My name is Ben. I’m a gay man in
his early 60s who has been married to Charley,
an FTM transexual in his early 50s.
We’ve been together for more than 30
years. We live in New England in the United
States.
We met singing in a chorale. I was already
working as a journalist, he was a college
student. At the time, both of us treated him as
a woman, although I have since learned that he
never felt like a woman.
At first, we went out as part of a larger
mixed group after rehearsals and concerts. We
all accepted him as part of the group, even
though he was still in college and we ranged in
age into our 50s.
Gradually he and I began doing things
together. I enjoyed his company. He acted more
like a man than a woman even then. He was always
ready to go on an excursion on the spur of the
moment.
Let me explain that I didn’t just think
that I was gay. I had bonafide
out-dancin’-in-the-clubs credentials. I was
active sexually with other men and considered
men my main sexual attraction. But I never found
love my gay relationships. I had a number of
good friends, usually not sexual partners, but I
never found anyone who loved me, as in becoming
my partner for life.
Charley and I gradually got closer and
closer. I think he “fell in love” way
before I did — or at least he knew it way
before I did.
When it seemed like we were going to get
intimate, I came out to him. It was one of the
hardest things I ever did. Back in the 1970s,
being gay was nowhere near as widely accepted as
it is now. I thought he’d run screaming
from the relationship. Instead he said,
“So?”
So, indeed. We ended up getting married. We
had two children and a house in the suburbs. He
finished university about 10 years after he
would have if he had stayed in school. I went to
graduate school. We were active in our church.
In the midst of all this busy-ness we were
vaguely aware that things were less than ideal.
We both suffered from bouts of depression and
had unexplainable outbursts of anger,
fortunately not directed at each other or our
children.
We didn’t talk about orientation or
sexual identity for 28 years. We didn’t
even know how to begin such a conversation. I
thought I had to be straight if I was married to
a woman. I acted the part well to everyone but
myself. Charley silently worried that I would
find another man and leave him.
About three years ago, we went on a getaway
weekend in January, which is winter in our part
of the world. We got snowed in at the hotel, and
that gave us lots of time to talk. We had just
bought a PC at home, even though both of us had
used them at work for years.
With the PC came the Internet, and I had been
exploring gay married men sites. Most of them
were nasty, either porn or hookup sites, and I
didn’t want to get trapped into either of
those options. So, I came out to Charley a
second time, and it was every bit as difficult
as it was the first time.
That weekend we began an incredible journey
together. When we got home, we went online and
sought support and community for ourselves. We
attended two gatherings for mixed orientation
couples — which is what we thought we were
— one in Florida and one in Chicago. But
Charley was never comfortable with the label
straight woman. I thought maybe that meant
“she” was bi. It turns out it meant
something entirely different.
At the second gathering, we got down to some
very intense, private discussions about our
relationship. I told Charley that I longed for
the touch of a man but that I didn’t want
to go outside our marriage for sex. He replied
that he had always wished that he could be that
man.
I was about to give a trite reply when
something clicked and my brain screamed for me
to shut up and listen — really LISTEN
— to what Charley was saying.
For an hour, he poured out his soul about how
he had never felt like a woman and had always
wanted to be a man, how he wanted to play ball
with his brother and his brother’s friends,
how he hated the body that came to him with
puberty, how every guy he dated turned out to be
gay even if they didn’t know it or admit it
at the time. Charley said that by the end of
that session he felt so much anger and
depression melt away from him. It was the first
time he had ever been able to articulate these
deepest of feelings about his gender identity
and sexual orientation.
Sometime during that hour, the universe
stopped abruptly and shifted course. Things have
never been the same since.
Charley pursued his identity as an FTM
transman. Over the next year he did a course of
therapy with a gender specialist, consulted an
endocrinologist, had a total hysterectomy for
medical reasons other than the trans thing, and
started on testosterone three months ago.
I came out to Charley twice, but I never came
out in a public fashion. I came out to my
daughter while Charley and I were having our
most intense discussions, but that was only
because she asked outright. She was out of
college, married and she and her husband were
living with us temporarily, so it was difficult
to hide that something was going on. But that
was before Charley came out to me as trans.
I’m a rather ordinary looking bloke. I
certainly don’t look queer, so I blend in
pretty easily at work and in the neighborhood.
With Charley taking testosterone, all that is
about to change. Because he has no ovaries, he
has no estrogen to counteract the T. His voice
has dropped like a stone, and soon he’ll be
singing baritone to my tenor. His transition is
forcing us to come out of the shadows of the
str8 community and our conventional-looking
marriage to live as who we are: two gay men who
have been married for 31 years.
That may sound cool to folks who have lived
as same-sex couples, but it has its
difficulties.
We’ve been private people all our lives.
We’ve rarely asserted ourselves
politically. We’ve always been liberal,
going back to before it became a dirty word in
our politically divided country.
The very act of transition, because it is so
visible, is outing us as a couple and making a
statement that is very often misunderstood.
We’re just ordinary people trying to live
our lives as authentically as we know how.
Nor has it been easy or pain-free. We came
out to our two children, both grown and out of
the house, two months ago. They both reacted
with intense shock and anger. Our daughter has
told us she doesn’t want to have anything
to do with us and doesn’t want to see us
for at least a year. That itself is a problem,
since Charley’s transition will have
progressed so far by then that it will be an
even greater shock to see us.
We have received wonderful support from our
church and the few friends we have told.
Charley’s sister has been wonderful, but we
haven’t told his brother or elderly parents
yet. My parents are dead, and I was an only
child. I am no longer close to my extended
family and don’t feel a need to communicate
with them.
Charley and I are a work in progress as a
couple. Some days we’re elated with how far
we have come.
Other days we’re down, and we wonder if
we can do it. The one sign that this is the
right thing for Charley is that even in the
darkest period of rejection from our children,
he never wavered about whether he should
continue. God’s love and our love for each
other give us the strength to continue.
