Recently, Emily and I hit a pretty major anniversary… one year out in public as a cis-gender and transgender couple. For those who are new to the terms (and I am pretty new too), cis-gender is someone who identifies as the gender to which they were born, transgender is someone who identifies as the opposite gender to which they were born.
When Emily told me about being transgender I was massively in shock. It is not something that I ever saw coming and it was probably the last thing I would have ever guessed as being a secret between us. My first thoughts were of how we would expand our family, what changes I would need to make about myself, how would Xander react and how would Xander get treated. In terms of what Emily was going through I knew I was happy to support her, what I didn’t know was whether I would support her as a friend or a wife.
After several tearful conversations it was agreed that I could only tell people with approval from Emily but similarly she would discuss with family and work by September so that Xander didn’t have to keep secrets.
April 2019 to September 2019 was super hard for me. I hated pretending that everything was okay, attempting to use Emily’s new name and pronouns in private whilst using her previous name and pronouns in public. My mental health imploded. I stopped crafting, I didn’t want to socialise with people who didn’t know, I was answering questions of those who did know and most of all I was trying to work out what I felt about my marriage.
I had lots of conflicting “advice”about how to get over it and letting Emily be her perfect self because “she hasn’t changed”. I had many telling me that it was okay to just walk away even though Emily had done nothing wrong. Everyone was wrong! Emily had changed despite still loving all the things she used to love including me. She was spending more time on clothing, more time in the bathroom, spending more time on social media talking to other transgender people. Nothing bad, but it was still different from the Emily I had known since we were 13 years old. Likewise, it wasn’t okay for me to walk away. I owed it to our vows and our son and our history to explore the situation and give it time.
The most important aspect of this time frame was honesty. I had to tell work because I needed time to explore my options and to have time alone. I stopped working on Thursdays and used the time to discover Junk Journaling, research resources for transgender partners and find a couples counsellor who I felt was able to deal with our issues. In the July I ended up needing two weeks off sick from work because 1 day a week really wasn’t enough time for me to process. The beauty of hindsight!
Finally we reached September and in the previous 5 months we had told close friends who we saw regularly, told Xander and our parents, and both our employers knew. In fact, Emily’s were great and implemented an entire calendar of when and how things should be implemented to the point of hiring a charity to come in and talk about transgender issues as part of a diversity awareness campaign. The time had come to go public and as with most things social media made his extremely easy for Emily (though again in hindsight she would have let a few more people know personally rather than via social media).
The minute it happened I was free from all secrecy agreements. It was now public knowledge and Emily was presenting to the world as herself full time.
I expected more drama from people but mainly my friends list were super amazing and supportive. I have had to unfriend a few people from social media… not because they said something directly to me (I would like to think that most of the people I know would remove themselves rather than need to be blocked) but because they were posting stuff that didn’t sit right with me regarding transgender rights. I would like to say that I would have unfriended them before this point, but I honestly cannot tell you that as I was pretty ignorant on the subject. As with most things, issues do not present themselves as obviously until you start looking for them.
I have had a few people, who have missed the Emily announcement in September, message me and ask who is Emily and why she was always mentioned in my newsfeed. A simple explanation and no-one has felt the need to take it beyond asking how Xander and I are doing.
One of the biggest impacts on me was the lack of having to lie to people to explain my distance, and low levels of mental health. Everyone had assumed it was work and the number of hours I was doing, and I let them think that (lets face it, that was also an issue but not one that was really taking headspace). I was grateful though because I didn’t have to lie to Emily. She gave me all the space and time I needed and also didnt expect me to make promises that I really wasn’t able to commit to.
We stopped saving for a house for 12 months. Instead I heavily indulged in my new creative hobby, got my phoenix tattoo done and lots of other things that I had stopped doing in pursuit of purchasing our first home. It wasn’t until COVID hit that I was able to imagine us having a long term future.
What changed?
Honestly I don’t know. One day I was just able to talk about expanding our family again, and talking about our ideal house again. As far as Emily was concerned, these dreams had not changed for her, the only thing that had changed was my view of her. Do I still have days where I have to sit and really evaluate where I stand? Yes. Do I still get the pronouns wrong? Absolutely especially when Xander is talking about Daddy. It is going to take longer than a year for me (and society) to not subconsciously assume that Daddy equals male. Emily will be Daddy to Xander and any future children. As Xander gets older he can make the decision to make any changes to this but we do try to encourage female pronouns when talking about Daddy and honestly I think he is doing pretty well. Do I consider myself a lesbian? No. Emily does and that is fine. Emily is my special case and probably only because we have such a long history of friendship on which to build our relationship on and I want to keep working on it. In writing Emily is my wife however, I still struggle with that verbally mainly because of the lesbian label. I will happily tell people that my partner is called Emily and that she is transgender if it comes up (often more so in socal circles that have known me to have a husband) but there is something about telling strangers that I have a wife, and them assuming I am gay, that I haven’t quite got my head around yet because it isn’t a label I give myself. I am working on it though because really, it isn’t my problem how other people define labels. If I want to define myself as a cis-gender, straight female with a wife, then who is to say that I am wrong. My marriage to Emily is to define as we see fit and so long as we are happy with our own definitions that is all that matters in our little bubble.
What are your most common questions where discussing transgender issues? Is it a subject that you don’t think about? Feel free to ask me any questions about our journey and I will provide you with the answers that are true to me (they are not true for every transgender partner).
See you on Tuesday.
Faerydae Stitches 