The Weight of Silk
The grandfather clock in the hallway marked each second like a judge’s gavel. David sat on the edge of their bed—the bed they’d shared for three decades—and watched his wife pace the length of the bedroom. Susan’s face was blotched with tears and something harder. Something that looked like anger carved from stone.
“Thirty years,” she said. The words came out flat. “Thirty years, David.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” She stopped pacing and faced him. At sixty-one, Susan still had the fierce green eyes that had caught his attention across a crowded lecture hall in 1989. Now those eyes pinned him in place. “Do you have any idea what this feels like? To find out that the man I’ve slept beside, raised children with, built a life with—” Her voice cracked. “That I never really knew him at all?”
David’s hands trembled in his lap. The confession had spilled out of him an hour ago, clumsy and desperate, after she’d found the locked suitcase in the back of his closet. The vintage dress. The modest collection of jewelry. The blonde wig on its foam stand, looking up at her like a decapitated ghost.
“You do know me, Susan. Everything about our life together—that was real. That is real.”
“Is it?” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Because right now I’m trying to remember every business trip, every late night at the office, every time you said you needed space, and I’m wondering—” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I’m wondering if you were parading around in women’s clothes while I sat here like a fool.”
The word parading stung. He absorbed it, knowing he deserved worse.
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then tell me what it was like, David. Because I clearly don’t understand anything anymore.”
He took a breath. Thirty years of practiced silence weighed against his tongue.
“The first time,” he began slowly, “I was fourteen. I put on my mother’s dress while she was at work. And for the first time in my life, something inside me went quiet. This… noise that I didn’t even know was there. It just stopped.” He looked up at her. “I didn’t have words for it. I still barely do.”
Susan stood rigid, arms crossed, but she didn’t interrupt.
“It’s not about attraction, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m not gay. I’m not—” He struggled. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. Only you. This thing, whatever it is, it exists in a completely different part of me. It’s like asking what breathing has to do with being hungry. They’re just… separate.”
“Then why hide it?” Susan’s voice rose. “If it’s so innocent, so separate, why the locked suitcase? Why three decades of lies?”
“Because I was terrified!” The words erupted from somewhere deep. “Because when I was nineteen, I told my father, and he—” David stopped. Swallowed. “He didn’t speak to me for a year. A year, Susan. His own son. And when he finally did speak to me again, we both pretended I’d never said anything. That was the deal. The unspoken deal.” His eyes burned. “So when I met you, when I fell in love with you, I thought I could just… stop. Put it away forever. Be normal.”
“But you couldn’t.”
“No.” The admission came out as barely a whisper. “I tried. God, I tried. For the first five years of our marriage, I didn’t touch a single thing. And I was miserable, Susan. You remember that time, don’t you? The depression? The drinking?”
Susan’s expression flickered. David could see her recalculating history, shifting puzzle pieces into new configurations.
“And then what?”
“And then I was on a business trip in Chicago. I was having a panic attack in a hotel room, and I didn’t know why. I walked into a department store like a man in a dream. I bought a dress. Nothing fancy—just a simple blue thing. I put it on in my hotel room and sat on the bed and cried for an hour.” He met her eyes. “When I came home, I was better. You said so yourself. You said it was like the cloud had finally lifted.”
Susan’s jaw tightened. “So every time you got better, it was because of—”
“Because I stopped fighting myself. Because I found a way to let this part of me exist without destroying everything else.” He stood, then thought better of it and sat back down. “I’m not asking you to understand. I don’t fully understand myself. I’m just asking you to believe that I never stopped loving you. Not for one second. Not once in thirty years.”
“Love.” Susan spoke the word like it was foreign to her. “You keep talking about love, but love is supposed to mean trust, David. It’s supposed to mean honesty. You looked me in the eye every single day and hid something fundamental about yourself.” Her voice broke again. “Do you know how that makes me feel? Like a fool. Like our whole marriage was a performance.”
“It wasn’t. Susan, I swear—”
“How am I supposed to believe anything you swear?”
The question hung in the air. David had no answer. She was right. The currency of his word had been devalued by decades of careful omissions, by the locked suitcase and the lies of silence.
Susan sank onto the window seat, suddenly looking her age. The fight seemed to drain out of her, replaced by something worse: exhaustion.
