Being the wife of someone who has come out as gender-fluid has its challenges. In previous posts, as well as in more detail in the book-in-progress, I’ve talked about a lot of those experiences, but here’s a new set of thoughts.

I understand that the majority of my husband’s life he’s had to be seen in a certain way that did not always fit who he knew he was. No one wants people to see them as something they aren’t. For those that are gender-fluid, and certainly those that are transgender, being mislabeled is traumatizing. When you know in your heart that you are a boy and someone still refers to you as a girl, uses feminine pronouns, uses your feminine name… it is deeply disturbing. And it’s not about hating girls. It’s about the fact that you are not a girl, but others are seeing you that way and being seen as something that you aren’t is a denial of your very self.

But as the spouse of a newly out gender-fluid husband, well, that’s just something I kinda have to deal with from here on out. Every time my spouse has the freedom to present feminine in order to be who he is and how he wants to be seen, I lose my ability to be seen as what I feel I am. Instead of being that heterosexual wife with a husband, I become part of that lesbian couple. And again, this isn’t that I hate lesbians, or I think lesbians are wrong, or that I had any negative feelings towards lesbians at all. It’s about knowing who you are and being mislabeled. And that being mislabeled can suck sometimes.

And with my husband able to express certain aspects of his femininity that are more constant in his character – always having his nails painted, feminine piercings, a more feminine hair cut – I am at the very least always part of a “queer” relationship. I never get to go anywhere with him again and just blend in as an “average” cisgender couple.

Most of the time, it not only doesn’t bother me, I literally don’t even think about it. I’m totally happy and content in the life I am living with my husband and family almost all the time.

But every now and again it will catch me sideways. Every now and then I feel a little resentful. Sometimes the bratty child in me pouts and says, “well sure, one of us can’t be who we are by why does it have to be me?” Every now and then I feel a little sad. Sometimes the little voice in my head says, “nothing will ever be like it was, you never get to be 100% you again.”

Truly not often, but every now and again.

And I open up and write this here as both a little bit of self-flagellation because I feel like it’s selfish and non-supportive, but also because I know it IS NOT selfish or non-supportive. It is in fact the reality that if I see myself as a cis straight girl, and he presents genderfluid – well then I really am kinda screwed sometimes. There is literally no actual solution that allows everyone to be exactly who they are 100% of the time. And that’s life. Love it’s never perfect, and as strong and unbreakable as our love is, we’re no different.

I am still, as I sit here typing this, a victim to the fallacy that letting someone be who they are is easy in the end if you love them, but everything about this is about a easy as a Monday morning – inevitable, but sometimes a little bit of a trainwreck. Nothing about this is simple.

So I guess I write this to remind myself of that, and maybe to make someone else who is feeling the same way remember it, too. Love it tough regardless of what your love looks like. Life is tough, regardless of what your individual challenges may be. That’s just how it goes.

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There’s a lot more where this came from! Want to read about bunny assassins and loved ones lost and deranged Christmas shoppers and surviving suicide? Please check out the rest of The Tangent Girl Volumes!

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