'I could be their Aunt Heather': Bruce Jenner's second wife reveals his 1980s despair when he thought about fleeing to Denmark for a sex change… and how their young sons exclaimed, 'Dad has boobs!'
- Linda Thompson was married to Bruce from 1981 to 1986
- Linda has published a blog detailing how he confided his gender dysphoria to her and it ended their marriage
- The couple shares two sons, Brandon and Brody, who supported their father during his ABC tell all
- She details Bruce's painful electrolysis and surgeries to feminize his face
- Their young sons noticed his breasts once, and she would lie to explain the physical changes to them
- After he stopped taking hormones in the 1980s and married Kris, he cut their sons out of his life for years
At his lowest point in the 1980s Bruce Jenner wanted to flee to Europe for gender reassignment surgery and return to America as his children's Aunt Heather. That was around the time his young sons asked their mother why their father had breasts.
As Diane Sawyer's explosive tell-all with Bruce Jenner came to an end, his second wife published a blog detailing their love affair, idyllic marriage and the gender dysphoria revelations that led to their divorce after two sons and a seemingly picture perfect Malibu life.
Linda Thompson met Jenner at the Playboy mansion when he was separated from his first wife, mother of his two eldest children. They fell in love and got married in Hawaii when she was already pregnant with their son Brandon. A few years later they welcomed a second son together Brody.
Bruce Jenner and Linda Thompson (pictured together) met at the Playboy mansion when Bruce was separated from his first wife. They fell in love and got married when she was already pregnant with their son, Brandon
As she wrote on the Huffington Post, 'Those were the happiest days of my life. I had a wonderful husband, who was the most athletic, high-spirited, energetic, easygoing, manly man imaginable. I had two beautiful, healthy baby boys. I had two great stepchildren. Life was just about as good as it gets.'
He was travelling the world doing paid appearances and they lived a glamour, life in Malibu, frequently seeing his elder son and daughter from his first marriage.
But when Brody was 18 months old and Brandon was three, Bruce revealed to Linda the secret he finally told the world Friday night.
She was, she insists, blindsided.
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With a 'somber look' Bruce told Linda, who had braced herself for the revelation of perhaps an affair, that he identified as a woman.
'What do you mean you identify as a woman?' she recalled asking. 'What does that mean?
And just as he told Diane Sawyer, he told his wife of four plus years that as long as he could remember, he felt wrong with the reflection staring back at him in the mirror.
According to Linda, her handsome husband told her, 'I have lived in the wrong skin, the wrong body, my whole life. It is a living hell for me, and I really feel that I would like to move forward with the process of becoming a woman, the woman I have always been inside.'
Linda posted this photo of herself and the couple's two sons, Brandon (right) and Brody (left) on Instagram
She insists she never saw it coming and there were no signs. Unlike third wife Kris, who walked in on Jenner in a dress, Linda says there was no evidence he ever raided her closet or wore any women's clothes.
'No. Not a clue. Nothing. Nada. Never.'
The couple entered therapy after Linda found someone who specialized in gender dysphoria, and the doctor 'broke my heart into a million pieces.'
She quotes the doctor as telling the couple of the sobering suicide statistics of transgender people at the time - 25% committed suicide- and told Linda she could stay with Bruce as he became she or Linda could divorce him. But she couldn't change Bruce.
While the couple was gutting it out in therapy for six months to try and save the marriage, Linda writes, Bruce was struggling.
According to Linda, Bruce 'considered traveling out of the country, possibly to Denmark, to have the gender-confirmation surgery and then come back to the U.S. identifying as female.'
I have lived in the wrong skin, the wrong body, my whole life. It is a living hell for me, and I really feel that I would like to move forward with the process of becoming a woman, the woman I have always been inside
Bruce Jenner, according to ex-wife Linda Thompson's blog
With four little ones running around under the age of ten, she didn't understand how that would work.
''What about the children?' He thought maybe he could reenter their lives as 'Aunt Heather.''
While she says he referred to himself as Heather at the time, he never revealed his female name to Diane Sawyer, referring to that identity as just 'She'.
As Linda writes, she sobbed endlessly and was despondent about the end of her marriage, but as devastated as she was, her 'heart bled for Bruce'.
Linda decided she didn't want to be married to a woman, their marriage ended, and a few years later she married music producer David Foster.
In the years during and after the couple split, Bruce started taking female hormones.
He detailed to Diane Sawyer that period in the 80s, saying the hormones quieted and calmed his mind, and he also said he grew 36B breasts in his years on them.
Linda remembers the time well, too, and also remembers the lengths he went to in order to change his macho facade.
'Thirty years ago the only hair removal that was permanent was electrolysis,' Linda writes. 'Poor Bruce began the process of having electrolysis performed on his heavily bearded face. He then began having the hair on his chest removed.'
And she - and their children - couldn't miss his newfound bosom.
Tearful: Bruce revealed that he identifies as a woman in an explosive interview with Diane Sawyer last night
She writes that she had an open door policy for Bruce to see his children, and he was welcome to visit Brandon and Brody anytime. But, and she doesn't detail why, they boys never spent the night at Bruce's house and occasionally visited.
Most likely it was to shield them, as an anecdote about seeing their father undressed led to a lot of confusion.
'One day, after having spent a little time at Bruce's house, both boys came into the kitchen and said to me, 'Mommy, we saw Daddy getting out of the shower naked, and Daddy has boobs!'
And so she tried to cover for Bruce, their father.
'Well, boys, you know how your dad was super-muscular and trained very hard for the Olympics? He had big muscles, and some of those muscles are called 'pectorals.' When you stop training and you stop lifting weights, sometimes the muscle turns to fat. So his pectoral muscles have probably just gotten a little flabby and look like boobs.'
Soon enough, the exhausting coverup of his transition ended, and it wasn't Bruce's gender dysphoria Linda was protecting them from.
After Bruce and Kris married, there were periods of several years going by without Bruce attempting to contact or visit his sons
Linda Thompson
Bruce stopped taking hormones, didn't go to Denmark, and started dating again. A source told ET he had his breasts reduced.
According to Bruce during his ABC interview, he chickened out of going through with it and stopped taking the hormones.
Linda then strongly hints that Kris knew more about Bruce's gender identity crisis than Bruce let on to during the Diane Sawyer interview.
'Bruce dated several women, even though he had begun his transition and showed signs of it. He had no facial hair, no chest hair, and boobs, and he had gotten a nose job and trimmed his Adam's apple. Clearly he was still confused and conflicted as to how fully he was ready to commit to changing his life completely.'
Then he married Kris and stopped seeing his sons, the sons who'd seen his breasts, for years.
'After Bruce and Kris married, there were periods of several years going by without Bruce attempting to contact or visit his sons. No birthday cards or phone calls, no 'Merry Christmas,' no 'Everything OK?' after the big Northridge earthquake.
Nothing.
But, in hindsight, Linda believes, the revelation of what their father was struggling with, and running from, in the years he vanished from their lives, helps explain a lot.
On the Diane Sawyer episode, Brody and Brandon, her sons, both sit proudly with their father, supporting him fully as he enters the next phase of life as 'She'.
And she wishes him well.
She instagrammed in support of him on Friday, hours before the TV show aired, and she ends her blog, 'I can now breathe a little easier, knowing he now has found the strength and the courage to fulfill his dream.'
Linda divorced David Foster in 2005.
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