Spouse in Transition 

riverwest1 Thank you! I do NOT take for granted the extraordinary gift I have in my wife! I'm pleased to show that it is possible with patience and love to get through just about anything!

It's up to you and you alone to decide if and when and how to transition. There's no right way, right time, etc... The people in our lives must also transition if they wish to stay in our lives and this is no simple thing. My only advise is to do what you need to do to be happy and be safe! Life is incredibly short!

Thank you for the kind words! I'll ask her if she would be willing to answer you herself.

Families can have some of the hardest times adjusting to transition. The simple fact is that some may never accept it. I have more than one family member that cannot / will not accept my transition. When I am in a situation where we must interact, I simply stand proud and confident in who and what I am - their opinion is NONE of my business! I have completed a legal name and gender marker change and one of my in-laws still refuses to us my name or correct pronouns and, worse still, insists that our children follow suit in his presence. In a word, unpleasant. I continue to hope that the old adage "Time heals all things" is true. I wanted to praise and thank you for supporting your partner! So many of us don't enjoy the support of our significant other. It's a HUGE help to have someone help with clothes and makeup especially in the early days. Transition is life saving. Each of the various medical and psychological societies recognize that treatment up to and including Gender Confirmation Surgery are necessary treatments for the condition of Gender Dysphoria. I don't imagine that will help convince your family either, it didn't mine, but who knows? ;-) I wish you two the best in your journey. Take it slow. Talk A LOT. You will be transitioning just as much as your lady but, you will be stronger for it!

Randi 1314 Transition is something that happens to more people than just us - it happens to everyone we know, everyone we love, and everyone whom we value in our lives as we transition. You spent your life to this time knowing you were living in a way that was inauthentic. I made certain to give them some time to sort it out for themselves. I know that folks actually came to enjoy many of the strategies I employed to appear as a successful male. There was a grieving process for many of them to go through and unfortunately, I lost some along the way. The vast majority found their way through with patience and love. Thankfully, my wife was among those that chose to stay and see me through it from the beginning.

I'm glad to hear that you and your wife are looking to find a way through! We would be happy to share our experience with you! Although, we're at least 11hrs from Illinois... ;-) That said, she and I are by no means the only married couple that have been able to find our way through transition. Patience, Love, Compassion, and LOTS of conversations are what we needed.

Frances MaGinness Always a pleasure to read your comments! I agree that trans folks are different from cis but that in no way means that we are not human beings deserving of the same basic rights, enjoying the same basic joys and sadness that all humans do! My sweet wife has been of tremendous support to me and that she agreed to do this video pleases me immensely! Too often, partners of trans people react hastily and harshly damaging both sides. If after some consideration and conversation the decision is to move on, so be it, however, I think it's of paramount importance to take the time. Relationships are truly among the most important things to our existence. Being shunned or invalidated damages us and those putting the negativity out there equally. WE ARE ONE!

that is wonderful. I hope I find someone someday. I was in a relationship before I discovered transgender on You Tube. We had broken up several months prior for other reasons. After I was moved to Florida she started calling me a year ago. I told her I was transgender.... etc. She wants to be friends, but not with Frances. She wants the other guy instead. Well I cannot go back to a failed relationship and be that same person. I am pressing onward with renewed hope inside that I will find someone who loves the real me. Thanks for sharing also. Transition is more than wearing clothes and makeup. I grow weary of watching the girls that are all flash and no thoughts are ever shared.

You're welcome!

Thank you for the questions! We are in agreement that being transgender is significantly more than a pair of boobs and makeup. It is a mental condition called Gender Dysphoria wherein I found the appearance I saw in the mirror to be inconsistent with the gender I know/knew myself to be. As you can imagine, this created a fair bit of cognitive discord! I am happy to report that this has steadily improved throughout my transition; with every step forward I feel a bit better. I want to encourage sensitivity and caution in asking deeply personal questions like those you have asked me as some transgender folks might be triggered and/or offended by them. I am not. That said, my intention has always been to openly offer my experience and to answer all reasonable questions to the best of my ability. I will attempt to answer your questions in that spirit. 1.) My wife, the cis one, identified as bi for most of her life. Things began to shift for her a few years before I began to transition, although she never told me. These days, she finds herself identifying more as lesbian than bi. In retrospect, my transition may have saved our relationship. As to romantically, she loves the new me. 2.) I, the transgender wife, have some surgical things I'd like to complete as part of my transition. Facial feminization seems to be mostly unnecessary - I'm taken quite readily as a woman and, by most accounts, an attractive one. I might consider a tracheal shave, a blepharoplasty(eyelid lift), removal of the extra skin under my chin and below my navel as a result of losing 155lbs, and possibly breast augmentation further down the road. However, I do intend to undergo GCS at my earliest opportunity. I hope this helps and again, Thank you!

Fiona Corwin My apologies for coming off as crude. I think in retrospect that my comment and questions were poorly phrased. It was never my intention to offend. My initial comment is a play on words from a video I saw that had a feminist theme where the leading protagonist in the movie quite adamantly tells a misogynist antagonist " Being a woman is more than make up and a pair of boob you know!" And my first question stems from a history of movies and story's I've read about trans women who have either transitioned after being married to a cis gender women or have become involved in relationships with cisgender women there after. In both cases there is always negative comments from cisgender lesbians who seem to treat transwomen as men if it comes to relationships so I need to understand the sexuality of cisgender women who do have relationships with transwomen. The second question was not meant to be as specific as it sounded but general. I couldn't recall all the different kinds of surgeries and procedures related to transitioning so I mentioned the only two I could think of. I asked because in your video. You and your wife said your 5 year plan became a 3 month plan and so It made me wonder how many of the procedures that are available you got in those short three months, this is also taking into account that medical professionals say you have to have been on hormones for a whole year before you can have Gender Confirmation Surgery. So as you can see it is not offensive at all but rather lengthy and in an effort to be brief I came off as being off putting.

