TRANSVESTIA

Dear Virginia:

I am writing this letter because I need to say what I think to someone and have decided to say it to you. First of all let me say that I am the wife of an FP and have known and lived with his secret for ten years. I have read "The Transvestite and His Wife" and many issues of TVia. I have tried to understand and to be of some assistant to my husband but my marriage is going down the drain.

Everything I have read about FPs has stressed that the wife and fam- ily must give him understanding and acceptance. But nothing has been said about the FP trying to understand his wife and family. I have met several FPs and they all have one thing in common they are self-cen- tered, egotistical, and very immature. They fail to realize that their wives and families have problems that are not associated with FPia, and that wives have their hangups too. I have not objected to my husband's dress- ing nor his going out while dressed up. He looks very good and can and has passed as a woman. But it seems the more I allow him to do in this area the less he needs me or his family. Our sex life is almost at a stand- still because no one can turn him on like his femme-self can. I cannot make love to him while he is dressed as it seems too much like a lesbian relationship and this makes me physically ill.

I can't talk to him anymore because if I try to tell him how I feel he automatically takes it as a personal insult or that I am trying to make him feel like a louse. So I have kept my mouth shut and that makes him mad also. No matter what I do I am still in the wrong. I am trying to keep our marriage together but I don't know how much longer I can stand our present situation. My nerves are shot and I am under a doctor's care for them. I can't make a marriage work all by myself.

Even though I have read the book "The TV and His Wife", I still worry that he will eventually want to become a full time woman such as yourself. He says he doesn't want to have the sex change but if he should decide to live as a full time woman that would be just as bad as if he had had the change.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life living with another woman, even if she isn't the genuine article. I want and need a real man that I can lean on and that I can depend upon, not half a man who leans so very heavily on me that I can't depend upon him to be there when I need him. I am tired of screaming for help and nobody listens to me.

You can print this if you desire and think it might help someone else

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