I’ve been re-reading my first blog entries from November last year (Nov 2023 – Eunuchorn).

I was in quite a mess. My marriage was in tatters and I went from coming out to feeling like the world was ending in less than a month.

If it wasn’t for my online friends, I do not think that I would have understood what was happening to me at all.

Husband’s difficulties

The way I came out as wanting to be castrated – wanting to be a eunuch – somewhat traumatised my husband. He has his own history of abusive relationships and my confessions seemed to him to put our marriage as one of those relationships. The strange psycho-sexual baggage of dark kink proved to be more upsetting to him than me saying I wanted my testicles removed. Indeed, in later conversations, it transpired that he didn’t even realise that I’d been talking about castration until few weeks later!

The problems he had shot what I shared fell into two areas (and the issues persist to this day):

1. Sexual coercion

He has said that my behaviour prior to this coming out was sexually coercive – strong words. He said that because I asked him to play a role and do things to me that he wasn’t comfortable with and I refused to discuss anything.

Although I asked, I didn’t demand, and “no” was a perfectly good answer and it would have been accepted, even if I was disappointed.

I think that I need to explore why he felt that he couldn’t say “no” to me. Unbelievably, we have only just started talking about this recently.

This is coming up in my own therapy sessions lately, where my counsellor refuses to let me accept responsibility for this.

2. Who was this person he was married to?

I have kept those parts of myself that scared me from everybody – including the man I love. He is left wondering who I am and what was true. Was any of our relationship true? These questions infuriate me because, from my perspective, nothing from the past has changed.

Attempts to answer my husband’s questions in this regard aren’t getting anywhere – it feels as though he doesn’t want to move on from this.

Dizzying highs and terrifying lows

Early on there were moments of self discovery and acceptance (Gender Euphoria? and Am I reaching an acceptance of myself?) – these were wonderful feelings. There were times when I thought that my husband was with me (Husband is onboard! and Husband’s Support?) and then times when he seemed to backtrack on his support (Backtracking Husband).

It was a mixed up shook-up time (December was worse, but I’ll look at that next month).

My poor husband had a lot to deal with: I’d come out with the scary sexual fantasies, and for a few years prior to this “coming out” I’d tried to get him to enact some elements of them (which hurt him deeply), and then I told him that I wanted to be castrated. I went from “I am afraid that I want this thing” to “this is going to happen whether you like it or not”, which made him feel excluded.

I went from manic highs to terrifying lows – I believe that whatever was happening for me threw my husband into his own tailspin, and that made my swings more pronounced, which made his mental health decline further, and so on.

It’s an example of two people’s illnesses feeding off each other.

Compassion

I have to have some compassion for myself during that difficult time in my life. My husband can’t go there because he was too damaged by it himself, so I have to give compassion for my own difficulties to myself. I am grateful to have survived that time – it could so easily not have.

I am glad that I am where I am – I have the bodily configuration that I need and in that I feel a deep contentment, even if other important aspects of my life feel broken beyond repair.

I wonder who else has had these kinds of difficulties coming to terms with their own body/gender identity journey?

You have my compassion and I’ll keep writing to support every one of you.

Sometimes, you just gotta be able to accept and love yourself because it ain’t coming from anywhere else!