Tag: trans partners

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Guest Author: Ariela Rosa

A partner recently sent me this piece she’d written for a contest and I was struck not just by the writing style but by the deep urge, as ever, to get a partner’s truth you in the world. Enjoy.

Transition in 2000 Words – by Ariela Rosa

May 24, 2022

I wanted to say I appreciate R’s commitment to building community and giving everyone a voice. Their style in leading with heart, reaffirming that the conversation is a safe space, and being open to everyone’s inputs is so appreciated. 

I stop to ask R, my spouse, if he has changed his pronouns.

“Oh yeah,” they say. “I was encouraging people at work to put their pronouns in their email signatures, so I started by putting mine. And when I went to put “he/him,” it felt wrong. So I just put they/them.”

This casual decision completely devastates me.

They came out as trans two years ago, 16 years into our relationship. I could not promise that our marriage would last through all the changes, but I of course wanted to treat them with dignity and respect, starting with the most basic of the basics: calling them what they wanted to be called. So I’d been checking in constantly about pronouns. They promised they’d let me know when they were ready, but suddenly I find out that I’ve been misgendering my spouse without knowing it.

I am angry at us both. Once again they’ve made a decision without letting me in, but also I want to get this right, and because I had no warning there is no way for me to not fuck this up over and over.

Saying “they” makes my heart ache for me.

Accidentally uttering “he” makes my heart ache for them.

December 23, 2021

“Hey, I got this for you for Christmas. I know it’s not much, but…”

I’d bought a few pairs of earrings that reminded me of my husband spouse. One set was two halves of an avocado with smiling faces painted onto the pits. I paid for his lobe piercings two weeks ago, crying later that day about this step in his evolving womanhood. Buying the earrings is my way of manning up.

I get on a plane to Utah the next day. I was tired of asking a dysphoric person to hold me through my tears as if I were the one suffering and needed to be someone else’s problem for a while. I also needed to know if I felt better with or without him.

The trip did not help me figure this out.

He called on Christmas Day to thank me. I sobbed.

January 2022

My friend sends me back from Utah with a gift certificate to Sephora. “I want R. to go to somewhere where they will take care of him and treat him with respect.”

What a thoughtful gift; I am happy and know he’ll love it. But also, I’m so angry; I feel a responsibility to go with him so I can shake my cis privilege at everyone and ensure that he will be treated right. But that also means seeing him glow in his foundation and eyeliner, watching “him” fade further away.

He shares that he’s afraid of looking like a man in a dress.

But what’s wrong with being a man in a dress? I could totally handle that! I tell myself to shut the fuck up; what awful thoughts. If there is a hell, then I’m sure I belong there.

We have fun for once; I’m proud that I was able to ignore the lump in my throat the whole time.

Back in the car, he cried. “They made me feel so valid,” he said. I tried extra hard to smile in spite of myself.

September 2020

My spouse’s summertime online affair came to an abrupt end when I found the transcripts of him and his partner sexting the other week. I had suspected the affair from the beginning, but I felt an extra sting when I realized that the other person had treated my husband like a woman when I felt I couldn’t. He even gave this person his chosen name while telling me he wasn’t ready to make that change yet. The potent mix of rage, guilt, and despair boiling all over my body makes me want to tear off my own skin.

Perhaps it is because I feel so much loss, pain, and eroding trust that I decide to finally confide in one of my best friends about R. being trans, hoping to lean on someone else for a while.

I do not tell her about the affair.

Still, she is angry. “OH MY GOD, THIS MAN IS ALWAYS DOING SOMETHING TO YOU!”

I stop her and explain sternly that my spouse being trans isn’t doing anything to me, and that she can’t be mad at someone just for being trans.

I do not lean on her for support.

October 2020

“Well, do you WANT to buy girl’s clothes?” I ask.

“I guess I should,” he replies.

“Cool beans. I will take you to Torrid, and we will get you a dressing room. And if someone dares to say something I’ll fuck ’em up.”

We find some vibrant skirts and blouses. I choose many of the options, insisting that he try everything because he has no idea what he’ll like. He is too shy to ask the sales associate for help, so I do.

“Hey you,” I say with as much non-nonchalant confidence as I can muster, “My husband wants to try on these clothes.”