Anthony Rizzo No worries! I understood the reference, but I was not certain about the context in which you were using it. I was not offended, simply cautious about making assumptions about where you were coming from. A great many transgender folks lose everything in their pursuit of transition including their spouses and, tragically, sometimes up to and including their very lives. I have thus far been fortunate in that I have lost very little as a direct response to my transition; many do not have it so lucky! As to the view of some that transgender women are not women, I assure you, I'm as female as the next woman. Most men and women that I associate with have no idea about my past and frankly, it's none of their business. I do disclose if it becomes relevant however, those circumstances are few and far between these days. Most all of my interactions with lesbians have been positive and accepting. Very few have taken the stance that I was born a man and will always be a man. I was born a woman, a little different perhaps, but a woman and that is no more clear to me today than it was 40yrs ago - I have known as long as I can claim knowing much of anything. That said, even when most would likely consider my transition complete, I will continue to identify as a trans woman. Many do not and I do not disagree with their identity as everyone has the innate right, and possibly responsibility, to identify however they choose. There remain safety concerns in being transgender based on the stories people tell about us; most of which are not based on any real experience or fact. Men are attracted to me because they like beautiful women not because they are somehow closeted gay men. But the ego lies all to us and tells us that the problem is over there rather than with us. This is a perfectly natural and necessary mechanism for survival. However, it is not actually useful when it comes to human interaction. It establishes that we are right and the other person is wrong. The problem lies in the fact that both parties have taken this stance and friction and possibly even a fight is the logical result. This is frankly true of any us vs. them scenario - think of the Hatfields and McCoys. Women in general are drawn to me and lesbians are no exception. I think that has more to do with who I am being than what they see.I live with integrity. I rarely lie and if I do, I call myself on it immediately and clean it up. I speak with confidence from my experience and generally avoid assuming I know anything about what's going on with anyone else. I know that I have no power over people, places, and things. The only thing I have some power to change is me and even that is pretty limited. Acceptance is the key - tolerance often equals arrogance. Language is VERY important as our dialogue demonstrates. Our entire world is wrapped up in conversation; we have words for everything and how we use them matters. Privilege is real and anyone who has chosen to transition knows this to their core. Unfortunately, those with privilege rarely see it and those without often don't say anything because they don't want to make waves for fear of security and/or safety. I don't want special rights, I want equal rights. I've gone much deeper into this than I had initially intended but the thoughtfulness of your reply set me to thinking and I wanted to take a moment to say thank you and expand upon some of the ideas we touched upon. I suspect that, when we die, it will be the moments, the conversations that we remember more than any of the achievements and failures, gains and losses that life has thrown our way. Thank you!

Fiona Corwin The average man doesn’t know how much of being female is learned at a mothers skirt hem and how much is genetics. A trans woman that transitions later in life and spends more time living as a man thus has a huge learning curve to overcome. Not only does she have to learn a lifetime of femininity in a few short years or even less but she also has to unlearn the years of male programing she has had to endure. Then there is the male frame that in some cases is more pronounced than the female frame. Some people are genetically better endowed with certain physical aesthetics than others, which may or may not be desirable depending on your gender such as long curved eyelashes a propensity for storing fat around the buttocks and hips or broad shoulders, a square chin and lots of body hair. All of these details can make transitioning a very involved process. Such a process is obviously not a choice but a necessity. It is crucial for one’s own sanity and wellbeing. Any trans person will concur however cisgender people seldom get this. Too often narrow thinking will lead them to looking at transitioning as nothing more than breast implants and make up. This is why I thought that reference was relevant because it is the same type of misogynist bigotry that is exercised against cisgender women. A man will complain about the time it takes a woman to get ready in the morning or fail to treat a woman’s conversation seriously if he perceives her to be attractive. In your case I saw your relationship with your wife as a huge advantage. It’s like having your own personal life coach. Of course I didn’t know to what extent this was true because that information wasn’t divulged in your video but it did seem that your wife claimed some doing in the sculpting of your image at least early on. Once again, seeing as the both of you said that your 5 year plan was shortened to three months I was almost certain that if anything got left out of your plan it was the big ticket items. Since neither one of you mentioned it in the video and it seems to be a very important part of the transition process I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t left out. In other words if you wanted to talk about it then here is your chance. I’m afraid though that this long correspondence exchange that we’re having might have buried that detail for the casual comment reader. But I get it. Some of the aesthetical cosmetic surgery was not necessary in your case and others can be postponed. Anyway, once again I wish I had chosen my words more carefully in order to convey exactly what I wanted rather than to seem like an antagonistic You Tube troll. I offer you and your wife once again my sincerest apology. You two deserve to be commended for your bravery, honesty and candidness. As I mentioned before I’ve heard about the negative impacts of transphobia within the cisgender lesbian community and hearing about you and your wife’s experience is definitely helpful to establish a better perspective. In conclusion, best wishes to the both of you as you share your lives journey may much happiness greet you along the way and thank you for sharing this most intimate aspect of your lives with me a complete stranger.