Hi Briannah,

I don't really know you (I have been away from the site for a while), but I just wanted to say... this post is beautiful.  Thank you so much for sharing with us.  I wish all the best to you and Nikki as you repair/rebuild your marriage.

(Well, OK, the cheese mousse thing... maybe not so beautiful.  But definitely everything else! )

Hi there!  It's nice to meet you, and not knowing someone but stopping to chat is how we get to know people, yes?  I'm a cisgender partner of a MtF genderfluid still figuring it out.  I use the male gender when I talk about him because that is what Nikki told me he feels is appropriate to us, I just wanted to get that out there because I do understand how important pronouns are and I don't want to come across to someone new like I live in a denial world or am rude to my husband!   

This place has been so helpful and important to me, I had stumbled through a few forums trying to learn about my new normal after the long secret finally came out, and so many of them it kinda felt like wanted to convince me I didn't matter at all in sorting out this new normal.  Only here were people willing to help me learn and also care about my feelings and struggles in the process.  People were willing to tell me what I was confused and/or unrealistic about, but they also were willing to tell me what Nikki was also, and that some of the things going on weren't okay.  And it was always gentle!  I loved that, that we were both treated like people.  And Nikki has come to the decision inside himself that transition isn't for him, and that he only had told me that was his decision because he had been presented with the ideology that it was the only solution.  But finding others here who live the way he has realized he wants to has been tremendous for him.  I like that this board is inclusive of the middle pathers, the fluid, the binary, and the transitioners alike, as well as us partners.    And I think it's so important to marriages that partners do have a welcoming place to learn how their life will change and get support.  This place was a major factor in my road to morph it from a huge, terrifying thing to my new normal. 

And, weirdly, this place has hugely helped with my body dismorphic disorder (mostly centered around my face, it's crooked, one entire side droops, was born that way not a stroke aftereffect and my brain can't...deal rationally with it) and my emotional damage from growing up under my father.  Which sorta proves the people are people, and human experiences are best shared!  Definitely way more alike than unlike, and kindness and connection is definitely the key for everyone to learn to live together on this planet.  I wish everyone would learn. 

We're slowly getting closer than ever I think, because we're working for it, and choosing it.  Some things you have to earn, right?  It also doesn't hurt that we have flaming examples of terrible relationships around us to remind us of things.  The kind where neither partner shows any consideration for the other, and the growing rifts between them was a wakeup call that it's easy to do that, and it's not easy to be proactive about it, but I want Nikki around.    Even if his hair and face are way better than mine! LOL

PS> If you go on a Princess Cruise ever...I hope you like beef and seafood, that seemed to be their goto meals, but do... not... ever... EVER... decide to be adventurous and try to the cheese mousse. 

Hi Briannah,

It is a pleasure to meet you as well!   I'm really happy to hear that this site has been so helpful to you, both with your relationship with Nikki and in other areas.  I agree that it is important for partners to find support, and that is often difficult to find.  I'm so glad you were able to find it here!   This site has also been very helpful to me as I was working through things.  We are fortunate that so many wonderful people visit here!

I, too, wish everyone would learn that lesson about kindness and connection.  The world would certainly be a better place.

It's so heartening to hear that you and Nikki are growing closer, and that you are choosing to do so.  Not everyone in the same situation would make the same choice.  I always enjoy hearing about couples who decide they can still make their relationship work after one of the partners comes out as non-cis.  Since so many marriages do not survive that type of revelation, it always warms my heart to see examples where the relationship endures, and even grows!  I am sending both of you my best wishes!

And beef is OK, but I *love* seafood!  But not to worry, unless my financial situation changes significantly, I doubt I will ever be on a cruise, so I will never have to worry about being tempted by the lure of cheese mousse!

You never know, I think cheese mousse migrates around the world, it could stalk you down!  I'm not sure how it qualifies as mousse though.  I've had several varieties of mousse, and the defining characteristic was the light fluffy texture(although I also hated the mango mousse, mangos aren't for me).  This was neither, it was a dense molded little thing of stinky cheese.

