Home » Betrayal or Love?

Betrayal or Love?

The Editor | Jan 13, 2014

Spread the love

There is a organization in central Pennsylvania called T.R.U.S.T. (Truth, Respect, Understanding and Support for Life’s Transitions) Their mission is to help spouses and significant others begin to understand that living with a crossdresser or transitioning spouse is complex and requires the components of the group’s name in order to navigate your life with that person. The group is affiliated with the TransCentralPA TG support group in Harrisburg. Here is another post from co-founder Lorrie.

By: Lorrie, Co-Founder of T.R.U.S.T

Finding out that your spouse is a crossdresser or is transgender, can be a difficult and confusing thing. It is normal to feel lied to or betrayed at first. You may even feel like the life you created with your spouse was all a lie, that it wasn’t real. Yet, I need you to open your mind to another thought. Maybe your spouse telling you was them actually showing their ultimate love for you.

Many crossdressers spend a lifetime in a cycle of buying clothes, dressing, going out, them purging (getting rid of everything, in an attempt to stop dressing). For many transgender MtF’s they have often spent their whole lives fighting against the feelings they have of being in the wrong gender body. They may have chosen very manly careers, been active in sports, or even joined the military in an attempt to be the men that they were told and expected to be. In both cases, many have been involved in prior marriages or had prior long term relationships that probably ended due to a lack of honesty or communication that they experienced with their partners, all due to fear.

Try to understand for a moment a fear so big that you can not face it. A fear that they have had since they were young and got punished for playing in their mom’s makeup. Maybe they were ridiculed for playing with their cousin’s dolls or even beaten for dressing up in mother’s closet. A fear of not only being disowned by society, but by their very own parents and families. So what they learned at a young age is to hide. Hide from everyone, especially the people they loved the most. Then, they hid from themselves, living in a constant world of denial.

If your spouse or partner has finally come out to you about their crossdressing or told you they are transgender, it is not to hurt you (even though I know it does). They have told you because they love you so much that they need to be honest with you. They trust and respect you and your relationship so much, that they can’t continue to fight inside themselves. They need you to understand them.

Please, educate yourself on the topics of crossdressing and what it means to be transgender. I’m not denying the struggle that we as wives and spouses go through when we are told. I myself am the wife of a transgender spouse. But, I would like to open your eyes to the idea that maybe they loved you so much that for the first time in their lives they felt they could be themselves.

Although it has been a difficult journey for me, I do believe wholeheartedly that my spouse’s gender identity has nothing to do with his/her ability to love me. Just as I wouldn’t turn my back on my child, my parent, or my best friend; I refuse to turn my back on my spouse, especially at a time when they need my care and support most of all. Its not about saying this is the long term life you want or promising your partner forever, it’s about showing love, caring, compassion, and understanding to someone who has left themselves so vulnerable in your presence. It’s about love, not betrayal.