“I need to know,” she said quietly. “Are you telling me you want to be a woman? Because if this is leading to—”
“No.” David shook his head firmly. “I’m not trans. I’ve thought about it, believe me. Spent years reading, questioning, turning myself inside out. But no. I’m a man. I’m David. I’m your husband. I just…” He searched for words. “I just also need this other thing. This expression of something I can’t name. Maybe once a month. Maybe less. Just enough to keep the noise quiet.”
“The noise.”
“The feeling that something in me doesn’t fit. That I’m performing masculinity every waking moment and some part of me needs a break from the performance.”
Susan was quiet for a long time. Outside, the evening had faded to purple-black. The grandfather clock chimed nine.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she finally said. “I don’t know if I can look at you and not see a stranger. I don’t know if I can trust anything anymore.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” She looked at him, and for the first time, her eyes held something other than anger. Something more like genuine curiosity. “What did you think was going to happen? When I found out? Did you want me to find out?”
The question caught him off guard. He sat with it.
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Maybe I was tired of carrying it alone. Maybe I wanted you to know the real me, finally, even if it meant losing you. Maybe I’m just old enough now to understand that I’d rather be rejected for who I am than accepted for who I’m not.”
Susan’s eyes filled with fresh tears. “That’s the first honest thing you’ve said that makes sense to me.”
They sat in silence. The distance between them—the length of the bedroom, the width of three decades—felt both impossible and strangely traversable. Like a canyon with a bridge neither of them could yet see.
“I want to be alone tonight,” Susan said finally. “I need to think.”
“Of course.” David stood. He paused at the doorway. “Susan?”
She didn’t look at him.
“Thank you for listening. I know you didn’t have to.”
He walked down the hall to the guest room, where he would spend a sleepless night staring at the ceiling, replaying every word, every misstep, every year of silence.
Three days passed. They moved around each other like ghosts, speaking only in necessities: The coffee is fresh. Mail came. I’ll be back by six.
On the fourth day, David came home from a walk to find Susan sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea gone cold. The locked suitcase sat in front of her, open.
His heart stopped.
“Sit down,” she said.
He sat.
“I’ve been doing research,” she said. Her voice was controlled, almost clinical. “Reading. There are forums. Other wives. Other husbands. This isn’t as unusual as I thought.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“A lot of those marriages don’t make it.” She looked at him directly. “But some do. The ones where the wife was told from the beginning, they seem to do better. But some of the others survive too. The ones where it came out later.”
David couldn’t breathe. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I don’t know yet.” Susan’s voice wavered. “I’m saying that I’ve spent thirty years building a life with you. I’m saying that our children exist because of us, that our grandchildren call you Papa and me Nana, and that walking away from all of that because my husband wears dresses sometimes seems…” She struggled. “It seems like maybe not the hill I want to die on. Maybe.”
David felt tears sliding down his cheeks. He didn’t wipe them away.
“But I have conditions,” Susan continued. “We see a therapist. Together. One who specializes in this. And you never, ever hide something this important from me again. I need to be part of this, David. Not an outsider to my own marriage.”
“Yes. Anything.”
Susan reached into the suitcase and pulled out the blue dress. The first one. She held it up, examining it with an expression David couldn’t read.
“This is actually quite pretty,” she said. “The color is all wrong for you, though. You’re a winter. You should be wearing jewel tones.”
David laughed—a wet, broken sound. “Is that so?”
“I have a degree in art history. I know color.” She almost smiled. Almost. “We’ll figure this out, David. I’m not saying I forgive you. I’m not saying I understand. But I’m saying I’m willing to try.”
She set the dress down and reached across the table. Her hand stopped halfway, waiting.
David met her in the middle.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know you do.” Her fingers tightened around his. “I love you too. I’m just learning that you might be bigger than I thought.”
“Is that okay?”
Susan looked at him for a long moment. This man she’d married. This stranger she was choosing to meet again.
“Ask me in another thirty years,” she said.
And for the first time in four days—for the first time in decades, really—David felt something in his chest go quiet. Not silent. Not gone. But finally, mercifully, at peace.
