This marriage lasted nearly three years with the usual collection of arguments, fights, etc., but finally it fell of its own weight. From intro- spective analysis, I would say that the TS who gets married as I did before maturing “AS A WOMAN” is the grossest of fools. If I had waited, perhaps I would have learned more about myself, about him and about the marriage relationship when I was the wife and not the husband. These are two quite different roles and my previous ideas of what a wife should do, be and expect, were acquired from considering the matter from the point of view of a husband. There was much I didn't know.

True, most women who marry are immature at the time, purely due to age, but at least they have had the advantage of preparing for marriage and motherhood ALL THEIR LIVES. Another thing was that we all have certain basic NEEDS. I NEEDED a mature masculine figure to lean on. Due to the nature of my husband's TV needs he was unable to satisfy this need and this contributed to the failure of our marriage.

I have told more than one doctor and will emphasize it here too that I wish there had been more opportunity for post operative psychotherapy. It would have helped me greatly in the aforementioned maturing process and in adjusting to the marital situation among other things. There is ever so much more to being a woman in modern society than just being a "female" and wearing dresses. Alas finding this out and learning what one needs to know and feel AFTER surgery is more than doubly difficult. I fully agree with Dr. Benjamin and others that the prospective sex change should be willing to live full time as a woman for a year before surgery and to solve in advance many of the problems that inevitably arise. And of course the most pressing of these is that of find- ing out whether the individual can earn an adequate living as a woman. Too often the economic complications do not appear until after surgery which may account for why so many of my "surgical sisters" wind up as prostitutes. Being unable to earn a living in usual ways they turn to women's "oldest profession". Of course, there is the added motivation of "proving" their femaleness and what better way that to take on a male sexually. Proper pre-operative experience and post-operative counsel- ling would help such people to know and accept their new selves, to adjust to society and to simply fade back into the world of women where they have so loudly proclaimed for so long that they belong.

In conclusion, several things have recently emerged as truths regard- ing the syndrome known at TS. There are no guarantees that the opera-

71