Spouse is re-evaluating their gender identity. How to adjust?

April 7, 2024 10:17 PM

My spouse, AMAB, has been figuring out their gender and sexuality for a while. They recently told me that they wanted to switch to they/them pronouns, which I am supportive of! I was a little surprised, but not shocked, and I am happy for them that they are feeling comfortable figuring things out! What's surprising my is my reaction to it.

I'm having a surprisingly difficult time adjusting, though, which I didn't expect. It's not struggling with the pronouns, it's the change itself. I think the issue is that that last couple of years have been incredibly stressful and awful (COVID, of course, but I also had a major surgery, followed by two major, related complications, one of which very nearly killed me. My job has been a nightmare. We're broke as hell. And they got laid off this week) and my spouse was the one thing in my life that felt... steady. Unchanging. So, while I am genuinely happy that they are exploring who they are, and I have no doubts about our relationship, it feels like the bedrock under my feet has shifted and I can't get my balance.

Does anyone have any suggestions for books or other resources that I could read? Experiences to share? It almost feels like grief. I am having fears that they may change and... outgrow our relationship? Which is silly! And I feel like a jerk having any kind of bad feelings about it, because this is not about me, it's about them, and they don't need to be worrying about my feelings while they are figuring stuff out, and dealing with stress, and now job hunting. I just... don't know how to process all this. (I do see a therapist, and have an appointment with her this week.)

posted by anonymous to Human Relations (14 answers total)

my spouse was the one thing in my life that felt... steady. Unchanging. So, ... it feels like the bedrock under my feet has shifted and I can't get my balance.

This is a serious thing. Please stop telling yourself there is anything wrong with feeling unsettled by all this. Please stop telling yourself you should feel like a jerk. You are just as allowed to feel feelings as your spouse.

Nobody has done anything wrong. You can still feel scared even if nobody has done anything wrong.

I'm not saying that your relationship is in any kind of danger, just that it's OK to not feel 100% happy positive all the time.
posted by amtho at 11:15 PM on April 7 [67 favorites]

This is a normal and understandable reaction that many family members and friends have in similar situations. It doesn't mean you're a jerk or unsupportive or queerphobic.

It is a kind of grief. You are grieving the loss of an understanding of who your spouse was, which is very clearly compounded by other losses/major life stressors.

Here is a brief article which you might find helpful.

I would also suggest that you take some time to just let yourself feel these feelings and express them with someone like your therapist or a trusted friend first, before you try to figure out if or how to share them with your spouse. This is a big adjustment time for you both and it will likely be easier for both of you to navigate if you have some space to express the more raw feelings without having to worry about the impact on your spouse.
posted by overglow at 12:57 AM on April 8 [13 favorites]

Here are some pieces that have given me new perspectives to consider as I witnessed a dear friend embrace their gender identity.

Jennifer Finney Boylan has written of her journey for a number of years. Her book, She's not there was one of the first I read on the topic and it helped me to hear about her experience and her individual and family choices. In particular, I was struck by the afterword by Jennifer's long-time friend, writer Richard Russo.
Reading about their friendship helped me understand what my own good friend was experiencing during their transition.

Here is an article by Jennifer Finney Boylan's spouse, named "Grace" in the book.
Imagining Grace: Deirdre “Grace” Boylan, wife of transgender activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, speaks about change, love, and resilience.

And here is an interview with JFB and her friend Richard Russo.
Writers Richard Russo and Jenny Boylan talk about friendship that has outlived a gender change

While this is one family, it was encouraging to read about their discussions, decisions, and communication over the years.
I agree with others that a therapist can be a safe place for you to explore and make sense of your feelings and reactions.
You deserve that space and that consideration.
posted by calgirl at 2:56 AM on April 8

The other comments here already give excellent advice.
I'd just like to say, when it comes to talking with your spouse, rather err on the side of possibly saying the uncomfortable thing , than not saying anything at all and having a ringing silence surround all aspects of their gender identity.

A common experience for trans and nonbinary people whose family or friends don't actively reject us, is this "scared to offend" approach, where our gender identity becomes a unspoken topic and ends up making us feel ignored or invalidated.

Absolutely talk to a therapist or friend first if you need to sort out how you feel, but ultimately you're allowed to have complicated feelings, and you're allowed to share those feelings with your spouse. Keeping quiet about them won't make them go away, and might back-fire in creating an "elephant in the room" that disrupts things all the same.

