Tonight, Hubby & I agreed that I should come clean with my kids and let them know what's been going on. It was one of the most difficult & painful things I've ever had to do, particularly due to their reaction.
They're not stupid. My daughters are 14 and 12, and they've known for some time that something was going on between Hubby & I. I've also been dressing in male clothing for several months now & have had my hair cut in a short, boyish style for a while, but I did these things to feel more comfortable within my own skin... and to help ease my daughters into the idea that I'm uncomfortable with doing 'female' things.
So we sat the kids down tonight and I started off by saying that Hubby & I have been having some problems within our marriage, which started about 15 years ago when I was expecting our eldest daughter. I gave them a couple of the more innocuous examples, one of which they already know about, but I told them from my perspective instead of from Hubby's usual perspective.
I said that we'd been trying to work on these problems for many years, but it has become graphically evident that they won't be resolved. I didn't pin the blame on Hubby anywhere near as much as he deserved, but the kids still presumed I was persecuting him. For example, I said we'd agreed before we got married that we'd have three kids and the first two would be born before I turned 30; we did have the first two before 30 but he was so traumatised by the circumstances surrounding our eldest's birth that he changed his mind about having the third one. (What I didn't reveal was that he had been dead set against having the second one and that he made it perfectly clear we were having her under his duress. It took him ages to warm to her as a baby, but luckily she was too young at the time to notice. She didn't need to know about that. Consequently, she thinks the sun shines out of the arse of the parent that didn't want her, and that the parent that wanted her from the start is a queen bitch. Awesome.).
I'd also said that we'd planned to stay in our current house for about 5 years before moving up the property ladder, but we're still in the same house we bought just after we got married. I used these as two examples of the sorts of problems that we've been unable to fix despite our (actually, my) best efforts. What I didn't tell the kids was that we haven't fixed them because Hubby changed the parameters of our agreement and didn't keep his word about the kids - he also refused to attend counselling to help him deal with his negative reaction to our kids; and that the housing situation is because he has never bothered to improve his qualifications so that he can make an equal financial contribution to our family.
So I said we've been going round & round in circles for years and we're not getting anywhere, so we need to consider whether there's any point in staying together. I then told them that there's another serious issue behind the scenes that may play a big role in that decision.
I eased them in gradually by explaining what I felt like as a young child, including the way I used to dress and the toys & games I used to play with, and how I became hugely uncomfortable with my body when puberty hit and my family & friends started piling pressure on me to conform with 'female' behaviour and presentation. I told them how betrayed I felt when my body changed, and I told & showed them some of the tricks I used to use to try to disguise my very obvious female features.
I explained how I'd felt miserable within my own skin pretty much from age 7, and how I spent my teenage years feeling depressed and confused until I read an article about a transsexual when I was 19. I realised immediately that this was what was wrong with me and I resolved to do something about it, but it was a daunting thing to think about at that age, especially with my mother suffering from cancer at the time.
I told them how I moved to the UK after Mum died and then I met their father within a few months of arriving, and at that stage I decided to just try and make the best of being female. Hubby seemed to like my features (even though I hate them, I do in fact have a good set of breasts and an attractive female body shape if you like that sort of thing) so I tried to ignore my dysphoria so that I could see myself from the perspective of someone who loved me & found me attractive.
I tried so damn hard.
And at first, it was OK. Hubby was loving and supportive so I could just about ignore most of my dysphoria so that I could enjoy being in love with him. But that was a very short-lived period, because he started to become distant when I was expecting our first child (about a year and a half after we met) and all of a sudden I started to lose the closeness we'd built up. Over the next 15 years he isolated himself more & more, and by 2006 he started pulling away completely because he had trouble dealing with me losing my job. I've always been the main breadwinner in our family and he's enjoyed a cushy existence while I've paid most of the bills; as soon as the responsibility fell on him he just couldn't take it.
What I didn't reveal to the kids is that our marriage was pretty much dead in the water by 2009 and I was seriously contemplating leaving him. He'd become not just distant, but emotionally abusive and quite nasty towards me - and the weird thing is, I have no idea why. I think it may be because I got very stressed in 2006 while I was going from freelance job to freelance job trying to keep our heads above water, and he didn't know how to cope with the stress I was experiencing. I think he just wanted me to be easy-going all the time, which I just couldn't do when I had insecurity and stress in my life.
But as I said, he'd started behaving almost like he didn't want to be part of our family, and certainly part of our marriage, between 2006-2009 so I was seriously contemplating my options when he happened to fall desperately ill in 2010. He suffered brain damage as a result of a serious migraine, and I dropped everything to take care of him and see to his every need. I more than went the extra mile to help him recover and to be honest, his illness was the only reason why we've stayed together as I do love him & I couldn't just leave him to struggle on his own.
He has made quite an improvement, but he's still unable and unwilling to improve on any of the serious aspects of our marriage that require work, so I'm tired of going over the same ground again & again, just to get more promises from him that he then immediately breaks.
So now the kids know that I have been suffering from gender dysphoria all my life. I explained that it's usually caused by one of two causes: genetic faults or hormonal imbalances during gestation. I said that the second one is what happened with me, and that I have been formally diagnosed by a consultant psychiatrist so it's a definite medical issue that I have. I told them that I have been referred to the gender clinic in London, where the next step is counselling to help me decide the correct path forward.
The kids were hurt & furious. I don't know how I expected them to take this, but I didn't expect the vehemence that they both spewed at me.
Both of my kids said that they wanted nothing more to do with me, that they wouldn't be there for me, and that if I decide to go through a sex change they would never want to see me again. Ouch.
My youngest asked whether I would start dating women or whether I would become a gay man. I asked her to think about what (not who) I married: a man. I asked her what that means about my sexual preferences. And she came to the correct conclusion herself, which I confirmed. And I corrected her by saying that it's not about 'becoming' a gay man, it's about honouring what I've always been all along by getting my exterior to match my interior.
I know they're raw and that this is a lot of information to take in. I hope they'll come round in time. I certainly know that my eldest daughter will sweeten up pretty quickly as soon as she wants some money from me, so hope springs eternal.
