My partner has recently come out as a transwoman - I feel less and less attraction towards her the further she transitions and it's putting a huge strain on our relationship. How do we navigate this new dynamic and not make it a dealbreaker since there are kids involved?

My partner (36F) and I (35F) have been married for 15 years. We have 3 kids together, two under the age of 10, and one teenager. I am a straight cis woman with no attraction whatsoever to other women. We are in the US.

Last year my husband came out as a transwoman. I've tried to be as supportive as possible and we have spent a lot of our savings on her surgeries. She's on hormones, she has plenty of feminine clothing and make up, and she's had multiple surgeries. The next surgery that she wants is to get a neovagina and while I've been cheering her on from the sidelines (what am I supposed to do?) this breaks my heart. I feel like I've lost the love of my life and when I look at her, I see a stranger. There's no attraction there and we haven't had sex since she's come out because I'm just not into it, even though she does keep trying to initiate.

My partner has been saying that I must be bisexual or pansexual because I fell in love with a transwoman but that's not true at all. We've gone to couples therapy and apparently she has felt this way since she was a little kid, which makes me feel even worse because I've told her everything, and I mean everything, about my life. I feel deceived and heartbroken and I can't even talk to any of our mutual friends about this because they're all rightly supportive about her bravery in coming out.

I don't know what to do. I've been used as emotional support for both my partner and my teenaged daughter who's apparently being bullied after her friends saw my partner picking her up from school wearing a short dress, heels and extensions. I've talked to my partner about not dressing like that when we're in public with the kids and she's agreed, but the damage has been done. Recently she has been sleeping on the couch because I just can't do it anymore.

She has all these new trans friends and I can't relate at all to any of them. I feel like she's jealous of me because I'm a cis woman because she makes comments when I'm on my period about how she wishes she could menstruate whenever I mention cramps and it's lead me to be secretive about even buying tampons. One time I came home to seeing her wearing my underwear (bra and panties) and being basically drowned in my perfume and jerking off to p*rn which has lead me to simply hiding those things because I don't see how I can even begin to bring this up.

I'm terrified of being seen as transphobic, because I'm not. She's a woman and that's what's making this so difficult. I'm not attracted to women at all. I want a husband, not a wife. But I know that if I divorce her now when she needs my emotional support more than ever it'll end very badly, and I don't want to have a negative relationship between us. I still love her and I want to be able to work this out. I've talked to her about all of this already but the lack of attraction and feelings of being deceived aren't going away. I feel like a real a-hole and I want to know if this relationship can be salvaged and how.

submitted by /u/ThrowRa727277277 to r/relationship_advice
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