I don't know what kind of conversations you've had with your spouse, but what I would have loved from my family are simply curious "Tell me more about how you feel, why did you decide to go make this change?" questions. Curiosity rather than reassurance, if that makes sense.
posted by Zumbador at 5:05 AM on April 8 [12 favorites]

And I feel like a jerk having any kind of bad feelings about it, because this is not about me, it's about them, and they don't need to be worrying about my feelings while they are figuring stuff out, and dealing with stress, and now job hunting.

I want to gently push back on this. They are your spouse and they should care about your feelings, just like you care about theirs. That doesn't mean it becomes all about you, just that it is a two-way street in terms of communicating and caring and doing the emotional labor.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:42 AM on April 8 [7 favorites]

Nonbinary person here. You have every right to feel the feelings that you are feeling, and agreed with all others that having those feelings does not make you unsupportive of your spouse! Navigating gender identity is not an easy thing for anyone, and what you are feeling is completely normal.

I agree with all of the other comments in that regard, but particularly with Zumbador's. I wish that my friends and family would ask me questions and have open conversations with me about my gender identity. I've tried to open that door with my sister and close friends a few times and it always gets shut. I agree that people are likely worried about offending or misunderstanding, but that's the point of a conversation.

For reading, I really enjoyed Trans Like Me, which I actually read when I was dating a trans person but before I realized I was nonbinary myself.
posted by anotheraccount at 6:14 AM on April 8 [7 favorites]

My long-term partner and I just split after 29 years together. He transitioned back in 1996, maybe. We had almost no role models. He was the first person to transition in our lesbian community and the reactions weren't great—one friend, who later became an active trans advocate, told me it was like he'd killed someone and I was choosing to stay with him.

At first, he promised to wait for me to be ready for any given step: starting testosterone, getting top surgery. But it turned out that, having made the decision, he couldn't wait, and he took every step before I felt ready for it. This was hard on both of us, as I felt a bit betrayed, and he felt like he wasn't getting the support from me that he needed. But what happened for me is that seeing him get more and more comfortable with himself, I began to feel really happy for him.

I was going to say, we were in the opposite of your position: everything was going great. We were happier than we'd ever been. I did not want to risk changing one single thing about our life.

My point was, it may (but no pressure) get easier for you as your partner gets more and more comfortable with themself.

Also, it's really normal to grieve. Our fourth child was the first one we though was a girl. I was really excited to have a girl. By the time he was three, though, he was really adamant about being a boy, and he socially transitioned at age four (he's now 16 and a thriving teenager).

I wanted a girl. He was an energetic, sassy, independent, argumentative little kid, and I thought he was going to make a great girl. I had a sundress that one of his older brothers had worn all summer when he was two, and I loved the idea of my daughter wearing that same sundress.

By that time, I knew a million trans people. I knew how great their lives were, despite the struggles. I saw the good outcomes. So I wasn't worried about him being trans. I just missed, and grieved, this girl I thought I had.

He was a little kid, so I didn't tell him I was having feelings; I worked them out elsewhere. But there was a pretty long time when I was simultaneously absolutely delighted with my son, and grieving my daughter.
posted by Well I never at 7:48 AM on April 8 [17 favorites]

I'm a trans woman, and my ex started in a very similar place to where you are. She thought of herself as a solid ally. She told me she'd support me. Then, because of other hard stuff in our lives, she refused to process at all for the two years until we settled the other hard stuff. By that time it was too late, her discomfort had solidified and is still the main problem in our relationship as coparents six years after we split.

So, my only advice to you is keep doing what you're doing. Process this. Talk to your partner. Talk to your therapist. Don't let your discomfort fester into something worse. Communicate.
posted by Tabitha Someday at 7:55 AM on April 8 [7 favorites]

After I came out as trans to my partner, she read basically every trans partner memoir she could find (I wish there were more!). One of the ones that she found that most echoed her internal feelings and experience was My Husband’s a Woman Now. I really appreciated the opportunity to better understand what was going on inside without her having to step through every detail herself. You might have similar luck if you read through a wide range of memoirs and even if they don’t match, it’s a helpful place to start a discussion about how you feel. How you feel is ok and not something that needs approval from your partner as much as they might not want to hear it! This is a process that necessarily involves change and grief is a natural part of that.
posted by Brassica oleracea at 7:55 AM on April 8 [2 favorites]

my spouse was the one thing in my life that felt... steady. Unchanging.

