Reddit reviews She's Not the Man I Married

Not knowing anything about how you and your wife are/have been navigating your transition - - as someone married to a person currently transitioning MtF, can I leave you with a quote from the book She's Not the Man I Married by Helen Boyd? It that might speak to some of the conflict your wife is in.

> I've felt convinced that at the root of it all is sexuality, that my unwillingness to love a woman is about facing unfamiliar genitals and wondering who is supposed to be on top. I couldn't figure out why loving a woman should seem so unimaginable when loving that same person in a male body was so fantastic. Since I was already comfortable with flexible gender roles, it didn't make any sense why some part of me was dragging its heels and saying no. But in the 21st century, in which the primary ethic is to do whatever you need to do to be yourself, fulfilled, and happy, it's hard not to notice that I'm stuck between a paradox and a dilemma: Either I'd have to change my sexual orientation to accommodate my husband's transition - and do so in an era when gay men have stopped pretending they can change theirs - or my husband would need to find a way to feel female without changing sex. It seems almost laughable, even to me. One voice in my head tells me we're screwed, while another unapologetically suggests I simply haven't tried hard enough.
(pp 36-37)

Can I suggest some reading material? My Husband Betty and She's Not the Man I Married by Helen Boyd. She's a bit of a navel gazer and talks a lot about theory and sociology and how it applies to her situation.

She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan. This one is her personal story about discovering herself up to her transition. It really close to home for us. She's working on a followup book about raising her boys in a transgendered home. It's supposed to be out later this year.

My spouse is transgender and we have 4 children. This never came up for us until about 13 years into our relationship and pretty much simultaneous with my 4th pregnancy.

Hey, I don't have a really good answer for any of this but I would suggest you read She's Not the Man I Married . I would be more than willing to send you my copy when I've finished reading it.

I would defiantly try to talk out her communication issues in therapy. She should feel able to talk to you.

There are a couple of books that I think your library may have (or be able to get through interlibrary loan).

Nobody Passes,
Delusions of Gender,
She's Not the Man I Married.

The last book is the sequel to an earlier one, and is probably one that would speak most to what you seem to be asking in this post.

When I'm having a discussion about gender, one of the visual analogies I like to do is this (motions in italics, spoken is not italics):

(take a piece of paper, like 8½ x 11 or A1)
All humans have emotions and feelings and desires and hope and longings.
start tearing the paper into smaller squares
These pieces represent the feelings, hopes, desires and emotions we all have.
there should be one pile now
Each society and culture decides which of these human things is masculine and which is feminine
split the pile into 2 piles
One pile is for humans with penises, the other for humans with vaginas.
take 1-2 pieces from each pile and put them into the other
As long as one mostly conforms to society's idea of what belongs in each pile, a little difference is acceptable.
take a lot more than 1-2, but less than half from each pile and pop it into the other pile
But when too much of you is different from what society expects, you get called sissy, fag, dyke, queer, tomboy and other bad & cruel things. Bad enough that some people will attack and beat you for being different. Long before children know what sex is, they're beating each other for being too different while denouncing the victim as a fag or lezzie. And even as adults, the violence gets called things like "hate crime" and "gay bashing" and sometimes results in death.
now take almost all of it, more than half of each pile and toss them into the other pile
And sometimes, you get so far from what society expects that you get like this. Where you are convinced that you're in the wrong body. That's usually called "gender dysphoria*.

From there, there is usually a discussion with questions and answers, and it is OK for the answers to be "I don't know" or "I don't know yet".

I don't know if your SO was victimized in school, but that can make some folks think that they're really more of the wrong sex than they really are (as in they're really "just a sissy" and not "a woman trapped in a man's body"). This is grossly over-simplified, but I think it gives an idea of what a real therapist would be needed to identify. And please don't think I'm disparaging sissies, transgendered people or anyone in between.

It is normal for you to not be attracted if your SO transitions - because attraction and sexual identity is very important; and people rarely look into where it comes from and why. It isn't reasonable to say "well, it is still the same person inside" because it is extremely common to lose attraction (and become disgusted) when your partner gains large amounts of weight. It is still the same person inside, but the package is not what we're looking for. I'm sorry. You're sorry. We're all sorry.

[She's Not the Man I Married: My Life with a Transgender Husband]
(http://www.amazon.com/Shes-Not-Man-Married-Transgender/dp/1580051936/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332921087&sr=1-9&tag=bookforyoums-20)