Hannah McKnight: Thank You, I’m Sorry

Gratitude isn’t easy for me. I FEEL it all the time. Like, literally all the time. I am thankful that I woke up, I feel thankful when I am settling into bed and hearing the wind and rain outside and I remember how fortunate I am to have a place to live. I am lucky to have food in my kitchen. I am blessed to be healthy.

But it’s the people in my life I feel the most gratitude towards, particularly my wife. I love her, and as I get older and I experience more and more, I realize that a relationship needs more than love. A committed relationship is the sharing of a life. Yes, you both need to have your own lives, but there is a third one, the one you have together.

Your entwined life needs to have the partnership of both of you. It’s not both of you giving fifty percent, it’s both of you making sure the two of you combined are giving 100%.  If I am having a bad day, I may not be able to give half.  Maybe I can do thirty percent, but that’s when my wife gives seventy percent.  This dynamic is true when she is having a bad day as well.  If you live together, it takes both of you to keep your home running, so to speak. The cleaning, the cooking, the maintenance, requires the energy and commitment from you both. When something breaks, the two of you need to work together to fix it. It’s not the other person’s problem if there is a plumbing issue, even if they were the one who broke it. Blame isn’t productive. A committed relationship means it’s the two of you against the problem, not the two of you against each other.

My wife and I work well together. We have our areas of responsibilities around the home, and we help each other when and where we can. I can’t cook, but I can help by washing the dishes, for example.

I feel grateful for the love we have, and our ability to work with each other. And, bonus, we like each other. We enjoy spending time together, especially if we’re catching up on our favorite show and having takeout.

It’s a wonderful life. It’s a small, quiet, simple life. The best kind. It’s the life we both wanted.

We are grateful and blessed, and we know it. And we thank each other for the things we do for one another. As I said, I have a hard time expressing gratitude, but to put a finer point on it, I have a hard time expressing how grateful I am, in an adequate way, for the life I have. It’s easier if I express my feelings during small acts of love and kindness. I don’t think I can find the words that are big and encompassing enough to equal the gratitude I feel for the amazing life I have.

It’s a wonderful life. It’s a small, quiet, simple life. The best kind. It’s the life we both wanted.

Of course, who I am is a significant part of how fortunate I feel. My wife is accepting of who I am in regards to my gender identity, and it wasn’t easy for her. But we got through it, I listened, I changed, I responded to her concerns, and I went (and continue to do so) to therapy to learn how to communicate and how to listen.  Not on;y about gender, but how to communicate about everything else in my life.

I also stopped drinking, which made every aspect of my life, especially being able to control my impulses, much better. And really, so much of the Pink Fog (which is when our ability to make decisions and think things through when it comes to this side of us) is completely tied to impulse.

I’m grateful for her patience and her sincere attempts at understanding all of this. I’m grateful she has accepted who I am. It took a lot of time, work, and love which is normal in a relationship, but crossdressing and gender identity are not parts of your partner’s life that you usually anticipate dealing with.

To clarify, she doesn’t understand WHY I am who I am, but that’s fair. I don’t understand that either, but she understands this is WHO I am.

Being who I am, with her acceptance, is more than just wearing panties everyday and getting makeovers a couple of times each month. It’s being able to talk about my feelings and share whatever pointless thoughts that run through my head. It’s being able to talk about every aspect of who I am with my best friend and partner.

“Thank you” rings hollow. I need a bigger word than those two.

“I’m sorry” also falls short.

Gender identity can bring peace and happiness to someone, but it rarely, if ever, makes a relationship easier. Speculating about your partner’s gender isn’t something most people think about when they are dating. I think more people are prepared for the possibility of their partner being unfaithful than they are when it comes to the possibility that their partner crossdresses.

When I feel thankful for my life I often feel regret for what my wife went through all those years ago. Those feelings of confusion and frustration and anger and loneliness.  The fear she felt, and still feels, that someone will find out.  I am well aware of how people can react to someone identifying as nonbinary and my wife is as well.  Neither of us want to have “The Talk” with anyone.  She and I know who I am and all the nuances that come with gender identity and it’s exhausting to try to explain that to someone.  It’s not unlike trying to get someone up to speed about what is happening in a Netflix series when they haven’t watched the first six seasons.

It’s not unlike trying to get someone up to speed about what is happening in a Netflix series when they haven’t watched the first six seasons.

I thought I knew who I was when we met.  I thought all of this was just about lingerie.  I didn’t even consider my gender identity.  I was a man, and I was a man who wore panties.  Of course, I have grown since then.  I came out to her when we were dating and since then, I’ve included her in my journey in terms of what I was thinking, feeling, and wanting.  Every new step for me was exciting, but every new step for her was one more strut into unknown territory.  Was I heading towards transitioning?  Would I be careless in removing my makeup and someone noticing the mascara flecks in my eyelashes?  Would someone comment on my shaved legs? 

I have countless mistakes in my life and in my relationships.  I continue to make mistakes and I see no end to that.  But if there’s one thing I did right was coming out to my wife after only a few months of dating.  I knew that I was never going to stop wearing what I wore, and I saw no reason why I should.  My wife needed to know, even if it meant the end of us.  I feel that our partners need to know as much about who we are, in all aspects, before a real commitment is made.  By coming out to her, she was able to make the decision if this side of me was a deal-breaker.  Coming out to her also helped my evolving gender identity less of a shock as my journey and our relationship progressed.

My preference for panties and other aspects of who I am made it clear to her that I am not A MAN in the stereotypical way.  I’m not a hunter, or a sports fan, or any of the other cliches that being a man usually means.  Being a MAN wasn’t something that my wife necessarily wanted from her partner, so I never really felt I was letting her down by not fitting that mold.  But I am sure it was weird, and perhaps still is from time to time, that while we do our laundry there’s a small (okay, maybe it’s not so small, lol) pile of my panties as we sort our clothes. 

It’s easy to lose sight of what we have and it’s easy for us to focus on what we have accomplished on our journey.  But if you are in a committed relationship, our partners likely have put in a lot of work, a lot of emotional work, right there alongside us, even if we didn’t notice or if we have forgotten how who we are impacted them.

Love, Hannah