-o-O-o-
I’d love to take the credit for this story which, by now, you’ll have realised is a work of fiction. Its coverage of David’s confession to Susan is raw, something that those of us who have trodden that particular path will understand well. It deals not only with the shock of Susan finding out that her husband has been crossdressing behind her back but also with the hurt that the deception caused, something that many of us have overlooked in our own confessions with potentially disastrous consequences – a cease and desist ultimatum under threat of being ejected from the family home in my case. This would have been one of my finest literary achievements to date but the eagle eyed amongst you will already have rumbled me through the inclusion of words such as ‘humor’ and ‘color’ spelt in a way that’s as alien on my side of the Atlantic as a Martian invasion!
But that said, I’ve often wished that I’d had access to Kandi’s ‘Open Letter’ before my first confession and I’ll now add that having the opportunity to read this story would also have been a huge help in preparing me for what was to come and perhaps helping avoid at least some of the catastrophe I unleashed.
Given the title of this post, it’ll come as no surprise that this story was generated by the AI model, Claude Opus 4.5, that I discussed last time. What may be surprising, though, is the prompt I used to generate it:
Please write a story about David, a crossdresser in his early 60s, who is confessing to his wife Susan after 30 years of marriage. She’s angry and upset, both because she realises she never knew David and because of 30 years of deceit. He tries to explain. End the story on a hopeful note.
It’s mind blowing to think that from a prompt of just 54 words, a story of over 1,800 words was produced in just a few seconds. A high quality story that many will recognise elements of their own situation in – I certainly do. But we shouldn’t be surprised; if I’d written it, I would have had little more than my own experience and what I’d gleaned from a few others in which to base it. The Claude Opus model had not only this – maybe posts here at Kandi’s Land formed part of its training materials – but also thousands, if not millions, of other sources, both accounts of similar scenarios and some where the link was at best tenuous, derived just from the more general experiences of women who find out that their husband has been hiding something – financial worries, affairs, gambling addiction, criminal history etc.
There’s a concept known as ‘visualisation’ which many sportsmen and women use – before taking a shot or running a race, they mentally rehearse the whole thing in their mind. If it’s a golf shot, they imagine selecting the club, lining up the shot, the swing, the contact of the club on the ball, the ball’s trajectory and its landing near the whole. So when they line up for real, they’ve already got clarity about how they’re going to approach it. And as I read this story, it struck me how it could help in the visualisation of possibly the hardest challenge any of us will ever face – coming out to our spouse. The potential issues are all set out in a way that enables us to put ourselves in the plot (particularly if we included our own name and our wife’s name in the prompt) and the hopeful turn of events at the end, whilst not guaranteed, at least gives us a positive outcome to aim for.
Last time, I talked about a particularly distressing hole that I managed to dig myself into using AI but using it in this way completely avoids that because it detached me from the issue. This wasn’t me on the receiving end of negative judgement for deceiving my wife, just a fictional character who I could observe without feeling emotionally involved. Another story I generated dealt with the need that the protagonist felt to talk to someone about his crossdressing. He chose one of his wife’s friends which then led to the conflict that she felt in dividing her loyalties between respecting the protagonist’s secret and needing to respect the friendship with the wife. I won’t reproduce it here but suffice to say that, like the story above, it provided a good means of visualising that for anyone contemplating that particular course of action.
It seems strange that a work of fiction can give us clarity but the truth is that in some respects these aren’t works of fiction because they indirectly draw on the factual accounts used to train the models. And because it’s framed as fiction, it’s easier to take a detached view of the situation without feeling that one is being backed into a corner from which there is no escape. It can provide an insight into unfamiliar situations – for example ‘write a story about a crossdresser going into the outside world for the first time describing what he sees, how he feels and how people react to him’ gave a very realistic insight into what to expect, correctly observing that most people don’t care and whilst some may disapprove, it’s not the end of the world.
-o-O-o-
And with that being as far as I think I can go with AI, it’s time to draw this topic to a close. In particular, the strength of Kandi’s Land is in its human content and I have no intention of undermining that with endless computer generated ‘AI slop’ . I’ll continue to use AI for exactly what it is – a tool – and if I do use it to make a particular point in any of my posts, I’ll always make full disclosure. I’ve been bruised and batted by the experience but I’ve also been awestruck. I’ve seen the dangers of using it as a proxy therapist but I’ve also seen what it can do when used sensibly. I’ll sign off with five suggestions for ways it can be used to enhance our lives without any of the problems that I encountered along the way:
1. Upload a photo in male mode and ask it to make the photo look female (‘please make this person look female with shoulder length brown hair’). It’s no substitute for the physical experience of crossing the divide but can be a critical first step on the journey as it was with me (using FaceApp).