My youngest hit me with that old chestnut that I was born a 'woman' so that's just what I am and I just need to learn to deal with it. I told her that I've been trying to 'just deal with it' my entire life and it's gotten to a point where I can't deal with it any more, but it really hurt to have someone so close to me exhibit that perspective on the situation. Besides, nobody is ever born a woman. I don't know about you, but I was born a girl. At least, physically anyway.
Sunday 9 September 2012
Saturday 8 September 2012
Diagnosis
I'd heard through the grapevine that getting help for gender dysphoria is a painfully drawn-out process, particularly here in the UK with the bloody NHS. Once I'd come to the conclusion that I couldn't cope with it any more and that I needed to do something about it, I did some research on Teh Interwebz and saw that, in my area at least, you could expect to wait 18 weeks to 6 months in order to start the process. According to what I read, it goes a little like this:
- Go to your GP, telling them you feel you were born in the wrong body. If you're lucky, they might refer you on; otherwise, wait for a second or third opinion before you're referred to the next stage, which is
- Your community mental health team. Before anyone can do anything about this condition, you need to speak to a local psychiatrist who will poke around in your head to ensure there are no underlying mental health issues which could be misattributed as gender dysphoria. If you satisfy this local psychiatrist, you then get referred on to
- One of the gender health clinics in the UK, of which I believe there are only 3, 2 of which are in England. They'll then start counselling you over a long period to help you deal with your dysphoria, analyse its cause, and determine the best course of treatment, which may include
- Real-life experience (living in your preferred gender role for one or two years, depending on the counsellor)
- Hormones
- Name change
- Surgery of some sort
- Full SRS surgery, if it comes to that.
The time period between each stage is, according to our local health authority, that infamous 18 weeks to 6 months.
So I saw my GP in June and broke down in tears in her office, explaining how I'd always known for as long as I can remember (since the age of 5) that I'm not female, and how desperately uncomfortable it's always made me feel. I explained how recent events have meant that I'm no longer able to tolerate living this way, and the thought of eventually becoming a 'little old lady' (within the next 20 years, holy shit!) fills me with such abject despair that it's making me feel suicidal. And I'm not being melodramatic there: I would quite literally rather top myself than find myself stuck in an old people's home wearing a horrible flowery dress, having the nurses call me 'dear'. The very thought fills me with dread and desperation.
Luckily my GP already has a couple of transgender patients that she'd referred on to the next stage, so she knew exactly what to do. She wrote to the local mental health team on my behalf to start the ball rolling. And I went home pleased (and frightened) that I'd actually finally pulled my finger out to do something about my lifelong difficulties, and sat back to wait... you guessed it... 18 weeks to 6 months for my appointment with a local psychiatrist.
So imagine my surprise when an appointment came through for early August for me to see a member of the local mental health team to get the ball rolling! So soon!
So I went along to the appointment, which was a week before we were due to go on holiday. (To Cornwall. In a fucking caravan. Again.) The lady I spoke to - one of the Community Mental Health Nurses - basically does 'mental triage' to determine whether the patient is indeed a suitable candidate for gender counselling, or whether there are any other underlying mental health issues that need to be investigated.
In a very gruelling hour, I told her how I've always felt very uncomfortable in my own skin for as long as I can remember, and how it always jars me when anyone uses female pronouns with me, calls me a woman/lady, or even uses my given name. It shakes me every single time, and it always has. I'd thought this would improve with age, but this is my 41st year and I haven't grown out of it yet, so I guess it's not a phase I'm going through.
I told her how I used to run around topless & barefoot as a kid (usually wearing nothing but my underwear and a pair of shorts), and how I was so happy at age 6 when my best friend's mother made me a bikini in my favourite colour (blue!) because it meant I could whip off the top as soon as my parents were distracted and swim in what effectively looked like a Speedo.
I told her how I was utterly devastated when my mother spotted (because I was running around topless, natch) that I'd started developing 'beestings' at age 7 and she told me I'd have to wear a top all the time for the rest of my life. I felt so terribly betrayed by my own body. I'd been playing along with all the other boys up to that point, but now I had to wear a shirt and be this weird 'girl' thing that everyone kept insisting I was supposed to be. And now that everyone could see I was a 'girl', the boys simply didn't want to play with me any more. :'-(
I told her how by the age of 9 I had a fairly decent set of proto-boobs growing and my hips had started to spread. I started feeling desperately miserable and felt such intense despair every time I saw myself in the mirror and saw how my disgusting breasts & hips were distorting the shape of my clothes and making it very, very obvious to anyone who looked at me that I was 'female'.
I told her how by the time I was 12 my periods had started - another betrayal - and my sense of futility and despair of my own body was reaching critical mass. I stood up and demonstrated how I used to walk down the street at that age, clutching the bottom of the front of my T-Shirt and pulling down hard on it to flatten my chest as much as possible. I said that I noticed this only earned me even more attention from men driving past me as they were wondering what the hell I was doing, so I then came up with a slightly better coping strategy of wearing clothes that were 2 or 3 sizes too big for me so that I could hunch my shoulders forward & hide my hated features in a big, baggy top.
I told her how the rest of my teenage years were spent in miserable resignation that this was just the way my body was, and as long as I didn't actually have to look at myself in the mirror I could just about get through the day.
Then I told her how, at age 19, I was leafing through the latest issue of People magazine looking for yet another ridiculous story to give me a laugh ("Elvis is the father of one of my identical twins but not the other one!") when I stumbled upon a story of a Bond girl who had been born a boy.
Caroline Cossey was 'outed' by the media in the UK when she had a small walk-on role in For Your Eyes Only, and someone who knew told someone else that she used to be a man and a huge scandal erupted. The story was syndicated and People picked it up... leading to me reading it that one fateful night.
Caroline said how she'd always felt uncomfortable in her (male) body and had always felt more like a girl, but it wasn't until she was a young adult that she heard about transsexualism and decided to have a sex change. She then went on to talk about some of the injustices that affected trans people in those days, such as being unable to marry and being forced to attend prison (if arrested) with people of your birth gender. She fought hard for trans rights, and is an absolute hero... but until that fateful night when I read her story, I'd never heard of trans people and I had no idea that anything could be done about it. I remember reading this article, and by the time I was halfway through I was literally shaking. I realised that this woman was going through exactly what I was going through (although from the opposite direction) and that her experiences so clearly mirrored mine that I finally understood exactly what had been wrong with me my entire life. I knew then & there that I'm transgendered and that I would benefit from doing something about it.
