It’s become clear to me recently that being transgender has been like living in a carefully constructed and maintained house of cards. Designed to protect me from discovery of my secret, my house has many rooms and no windows. Rooms are labeled with names like “How I’m supposed to be with people at work,” and “How I’m supposed to be with my wife,” and “How I’m supposed to be with friends.” Like any house of cards it’s prone to sudden collapse and needs continuous monitoring to detect any slippage before it crashes down.

I’ve even had a house of cards with my therapists even as I knew that I needed to be fully transparent to help them help me out of depression, anxiety, and dysphoria. With my shame I was unable to do so and thought that my feelings could be treated separately without their (and my) full understanding of my psyche.

I now know I was wrong, which led me to spending a lot of time and money, relationship problems, and stifled career progression for the past 40 years. Important safety tip: don’t follow in my footsteps if you can avoid it.

It might help to provide a summary of the effects of living in my house of cards:

• Marriage
  

- I was often hyper-sensitive to anything I interpreted as criticism, leading to my needing reassurance that I am okay.

- Reduced sex drive due to my not being more true to my self as well as over-thinking innocent requests like, “Touch me here, this way.”

- Anger and frustration when she came up with what I interpreted as more rules for me to live by, like being advised to not wave my hands when talking (looks effeminate, go figure), be sure to keep the washing machine’s lid raised when not in use to prevent odor, shake out washed clothes before putting them in the dryer. Oh great, more cards to add to my already-teetering house.

- “I’m so tired” as my common phrase at most hours of the day. Who could blame me? Keeping my house from falling while doing my job or anything else with others is exhausting.

• Children
  

- Always good at shaking the house, challenging the status quo, not listening or following through… and me, paranoid about being found out. I was so uptight, trying to control and direct instead of providing them with the warm comfort they expected. (My wife assures me I wasn’t that bad and was actually a good father. She's biased of course.)

- Thank goodness I had two sons. I can’t imagine how tough it would have been for me (and them) if I’d had daughters.

• Career
  

- Often unhappy and unfulfilled, threatened by senior management due to doubts I was really one of the boys. Trying to act the part, mostly succeeding, but at a huge cost to me.

- Despite my competence, I communicated - more often than I should have - insecurity, fear, need of reassurance: not a promotion path.

- Always the one who first thought of customer’s feelings over pragmatic business realities, leading to a fair amount of raised eyebrows.

- Changed jobs a lot trying to find the “right one.”

Do I still live in my house of cards? To some extent, yes, although many of the cards have been removed recently by my coming out to my wife and therapist. What a huge relief! But it still has to be maintained while I consider where/when/if I come out to others. At least, though, I finally have awareness that my house isn’t as unstable as I’d thought and for that matter I care a bit less about it these days.

I still have an in-law apartment above the garage which I maintain to keep track of what I have not yet confided to my wife. I’m having trouble, for example, telling her that I am and will be buying more clothes and accessories, that I need to store and care for them, and that I’ll be getting some coaching on all this from TG community resources.

Emma