I have an issue eating beef, and get really sick from more than small amounts.  It's not an allergy, nothing dramatic, but my body can't digest it properly.  I mean eating it more than once a week small, sometimes two weeks, or i get really horribly sick, something you do NOT want to do in a tiny cruise cabin bathroom.  It took me two trips to come to terms with the fact that the toilets work basically with a giant vacuum cleaner somewhere in the ship and the creepy sound they make when you flush them, I don't want to 'pray' at them!  So I spent the whole week on Princess eating a lot of cuban chickan panini's at the panini bar and pizza.  It's kinda sad that I didn't like their food (there is some variance from ship to ship, but it's more in the small details than the options) because the ship was amazing and Nikki really loved it.  Unfortunately I was really not a good fit with either the menu or the personal relationship with my room steward.  Holland America is my favorite cruiseline, and the room stewards are like ninja's, you NEVER see them.  It might have been okay if i hadn't had a major female crisis in my sleep on white sheets and had to face her the next day.  X_X  She was really lovely, and so nice...but nothing saves you from that level of embarrassment. 

And some of the Holland America ships have a pizza bar right next to the pool, it's awesome to have a swim and hit up the pizza bar in your suit and nosh with the caribbean music playing and the happy swimmers and view of the ocean while you let the winds dry you off.  Because nothing says "HELP ME" like walking into an area of full air conditioning in a wet swim suit!

They had this awesome hangout in the middle of the ship, a three story piazza filled with little cafes and bars (the panini cafe was here, and right next to a coffee bar with awesome little deserts, so you can guess we spent a lot of time here after dinner so I could eat too!) and live entertainment on the big open floor.  It was gorgeous! 

Thankfully my life experience has taken off the blinders on a lot of things around relationships.  The first thing that has helped me massively in all of them was realizing that despite social expectations, relationships are actually all as individual as the people in them.  That idea was never really presented in my area, it was 'all people in relationships do this, feel this, go there" sorta things.  The second being the various outcomes of people who lived by that and expected everything to magically work out.  One set of great grandparents fought extensively, nastily, and publicly.  No one was sure why they were married.  It was ugly.  One set of grandparents seemed to me sort of unaware that they were married and not just roommates, and the only time I ever saw them in the same room or interact was at the table for meals, and had the old tv separate bedrooms things.  My parents divorced after my dad cheated taking me with him and the fallout after mom asked the routine what did you do today? when she got home from work, and my dad and later stepmom spent years teaching me it was my moms fault since she didn't go out with him on weekends (cuz, you know, me!), so you deserve to get cheated on if you don't neglect your kid, good life lessons.  LOL  My own disastrous first marriage that retrospect showed me was an attempt to get away from the family.  Escape doesnt' make a good relationship, especially when he had an untreated mental illness in the mix. 

I only had one reasonable marriage to pattern after, the other set of grandparents.  They did a lot of communication and compromise.  They also would argue publicly, but they always argued the point and not each other.  There was no presentation of marital perfection, but a realistic 'this is what it is like to live with someone full time'.  It was the best thing in my life as a teaching role and as a stable place to spend my summers and vacations away from my crazy parents (mom wasn't really better than dad). 

So...here I am, remarried after Nikki convinced me marriage isn't horrifying.  And he worked really hard at it, and just when I'd about overcome most of my trust/relationship isssues (it took me over a decade, it was a lot of damage and I'm slow okay?) this hit.  And it's sort it out or it breaks.  If you haven't read my other entries, the short form is Nikki always presented this as a we tell each other everything, trust each other, and really know each other sort of deal, and I slowly learned to exist in that kind of set up, and thrive in it, only to find out 17 years in he lied, about something I gave him plenty of room to talk to me about that was obviusly not a dealbreaker.   So...to keep this going both of our issues are in play and it's a great big mess but we're slowly putting it back together like a jigsaw puzzle.  It's not easy.  It's ugly, it's messy, it's joyful, it's fun, it's tedious, it's exasperating, it's just...life.  I will never try to gloss over things, becasue I think we have a global culture of expectations that have nothing to do with reality because people are for some reason unwilling to talk about the ugly and the hard and the work required for things.  You know, the 'must be nice' mentality that other people who have something good it just fell into their laps instead of them working for it. 

LOL  I"m sorry, I tend to freethink and write novels or at least full Victorian letter length things.    I"ll shut up now!