The Bruce Jenner Interview Experience

It's been a few days since the interview and in those few days, the transgender conversation has exploded. Within the community, I've seen both overwhelming support and overwhelming damnation of Bruce Jenner coming out on national television.

Dawn Ennis, a friend of mine (whom I have yet to physically meet :-D) in the trans community, made an excellent point in her TV interview that everyone has their own experience in how he or she discovered and figured out what to do about being transsexual, and I think people need to be conscious of that. Jenner is a celebrity and has been for about 40 years. No one could ask him to remain closeted just because his coming out would invite so much press. In my opinion, he handled it well. I can think of several other ways this could have gone really badly.

As the spouse of a transsexual (I'm still not sure why no one used this word instead of transgender, but I'm no expert either), I found the interview fascinating. Much of what Jenner said was true for our experience - albeit from my perspective. We have two kids, but they were much younger when Tasha began her transition than when Jenner's transition started. I was amused at one of the wife's quoted comments calling transition a "journey" because that's what Tasha's father called it. It's a very impersonal comment. I would never call what a trans person goes through a "journey." "Ordeal," probably. "Process," maybe. But when you wish people luck on their journey, it means you are not coming along. It's that person's journey, so send me a postcard when you get there.

I think Jenner will have a lot of support throughout the transition, even outside the family. People will accept the woman Jenner is and that will be good for trans people. But what about the other trans people? The ones who are not celebrities. The ones whose name we don't know. The ones whose only person looking at him or her is himself or herself in the mirror.

I thought mostly about the wives as I listened to the interview. I'm a spouse, after all. It was nice to hear that the ex-wives were supportive (although if they weren't they wouldn't say since they were quoted on national TV). I thought about having torn feelings toward Tasha's transition. I thought about being angry at the universe for all of it.

I remembered thoughts that went through my head only a few years ago that still echo sometimes in my head. As I was taking the last of Jonathan's things out of our closet and putting them into bags, I had this crazy revelation (however irrational it might have been) that I didn't marry a man after all. I married a woman. The only person who wanted to marry me was not even a guy. I'd had relationships before, but none of those led to marriage because clearly guys didn't find me to be marriage material. It made perfect sense to me at the time. If you know me personally, you'll agree that it fit nicely into my self-image.

Jenner said that as a man, he was being himself under the circumstances. That was not authentic to how he really felt about who he was, but in the man's body, he was who he could be: a woman's brain in a man's body. But did that make him a "man" while he was in that body? He certainly had that body's sensations. Like Tasha, he acted and reacted like a guy. Tasha tried to convince me of this, and I finally just let the idea go, but I maintained that a female brain was responsible for guiding the testosterone-driven body, so it was still not quite the same. But does it really matter in the long run for me as a spouse? It shouldn't. People come in all colors. Some guys with guy brains are more emotional than other guys with guy brains. I, for one, do not act like a "girly girl." So, should it have mattered? No, but it did. Have you ever doubted your attractiveness because your partner changed genders? Do you think the average person ever would?

The interview made me wonder about all of the other spouses out there. The ones who, like me, have gone on "the journey" with their partners/spouses. I know that there are many spouses who say they're bi-sexual, so the gender change didn't matter to them. What about the other heterosexual spouses? That's why I started this blog: to share my experience with other spouses out there. Maybe it was a selfish thought, but I kept thinking about the stories of those women and men who chose to stay and how many of those trans people never tried to end their lives because of it. I felt for Jenner's wives. I cannot have a shared experience with the transsexual person, but I can with their partners. I also thought about stories of partners who left.

If you haven't watched the interview, you should. I wonder what people who have absolutely no exposure to this felt about it. I mean really. I'm not talking about the people who post responses under articles. My perspective is different as a spouse to that of a transsexual. My experience is different from other spouses/partners. My experience is different from someone who has never had to think about it. What this interview did was start a bigger conversation, and that's super important. Sure, it's going to cause all sorts of reactions. Some will probably be bad. But the elephant is in the room and nobody can get around it without touching it now (unless perhaps you live under the carpet). So much good can come out of this. It's true and proper education at its finest. It's a "real world application," as they like to call it. Your perspective on the interview is important. The interview itself can be a jumping-off point to meaningful conversations.

Take advantage of Jenner's vulnerability, no matter what you thought of it.

A New Home

I've come to my blog a few times over the last few months and said to myself that I need to write something. A few people (thank you!!!) are following me here and don't I owe it to continue to comment on my marriage to a transsexual?

Well, yes.

Except that over the last few months what has occupied me was whether or not we would be moving back to Los Angeles, how good was the public school our kids would - and now do - attend, whether or not Natasha would like her new job at a new school, whether or not I would get more work out in L.A...

Throughout this time, I've been dealing with my own hormonal shifts, and that did have a bearing on how I have seen Natasha in my life. I've noticed my libido getting more intense at times and having no one I wanted to satisfy it with. I also know that she has been feeling that kind of thing, too, but she has had no one who wanted to satisfy it with her. See the difference? Not so good. But over all, it's not been the biggest blip on my radar.