However, there was a problem.
I was living in South Africa at the time, and South African society is very macho and patriarchal... and they do tend to bully mercilessly any men below a certain height. Many white South Africans have Dutch ancestry, which means that they're generally very tall, so there are a lot of tall men to pick on the smaller ones. I had a male colleague who was 5'2 - two whole inches taller than me - and he suffered so much incessant bullying in his everyday life due to his height that he bought himself a monster truck so that he would at least feel tall on the roads.
So I knew it probably wouldn't be a good idea to transition in South Africa. And anyway, my mother was suffering with cancer at the time so my life was very stressful; I resolved to just put my epiphany on the back burner until I could deal with it later.
And then later came. My mother eventually died of cancer four years after I realised I'm trans (I never told her). I struggled to deal with my grief, but I eventually worked through the worst of it & figured out what I needed to do next. I decided to adopt my then-11-year-old brother, pack my bags, and move back to England to start afresh.
I'd only been living in England for less than 3 months when I met Hubby for the first time. And he was such a nice guy, and I fell so hopelessly in love with him, that I decided to marry him, settle down & have some kids. I'd always wanted these things despite my gender dysphoria, and I found myself in a position to try them out & see how things went.
Things went OK at first but I never got rid of that constant sense that I'm in the wrong body. Actually, scratch that: it's not actually my body that's wrong, it's society's insistence that I have to be a certain gender with strict constraints on my interests and behaviour that is wrong. I could probably live this way for the rest of my life (provided I don't need to look in mirrors and I can bath really quickly) as long as society wouldn't try to insist on me using female toilets, female hospital wards, female changing rooms at the gym (including being forced to see naked or topless women in the changing rooms - yuk!), and as long as society would stop presuming that I want everything to be pink and frilly and that I want to watch chick flicks & read chick lit. Ugh! Why can't society just back the fuck off and allow people to behave how they want to behave and be interested in what they are interested in, provided nobody is getting hurt?!
So the Community Mental Health Nurse listened respectfully and sensitively to my story, asked me some probing questions to check the validity of my statements, and then said that she'd be more than happy to refer me to the psychiatrist for a formal diagnosis. She then wished me luck on my journey.
That was less than a month ago. So imagine my further surprise when I very quickly received a follow-up appointment with the psychiatrist, which was held this Tuesday?
He went over the nurse's report from our meeting, and he asked me several in-depth questions to ensure I was really a genuine case... and then he said he'd be very happy to refer me to one of the gender clinics for proper treatment. He reckons the wait for this will be something in the region of 3 months, so there's a possibility that I might take the first little baby steps towards transitioning before the end of this year.
Oh, and he did indeed confirm the diagnosis. I have now been formally diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder, by a consultant psychiatrist. This whole thing is getting more real by the day.
And as for that People magazine article about Caroline Cossey? I still have it. It made such an impression on me that I ripped it out of the magazine and put it in a safe place, eventually bringing it over to England with me. I've held on to it for 22 years. And if/when I transition, I'm going to have it framed.
Yesterday's Shrink Meeting
So I'm seeing a shrink at the moment.
I have a lot of issues to deal with (childhood abuse/neglect; post-traumatic stress; Asperger's; gender dysphoria - and those are only the ones I can think of off the top of my head) and I've been pressing my GP to refer me for counselling for the past 17 years. I haven't had any counselling since my early 20s when I lived in South Africa, and I've been struggling for the whole time since then. The NHS, in spite of being thought of as the 'envy of the world', is actually crap. It's fine if you need some emergency treatment (such as if you break a leg or something) but if you have anything more long-standing, such as mental illness, cancer, physical deformities or my issues, you're pretty much screwed. It's an uphill battle to be seen at all.
So yesterday I had a session with my counsellor and much to my surprise, the main subject of our meeting turned out to be my anger towards my husband, which I have kept very well hidden. I hadn't acknowledged that I'm very angry with him - not even to myself.
When we first got together, I thought he was Mr. Perfect. Well, close enough anyway. ;-)
He's kind, thoughtful, attentive, and he was quite romantic at the time. He said I was the best thing that ever happened to him and that I am the most important thing to him. He promised to always put me first, and I promised him the same with him.
We discussed the usual subjects: marriage (we wanted to marry a year to the day after we got engaged); buying a house (we wanted a small starter home, then upgrade to something nicer); holidays (I love travelling and he said he did too); children (we both wanted children and I said from the start that I wanted 3 kids; he agreed).
So we got married and everything seemed kosher for about a year. And what a year it was! We got married, bought our first house, and I gave birth to our eldest child, all within the space of 1997.
But as I was progressing through the pregnancy, thinking how great it was going to be to have a child (something I'd always wanted) and how nice it would be for me to take a couple of months off work looking after the baby before easing my way back into the workplace, Hubby & I started assessing nursery schools and childminders, testing the water to see what facilities would be available for when I'd eventually start going back to work.
And all of a sudden, Hubby changed from the generous, loving man who put me first. Rather than appreciating the fact that I was giving him a child (and going through all sorts of trauma to do so), he started pressuring me to sign up for childcare to start as soon as possible (i.e. from when the baby would be 3 months old). He said that we desperately needed my salary coming in every month so that we could afford to pay the mortgage, so he heaped enormous pressure on me to go back to work early. This started months before I'd even given birth.
I was extremely distressed by this. When I planned out how I wanted my life to unfold, I'd always known that if I worked hard at school and college, and was ambitious in my career, I'd have a far more stable financial background than my mother'd had. She raised her first two children until the youngest (me) was 3 years old before going back to work, so I would surely be able to do the same since I was far more successful (careerwise) than she was.
I'd been working since I was 16 (I was 26 when my firstborn arrived) and had buried my mother, moved countries, gotten married and was expecting a child all within 2 years... so having a baby was a perfect opportunity to take 6 months-1 year off work, spend time enjoying my baby, before re-entering the workplace. Right?
Wrong. Dead, dead wrong.
You see, I had indeed done everything right career-wise to deserve this time with my child, but I hadn't factored in that in order to take time off work with a baby, you need a supportive husband/partner/whatever to bring home the bacon while you do so. Sadly, I didn't have that.
