I do not know whether staying is loyalty or fear

Dear Delyara, My husband came out as transgender after twenty-four years of marriage. She has begun living as the woman she says she always was. I love her. I am also heterosexual, or believed I was, and I do not know what that means for us now. Friends divide into two groups: those who tell me love should transcend gender and those who quietly ask when I am leaving. Both make the decision sound simpler than our kitchen, mortgage, children, private jokes, and the body I knew beside me for half my life. She is happier, more open, and less angry than before. I am grateful for that and grieving someone who is still present. When she wears a dress, I see her courage and feel my own desire retreat. Then she reaches for my hand in bed, and the familiar touch brings back a marriage that does not fit neatly into the language available to us. She fears I will abandon her for becoming honest. I fear staying from guilt will eventually become another form of rejection. I cannot tell which future is kinder. Every answer asks one of us to lose something essential while assuring the other that love remains.