Staying Together

They are the minority couples that stay together after one spouse transitioned, but how about when both spouses transition?

Meet the transgender couple who stayed together after they both had sex change operations
Metro UK
By Jen Mills
22 Nov 2015

You would never guess there was anything unusual about this young couple from their picture – but their relationship was rather special.

Arin Andrews and Katie Hill were the first openly transgender teen couple in the U.S. and their unconventional love story gave hope to other trans young people all over.

The couple met in 2012 while going through gender transition, and fell in love.

Arin, now 19, and Katie, 21, posted videos documenting the highs and lows of their courtship and their transition, discussing the physical and emotional changes.

I know of one couple that transitioned and they are happily in love. It has to quite rare for couple to stay together when one transitions let alone both. Last September there was an article about trans love.

My Husband Is Now My Wife
The spouses of transgender people face their own dramatic transformations—only no one celebrates them.New Yorker Magazine
By Alex Morris
September 22, 2015

Elizabeth Miller sat in her living room with her wedding album in her lap. It had been a long while since she’d brought it up from the basement, and the brown leather cover was worn, the pages slightly yellowed. From under their plastic covering, the pictures show pink linen tablecloths and taffeta gowns and Elizabeth in a dainty white Laura Ashley dress and a flower crown, peering up at the camera with that expectant newlywed’s look — heaps of bliss, a dash of terror. Next to her in the pictures, wearing a gray morning coat, owlish glasses, and a thick beard, is her groom, Dan, who is now her wife, Diana.
[…]
It’s not that there’s no continuity between that bookish man and the boho-chic woman Diana is now, sitting on a sun-dappled burgundy sofa, thigh to thigh with her wife of almost 33 years; it’s that the continuity is uncomfortable, painful even: She’s glad beyond measure that she married Elizabeth that day, but she wishes Dan never did. In many ways, she wishes Dan had never existed at all.
[…]
There are some signs that the new awareness of the trans experience is helping families avoid estrangement. A 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 43 percent of respondents “maintained most of their family bonds, while 57 percent experienced significant family rejection,” numbers the surveyors say indicate that “families were more likely to remain together … than stereotypes suggest.”

But even if a spouse doesn’t reject a partner’s transition, most are, according to therapists and trans experts, unlikely to remain in the marriage. Anecdotally, this seems especially true when the transgender person’s partner is male. “In my experience providing support for partners of people in transition, the majority are women,” says Helen Boyd, a gender-studies professor at Lawrence University whose writing about her own husband’s transition has become required reading for those dealing with this issue. “Men either don’t stay or don’t seek support.”

I remember talking to Helen and Betty over breakfast one time and Helen said one of the things that she missed was falling asleep on her husband’s shoulder on a train or walking down the street holding her husband’s hand and not hearing whispers.

The experience can be especially challenging for straight women. For lesbians with transitioning partners, their place in the LGBT community can be somewhat preserved. But a woman whose relationship was ostensibly heterosexual must face questions related to her own identity. Milena Wood, who met her trans wife, Shannon, when they were both in the military, says she doesn’t necessarily mind being mistaken for half of a lesbian couple now that Shannon’s transition is under way, but she still doesn’t think of herself as gay, which makes it hard to know where to fit in. “I don’t know how comfortable I would feel in a group of lesbians,” she tells me. “Because here I am doing the very thing that they’re trying to prove is not possible” — change the gender to which she is attracted. “Shannon doesn’t have to change anything about how she feels about me, because I haven’t changed,” Wood says. “But I have to change everything about how I feel about her: how I see relationships, how I see sex, how I see a whole bunch of things.”

The Florida Times-Union also had an article about a couple that stayed together,

Katie and Tricia still have navigating to do within their marriage. Together they will map out whether they will continue to live as spouses.

“When you love someone, you give your life for them. The soul that is there needs to be taken care of and I’m not going to try to do anything that’s going to cause him distress,” Katie said, perhaps unaware of another slip of the tongue.

Jenny Boylan and her wife stayed together after Jenny transitioned. About ten - fifteen years ago when I went to hear a speech that Ms. Boylan gave at Smith College in Northampton MA we had pizza with them afterwards at a small pizza place behind the college. It seemed to me that her wife was still struggling with her transition.

I know another couple that broke up when the husband transitioned but after a number of years they are back together again.

They are the exceptions, most do not stay together. I remember once during a support group meeting one spouse sat there crying during the whole meeting saying “I just want me husband back!” There is no easy solution sometimes the love is still there but the obstacles are too great to overcome.