After 19 Years of Marriage, Man Discovers That His Wife Used to Be A Man

A Belgian man is seeking to have
his marriage annulled after
discovering that his Indonesian wife
of 19 years had been born a man.
The man, only named as Jan,
married Monica, his family's former
nanny in a previous marriage, in
1993 despite legal difficulties raised
by the Belgian immigration
authorities. But it was only in
recent weeks that he discovered
that his wife had originally been a
man and had undergone a s*x
change.
"I feel I've been assaulted," he
said. "I brought her to Belgium.
That was not easy. The Belgian
courts had serious doubts about the
authenticity of her birth and her
identity papers, but eventually they
accepted it anyway.
"I thought she was an attractive
woman, all woman. She had no
male traits." Jan, 64, said that he
and his wife had decided not to
have children because he had two
by his previous marriage and she
fooled him by pretending to
menstruate, using sanitary towels,
"to conceal the truth". "Even during
s*x, I never noticed anything," he
said.
For many years the couple lived a
normal family life and Monica, 48,
was like a "big sister" to his children
until their marriage started to come
under strain when she got a new
full-time job.
"Monica began to change very
much," he said. "My oldest son saw
her sometimes at a nightclub. She
began to wear very flashy clothes,
those ultra-short skirts or tiny tops,
so her abdomen was completely
exposed." Finally rumors began to
surface and after Jan found
"amorous messages" from other
men on her computer, he
confronted her in a violent row that
led to the police being called. "A
friend told me that he had heard
that Monica was actually a s*x-
changed man. I could not believe
it. My son heard similar rumors," he
said.
"I pushed her against the wall and
said: Now I know the truth. Are you
a man? She then announced that
she was born as a boy and that she
had been operated on. She was
now a woman, and so she did not
need to tell me about her past as a
man.
My world collapsed. That evening
we came to blows. The police
came." Jan, who is undergoing
psychiatric treatment following the
discovery, has started legal
proceedings to have the marriage
annulled but the Belgian courts
have so far refused to allow him to
turn her out of the family home.
"That person has deliberately
deceived him for years, even
scammed. Presumably she has also
forged documents used here to get
a residence permit. The children,
who for years have lived with her,
are devastated," said his Liliane
Verjauw, his lawyer.