I want to talk about something today that has become something very close to my heart. And I never thought it would to be honest. In November 2017 I met my fiancé. My transgender fiancé. Ever since we started our relationship I find that people I know are always curious but feel awkward about asking questions because they don’t want to pry or offend and I just say, ‘hey I’m an open book and she wants to raise awareness so ask away’.

But now I’m going to write it all down for you and when I say all I mean all. This is the start of a long journey that’s going to take years so I’ll be keeping you updated along the way and hopefully I’ll be able to provide some advice from the partner’s point of view. So enjoy and feel free to comment any genuine questions!

Transgenderism. What is it?

Transgender – relating to a person whose personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex

Here is a Google definition of ‘transgender’ and to be honest I think it’s pretty good. If you accept that gender and sex are fundamentally different that is. Here we’d take gender to be part of personal expression and sex to be biologically based.

So someone who is transmale would have been assigned female at birth but identifies as male.

My partner is transfemale and this means she was assigned male at birth but identifies as female socially and wishes to further transition physically as well. And yes, she has a penis! (People are often confused about that so sorry for the brashness).

I think here is a good enough place as any for a little comparison pic so here you go.

Our Current Situation and How We Got Here

So this isn’t going to be about my partner’s battle with acceptance throughout her life. This is entirely from my point of view because in the end that’s all I can accurately provide. (If people want to hear from her I’m sure we could do an interview post or something – let me know!)

Disclaimer : I’ll also be using neutral pronouns initially because Katie actually accepted that she was trans after I met her. So keeping it neutral until when her gender identity settled is how I think it’ll be easiest to understand.

The Beginning

So I met my partner in November 2017. We originally met on Tinder and I knew they were Gender Fluid. Some days they dressed and acted and felt more male and sometimes they dressed and acted and felt more female. I met my partner as a male and knew their male name etc. It’s actually a funny story as to how I met their female side (I say this because at this point the male and female were very much separate). We literally just bumped into each other in town shopping very soon after we met and they were a girl. I look back now at that day and honestly I think it’s the best way it could have happened. Like I said before,to me at that point the world was black and white, male and female and I really doubted myself as to whether I could be tolerant and accepting of this person who was Gender Fluid, something which at the time was alien to me. In the end I realised that maybe my own sexual orientation needed revising because the world was not male and female anymore and I wasn’t attracted to people because of gender – I was way more attracted to personality. That day I met the female side, they gave me a kiss goodbye before I left and I’ve kissed a few girls in my time and I’ve kissed a few guys in my time too and although in my head I knew ‘okay this person is biologically male, there is a penis in those women’s jeans’ that kiss felt like a kiss from a girl. It was so distinctly different from the other kisses we’d shared. It was madness. I was so amazed. I messaged them later that day to tell them my experience of it and I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so happy. To them that was a win. That was ‘okay one more thing I’m doing right, one more thing I’m passing at.’

Over the next few months they became more and more comfortable being around me and others as Katie. It got to a point where we realised that Katie was an escape from an unhappy reality as Kieran because Katie was the truer reflection of them. As Kieran, something was always missing and that was femininity. Katie was how they felt most comfortable and confident and keeping the two separate was just making them so so unhappy. It was so painful to watch.

A Tough Time

It’s at this point that I have to share the harsh truth of this part of our relationship. As I’ve said, I was unsure if I would be able to accept someone as Gender Fluid but it was at this point I think I realised that I could accept it because the person I had met in the first place was still there. Kieran still came out even though they were Katie the majority of the time. There was a lot of difficulty here for me because I sort of felt like Kieran was being lost and they were changing into Katie and I didn’t recognise them anymore. I think at one point I even said to them I prefer Kieran over Katie and I hugely regret this now. There’d also be times that after being around Katie so long they would switch into Kieran and I would just break down because I had missed him so much. Through this strange period of conflict we realised together that for me at least both personalities had different traits that were good I guess you could say. I’m sure if you asked Katie she would say there wasn’t a lot she liked about Kieran but we came to the conclusion that for it to work, there had to be a blend. It was too jarring for me to be in a relationship with two different people in the same body and too emotionally exhausting for Katie to switch all the time. Kieran was always better at consoling me when I was emotional – Katie being a typical woman would just cry along with me. Katie was more compassionate and playful almost child like and that really helped us deal with the seriousness of the matter with a little more jest so things didn’t get too heavy.

Their Facebook profile was changed to Katie and pronouns to female. And this sparked further backlash from friends. During this period of time where they were trying to find balance, their friends really felt like I had. They felt Kieran was changing too much, that they weren’t the same person that had been in their lives for years as a male. It went to the point of some friendships breaking down for a while and all I could do was be there for them. To say to the friends, look they are the same person and to say to Katie you know, you have to be patient just like you were with me. Eventually the blend of personalities came together more and other people could see that Kieran, the person they’d known for so long was still around, the signage had just changed if you like. It’s at this point that Katie really felt more able to come out as transgender.

(From here, I’ll be using female pronouns as this is what Katie uses now).

