Introduction

Greetings. I am the wife of a transgender woman who has been out to me since July 2020. The primary purpose of this blog is to provide information on the challenges I encountered and continue to encounter while on this journey toward understanding my spouse’s change in gender identity. Even after almost four years my spouse Marcie and I continue to work on our relationship. Although it’s not nearly all work. We have had a lot of fun on the road to a marriage that looks much different than we ever expected. This blog is meant to be a stepping stone from the book “Inside My Husband’s Closet” which detailed my journey during her first  year.

 This blog will be a place where partners, family members, and friends can come to read the experiences of others. Some of you may wish to pose questions as food for thought for future posts. Others may wish to join in the conversation, bringing their ideas forward for others to consider.

The blog will be moderated. By this I mean all comments from others will be reviewed before being posted. Comments I deem not consistent with the spirit of the conversation (helpful to others and kind), which are not posted with good intent, or are otherwise inappropriate may be held back and not posted.

This does not mean you will never encounter a thought that is disturbing to you. Use the title of a specific blog and my first few paragraphs to help you determine if this is a conversation in which you want to participate.

I have not written a blog before. This will be a learning experience for me. I do not know how many, if any, comments I will receive. I will review comments as quickly as I can, but that may take a while for popular topics. If multiple folk provide comments in a similar vein, I reserve the right to summarize and post as one. I don’t want reading the blog to become tedious because of length or complexity.

While an occasional comment may relate to our first year, the focus of this blog is on issues that occurred from the beginning of our second year onward. My posts will focus on the two of us as a transgender couple, although may expand to my broader circle of family and friends.  

The language and terminology surrounding those whose gender presentation and/or gender identity do not match their gender assigned at birth is evolving rapidly. The use of terminology varies across individuals as well as communities. Throughout this blog I will use the term ‘trans’ in reference to those who fit into one of these or other related categories, e.g. trans, transgender, cross dresser, etc. First, ‘trans’ is currently the term most commonly used by Marcie. Second, ‘trans’ is the term with the broadest and loosest definition. The term is an umbrella term as it is used by individuals across a wide range of identities.  

This approach is my own. Many individuals may disagree with this and other definitions that I use as I write. My usage of terminology is not meant to be definitive, exclusive, or offensive. However, continually providing all of the possible terms for a given concept would quickly become tedious and could obscure my meaning. See Chapter 9 in “Inside My Husband’s Closet” if you wish a more extensive discussion of LGBTQ+ terminology.

My use of pronouns will vary throughout the blog. When I touch on topics in the first couple of years, when she was still intermittently presenting as masculine, I may reference Marcie as ‘he’. Once she had socially transitioned full time ‘she’ will become the pronoun I use in most cases.

My posts won’t be written or presented in any specific order. For example, my first few blogs will not necessarily address my thoughts during Marcie’s second year out. As I have done in the book, I will annotate a given thought as a number in brackets. The number will represent the days since my wife came out. For example, something I wrote in my journal on the tenth day after she came out will be noted as [10]. In this way, the reader can compare the timeline of my journey with that of their own, although we’ll generally not match closely. All couples have their own unique story.

My blogs will focus primarily on the cisgender partners/spouses/family/friends of those who are trans women. This decision was made because this is the realm of my experience. I may on occasion extend the conversation to trans men, with the understanding I have less personal experience with these folks.

In the beginning, my posts will not appear on any specified schedule. If you wish to receive an email when I’ve made a new post, go to https://cherylbthompson.wordpress.com/contact/ . Enter your name, email, and a note to add you to the mailing list.

See you tomorrow.

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