Hubby was working as an administrator at the company for which I was Production Manager (I put him forward for the job). His wasn't a particularly taxing job, although the bosses could be extremely taxing on a regular basis. When I pressed Hubby about my not wanting to abandon my poor baby at 3 months of age, he insisted it was the only way forward as he wasn't earning enough on his own to cover the bills.
Now, many men in this situation actually fucking do something about it. I certainly would. I have, my whole life. The sole reason why I worked so damn hard in school and college, and have been so ruthlessly ambitious throughout my career, is because of my mother's experiences. You see, after having experienced a very comfortable middle-class life with my father, she eventually found herself in her forties, divorced with two teenagers and a toddler to look after on her crappy secretarial salary, which was a fraction of what she was actually worth. We lived in some very ropey accommodation in some really shitty areas, and there were days when there was absolutely no food whatsoever in the house and entire years during which I received absolutely no new clothing, but she did the best she could and we all made it out in one piece (well, apart from her, but her breast cancer wasn't her fault either).
I saw her struggle every day to make ends meet and I was determined that I wouldn't allow the same fate to befall me. So I worked hard and pushed my way up the career ladder, to the point that I am now a senior manager at a very prestigious company. But despite my best efforts, I found myself in almost exactly the same situation as my mother was when she gave birth to her third child: her (alcoholic) husband was a useless provider, so she had to put him in childcare when he was 2 months old so she could go back to work and keep a roof over our heads.
But my Hubby? Hubby came from a family where his parents were about 10 years older than mine (and much more old-fashioned; it's amazing what a difference a decade can make). His parents have always practiced strict gender roles, with his mother doing the cooking & cleaning and being very proud to do so, and his father doing the DIY & being very proud to do that too. Neither one of them could do the other's role, and they're perfectly happy that way.
His Dad worked as a draughtsman (coincidentally, the same job my own father had - in fact, both of them worked on the design of Concorde, although they didn't know each other at the time). He worked his way up to a supervisor/managerial role so he was certainly well respected in his field. However, due to their age, he retired not long after I met Hubby.
But it occurs to me that it's quite strange that his mother had to go out to work too, particularly in the 1970s.
She had three sons, one of whom very sadly died as a teenager, so she certainly had plenty to do. But Hubby's recollections of his childhood were very much working-class, with the family piling into their Mini to drive down to Cornwall on holiday, and it generally involved stories of inexpensive outings and purchasing potatoes & cabbages etc. in Cornwall to take them home because they were cheaper. (Whereas my childhood holidays involved international flights and fortnights spent in exotic locations such as Cape Town, Durban and Bophuthatswana.)
I know it was unusual for women to work in the 1970s. It certainly wasn't unheard of, but the societal expectation at the time was that the husband was the provider and the wife was the homemaker, but we were becoming enlightened enough that women could go out to work if the family wanted that extra bit of income. However, the everyday bills etc. were expected to be covered by the husband's salary.
Soooo, back in the 1970s my father paid for all our bills and we lived a very comfortable middle-class life in a large, detached, three-bed two-bath house in a nice neighbourhood. We'd go out socialising every single weekend (or we'd have friends round ours) so all-in-all it was quite a good lifestyle. But my mother decided to go to work when I was 4, because by that stage I was old enough to benefit from nursery school and she was getting a bit bored being stuck at home all the time. So they agreed that she'd get a secretarial job (which is what she'd been doing before having us kids) and that her salary would go into a savings account, to save up for nice holidays, home improvements, and stuff like that. The luxuries, basically. So that's where our jet-set lifestyle came from: my mother's contribution to our family was that we could do that little bit more than just the good, comfortable lifestyle my father's salary could provide.
By contrast, Hubby's mother worked in a factory, and then later in a charity shop. And from Hubby's description of his childhood, I believe that every single penny she earned was essential to enable the family to keep the wolf from the door. No luxurious overseas holidays for them; they were lucky if they got a week in a caravan. They scrimped & saved to keep their house in tip-top condition, and over many years they eventually decorated it to a high standard. But they still live in the house that my Hubby was born in 42 years ago.
So this is the environment in which he was raised. Is it any wonder then that he expects my support in providing for his family?
Now, I've always been a hard worker, and I've always been utterly selfless with my income. Every single penny I earn goes towards the family; in fact, I pay out more in bills every month than Hubby brings in as income. So I don't begrudge at all paying my fair share. And in these times, both partners in a marriage can reasonably expect to need to step up to the plate in order to provide for the family, as the days of a sole breadwinner are sadly in the past for most of us.
But would it have been too much to ask him to get a second job, or a better-paying first job, to cover the six months or so I needed to be off with the baby?
I don't think it would be. I've worked two jobs simultaneously before, and it is very tiring but I had responsibilities that I had to meet. Nothing quite as important as a wife who was bearing my child, though. But Hubby simply didn't have the get-up-and-go to do that. Instead, he piled huge amounts of pressure on me when I was very vulnerable (and hormonal), even going so far as to change the childcare plans I'd arranged for the baby.
So with a breaking heart, I was forced to hand my little 3-month-old daughter over to my mother-in-law, and hope she'd do the right thing by her. I was robbed of the opportunity to try to learn how to be a mother to my baby - and this was something I was struggling with for more reasons than one. Hubby didn't know it at the time, but one of the reasons why I so desperately needed to spend time with the baby was because of gender identity issues. I was trying desperately to be a 'woman' and I saw motherhood as an ideal opportunity to explore that side of femininity and see if I could be comfortable with it. But it was not to be. She was ripped away from me long before I was ready to let her go. And I very much doubt the femininity experiment would have succeeded anyway.
So I'm pissed off with Hubby about forcing me into this situation with my baby, but then I had Baby #2 just under 3 years later. And the situation hadn't improved; in fact, it was much worse.
Whilst we'd agreed from the outset that I'd have three kids, and two before the age of 30, Hubby was quite traumatised by the introduction of our first kid. Firstly, it was a traumatic birth for various reasons, which shook him terribly... but secondly, he reacted very badly to the intense way in which I needed to care for the baby. I breastfed my children for two years each, and that's a full-on role when they're little as they need to be fed & changed every 2 hours. He couldn't cope with the intensity and the intrusion into our marriage, so he started to become quite distant towards me even though I wasn't actually doing anything wrong.