2. As detailed above, ask it to write a story about a particular aspect of the crossdressing journey to help you visualise your own next steps (‘write a story about David, a 56 year old crossdresser, who goes out as ‘Jane’ for the first time’)
3. Upload a photo in girl mode and ask it to experiment with different outfits giving it either specific instructions on the garments to be worn (‘show me wearing a black midi skirt, blue cowl neck sweater, and heeled ankle boots’) or just ask it to show you wearing an outfit for a particular event (‘show me wearing a suitable outfit for an evening at the ballet’)
4. Ask it for advice on where to go or what to do. Giving location details will help it recommend particular places or activities in your locality (‘I live in London, suggest places where I can go and be accepted as a crossdresser’)
5. Getting practical advice (‘I’m a crossdresser and want to start using makeup. What basic products should I buy and how are they used?’)
13 Responses
Amanda,
A very insightful post. It is amazing what AI can do.
But, it certainly is not me. Never has, never will be.
You, Amanda, have made me think, not AI.
Jocelyn
PS – and I will try visualizing before I “address” the ball; assuming the feet of snow melt and the temperature gets above freezing
Jocelyn, thank you for sharing your views.
The big danger with AI is rather than using it to fulfil a pre-existing need, needs are created to justify its existence. Just because AI can perform certain tasks doesn’t mean that it should, particularly when humans can do a better job. I’ve had a lot of fun with AI – and whilst I did promise that this post will be the last, it does feature in a very left-field way in another post that will see the light of day in a few weeks’ time – and am happy to use it as a tool when the need arises but I’m certainly not going to be a slave to it, either in my feminine activities or in the wider context of my life as a whole.
As for addressing the ball, AI is probably going to give far more useful advice than I ever could as my golfing activities are limited to the local dinosaur adventure golf!
Hi Amanda – AI really is too new for me to make any comments about it yet. I’m hopeful it’s useful for applications requiring higher levels of quick thinking, government, leadership, etc. At the consumer, “Average Joe” level I’m certainly not sold on it. I know one entertaining upside I’ve found so far is – I can have a heavy makeout session with any cute T-girl anywhere that I so desire. Been there done that. And as fun as it is watching me and KR get all hot and heavy, that also gets boring really fast.
I would have prefaced your list of 5 suggestions for ways AI can enhance our lives with – “Before you attempt to solve any problem you’re having with AI, try figuring it out for yourself.” Use your own brain cells. If you try and fail – try again. Try enough times and you’ll probably figure it out. Then you’ll have accomplished something on your own. Remember when humans used to like that feeling? I will say that I do believe AI will make humans lazier than they are today. And they’re pretty damn lazy right now. Hope I’m wrong about this.
Grace, thank you for joining the discussion!
As for your final point, sadly I think that ship has already sailed. When I was young, I knew all of my friends’ phone numbers; nowadays, ‘thanks’ to smartphones, I don’t even know my wife’s or kids’ numbers without looking them up. I rely on satnav to get me from A to B, even sometimes on routes I’ve travelled many times before. And the truth is that for every mind blowing use of AI that exists, there’s another that’s deeply concerning (and the mind blowing uses – for example the ability to create high quality academic papers – often coincide with the deeply concerning ones – the destruction of the concept of critical thinking within the student population).
It’s a fantastic development but it certainly isn’t the panacea to all of the problems and challenges of the world!
Amanda ,
In reality we don’t need to draw on AI , I discovered this when I went out to social meetings , to hear both sides of the situation for real . Human beings unlike AI models have limited capacity to contain their inner feelings and needs , at some point in our lives we to find an outlet . Over the years our stories related very much to how homosexuals has to reveal their true selves even when it was illegal .
What I find very sad and upsetting about the story AI generated for you and many others is the level of denial , the hope being it makes it much more acceptable if you’re just a CROSSDRESSER . It’s actually much harder to for people to understand that a husband wants to wear female clothing for inexplicable reasons , it isn’t a crime to admit you have gender dysphoria , part or all of you does want and need to be female . Again lets not forget the same situation applies to F/M people . It takes education and understanding from all sides to find acceptance , a wife or partner needs to open their minds and not block out the reality as they will be the losers .