It's super common, in 2024, for the words "gender" and "identity" to get glued together like they were married. I've always found it more helpful to use those words like they're just friends: both are important, but they cover different aspects of being a person. Way I see it, identity is about who we are and gender is but one of the ways how we are.

Your spouse is still the same person you married, and as long as they want to stay married to you and you to them, there's no reason why you need to think of them as any less steadily there. They're learning more about life and about the way they see themself as they get older and pile up experiences, as do we all.

The thing about identity, on its own, is that none of us actually can change who we are: I'm always the one in here, with the rest of the world and all the other people in it out there, and that remains the case regardless of how anybody else sees me or indeed of how I see myself. That's more than the human condition, that's the conscious entity condition. In the immortal words of Buckaroo Banzai: no matter where you go, there you are.

If I were to get into the habit of thinking of my identity as a hetero cis husband or as an inner space cadet or as Australian or as politically left wing or as anything beyond purely being me, then I am pretty sure I would experience quite a lot of distress whenever any such aspect were to change, because I'd inevitably feel as if I were losing part of myself. So I've never been a fan of "identity as".

Always having been rigorous about keeping the identity question distinct from the self-description question leaves me free to deal with even quite profound alterations in my circumstances and the ways in which I understand myself without piling on the additional suffering that would inevitably arise from that fear of loss. And the same distinction also helps me cope more easily with changes in people close to me: they're still them regardless of how they or me or anybody else happens to think of them. If ms flabdablet were to tell me tomorrow that I'm now in a homosexual marriage with a trans man, my first instinct would be to hug and reassure and then hope like hell that this is still a marriage that works for him.

I am having fears that they may change and... outgrow our relationship? Which is silly!

Not the slightest bit silly. Absolutely par for the course in any committed intimate relationship, especially while navigating the intense process of a partner understanding important aspects of themself in a new and different light. Hell, I go through periodic bouts of wondering why the hell ms flabdablet continues to put up with me after triggers way less strong than that one.

Keep hugging. Keep talking. Most of all, keep listening. You two will help each other figure this out together. That's what marriage is for.

Wishing you both all the best. May your marriage be long and remain deeply fulfilling for both of you.
posted by flabdablet at 8:01 AM on April 8 [16 favorites]

I am having fears that they may change and... outgrow our relationship?

That's a valid fear. They are having a raft of new experiences that are going to stretch their understanding of the world and themselves.

You seem to be dedicated to not being left behind though. Keep it up -- learn what they're learning, see what they're seeing. You don't need to change your life to center around their changing identity, but understanding the new context they're living in is a valid and very important pursuit.

In short, it's a time of growth for both of you.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:04 AM on April 8

Sometimes when we are uncomfortable with something going on with a spouse or partner or close friend, we feel bad, like it makes us not be supportive of them or their situation. This isn't true at all! It would be weird if you didn't have some feelings in response to a big change in the life of a beloved person.

Your feelings about this don't make you a jerk, or transphobic, or silly. So my first suggestion: let go of the self-deprecation and self-criticism around your own feelings, as much as I can. Let yourself feel those feelings. Pretending them away or judging yourself negatively is going to make it harder to process them and support your spouse.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:45 AM on April 8 [1 favorite]

Can I recommend Doc Impossible's entire Substack archive? (homepage)

She transitioned pretty late in life, and she and her wife stayed married. I find her writing really straightforward, science-based, and refreshing, and she's super sensitive to common concerns that both trans people and their loved ones might face. She's also really open about pros and cons and things to know about different aspects of transition, which may be helpful to both you and your spouse.

Articles that might be helpful to you right now:

"Oh, s#!t, my partner just told me they're trans"

Letting Them Go (Why Loved Ones Grieve Us When We Begin Our Transitions)

What Does All This Trans Stuff Mean?
posted by ngaiotonga at 4:35 PM on April 8 [2 favorites]

My husband transitioned about eight years ago. We are still together. I try to overcome my feelings by being very pragmatic. Pragmatically, the past eight years saw a great deal of change, but my husband's gender change was only one of many.

I'm sorry that you are facing all these challenges at the same time. My husband's transition was one of the events in my life that are forcing me to hold less tightly to my idea of what the "rules" are for how life works, how it will work, and what I can take for granted. I believe that I get to choose what I need to be solid for me - and for me that's being loved. Having that, I was able to do the rest.
posted by rebent at 8:55 PM on April 8 [3 favorites]