How NOT to Come Out to your Wife as Transgender
A cautionary tale
CW: Internalized transphobia, fatphobia, homophobia, and pictures of me with a beard
Continuing on from my previous article, ‘Cracks’, which was about how I figured out I was trans; this article is about what happened next. It was tumultuous but the story does have a happy ending. I’m hoping this will help others who are in a ‘straight-passing’ relationship or marriage when they realize they aren’t cisgender.
First tip, if you figure out you are a woman and you have a beard; WARN YOUR PARTNER BEFORE SHAVING.
So my egg cracked, I finally said the words to myself “I think I’m transgender” and my world felt like it was collapsing. I was overwhelmed with information from others’ anecdotes about their coming out, stories of relationships crumbling, and messy divorces. I had moved to Washington with Hannah just a year prior, now I was panicking about telling her I’d been lying to her and myself. I knew she was pansexual but what if she was no longer attracted to me as I transitioned? I had just become estranged from my family, we were living with hers - where would I go if she didn’t want to be with me any more? I had a work from home call center job that required internet access and… a home.
All of these thoughts were swirling in a maelstrom around me and I felt like a plastic bag getting torn to shreds in the gale. I was entirely destabilized, between the panic logistics and the gender revelation bomb; I had no idea who I was. I was dissociative and terrified.
If you are currently in this early revelation panic stage, please remember you are not alone.
I’m an LGBTQ+ Life Coach and I started Kiwifruit Coaching so I could help others through their life transitions and come out the other side thriving.
As you’ll learn through my articles, I make a lot of mistakes! But I’ve learned so much from them, I use that knowledge and experience to help make it easier for my clients
One of the first things I did when my egg cracked was download FaceApp and try the gender swapping filter. This feels like a rite of passage for trans people, seeing what our ‘potential’ could be. However the app was distorting my future image because it was taking the shape of my beard as the shape of my face underneath, so it just looked wrong. I wanted to see myself as a woman so badly, to see if I could justify this to myself, to see if it would be ‘worth it’, if I could even tolerate my bare face in my reflection.
So I trimmed my beard really short, took another photo and gender swapped it. Did the end result look anything like me? BARELY. But I loved it. I loved seeing myself as a woman. I wanted nothing more. I believe if a truly cis person used the same filter, the reaction to their gender swap would be a mixture of amusement and revulsion, like “oh that’s so weird!”. My reaction was one of excitement. The face on the right looked more like me, to me than the original picture on the left.
Looking at this picture, I don’t recognize the guy on the left. He looks so sad and scared. There’s no light in his eyes. Even in other photos where he’s smiling, it never reaches his eyes.
The AI generated woman on the right is clearly fake looking, there’s a lot of the uncanny valley effect.
I could tolerate it because I had been feeling the uncanny valley every single time I had looked at my reflection previously.
The only time I could really be okay with my reflection was when I was absolutely wasted. I’d drunkenly try and smile at myself, to try to connect with my reflection, to try and feel like it’s me and that I was okay looking like this person. The closest I could get was “this is fine, I guess”.
Seeing the FaceApp picture confirmed for me that I wanted this, more than anything. I had known for a long time subconsciously, it just took a few decades for my conscious brain to allow it to even be entertained as a possibility. My last few years of reading trans experiences had been little chips at my eggshell, longingly reading about how they were happy as their true selves, that HRT had made their brains feel right, that they no longer hated themselves.
I wanted all of it, so badly.
I sent Hannah an article that I related to (I’ve Been A Lesbian My Entire Life, But I Only Realized I Was A Woman This Year by Cassie LaBelle), got in the shower, shaved, and then went to come out to Hannah.
DON’T DO IT IN THAT ORDER!!
Hannah had only seen my face when I had closely trimmed my beard previously, she had never seen me clean-shaven. She’s also on the autism spectrum and doesn’t handle sudden change very well, with a mild bit of face blindness (that last part I was not aware of at the time). So when I walked into our room, clean-shaven and shaken; she literally didn’t recognize me. To her I was still clearly me, I was me-shaped still, I sounded like me, but I didn’t LOOK like me. Ironically, that’s kind of how I experienced myself my whole life up until that point.
However when she said to me “I don’t recognize you right now” and looked at me with utter confusion, I was already in a state of panic, and my brain said “Oh no, she’s rejecting you for being trans”. I hadn’t even said it to her yet, I was so jumbled. I wasn’t communicating well, I wasn’t using my words, I was lost in my thoughts and wasn’t sure what I had said to her or what I’d just thought. I was lost.
We were both absolute messes for the next week. We were talking past each other, both feeling defensive and hurt, both panicking that we were about to lose our person. Hannah was reading horror stories from cis partners of trans women, tales of infidelity, secrets being kept, sexualities changing and being left for a man, or being forced into open relationships. I was taking all of those concerns as personal attacks instead of fears to tackle together. She had read of people taking HRT secretly without telling their partner so she asked me point blank if I had been keeping this from her since my ‘Diet Pill Dysphoria Episode’ - I told her honestly “No, I’ve kept this secret from both of us until right now”.