Once the baby got to about 18 months, I reminded Hubby that we'd agreed to be having Baby #2 around that stage. Suddenly he was vehemently against the idea of another baby. He said he'd found the introduction of our first child so difficult to deal with (what did you have to deal with, son? I know she was a demanding baby, but I was doing 90% of her care, so apart from the obvious trauma surrounding her birth, what was your beef?) that he couldn't stand going through it again by having another child. I was hugely upset, because this was one of the things we'd agreed to before getting married, and he was now going back on what we'd agreed. So I told him that I can be patient for a little bit but it would be a dealbreaker if we don't have the second kid, so he very grudgingly let me fall pregnant a second time. But all the way through that pregnancy, he made it perfectly clear that he did not want this second child, and that he'd only agreed to it because it was what I wanted and he didn't want to lose me. He let me know in no uncertain terms that Baby #2 was conceived under duress.
Oh, hang on - there you go. That was one example in which he did actually put me first. It's probably also the last time that this has happened. Moving on...
So once again, he piled on the pressure that I'd have to go back to work at 3 months just like the last time, because blah blah blah blah. He'd had 2 years now to improve his qualifications, get a better job, or get a second job so that I could finally spend time with at least one of my babies (and I'd have them both home at the same time - yay!)... but predictably, he hadn't bothered. So once again, I bawled pitifully as I now handed both of my children over to my mother-in-law when the little one was a tender 3 months old, and went back to being a wage slave to keep the fucking bank happy.
Waitaminute... that was me putting Hubby first, as I always fucking do. So that cancels out his previous achievement then.
And now to my complete surprise, I started talking to my counsellor the other day and all this repressed rage suddenly came out of nowhere about how much Hubby has let me down over the years. I cried as I told him about the babies, our isolation & lack of social stimulation, his laziness with simple things such as DIY (which he'd told me he was excellent at - and he is, as long as he can get off his arse and do the fucking thing), his financial incompetence, the fact that we're still living in a shitty little starter home in a crappy area when we should be onto our second or third home by now, his emotional distance and lack of support when I've been going through traumas, and so on and so on.
I realised that one of the big problems I've had over the last few years, particularly since 2006, is Hubby and the way he's been treating me. So I resolved to sort that problem out, one way or another.
I have a lot of issues to deal with (childhood abuse/neglect; post-traumatic stress; Asperger's; gender dysphoria - and those are only the ones I can think of off the top of my head) and I've been pressing my GP to refer me for counselling for the past 17 years. I haven't had any counselling since my early 20s when I lived in South Africa, and I've been struggling for the whole time since then. The NHS, in spite of being thought of as the 'envy of the world', is actually crap. It's fine if you need some emergency treatment (such as if you break a leg or something) but if you have anything more long-standing, such as mental illness, cancer, physical deformities or my issues, you're pretty much screwed. It's an uphill battle to be seen at all.
So yesterday I had a session with my counsellor and much to my surprise, the main subject of our meeting turned out to be my anger towards my husband, which I have kept very well hidden. I hadn't acknowledged that I'm very angry with him - not even to myself.
When we first got together, I thought he was Mr. Perfect. Well, close enough anyway. ;-)
He's kind, thoughtful, attentive, and he was quite romantic at the time. He said I was the best thing that ever happened to him and that I am the most important thing to him. He promised to always put me first, and I promised him the same with him.
We discussed the usual subjects: marriage (we wanted to marry a year to the day after we got engaged); buying a house (we wanted a small starter home, then upgrade to something nicer); holidays (I love travelling and he said he did too); children (we both wanted children and I said from the start that I wanted 3 kids; he agreed).
So we got married and everything seemed kosher for about a year. And what a year it was! We got married, bought our first house, and I gave birth to our eldest child, all within the space of 1997.
But as I was progressing through the pregnancy, thinking how great it was going to be to have a child (something I'd always wanted) and how nice it would be for me to take a couple of months off work looking after the baby before easing my way back into the workplace, Hubby & I started assessing nursery schools and childminders, testing the water to see what facilities would be available for when I'd eventually start going back to work.
And all of a sudden, Hubby changed from the generous, loving man who put me first. Rather than appreciating the fact that I was giving him a child (and going through all sorts of trauma to do so), he started pressuring me to sign up for childcare to start as soon as possible (i.e. from when the baby would be 3 months old). He said that we desperately needed my salary coming in every month so that we could afford to pay the mortgage, so he heaped enormous pressure on me to go back to work early. This started months before I'd even given birth.
I was extremely distressed by this. When I planned out how I wanted my life to unfold, I'd always known that if I worked hard at school and college, and was ambitious in my career, I'd have a far more stable financial background than my mother'd had. She raised her first two children until the youngest (me) was 3 years old before going back to work, so I would surely be able to do the same since I was far more successful (careerwise) than she was.
I'd been working since I was 16 (I was 26 when my firstborn arrived) and had buried my mother, moved countries, gotten married and was expecting a child all within 2 years... so having a baby was a perfect opportunity to take 6 months-1 year off work, spend time enjoying my baby, before re-entering the workplace. Right?
Wrong. Dead, dead wrong.
You see, I had indeed done everything right career-wise to deserve this time with my child, but I hadn't factored in that in order to take time off work with a baby, you need a supportive husband/partner/whatever to bring home the bacon while you do so. Sadly, I didn't have that.
Hubby was working as an administrator at the company for which I was Production Manager (I put him forward for the job). His wasn't a particularly taxing job, although the bosses could be extremely taxing on a regular basis. When I pressed Hubby about my not wanting to abandon my poor baby at 3 months of age, he insisted it was the only way forward as he wasn't earning enough on his own to cover the bills.
Now, many men in this situation actually fucking do something about it. I certainly would. I have, my whole life. The sole reason why I worked so damn hard in school and college, and have been so ruthlessly ambitious throughout my career, is because of my mother's experiences. You see, after having experienced a very comfortable middle-class life with my father, she eventually found herself in her forties, divorced with two teenagers and a toddler to look after on her crappy secretarial salary, which was a fraction of what she was actually worth. We lived in some very ropey accommodation in some really shitty areas, and there were days when there was absolutely no food whatsoever in the house and entire years during which I received absolutely no new clothing, but she did the best she could and we all made it out in one piece (well, apart from her, but her breast cancer wasn't her fault either).