She opens a room without hesitation and with a warm smile. Turns out I didn’t need to beat up anyone today. Lucky her.

I ask what he thinks. Turns out a shirt I had chosen was less than flattering. If he wants my opinion, I will gladly give it to him. But I also will encourage him to buy the damn thing if he disagrees.

“Yeah, hell no, ick.” I breathe a sigh of relief. We throw it aside and laugh.

July 2020

After making passionate love, we cuddle in bed as a stream of afternoon sunlight shines through the window and onto our nakedness. I cry while I caress his chest hair, which glistens from the light and the sweat of our sex. He is going to shave his chest for the first time today, and with laser starting next month I know that this is the last time I will ever feel this part of him.

His hair is so coarse, long, full, curly. We used to make jokes about the possibility of his chest hair poking through his t-shirts, making him and the shirt one and giving him super powers.

He won’t feel like my person without this hair.

He holds me tight, giving me this last chance even though it kills him. I apologize.

When he finally goes to the bathroom, I sob and scream into my pillow until I fall asleep.

June 2022

R. is having a bad dysphoria day.

I just want to gouge out my own eyes. I feel like a fraud. In my head I imagine people referring to me as ‘he’ but then I feel like I’m referring to myself that way and it makes me feel like I’m lying if I keep misgendering myself. I feel lost and can’t function.

I should be there to help them through this, but my deadlines don’t care. So I work while I listen, trying hard to understand something that I know I never will.

I know. It’s ok. I think I just need to say it. Sometimes just sharing things with you helps.

I feel guilty for missing the man they need to get rid of to feel right.

Spring 2022

“Oh wow! And you’re okay with that?” This seems to be the chief question during the public phase of my spouse’s coming out.

“I mean, we’re a work in progress,” I giggle because I don’t know how else to respond. “Anyway, he hasn’t changed pronouns yet, but I’ll let you know when.”

What I really want to say is fuck you. I don’t think I get to choose or “okay” the core of my spouse’s self, assholes.

Or is everyone asking whether I want to stay married? This seems like a terribly invasive question that I can’t even answer for myself yet.

“It’s so great that you are supporting him—oh, I mean her? Is that right?” They look for me to assure them that they are indeed not transphobic. But I don’t have energy to help anyone else.

Instead of expecting me to take care of them or make them comfortable, why doesn’t anyone ever just ask me what I need?

Today that online group for partners of trans folks posted a meme: “As a trans person you don’t transition to become a different person. You transition to stop pretending to be someone you’re not!”

This stings. I know it’s correct. I also know that I fell in love with the person my spouse was pretending to be. I miss that person every day. I write this in response to the original poster.

“My wife is trans,” OP replies. “I tend to focus on how much happier she is.”

Dismissed again.

June 2020

“I’m gonna order some books on gender and sexuality,” he mutters while I’m in the middle of a Zoom meeting. There is maybe six inches of space between the back of my chair and the side of his. Our second room barely accommodates our desks, but I’m insistent that we separate our work space from the rest of the house so they don’t meld together. This work from home thing is temporary anyway.

I wave him away so that I can pay attention.

The books arrive a few days later. One book in the pile… is a gender workbook?

“Babe, are you questioning your gender?”

He doesn’t look at me when he says yes.

The floor has fallen out beneath me.

“I can’t do this! Of course you can transition and I will always support you, but I cannot be your wife! We need to divorce NOW. Seriously, what the fuck! 16 years! After everything we’ve gone though, you didn’t tell me?! 16 fucking years!”

“I didn’t know either.”

When R. was five, a bunch of her cousins visited her apartment, and her first instinct was to pick up some cans to join the girls in playing restaurant. The room fell silent: every adult whipped their head around, instilling deep shame into her as they said “boys don’t play like that.”

That’s when he was born.

So I know he’s right: how could he have known?

But how do I reconcile falling in love with a mask?  I’m grieving him while she is alive; I grieve him even though he wasn’t right. I don’t understand my reality or my feelings.

It doesn’t take long for her to peak through and for him to start fading away, though in the quiet phase of the transition he comes back sometimes to keep up appearances for those who do not yet know.