I think it was day 3 of miscommunication where Hannah asked me to say to her “I am transgender and I am a woman” - because I still hadn’t said it explicitly! I had been sending articles, links to reddit threads, thinking out loud about what I would want my body to look like, potential surgeries, the concept of changing my name; I was in a manic and overwhelmed state and I was dragging Hannah along behind me instead of making our way through it, together.
All of our words had come from places of fear - fear of rejection, fear of losing each other, fear of external forces, fear of doing it ‘wrong’. If we had just been on the ‘same side’ from the beginning, it would have been so much easier and more joyful.
We eventually settled down and reunited properly, I apologized for the way it all went down, she apologized for her part in it, and we hugged and reconnected. We sat and talked honestly about our fears, reassured each other that we were still in love, we still wanted to be together forever, and that this was a journey we were going to take together.
Hannah and I came out to her family together, me as a trans woman, her as a lesbian. (When we started dating, she had decided that if it didn’t work out, I would be the last guy that she dated. Neither of us knew how right she would end up being…)
Hannah’s sister asked “So are you going to get the surgery?”, immediately asking about my genitals. Hannah ran interference and said that any questions like that could be filtered through her.
Hannah’s mother said that “statistically, lesbian relationships are more abusive”.
Suffice to say, it went really well.
Are you currently in the stages of figuring out how or when to come out?
This is something I’ve worked with a lot of clients on, helping them gain the confidence to come out to their partners, parents, friends, and colleagues.
It’s time to be loud, proud, and visible
It’s time to set yourself free
Here’s what I wish I had said to Hannah right at the very beginning of all of this (while still bearded):
“I think I’m transgender. I’ve been reading a lot of trans experiences and they have really resonated with me unlike anything I’ve ever read. My whole life I have felt queer but never really known how. I’ve never related to my gender. I’ve never recognized my reflection. I’ve never loved my body. I’ve always fantasized about what it would be like to be a woman. These are not cis experiences! We knew there was something going on with my gender so I adopted non-binary as a label, but that also never felt like it fit. Saying to you that I am trans and I am a woman fits me. It feels right.
I want to be your wife. I want us to make it through this life as our genuine selves, and I think I will be happier and more able to be myself as a woman. I’m not disappearing or becoming someone else - I’m going to become more of the person you fell in love with, but even brighter. I love you and I want us to go through this transition together”.
If you are in a similar situation and haven’t come out to your partner yet - do it sooner rather than later. Your fear and secrecy will only drive a wedge between you. Make it a co-operative journey, rather than feeling like opposing forces. Reassure them that you aren’t going anywhere.
One of the biggest fears I see from cis-partners of the newly cracked is they are worried that they are going to lose their person, that they will change completely and be unrecognizable, That their entire psyche and personality will change into someone that they don’t like or aren’t attracted to; or that they will change to the point that they aren’t attracted to their partner any more. This is not our experience.
I’d be lying if I said that there weren’t a bunch of changes in me, I feel like I am entirely different compared to who I was prior to figuring this all out. However I feel that I am a better version of who I was. I was a kind, quiet, funny, polite, caring guy. Now I am a kind, funny, polite, caring woman - but I am no longer quiet.
I am no longer a shrinking violet, feeling like I have to dim every single part of myself that the world said I had to hide. I smile, I laugh, I dance, I sing, I exist joyfully. I am public with my transness because I know my visibility helps others, compared to a big husk of a ‘man’ who wouldn’t even let himself smile for fear of being othered. Every part of me that I was forced to hide is now on full display and I couldn’t be happier. I’m passionate, I’m confident, I’m able to let myself step forward as a leader and make a difference in my community. I’m unmasking my neurodivergence to show others that they are not alone and there is nothing ‘wrong’ with them.
I hated myself for the first 30 years of my life.
I no longer hate myself.
I love the woman I am and the woman I’m becoming.
I’m so proud to be her.
Which means I am able to be a much better partner to Hannah, I am no longer spending half my energy battling my dysphoria and self-hatred. I’m no longer hiding when we go out in public, shrinking myself as much as possible. I am loud and proud with my love now, I don’t feel like an impostor trying to keep up the ‘straight’ facade.
But this isn’t just my transition, it’s also Hannah’s. She’s had to come to terms with being visibly lesbian now, to being the partner of a visibly trans woman. I couldn’t have asked for a better ally or protector. I’ve also gotten to see her embrace herself more, her sexuality making more sense, abandoning the femme aspects of her presentation that she found uncomfortable and embracing her butch side. When we look at pre-transition couples photos, we don’t recognize either of the people in the ‘before’ photo, because we have come so far since then. The light and joy in our eyes now show how powerful and transformative this journey has been.
Now, we’re Blooming together 💜
-Hazel Bloom
If you need support, I am an Online Queer Life Coach. I help people through their own transitions and support them in living their best queer and/or neurodivergent lives. I aim to be as affordable as possible with a sliding scale rate available for my One-on-One coaching - reach out to me for a free 15 minute meeting! I have Online and In-Person support groups that will always be free, click the buttons below to find out more!
Make sure to subscribe below so you don’t miss the next article! I have several in the works, plus Hannah is going to write about her side of the experience as a guest article. I’m very excited to have the two pieces as resources for other couples going through similar situations.