I saw her struggle every day to make ends meet and I was determined that I wouldn't allow the same fate to befall me. So I worked hard and pushed my way up the career ladder, to the point that I am now a senior manager at a very prestigious company. But despite my best efforts, I found myself in almost exactly the same situation as my mother was when she gave birth to her third child: her (alcoholic) husband was a useless provider, so she had to put him in childcare when he was 2 months old so she could go back to work and keep a roof over our heads.
But my Hubby? Hubby came from a family where his parents were about 10 years older than mine (and much more old-fashioned; it's amazing what a difference a decade can make). His parents have always practiced strict gender roles, with his mother doing the cooking & cleaning and being very proud to do so, and his father doing the DIY & being very proud to do that too. Neither one of them could do the other's role, and they're perfectly happy that way.
His Dad worked as a draughtsman (coincidentally, the same job my own father had - in fact, both of them worked on the design of Concorde, although they didn't know each other at the time). He worked his way up to a supervisor/managerial role so he was certainly well respected in his field. However, due to their age, he retired not long after I met Hubby.
But it occurs to me that it's quite strange that his mother had to go out to work too, particularly in the 1970s.
She had three sons, one of whom very sadly died as a teenager, so she certainly had plenty to do. But Hubby's recollections of his childhood were very much working-class, with the family piling into their Mini to drive down to Cornwall on holiday, and it generally involved stories of inexpensive outings and purchasing potatoes & cabbages etc. in Cornwall to take them home because they were cheaper. (Whereas my childhood holidays involved international flights and fortnights spent in exotic locations such as Cape Town, Durban and Bophuthatswana.)
I know it was unusual for women to work in the 1970s. It certainly wasn't unheard of, but the societal expectation at the time was that the husband was the provider and the wife was the homemaker, but we were becoming enlightened enough that women could go out to work if the family wanted that extra bit of income. However, the everyday bills etc. were expected to be covered by the husband's salary.
Soooo, back in the 1970s my father paid for all our bills and we lived a very comfortable middle-class life in a large, detached, three-bed two-bath house in a nice neighbourhood. We'd go out socialising every single weekend (or we'd have friends round ours) so all-in-all it was quite a good lifestyle. But my mother decided to go to work when I was 4, because by that stage I was old enough to benefit from nursery school and she was getting a bit bored being stuck at home all the time. So they agreed that she'd get a secretarial job (which is what she'd been doing before having us kids) and that her salary would go into a savings account, to save up for nice holidays, home improvements, and stuff like that. The luxuries, basically. So that's where our jet-set lifestyle came from: my mother's contribution to our family was that we could do that little bit more than just the good, comfortable lifestyle my father's salary could provide.
By contrast, Hubby's mother worked in a factory, and then later in a charity shop. And from Hubby's description of his childhood, I believe that every single penny she earned was essential to enable the family to keep the wolf from the door. No luxurious overseas holidays for them; they were lucky if they got a week in a caravan. They scrimped & saved to keep their house in tip-top condition, and over many years they eventually decorated it to a high standard. But they still live in the house that my Hubby was born in 42 years ago.
So this is the environment in which he was raised. Is it any wonder then that he expects my support in providing for his family?
Now, I've always been a hard worker, and I've always been utterly selfless with my income. Every single penny I earn goes towards the family; in fact, I pay out more in bills every month than Hubby brings in as income. So I don't begrudge at all paying my fair share. And in these times, both partners in a marriage can reasonably expect to need to step up to the plate in order to provide for the family, as the days of a sole breadwinner are sadly in the past for most of us.
But would it have been too much to ask him to get a second job, or a better-paying first job, to cover the six months or so I needed to be off with the baby?
I don't think it would be. I've worked two jobs simultaneously before, and it is very tiring but I had responsibilities that I had to meet. Nothing quite as important as a wife who was bearing my child, though. But Hubby simply didn't have the get-up-and-go to do that. Instead, he piled huge amounts of pressure on me when I was very vulnerable (and hormonal), even going so far as to change the childcare plans I'd arranged for the baby.
So with a breaking heart, I was forced to hand my little 3-month-old daughter over to my mother-in-law, and hope she'd do the right thing by her. I was robbed of the opportunity to try to learn how to be a mother to my baby - and this was something I was struggling with for more reasons than one. Hubby didn't know it at the time, but one of the reasons why I so desperately needed to spend time with the baby was because of gender identity issues. I was trying desperately to be a 'woman' and I saw motherhood as an ideal opportunity to explore that side of femininity and see if I could be comfortable with it. But it was not to be. She was ripped away from me long before I was ready to let her go. And I very much doubt the femininity experiment would have succeeded anyway.
So I'm pissed off with Hubby about forcing me into this situation with my baby, but then I had Baby #2 just under 3 years later. And the situation hadn't improved; in fact, it was much worse.
Whilst we'd agreed from the outset that I'd have three kids, and two before the age of 30, Hubby was quite traumatised by the introduction of our first kid. Firstly, it was a traumatic birth for various reasons, which shook him terribly... but secondly, he reacted very badly to the intense way in which I needed to care for the baby. I breastfed my children for two years each, and that's a full-on role when they're little as they need to be fed & changed every 2 hours. He couldn't cope with the intensity and the intrusion into our marriage, so he started to become quite distant towards me even though I wasn't actually doing anything wrong.
Once the baby got to about 18 months, I reminded Hubby that we'd agreed to be having Baby #2 around that stage. Suddenly he was vehemently against the idea of another baby. He said he'd found the introduction of our first child so difficult to deal with (what did you have to deal with, son? I know she was a demanding baby, but I was doing 90% of her care, so apart from the obvious trauma surrounding her birth, what was your beef?) that he couldn't stand going through it again by having another child. I was hugely upset, because this was one of the things we'd agreed to before getting married, and he was now going back on what we'd agreed. So I told him that I can be patient for a little bit but it would be a dealbreaker if we don't have the second kid, so he very grudgingly let me fall pregnant a second time. But all the way through that pregnancy, he made it perfectly clear that he did not want this second child, and that he'd only agreed to it because it was what I wanted and he didn't want to lose me. He let me know in no uncertain terms that Baby #2 was conceived under duress.