I envy my friends for getting to keep him for just a little longer.

June 2004

We met through a mutual friend when we were 17 and 19. I was about to graduate high school and was pretty sure I didn’t have a future, so I had stopped dreaming by the time he came along.

But being with him made dreaming seem possible.

After talking each other’s ears off for a week over the phone, we met for pizza, walking across the Harlem Bridge to the Bronx. On the way back, we stopped in the middle of the bridge to enjoy the light breeze and cloudless sky. We held hands while watching the late afternoon sun bounce along the water.

Something felt so familiar in this moment, like I’d known him before and would know him again. I already could not picture my life without him.

“Hey, I just want you to know… I can’t predict what will happen with us, but no matter what, I will always be your friend.”

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Five Questions With… Tasha

Another interview with a partner whose narrative is in Transgress Press’ Love, Always.

1. What didn’t you write about in your narrative but wish you had?

I wish I had known at the beginning that they were going to discard the conceit that it was a “letter to our partners”; I submitted early, before they abandoned that title and theme and opened it up to all sorts of contributions. (I actually love the new approach and think it was brilliant, so I’m not complaining about the change!) It seemed weird to me to write to my wife about things that she was there for, so I omitted a lot of discussion about, for example, the times when the year she spent in transition was tough in ways I never anticipated. I knew the “big stuff” would be a tremendous deal, but I didn’t expect to find myself crying every time I looked at her newly pierced ears, or that sometimes her gender issues would overshadow everything to the point where I’d be desperate for a conversation about something banal like who forgot to pick up cat litter. I didn’t realize that the process of transition wasn’t going to be about huge milestones so much as a million little things, all of them nibbling away at the life I knew and replacing it with the unknown. There were indeed some huge milestones, but when they came, I tended to have had a lot of warning and to cope very well.

I also didn’t want to make her feel guilty, and composing a letter ostensibly to her of “ways you made me suffer” seemed likely to do so. Particularly when, at this late date, we’ve both hashed this stuff out often enough that it would seem like re-opening wounds that have (genuinely) healed. But I think that sort of thing is important to tell because it shows that happy ever afters are possible… and that like most things in marriage, it takes work and determination and sometimes tears.

Oh, right, and lest I look like a saint, I kind of wish there’d been a way to shoehorn in the anecdote about the time I screamed “How can you be fine with growing breasts but afraid to buy a bra?!!” at the top of my lungs and then fled weeping into the bedroom and slammed the door. It’s easy to tell a story with smoothed edges and narrative flow after the fact, but the reality was messy and complicated and sometimes involved me completely losing the plot.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Tasha”

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ABC on Trans Couple Story

Somewhere in the last week’s insanity I did an interview with Susan James of ABCNews.com about a recent article published in the Boston Globe by a journalist whose husband transitioned from male to female.

It was a lovely interview, and quite a few things I said I can see reflected in the story (such as the suspicion of the 55% statistic).


An estimated 45 percent of those surveyed said that their relationship with a spouse or partner ended because of their transgender identity. Surprisingly, 55 percent, stayed on or their relationship ended for other reasons, according to that report.

But those like Diane who have gone through transition with a loved one, say it is a long and painful process — and most spouses leave the marriage.

ABC has a few other good clips up as well, so do go check out the article. If you’re the type, thank James for doing such a good job with the story. She’s covered trans issues before and really seems to get it.

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Trans Partners: Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

Hey, lovers of trans people! Come out about your desires today for National Coming Out Day! Celebrate the beauty of trans bodies and souls, no matter their shape or size or color.

There’s not enough of us out.

Here’s an exercise I ask trans partners to do when they’re feeling isolated: imagine you are Professor Charles Xavier and you’ve got that fabulous helmet — except instead of finding mutants, it helps you find other partners of trans people.

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Post Trans Post

Here’s a copy of a a guest bit I wrote recently for T-Central for a small series there on transitionn. Lots of the posts that appeared there were interesting, from FTM & MTF, a 17 year old & a 90 year old & every age in-between. I haven’t written very much about the experience of being “post trans,” so here you go.

