the last year of this cold, loveless marriage make a lot more sense. It made me realize that her behavior this whole time has been because she’s been checked out of this relationship for over a year now and that I was fighting to keep something that made me miserable. Idk I just thought that
our 8 year relationship would be strong enough to pull through a transition and that it was worth more to her to try and repair it instead of tossing it aside but
I guess I found out that the marriage I’ve been in for 3 years just meant way more to me than it did to her, which is the part that felt like a stab in the gut to me.
The weird part is, I’m not that sad about this relationship ending, probably because I’ve felt it fizzle out this whole time. We’ve both clearly been miserable in it, so I don’t think it was going to last as a marriage anyway. I just feel really sad that someone I thought was my best friend has secretly resented me for over a year. I knew divorce was a possibility of me coming out, but
I expected her to have some more empathy for me. Instead she basically ignored me coming out until I pressed her about it then threw me out like hot garbage. So now I’m using it as an opportunity to explore my gender and my sexuality, and venting about my relationship issues on reddit because I’m still not out to anyone except her, her sister, and my sister.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I’m not really looking for advice, I just needed to yell at the sky for a minute, but also feel free to make any comments or judgements about it below.