Oh, hang on - there you go. That was one example in which he did actually put me first. It's probably also the last time that this has happened. Moving on...
So once again, he piled on the pressure that I'd have to go back to work at 3 months just like the last time, because blah blah blah blah. He'd had 2 years now to improve his qualifications, get a better job, or get a second job so that I could finally spend time with at least one of my babies (and I'd have them both home at the same time - yay!)... but predictably, he hadn't bothered. So once again, I bawled pitifully as I now handed both of my children over to my mother-in-law when the little one was a tender 3 months old, and went back to being a wage slave to keep the fucking bank happy.
Waitaminute... that was me putting Hubby first, as I always fucking do. So that cancels out his previous achievement then.
And now to my complete surprise, I started talking to my counsellor the other day and all this repressed rage suddenly came out of nowhere about how much Hubby has let me down over the years. I cried as I told him about the babies, our isolation & lack of social stimulation, his laziness with simple things such as DIY (which he'd told me he was excellent at - and he is, as long as he can get off his arse and do the fucking thing), his financial incompetence, the fact that we're still living in a shitty little starter home in a crappy area when we should be onto our second or third home by now, his emotional distance and lack of support when I've been going through traumas, and so on and so on.
I realised that one of the big problems I've had over the last few years, particularly since 2006, is Hubby and the way he's been treating me. So I resolved to sort that problem out, one way or another.
Friday 7 September 2012
A lot has happened
I've been through quite a bit since last I posted.
Firstly, my brother, who was my best friend growing up, said he had no idea that I was going through what I was going through at the time. He remembers me as being a 'tomboy', and when I mentioned how I hated wearing girls' clothes he remembered me feeling that way, but he hadn't put two & two together (he described himself as 'Captain Oblivious', but in all honesty he's always been more like 'Captain Self-Centred').
He asked me loads of questions, which I answered as honestly as I could, and he encouraged me to tell Hubby the bad news. I'd been dreading doing so because I know where it will lead. Hubby pretends to be all tolerant and easy-going, but that's just lipservice: any time an LGBT person comes on the TV he makes some sort of disparaging comment. The final straw came when the whole family was watching a music video ("Black Heart" by Stooshe) and he kept making very rude comments about one of the women in the band (Karis). He said that she looks like a 'tranny' because of her strong facial bone structure. And to make matters worse, my kids laughed along with him.
I was really upset. Not directly due to the rudeness of his comment (that was only somewhat annoying; after all, I don't personally know the lady and I don't particularly care for the band)... but because of what it revealed about his true feelings on several subjects. Such as transgendered people. And femininity. And how women 'should' look in order to be considered 'real' women. And how ridiculous people look to him if they don't fit the gender stereotype he expects them to hit.
All of this happened while I'm going through the most extreme period of gender dysphoria I've suffered in many years - the worst since my breasts started growing & my 'childbearing' hips began to spread.
So I basically called them all out on it. I told them that they were being cruel and offensive, and that it doesn't matter what her face looks like, she is a singer in a successful band and doesn't deserve that kind of disrespect. Then I told Hubby that there is something important we need to discuss, and that I'd talk to him later.
Hoo boy.
So later came. I called him up to our bedroom, sat him down on the bed, and started the conversation by listing the various issues in our marriage about which I've been increasingly dissatisfied over the past 15 or so years. I won't bore you with the details here, but suffice it to say they are serious issues that I've spoken to him about several times before, and despite his promises to improve in certain areas he has never been bothered to try.
Then I finished the conversation by saying that all of the above may well prove to be irrelevant anyway, because... I'm transgender. I outlined briefly the fact that I've never felt comfortable in my body, that I've known my whole life that I'm not a 'girl' and that I've been struggling to do what was expected of me my whole life. I gave him some background, and then told him that I have contacted my doctor about investigating this to see which path I need to take.
He was furious. But rather quiet.
The one question he did ask me was this: if I've never felt like a 'woman', why have I grown my hair long at times in the past?
And the honest answer is this: all my life, everyone around me has been telling me that I'm female, that I'm supposed to like 'girly' things, wear dresses, behave in a 'ladylike' manner (thanks Mum!) etc. etc. and the whole time they've been saying that to me, it felt wrong. But I guess I just took their word for it that this was what I had to do in order to fit in & be accepted, so I tried emulating the behaviours that they demanded of me.
I tried so damn hard.
Even going so far as to fall pregnant (twice), which was a surreal experience because although I knew I had a child (or in one case, children) inside me and was doing the most definitively 'womanly' thing that anyone can do, it still jarred with my inner sense of myself and I was surprised that pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding were still not enough to make me feel like a 'woman'. All of those events just felt like I was fulfilling a biological function, rather than something to do with my gender identity.
But I've come to the point in my life now where I can't sit back and accept other people's shit, and I'm sick & tired of constantly trying to live up to other people's expectations of who I should be. So it's time to face reality for the first time in my life.
Hubby said he'll be supportive, but in all honesty I know this is just lipservice. Just like the lipservice about us having a third child (which never happened); or him pulling his weight financially (17 years after meeting him I am earning more than double what he does, and he hasn't done anything meaningful to improve his situation as it's easier to let me do it); or towards putting me first in his thoughts (such pretty little words, such a pity that he didn't really mean them - after all, if he wanted to put me first, wouldn't he have moved heaven & earth to ensure I didn't have to give up my babies at 3 months of age so that we could pay the mortgage).
Hubby, if you ever read this... know that if you'd put your money where your mouth was instead of taking me for granted, isolating me and leading such a boring, geriatric life that I had to be the one to book anything we'd do, I would probably have been able to ignore my gender dysphoria for much longer, if not for my entire life, because I might have been happy being part of that great relationship we once used to have. You fucked up majorly in 2006 (when I was made redundant) because all of a sudden you didn't have my cushy salary to fall back on, and you couldn't take the pressure of being the only breadwinner. Which is something I'd done before and quite enjoyed, if you recall. And when I was diagnosed with Asperger's and needed your support and encouragement to help me through it, what did you do? Fuck all. You tried to pretend it wasn't there, and you left me to cope with a huge, lifechanging diagnosis all by myself. Big mistake... because that was just another instance in which outsiders (such as my bosses) were more supportive of me than you were. The more you do things like this, the more I notice that this seems to be your modus operandi, and it's totally at odds with the ground rules with which we established our relationship.
