Heternormative Divorce 101

Generally speaking, men do better financially and worse emotionally during a divorce. Women cope better with the emotional and social bits but their finances take it hard.

So one reason I started this project is because AMAB individuals usually have what most married men have: Their wife is their best friend and biggest confidente and they feel like they can't breathe when contemplating coming out to her and don't know how to get past that.

They typically don't have a support network to help them think this through or talk this out and do some "What if?" scenarios. They may have clues she probably won't cope well with the news and she's usually the go-to person when they need to talk about social drama or moral dilemmas or similar in their lives.

It seems to never occur to them that she probably has two major issues here having absolutely nothing to do with being judgy or rejecting per se.

The first is that in most heterosexual marriages, he makes most of the money. So the prospect of divorce is an existential crisis that potentially leaves her homeless.

There are relatively few homeless women on the street because homeless women are at high risk of being raped, so women generally do all in their power to avoid homelessness in spite of frequently not making enough money to adequately support themselves. 

So this makes it difficult for them to try to sort out their feelings about your gender identity and whether or not they want to stay because saying "I can't accept this." looks highly likely to land them in the street after supporting your career and doing everything a good woman is SUPPOSED to do to secure the Good Life for themselves in a morally acceptable fashion in a world that hangs a lot of baggage and expectations on women about women being first and foremost guardians of morality. 

The second big issue is that "good girls" are supposed to have limited sexual experience, not really be interested in sex per se, have sex because they love you, etc. 

No matter her age, odds are good she doesn't really think too much about what turns her on, why she wants you or wants sex, etc.

So if you are really a woman, telling her that makes her wonder if she's really gay. And it's not a thing she feels okay exploring because only "bad girls" think about sex in terms of sexually objectifying other people, such as "What hair color or other physical attributes do I like?"

Women get told you will fall in love, marry for love, be a good wife and mom and women aren't supposed to think about this in terms of marriage being their career that pays their bills -- that would make them a gold digging whore -- nor in terms of their sexuality.

So amab individuals who are used to turning to their wife for their emotional and social needs must find some means to help them sort things out themselves before they talk to the wife and open up a can of worms she's wholly unprepared for in most cases.

That's the crux of why this looks like a catastrophe waiting to happen to most married AMAB individuals trying to figure out how to navigate this.

And why their wives seem to feel crushed by the prospect of trying to navigate it and seem to hit a blue screen of death instead of doing their usual thing of listening, trying to understand and analyze the social, emotional and psychological bits and reach a practical answer. 

Footnote 

Even if you are so wealthy that homelessness is not a concern, the AMAB probably makes vastly more than the wife and if you divorce, this life is gone and never coming back.