All gender dysphoric people long to be accepted and loved for themselves as they truly are but many fear rejection should the truth come out. If they have entered a relationship while maintaining a secret then they know that they have not been totally frank about themselves, but hope that they can keep the behaviour separate from their domestic life. They usually believe that if they declare themselves at the beginning of a relationship they will be rejected anyway. By marrying first they can hope for unconditional love from their partner who will love them enough to put up with anything. The major difficulty which all transgendered people face is the lack of transgendered role models.
Western culture offers only two genders, man or woman.
Marriage offers a confused person an opposite role model whom they can observe in their natural surroundings and who they believe will help them with perfecting their new persona. Many women will be unaware that this is happening and many gender dysphoric people may model subconsciously, still in denial of their true intent. This aspect is demonstrated almost totally by men on women. Female to male subjects rarely marry. There is a move by some transsexuals to identify as transspersons, rather than to attribute their gender identity to either determinant, thus reducing the impact which transsexualism is often perceived as having on the traditional models.