The way you treated me after our kids were born, but particularly after 2006, left me feeling very lonely indeed, and it gave me all sorts of time to think about my life. And since I was so damn unhappy with so many things about my life, it's only natural that I had a huge think about things this year and decided to stop letting the world in general (and you too) make me feel so damn miserable about myself.
- I came out to my elder brother, who was surprised but supportive.
- I came out to one of my friends, who seemed bemused & couldn't relate to what I was saying, but then she's a very 'girly' girl so that's hardly surprising.
- I came out to my husband. Which was a HUGE deal, and will cause us a great deal of trouble over the next few years.
Firstly, my brother, who was my best friend growing up, said he had no idea that I was going through what I was going through at the time. He remembers me as being a 'tomboy', and when I mentioned how I hated wearing girls' clothes he remembered me feeling that way, but he hadn't put two & two together (he described himself as 'Captain Oblivious', but in all honesty he's always been more like 'Captain Self-Centred').
He asked me loads of questions, which I answered as honestly as I could, and he encouraged me to tell Hubby the bad news. I'd been dreading doing so because I know where it will lead. Hubby pretends to be all tolerant and easy-going, but that's just lipservice: any time an LGBT person comes on the TV he makes some sort of disparaging comment. The final straw came when the whole family was watching a music video ("Black Heart" by Stooshe) and he kept making very rude comments about one of the women in the band (Karis). He said that she looks like a 'tranny' because of her strong facial bone structure. And to make matters worse, my kids laughed along with him.
I was really upset. Not directly due to the rudeness of his comment (that was only somewhat annoying; after all, I don't personally know the lady and I don't particularly care for the band)... but because of what it revealed about his true feelings on several subjects. Such as transgendered people. And femininity. And how women 'should' look in order to be considered 'real' women. And how ridiculous people look to him if they don't fit the gender stereotype he expects them to hit.
All of this happened while I'm going through the most extreme period of gender dysphoria I've suffered in many years - the worst since my breasts started growing & my 'childbearing' hips began to spread.
So I basically called them all out on it. I told them that they were being cruel and offensive, and that it doesn't matter what her face looks like, she is a singer in a successful band and doesn't deserve that kind of disrespect. Then I told Hubby that there is something important we need to discuss, and that I'd talk to him later.
Hoo boy.
So later came. I called him up to our bedroom, sat him down on the bed, and started the conversation by listing the various issues in our marriage about which I've been increasingly dissatisfied over the past 15 or so years. I won't bore you with the details here, but suffice it to say they are serious issues that I've spoken to him about several times before, and despite his promises to improve in certain areas he has never been bothered to try.
Then I finished the conversation by saying that all of the above may well prove to be irrelevant anyway, because... I'm transgender. I outlined briefly the fact that I've never felt comfortable in my body, that I've known my whole life that I'm not a 'girl' and that I've been struggling to do what was expected of me my whole life. I gave him some background, and then told him that I have contacted my doctor about investigating this to see which path I need to take.
He was furious. But rather quiet.
The one question he did ask me was this: if I've never felt like a 'woman', why have I grown my hair long at times in the past?
And the honest answer is this: all my life, everyone around me has been telling me that I'm female, that I'm supposed to like 'girly' things, wear dresses, behave in a 'ladylike' manner (thanks Mum!) etc. etc. and the whole time they've been saying that to me, it felt wrong. But I guess I just took their word for it that this was what I had to do in order to fit in & be accepted, so I tried emulating the behaviours that they demanded of me.
I tried so damn hard.
Even going so far as to fall pregnant (twice), which was a surreal experience because although I knew I had a child (or in one case, children) inside me and was doing the most definitively 'womanly' thing that anyone can do, it still jarred with my inner sense of myself and I was surprised that pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding were still not enough to make me feel like a 'woman'. All of those events just felt like I was fulfilling a biological function, rather than something to do with my gender identity.
But I've come to the point in my life now where I can't sit back and accept other people's shit, and I'm sick & tired of constantly trying to live up to other people's expectations of who I should be. So it's time to face reality for the first time in my life.
Hubby said he'll be supportive, but in all honesty I know this is just lipservice. Just like the lipservice about us having a third child (which never happened); or him pulling his weight financially (17 years after meeting him I am earning more than double what he does, and he hasn't done anything meaningful to improve his situation as it's easier to let me do it); or towards putting me first in his thoughts (such pretty little words, such a pity that he didn't really mean them - after all, if he wanted to put me first, wouldn't he have moved heaven & earth to ensure I didn't have to give up my babies at 3 months of age so that we could pay the mortgage).
Hubby, if you ever read this... know that if you'd put your money where your mouth was instead of taking me for granted, isolating me and leading such a boring, geriatric life that I had to be the one to book anything we'd do, I would probably have been able to ignore my gender dysphoria for much longer, if not for my entire life, because I might have been happy being part of that great relationship we once used to have. You fucked up majorly in 2006 (when I was made redundant) because all of a sudden you didn't have my cushy salary to fall back on, and you couldn't take the pressure of being the only breadwinner. Which is something I'd done before and quite enjoyed, if you recall. And when I was diagnosed with Asperger's and needed your support and encouragement to help me through it, what did you do? Fuck all. You tried to pretend it wasn't there, and you left me to cope with a huge, lifechanging diagnosis all by myself. Big mistake... because that was just another instance in which outsiders (such as my bosses) were more supportive of me than you were. The more you do things like this, the more I notice that this seems to be your modus operandi, and it's totally at odds with the ground rules with which we established our relationship.
The way you treated me after our kids were born, but particularly after 2006, left me feeling very lonely indeed, and it gave me all sorts of time to think about my life. And since I was so damn unhappy with so many things about my life, it's only natural that I had a huge think about things this year and decided to stop letting the world in general (and you too) make me feel so damn miserable about myself.
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