What I Learned About Myself When My Transgender Ex Transitioned
By: Patricia Dillon
Tags: Self-awareness, Gender Identity, Love, Life, Sexuality

What I Learned About Myself When My Transgender Ex Transitioned

Photo by Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash

When my ex and I first met, in high school, I instantly felt an immense attraction. I was a 16-year-old sophomore, and he was an 18-year-old senior. Two years later, on the night of my graduation, we got engaged.

I moved to college and we continued what became a semi-long distance relationship. After two months, my fiancé said he needed to talk to me during one of the frequent visits he made to campus. At first, I was nervous and thought he wanted to break off the engagement.

That wasn’t the case. He told me that he was, in fact, a she. At the age of 20, the man I had fallen in love with realized that he was a woman. My initial response was, “I still love you. Your gender doesn’t matter, and of course I’ll support you.” However, a few days later, I began to question my resolve. Could I marry a woman?

I spent the next five months agonizing over what to do. I still loved this person, but I wasn’t bisexual. Or was I? I didn’t know what to think. I pondered what my family of conservative Baptists would say if I married a transgender woman. I worried about how society would view us as a couple.

In the end, I realized that none of it mattered. I loved this person, male or female. At the time, gender didn’t matter — only personality. We went through with the wedding as planned, and three months after getting married, she began hormone replacement treatment.

My spouse slowly began to present more as a female — wearing traditional feminine clothing, letting her hair grow long, and wearing makeup. She even began to adjust the pitch of her voice.

Throughout her transition, I was her biggest supporter. But the more feminine she appeared, the more I began to question myself and doubt the decision I had made to stay with her. I even questioned my own gender identity and, for a time, believed that I was bigender, expressing myself in both feminine and masculine ways. But I realized that I was only trying to act more masculine to compensate for my wife becoming more feminine.

When the spark in the bedroom began to fizzle out, my ex and I tried an open marriage. She could no longer satisfy me in the way I needed, and she was interested in sexual relations with men. So she found new lovers, and I found a boyfriend. But that’s another story.

I eventually realized that I am genuinely a cisgender woman. I also discovered that while I am heteroflexible, the love I felt for my wife had started to fade. I still loved her, but it felt more platonic than romantic. I tried hard, desperately at first, to cling to the romantic love I had for her. But sexuality and gender identity are not a choice. It’s a discovery you make once you free your mind from the heteronormative shackles.

As hard as I tried to remain in love with her, it wasn’t enough. My brain finally understood that the man I loved no longer existed. A woman had taken her place — a beautiful, fun, best friend kind of woman.

I still remember the look of hurt and betrayal when I asked her to sign the divorce papers. I knew that I needed a man, a husband, and she needed someone to love her for the woman that she is — not the man she was. For both our sakes, ending the marriage was for the best.