FORTY-SIX years ago Kaye met Jack at a slide night in Sydney. They both had adventurous spirits and Kaye was attracted to him immediately.

“He was really genuine, and very sincere in what he said and what he did. We got on right from the very beginning,” Kaye says.

They married a year later and over the decades had what Kaye describes as a “very close” relationship. The pair lived in a rural New South Wales town, ran two small businesses together and raised their children.

“I thought we were the happiest couple in the world,” Kaye says.

But Jack had a secret. From the time he was 13, Jack knew he was a woman and worked hard to hide it. In the 1950s, Jack explains, a bloke who expressed any feminine inclinations “was totally unacceptable.”

He locked away the nagging gender question for six decades until “it just became insistent. So insistent I could not ignore it,” she says.

Yes, that’s right. She. At the age of 71 Jack became a woman named Peggy and describes the transition as “the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life.”

“I’m lost about it. None of it is easy. I would have avoided it if I could,” Peggy says, later adding, “the damage to my family is incalculable.”

With long grey hair, a neck scarf and classic grey jacket, a passer-by might mistake Peggy for any mature woman having a coffee in the lobby of an up-market hotel. But looks can be deceiving.

Peggy’s transition has thrown her life into turmoil. Her wife and adult son moved interstate and relations with her daughter are strained.

“I live in a rented house, no security, most of my money gone …. I’m starting again, not quite from scratch,” she says.

While Peggy is clear she doesn’t regret the decision to transition and undergo gender reassignment surgery, “what I [do] regret is the hurt I have caused my family.”

Recalling the moment she told Kaye about moving out of the family home in order to live as a woman, Peggy becomes tearful and says: “It was, still is, gut-wrenching to even think about.”

Peggy’s so overcome by grief, we are forced to stop the interview and wait until she is able to continue.

“It’s the hormones,” Peggy jokes, wiping a few tears away from her eyes.

While Peggy and Kaye are legally separated, they remain married and speak on the phone every day.

I talk with Kaye for almost 40 minutes but it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint her feelings about Peggy’s transition.

“The whole thing has been selfish, in a nutshell,” she says, adding that Jack (because she refuses to call her husband “Peggy”) has “put himself first all the time.”

Even so, Kaye insists she is “not angry.”

“I am hurt by it,” she says, “had he shared it with me, it might have been easier for me to accept.”

Kaye goes on to say their children have also been hurt by Peggy’s gender change. She uses the word “accept” more than 20 times in our conversation, sometimes in the negative and sometimes in the positive.

“I will accept him as a woman,” she says at one point and then seconds later states, “I won’t accept him” unless he dresses “conventionally.”

Does Kaye think Peggy had a choice in whether to transition or not?

Surprisingly and emphatically, Kaye immediately says: “No, I don’t.”

Seeking some clarity on her views, I press her further. Finally, Kaye says:

“I’ve lost the man that I married, and that’s what I’m trying to come to terms with.

“Still, I’m never going to divorce him, because I still love him for what he is, because he can’t help himself,” she says.

Psychologist Jennie Yates began working with clients experiencing gender issues and their partners in 2009.

The partners of transgender people, Ms Yates explains, often “felt betrayed, they felt that their partner had kept something from them.”

“What people forget is that the person who’s coming out has been thinking about it for at least a while, if not a lifetime.” Ms Yates says.

“They’ve had time to adjust to it, and there’s seldom any recognition of the fact that for the partner it’s completely new news,” she says.

She also calls on transgender people to consider the speed of their transition.

“More partners would actually be able to make it through that process if it went at a speed … where they didn’t feel railroaded,” she says.

However, Ms Yates makes it clear that in the end, whether or not to stay with a transgender partner is an “individual choice.”

“It’s about respecting the essence of the person that you’re committed to and where that’s the case, then I’ve seen people get through incredibly challenging times,” she says.

Melburnians Brenda and Janice Appleton fit this mould. The warmth and ease of their interactions belies the tough path they’ve travelled together.

Like Peggy and Kaye, they have been married more than 40 years. And in a similar way to Peggy, Brenda also wondered about her gender from a young age.

“It’s a very lonely place. My father was a ex-footballer, ex-boxer, ex-army person so it was a very macho environment with no discussion about gender,” Brenda explains.

The Appletons met in New Zealand when Janice was 17 and Brent, as Brenda was known back then, was 19 when they were working in the same accountancy office.

They married in 1972 and had two children. Looking back, the Appletons agree they were both “playing roles.”

“Brent was trying to be as macho and as masculine as he could and I was trying to be the best corporate wife I could be and (a) mother,” Janice says.

Explaining it further, Brenda says “like many trans people, I thought that if I worked hard, got married, had kids then the doubts and the uneasiness that I was experiencing would go away.”

The facade fell apart in August 2001. After fours years of counselling, Brenda reached a flashpoint.

Brenda explains she looked pale, had “lost weight” and “become a shell of a person.”

“I had three suicide incidents. It became a matter of life and death and I had to decide that I wanted to live more than I wanted to end the pain of where I was at,” Brenda says.

Janice is nodding as Brenda describes this fraught period of their lives, and comments “it was so hard to watch.”

The day it all came to head is etched in Janice’s memory.

“When you came home and said ‘I can’t go on,’ and I said ‘I can’t keep going on like this. Something’s got to change. We’ve got to make this happen’,” Janice recalls, speaking directly to Brenda.

Six months later, Brenda started to transition.

“We had times where we thought we would need to separate; it would be better for both of us. It was a huge amount to work through,” Brenda says.

“Janice also got professional counselling for two-and-a-half years. We had two children in their early twenties at that stage. Both of them needed help,” she continues, “it’s a big journey for everyone.”

Brenda explains she worked hard to “slow things down sufficiently” so her family had “time to process things.”

And it’s not just Brenda who has evolved into a new person. Janice believes this experience has “completely transformed” her and repeatedly says she is “grateful.”

“I was able to shed every ounce of pretence or role-playing I had had in my life up until then,” Janice explains.

This included losing many of the couple’s friends and dealing with the nudges and winks of strangers when they are out in public together.

“I know now that if that’s starting to bother me, it’s time for me to work on myself,” Janice says.

Brenda says it is the “very strong foundation of respect and love for each other that was able to carry us through this period of uncertainty and difficulty.”

“I think we have a better relationship than most heterosexual couples because … we had to evaluate what our real values were,” Brenda says.

“We are true soulmates,” she concludes.

Jack/Peggy and Kaye’s names have been changed at their request.

Ginger Gorman is an award winning print and radio journalist, and a 2006 World Press Institute Fellow. Follow her on twitter: @freshchilli