‘I’m Trans’

The hard times weren’t over however. The conflict still continued everyday and still does even now. Her thought process everyday when she gets dressed and does her make up is, ‘am I passing? Do I look like a woman?’ It’s especially hard for her as body hair grows at a rate of knots, it’s crazy. So she has to shave her face roughly 3 times a day which is irritating her skin. A particular insecurity for her I know is her voice as people have said that that’s the only real tell when they meet her that she’s not born female.

Katie has a community on her Facebook of lots of different people and in particular she seeks out help and offers support to anyone. She’s a very selfless person and I love her for this. Through doing this on Facebook she’s found friends in other trans people and so she has people to talk to about it that are going through it. However, many of them seem to have bad experiences of transitioning because they are impatient or are having to pay for hormones because their health insurance won’t cover it etc. What I’m saying is that these negative views of the transitioning process passed onto Katie and on top of not liking doctors and hospitals, she pretty much shunned the idea of getting help. ‘Oh what’s the point? They won’t believe me. It’ll take too long. It won’t be effective.’ But we went to the GP and she was great. Turns out over the last year the demand for trans treatments had increased and so there had been a clinic opened at another GP practice not too far away specifically for trans patients.

About 2 weeks later the appointment came through for the trans health clinic and the appointment letter gave so much information about what to expect and really helped ease Katie’s anxiety about the whole thing. I went to the appointment with her and the doctor there explained to us that she specialised in sexuality and sexual health and was finding trans patients in GUM clinics and sexual health clinics because they didn’t know who else might help them. So she set up the trans health clinic specifically to fill that need. The first appointment was just Katie talking about her history with her mental health and her gender issues and then in the next appointment, a care plan was devised.

The doctor expressed to us that she doesn’t usually have trans patients come to her that are in committed relationships and so for them they only have to think about themselves. But for us one of the huge things was fertility. I would like to have children eventually but if Katie were to go on hormone therapy, even if she didn’t have genital reconstruction surgery, she would have to come off the hormones to increase testosterone again in order for us to conceive naturally. Although this may be possible at the time, we have to prepare for the fact that it might not so we have been referred to a fertility clinic for gamete storage. It’s madness to me that I’m having to think about this now but to be honest it’s proving really good for our relationship because it’s getting us to talk about what we want for our future and where we see things going. It means our relationship has a lot of direction and planning but I wouldn’t change that. Because we have to talk about the future, I know where we both stand. I know that we both want that future together. And as a result of that, we got engaged 7 months into our official relationship.

We received some bad news in August 2018 that the NHS here in England won’t fund laser hair removal for trans patients. Talks between NHS England and Gender Identity Clinics and other trans services are ongoing but at the moment they won’t fund it so Katie would have to

privately fund it herself. That’s not the only problem with it though. Looking at hair removal clinics, they tend to offer male and female packages. Now because of the body hair that Katie has, she would have to go for a male laser package which to me just doesn’t feel right. I get protective of her I know but I would prefer her to go to a trans specific service. Katie’s also awaiting psychotherapy and speech therapy which I know she’s really looking forward to. She has to get three doctors to sign off on her diagnosis of Gender Incongruence in order to qualify for hormone replacement therapy.

Final Thoughts

I guess the big take away from the experience I’ve had over the past year is that when people say ‘oh trans and non-binary people are just making things awkward for the rest of us. I don’t know what to call them etc’ I first of all understand completely because I struggled too, but I know if someone isn’t a dick they won’t shun you because you need time to adjust – that’s natural when changing something so ingrained into someone’s brain. And also people who flat out call it attention seeking etc don’t realise what it’s really like. Unless you live with it yourself or as a partner you’ll never know what its like to see the person you love look in the mirror everyday and see someone that they feel isn’t them. To look at this man staring back and knowing that’s not who they’re meant to be. It’s so hard to express but just watching someone go through the torture of hating their own body, desperately trying anything to change it, getting so disheartened when some stranger calls her a male pronoun it’s horrible. People, especially online, can be really nasty and it’s all well and good if you’re against trans and that’s just what you believe but you don’t see what your words do to the person I love everyday. You don’t see how devastating those comments can be. I think a huge issue Katie finds is that men in particular fetishise her because she’s transgender and it’s quite frankly disgusting. She finds often that guys see her as an object because of what she feels is a huge flaw, something that she battles with everyday. She’s sexualised unnecessarily and though some women may say, ‘oh well that’s just part of being a woman,’ maybe it is for some, not saying that is should be, but she’s new to the world of sexuality as a woman. As a male Katie was never intrusive or pervy and men being that way with her is difficult to navigate and is degrading to be honest.

Equally on a more positive note, the nice comments can really make her day. I think the physical side of things is just a waiting game but the social side can be influenced now and positive comments and such really help raise her spirits while waiting for the physical treatments.

I hope I’ve done this justice and as I’ve said this is just my point of view. If anyone would like to hear from Katie about the subject I’m sure she’d be happy to do an interview here, just let me know! Feel free to leave and constructive comments and questions (nastiness will not be tolerated).

Thank you for your support and I’ll be back soon with more from this series. I don’t know what to call it yet so any help with that would be appreciated.

-BN x

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