When we talk about deception in the majority of cases it isn’t intentional , the biggest deception is what we have to live with . The story quotes Susan saying to David , ” I don’t know you !” Poor David like the rest of us doesn’t really know himself from a very young age .
From my own experience children shouldn’t be used as weapons , a transgender parent can still be a good parent , I don’t love my children and grandchildren any less .
Whether you feel AI is a useful tool or not ( I’m not convinced ) you would be wise not to expect it to solve real life problems , only humans can do that .
Teresa, the important thing to remember about AI is how it actually works. I’ve gone over this in both last week’s post and one from a few weeks ago so no need to repeat but the thing is that AI models are trained using publicly available documents and posts online. So as I put in this week’s post, it’s a safe bet that the training of the AI model I used and other similar ones like Gemini, Grok and ChatGPT included accounts of crossdressers recounting their experiences of coming out to their wives. It’s entirely possible that the accounts I posted here formed part of that training, given that Kandi’s Land is a public forum. But whether or not that is the case, I can certainly relate to many parts of that story, not least the issue that I completely overlooked when I first confessed – Mrs A’s grief and anger about the deception.
In the end, though, we can’t stick our head in the sand and ignore all of this. Whether we like it or not, AI has arrived and is accessible to all. And as with any bandwagon, people will inevitably jump on with no regard for the pitfalls. To my mind, the danger is not in placing reliance on it per se but treating it as human, something it patently is not. AI can solve real world problems but not all real world problems by any stretch and as with any tool, it is up to us to decide when it is appropriate and when it should be left well alone. And we can see that with the story in the post – it is not a script for how to come out as a crossdresser to one’s wife, it is not an exhaustive account of all of the issues but it does inform several issues that may arise during that conversation. It’s then up to us to take those on board and be prepared if they arise.
I do not expect AI to solve all real life problems but used in the right way it can help us make better decisions when trying to solve problems we are faced with. Equally, though, things can go very wrong very quickly because, whilst in reality it doesn’t have a mind of its own, that’s not the impression that can be gained when using it but it has no consciousness, conscience or empathy to understand when it is causing distress or worse. What I have tried to do with the last two posts is not to flag wave for AI or imply that it’s the answer to all of life’s woes but to demonstrate how it can both help us when used in the right way and potentially do a lot of damage at other times.
I’m not a big fan of AI at all as a matter of fact it scare the hell out of me. But that said it is definitely a pretty insightful story that I’m sure resonates with a lot of us.
As you know I told my wife before we got married and when my boys were old enough to understand I told them too. But although telling my wife certainly helped the both of us but unlike the wife in this story my wife would do no research what so ever. There is a support group on crossdresser heaven strictly for the wives of cross dressers that I made her aware of but all she said was I’m not interested in listening to other peoples tales of whoa. I also bought a book entitled “my husband wears my clothes” written by a therapist whose husband was a CD. It was how she and her husband navigated their way through it all. When we were seeing a therapist I told her about the book and she read it. Later on at a session she asked if my wife would consent to read it and my wife said yes but got through about 6 pages and quit. So I eventually just gave up trying to help her understand. I’ve even invited her to join in on our Wednesday happy hour at a pub as well as joining us at the Girls weekend in Kelowna and the Gurls in the Burbs annual Christmas party but she steadfastly refuses the invites. With all of that said I still appreciate her allowing Trish to do what she does and do count my blessings.
Trish,
The important point is she knew ( for better or worse ) and you’ve offered her the chance to meet others . I offered my wife the same opportunities , some wives really do enjoy the time out with their crossdressed husbands , I had some lovely times in their company .
Amanda,
I appreciate your efforts in helping to understand AI , I can see how it might help some people but we must also understand it’s limitations . At the moment I don’t feel it has importance in my life but I know I can’t ignore it will affect my life in some way , people are losing their jobs to the technology whether it will prove to be a mistake it’s too early to say .