In terms of this blog, what I can say about this time is that dealing with the stress was both affected and unaffected by being married to a transwoman. Like many transfolk, they also had other issues to contend with, like depression, anxiety, OCD, or some other issue that at its core had nothing to do with being trans... or not entirely to do with it. For Natasha, she has suffered from depression because of more than one thing. But during her transition, she tried very hard to convince me and those around us that becoming a woman would make her a happier and much less depressed person. The truth is that she is happier in herself, but she suffers from as much depression as she did before. She still has trouble handling stress and she handles it (or doesn't handle it as the case may be) the same way she did when she was a man. We suffered a ton of stress lately, especially since probably October, and she got just as angry, withdrawn, snappy, and horribly sad as ever. I found myself thinking, "She's driving me as crazy as she ever did." In this regard, and in many, MANY positive aspects, she has been the same.

What did affect me was that when I was dealing with other people during that time and I had to discuss myself and my spouse, I felt more bothered about having to explain the whole female father thing or the husband/spouse thing. This was not at all her fault. It was that my stress made little things bother me. Now that my stress level has decreased, having to explain to people that Jonathan is now Natasha and that she is still the father of our kids, etcetera, is more amusing.

So, now we're settled in Los Angeles. The kids are going to be homeschooled for at least the remainder of this year and probably all of next. Natasha definitely hates her job but there's a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a new career, thanks to my sister-in-law. My own parents have moved down the street, which makes both my kids and my folks immensely happy and makes Natasha and me relieved. We have Disneyland annual passes. I'm a producer on a fledgeling web-based TV news show for writers. Things are good, right?

I decided to write a blog post today because I wanted to share that Natasha and I had a talk not a week ago about our relationship. We both know that I feel the missing link between us and there's nothing either of us can do about that, but also we know that we are best friends and soul mates for life. Some day, maybe one of us might meet someone else who is a soul mate, too, and also has the right sexual orientation, but right now, nobody's looking. We're happy with each other. We have way too much else on our plates to even contemplate changing our lives in that way.

I'm in a private Facebook group for partners of transfolk and there's this one woman who, from my perspective, ran like a bullet to a lawyer for divorce papers after her spouse dropped a male Facebook profile for an entirely female one. Granted, from what she says and implies, the transitioning spouse isn't really including her in any of the decision-making, so I don't think either of them are really losing any sleep over ending the marriage, but it's got me thinking again about how fast people run away from problems. The sad fact is that me being married to a woman is still a "problem" in that I am now married to one of my best friends and not to my best friend to whom I'm immensely attracted to. Even if we weren't having sex, which happened for several years before, I was still immensely attracted to my husband. So, yes, it's a "problem." It does have an effect on my life on a daily basis that is noticeable. But it was MUCH worse in the beginning and still I didn't run. I will never run from her. Not because of her being a woman. And when I say that it's still a problem I say that along the same lines as that I'm not a millionaire is a problem or that the sliding door in the den is finicky so that's a problem. There are varying degrees of "problem," and Natasha being a woman is of the lesser degree.

The woman on Facebook is like many other women I've met over the last few years who used the transsexual card as the final straw to get out of a marriage. Again, in her case it seems that the transitioning spouse wasn't acting fairly. Still, she is one more example, to me, of someone who when she decided to run, ran really fast and very suddenly. It's like a switch was flipped in her head.

Why do people run from problems? Do they think that turning their back on them makes them disappear? I've never been able to do that. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I'm a control freak and if I don't know what's hunting me I can't figure out how to defeat it. It's like when you show an infant your face and then move it behind your hands. They really do think it's gone. It vanished. Some part of some people never grow out of that, I guess.

Natasha and I needed to have that conversation about our relationship. We'd danced around it a few times in the recent past, but we needed to be on the same page about each other. As much as the conversation was more than laced with sadness, it was all the honest truth and it was all said because we still love and respect each other and never want to hurt the other person but still remain true to ourselves. The truth has very big teeth and if you try to run from it, you will get a painful bite in the ass eventually.

The truth is that while I felt like I'd put some of "myself" aside for Natasha during her transition, I also discovered so much about myself. What I put aside was my heterosexuality. I put away much of my anger and frustration. I discovered that I am a strong person. I discovered that I am far more loyal and giving than I ever imagined. I discovered that I really am a good mom. I felt loss. Great, deep loss. But I got though it and I got over it. I was able to think through things that were becoming emotionally overpowering. The truth was that what I "put aside" was not anything that was... unauthentic... to myself. It was all me. I was not ever false to myself. I never lied to myself. Having to put aside aspects of your life or your nature doesn't mean you are being fake or false. We put aside aspects of our lives all the time. When we have kids, we can't stay out all night partying anymore (well, if you want to actually be a responsible parent, that is). When we start a new job, we can't necessarily show up in our pajamas.

The pain I felt during Natasha's transition was the pain of growth, realization, and survival. It was facing fear and loss and change. I could still have done without it all, but I'm finally looking at this as a period in my life where I learned more about me and what I can handle.

More to come. I promise.