**
Post Trans Post: Life After Transition – August 2010

Betty transitioned. Apparently we’ve forgotten to announce that officially. I can’t imagine anyone is surprised; looking back, I see chapter 5 of My Husband Betty as tea leaves neither of us wanted to read. But I wrote My Husband Betty seven years ago (and it’s still in print!), and that old joke says it only takes 2 years, right? Maybe that’s from crossdresser to transsexual, because surely it takes more years than that to become a woman or a man. It certainly took me a few more than 2 to become a woman, and that was without any trans interference. (Sometimes, when someone asks me if I’m trans myself, I wonder if I ever did make it to “woman,” but for me, that’s a compliment, that all of my genders are showing.)

What we are, post transition, is more relaxed. That has something to do with our move from New York to Wisconsin, and something to do as well with us both having jobs we like. It may also have something to do with our being together for 12 years now. But hearing that other shoe drop, at long last, has brought us both relief as well.

We find it easier being perceived as a lesbian couple than as a trans couple. Granted, we “do” lesbian with our bizarre heterosexual privilege – by which I mean we are still federally recognized as legally married. I certainly don’t mean to imply it’s easier to be a lesbian couple; it’s not. It’s way harder then when we were seen as a somewhat eccentric het couple. But you do a lot less explaining at parties, and that’s a nice break. People know what lesbians are, even if, as in our case, the label isn’t wholly accurate. Mostly we don’t prefer to tell people Betty is trans; if they know, & have questions, we answer them when we’re in the appropriate time & place to do so, like in a private conversation and not at a party. But otherwise, I have no interest in outing her on a regular basis.

Often the question of whether or not to be out as trans rests upon the assumption that you’re either out or stealth. Yay, another binary! The reality is that there is a significant gray area. What has surprised us most is that the old advice – to move clear across the country – has its reasons. We did, but not as part of her transition plan. We did, and so we’ve reaped the benefits of being in a place where no one knew her as male, where no one knew us as het, where no one knew us before at all. That is, when we meet people now, they need only know as as a same sex couple. Unlike many if not most trans people, Betty is undeniably out. Once someone asks me what I do, for instance, it is only a few short stops to “She used to be a man?” To preserve some of our privacy – and yes, even memoirists like some privacy – I usually tell people I write gender theory which invariably leads to one of two responses: (1) “Oh.” Or (2) they actually want to know what I think of Lady Gaga’s/Caster Semenya’s gender, at which point the conversation turns away from me and onto cranky female athletes or Gaga’s little monsters. That is, the titles of my books don’t ever have to come up, which keeps me from outing Betty. One of the best parts of working in academia is having people assume they haven’t read your work.

Sometimes I like to joke that I threw Betty over for a “real woman” but that’s only if that someone will get the joke. (The short version: I don’t believe in “real” genders.)

What we’ve found is that the guy at the local equivalent of the 7-11 doesn’t need to know. We are often assumed to be friends, and not a couple, because of general LGBTQ invisibility, and I’m learning to leave with that & all the heterocentric bullshit the world is steeped in. When someone’s head is still getting used to the idea of homosexuality, you don’t really want to hit them with Teh Trans, anyway. They’re not ready.

A friend of mine, both lesbian and trans, was once asked to talk to a student about being out. My friend promptly explained her experiences being out as trans, to which the slack-jawed undergrad responded, “I thought you were just a lesbian.”

So now we’re “just lesbians.”

But is anyone “just a lesbian”? Every lesbian woman I know is a host of other things: parent, daughter, lawyer, trans, Asian, etc. We are not “just lesbians” either. We are something like post trans queers. Or I am, at least. I’m not really sure anymore.

The only sad thing for me is that I have lost my partner in crime. Betty is (quite frustratingly, some days) gender normative, trendy, and magazine feminine. I have to remind her not to flip her hair so much. I love her, but I still nurse a general dislike of normative femininity. I’m naturally suspicious of people who fit in. I assume I’ll get over it. You don’t really make it through transition as someone’s partner without having an awful lot of flexibility.