Trish, thank you for sharing your experience. In contrast to your wife, my wife did a lot of research in the immediate aftermath of my confession and I think she developed a reasonable understanding. However, that didn’t prepare her for what she saw when, trying to be a part of this facet of my life, she encouraged me to show her my feminine side. In fairness to her, that understanding played a major part in her more tolerant stance when things blew up again nearly a decade later even though, by the very definition of DADT, she doesn’t want to play any part in it or even know about it. As I suggested in other responses, the AI generated story I presented doesn’t provide a foolproof blueprint for confession, it doesn’t guarantee a conciliatory ending or prevent marriages from blowing up. But what it does do is provide an angle, and perhaps a more complete picture of what might arise than many, myself included, are unable to envisage.
As I said above, I’ve had my bit of fun (probably not a completely appropriate choice of word given some of my experiences!) and it’s now back in the metaphorical toolbox, only to emerge when I have a genuine need. And ironically, that need did arise today – nothing to do with crossdressing but I needed to knock together a policy document for an aspect of our IT system. Nothing fancy and Google Gemini obliged in a few seconds; all I then needed to do was read through it, make a couple of amendments specific to our business and then post it on our intranet. What could have been at least a half hour job was completed in under five minutes.
But perhaps my greatest win with AI was when I was using it to pull together a landing page for our business website. I asked the AI to recommend a local business in the same sector whose website was a good example of what I was trying to achieve. I never mentioned the name of our business and the AI helpfully suggested two websites to review and draw inspiration from, one of which was ours!
Amanda, I’m not surprised that your website was picked what with your written abilities I’m sure it was stellar.
Amanda, even though the story is fictional and written be AI, to could be my story. My male name is even David.
It is hard to argue with what the wife said to her husband. I have experiences much the same from my wife. I have also heard this story from many post on many sites. My story has not had a very positive outcome, and I have had another confrontation with my wife. I understand her feelings, there is a lot of what Susan said to David that my wife has said to me.
Amanda we are going through the same situations with our wives. I can not think of a more damaging situation for the crossdresser and his wife. I think your post always show such a deep insight into the difficulties some of us face. Hiding who we are is the worst thing we can do. Like you I my wife found out in the worst possible way. I think I have made all the mistakes a person can make. I wish my relationship with my wife was a more loving relationship. I think that leads to a much better outcome.
You can never change the mistakes you have made in like, I do not know where this will lead to, but expressing my feminine side will be more difficult if I can do it at all. I don’t want to hurt my wife, but deniging who I am has been an emotional dagger in my heart. I feel so empty as a person. Acceptance and tolerance must come from within that person, I can’t demand that my wife accept this side of me, so I may need to give up an integral part of who I am.
I have heard of many examples of the sun shinning after dark cloudy skies. I can only hope the sun comes out for me and for you as well Amanda.
Love you all
Julie
Julie, thank you for sharing what is a very personal and distressing situation for you. I think that the story will resonate with any of us who have been in this situation, at least to some degree but that’s inevitable because of the way that the AI models are trained.
But there’s a deeper issue here which is not expressly stated in the story but is obvious when one reads between the lines and that’s that David cares about both his wife and his marriage. He tries to get her to understand but there is no malice when it appears that she doesn’t. And it’s that caring that causes many of us, including you and me, so much pain. Because the understanding that we seek has to be two way and the realisaton that our wants & needs are incompatible with our wives’ is a bitter and painful pill to swallow. And how can we possibly admit that the only time we’re truly happy is when we’re able to leave our male lives alone for a while?
We’ve talked a lot about your situation in private and it’s heartbreaking that you’re no nearer to achieving a compromise. Perhaps all we can do in these situations is to accept that we’ve done everything we can and grasp opportunities, scant though they usually are, whenever we can. As I found out when I had to confess for a second time, sometimes it’s easier for a wife to ignore what’s going on than confront it.
My fingers are crossed for you and hope that one day things will move in your favour.
Aamnda,
We go through so much pain because we do care , we care so much it hurts .
My wife did see a couple of pictures but not Teresa in person until we separated . She had the marriage licence but as I was applying for our divorce through GOV.ORG I needed the licence . She agreed to bring it to me and have a coffee , she took one look at me at my front door , threw her hands in the air and blirted out , ” I can’t deal with this !” I sat her down with a coffee to calm her , we chatted while we sorted through the divorce papers , she then left after about an hour . That was the last time she saw Teresa , we’ve been divorced for several years now . I only see her now just before Xmas at a family breakfast but not as Teresa .