What I will say to the partners: my resolve to be her friend first, and her lover/wife second, was tantamount. We still worry that our friendship has replaced or supplanted our marriage, but I suspect that’s the kind of thing a lot of long-term relationships wrestle. When it comes down to it, our journey, and my midwifery, has been an honor and a pleasure. It is a remarkable thing to watch someone go through gender transition and to help them do so. She has assisted me through a few life transitions, and we will, no doubt, see a few more in our lifetimes, and any and all of those changes can be a threat to a couple’s permanence and happiness. Her gender transition’s challenge to who we are as a couple was maybe more challenging than others, or maybe just more obvious in the ways it accessed axes of identity. But surely unhappiness, self-repression, and stagnation would destroy any relationship as easily and with far more bitterness and regret, and you know? Phooey to that.
**

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Madison, WI: SOFFA Support Group Starting

It’s always so good to hear when another partner support group starts! Go Madison!

Just to let you know there is a SOFFA support group starting in Madison.
It will meet every other Tuesday evening, 7p-9p, beginning January 19.
It will meet at Outreach, 600 Williamson Street.
We will be focusing on the SOFFA experience and narrative.
It is a drop-in, peer support group.

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Trans Partner Support Column

I was interviewed not long ago by Amanda Waldroupe as she was writing a column for just|out of Portland (OR) about the way in which partners of trans people need support and get or don’t get it.

While numerous resources exist for transgendered people during their transition, there is a dearth, both in Portland and nationally, for their partners—who go through their own emotional and sexual travails during the experience.

Reid Vanderburgh, a local transgender therapist, says partners can have a tough time throughout the transition process, even if they support their partner.

As far as I know, it’s the first column I’ve ever read about support groups for us partners – but maybe I missed one. Thanks to Ms. Waldroupe not just for writing the column, but for quoting me accurately.

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Dottie Laing – Already Missed

Allison Laing’s wife Dottie Laing died tonight after a long struggle with illness.
She left this note:

Celebrate my life!
Please do not be sad.
Remember me in fondness.
I have enjoyed my life, and treasure my family and friends.
I am proud of my loved ones, and feel content knowing that a part of me lives on in each of them.
I will always be there each time you smile thinking of the good times we have shared.
It’s been a great life!
– Dottie

She worked for and in the transgender community for many of the 50 years she & Allison were married. She was the kind of woman who smiled at the new wives at Fantasia Fair, and whose smile held a world of wisdom. We’ll miss her very much, & no doubt she will be missed at this year’s Fantasia Fair tremendously.

Do keep both Allison & Dottie in your thoughts & prayers. If you have any memories of Dottie you’d like to share here, please feel free to use the comments section below to do so.

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From a Child of a Trans Parent

This is B.’s reaction to the Chloe Prince documentary that was on the other night. Since I’m a partner, & have a soapbox from which to talk about my reaction as a partner, I thought I’d open my blog to the child of a trans parent on her feelings.

She’s 15, and her father, now female, transitioned about five years ago. She was about the same age as Prince’s eldest when she as told of her father’s imminent transition.

At first all I really felt was sadness for the children and the wife. The poor woman had to watch her spouse say on TV that she thought she might not have transitioned if she had stayed with her ex-girlfriend, something that must have felt awful and been humiliating to watch. I was shocked that the children’s reaction to the fact that their father was going to become a woman had been recorded in the first place, let alone aired on TV. As the child of a transgendered person I would be horrified if my initial reaction was shown to people all over who I didn’t even know. It’s an incredibly private moment that the rest of the world doesn’t have any business in watching.

As the show progressed I started to feel increasingly angry, and not just because she seemed to me a parody of a woman, intent on acting like a stereotype of how a woman “should be” and appearing very feminine, or because despite this femininity she still did all the “masculine” chores around the house, and we got to see pictures of her working with tools and at her job (I would have expected someone who had undergone a male to female transition to not be sexist).

I wanted to punch a hole in the wall every time it was mentioned that the children had “lost” a father. I never lost my father, just because she’s a woman doesn’t make any difference to the fact that she is my father. A sex change operation doesn’t change that. Chloe had no right to be upset about being missed out on the mother’s day photo- it was for mother’s day, not father’s day. Those children are going to have a hell of a time growing up now, and will have to deal with people they don’t know recognizing them and even judging for something they didn’t even do.

Thanks very much B. for sharing your thoughts with us. I would love to read comments from other trans people with kids, if their kids watched, what they thought.