"Oh, s#!t, my partner just told me they're trans"

What you need to know when your partner got their gender wrong

Foreword: This article talks about sex non-explicitly, as part of relationships. It’s not for minors.

Hi there, friend. I’m guessing you’re having a pretty intense time recently, huh?

Let’s talk about it.

First thing’s first: I want you to know that you’re really, really, really not alone, and it’s going to be all right.

The shock, the confusion, the fear? Maybe the sense of betrayal? Maybe, too, a spark of excitement for your partner? Curiosity at what the future holds for them, and maybe for you? Feeling overwhelmed and pulled a million different ways at once?

All of it is incredibly normal, and there are lots of people who either have been or currently are where you are now. I’m guessing you’re feeling pulled in a million different directions at once right now. And I’m guessing that you’ve got a lot of questions and stuff you’re worried about. This is a guide to answer the most common questions that partners of trans folks ask, and give you some options about what you can do next.

And yeah, I’m gonna give you sources for everything. That’s kinda my jam.

Just so you know I’m not some random dummy on the internet, my name’s Zoe, and I’m an associate professor of technical writing. One of my areas is biomedical communication, which is just a fancy way of saying that I specialize in explaining complicated medical research in terms everyone can understand.

Stuff like this. So, let’s get to it.

Vocabulary

There’s a lot of terms that the trans community uses, so let’s get you comfortable with a couple of the most common ones, so that you can feel like you understand what the heck we’re talking about, okay?

• Transgender/Trans: Anyone whose gender doesn’t match what the doctor guessed when they were born.

  • This is something known as an umbrella term. That means that it’s sort of a bucket that exists to describe a whole lot of different experiences that generally fall into a single category.

  • Nonbinary people count as being transgender, but not all nonbinary people vibe with the label. That’s fine!

• Binary: Someone who’s just a guy or a gal.

• Nonbinary: Someone who’s not just a guy or a gal.

• Cisgender/Cis: Anyone whose gender matches what the doctor guessed when they were born.

• AGAB: An acronym for “the gender you were assigned at birth.” Sometimes you’ll see AMAB (assigned male at birth) or AFAB (assigned female at birth), but they’re getting less common.

• Transmasculine or Transfeminine: modern replacements for AMAB/AFAB. Generally, they mean “someone who is transitioning towards masculinity and/or away from femininity” and the inverse. They’re not perfect, but at least they don’t tie trans peoples’ identities to some doctor’s wrong guess a few decades ago.

• Dysphoria: Distress of some sort that your body or place in society doesn’t fit your gender.

• Euphoria: A feeling of joy and relief when your gender fits well.

• Presentation: How you dress and look. It’s the main way we tell other people what our gender is without saying anything.

• Transition: The process where a trans person changes their body or presentation to fit your gender, whatever it is. This does not need to include any surgery or hormones.

See? Not so bad. And, just to let you know in advance: I’m going to use gender-neutral language to refer to both you and your partner, because I don’t know who, if anyone, is a man, woman, both, or neither. But knowing these terms will help us answer some questions you’ve probably got on your mind.

Now, let’s get to them.

Why the hell didn’t they tell me they were trans?!

You know what? Super fair question.

This is probably the most common first response that partners have when their partner comes out as trans. After all, you heard before—probably many, many times—that trans people always knew they were trans, and that that was actually a requirement for being trans.

Thing is? It’s not true. Let’s look at a graph from that article I just linked.

This is all broken down by age categories. Let’s skip the young folks for now and see right in the middle: the 30-50 age groups. We’re looking at 22-29 years on average between the person’s first memory of gender dysphoria and when they started their transition. That means that a 49-year-old person who was completely average on this graph typically didn’t even feel their first twinge of gender dysphoria until they were 20, or that a 39-year-old wouldn’t have noticed until they were 21.

And then they’d have to figure out what that feeling even was, and not just, like, depression or anxiety. Believe me, as someone who’s been there? It can take a lot of work and a lot of time.

But things get even trickier. While not all trans people knew we were trans when we were little, a bunch of us did. To make an average, then, that means that for every 45-year-old who figured out that they were trans when they were 8, you have to have someone who didn’t have the first whiff of their dysphoria until they were thirty-seven.

I didn’t realize I was trans until I was 35. Literally, no earthly idea, and then 11 days of panic, and then I knew I was trans. I know several people who didn’t realize they were trans until they were in their sixties.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying something really, really simple: Your partner might not have told you because they didn’t know either… and when they figured it out? They probably tried to make it go away.

For you.

…really? That many trans people didn’t know?

Really.

The median age of transition is 31, and that number has fallen a lot in recent years, because trans people have been realizing they’re trans at much younger ages lately. If you’ve been with your partner for any length of time, and especially if you’re older, that number used to be a lot higher.

Well, my partner DID know for a long time. Why did they lie to me?

That’s a question with some complicated answers. Let’s start with the blunt ones first. Remember this character?

That’s Buffalo Bill, the serial murderer from Silence of the Lambs, one of the most influential movies of the 1990’s. “He”—and “he” was constantly misgendered in the movie—skinned women to make a woman suit out of them, “his” desire to be a woman pathological and destructive and not, as they say in the show repeatedly, that of a “true transsexual.” If your partner is in their mid-30’s, they almost certainly grew up having seen this movie, this character.

Or, how about this one?

That’s Paul Millander, the very first, marquee, multi-episode serial killer from the first two seasons of CSI: Crime Scene Investigators. A brutal murderer and deceiver, Millander was a villain that, arguably, is why CSI became such a massive cultural sensation in the 2000’s. If your partner is an adult, they probably grew up watching Paul get chased on CSI.

Why do I mention these characters?

Because that’s what we were taught it meant to be transgender when we were little. Lunatics, murderers, psychopaths. That being trans was evil. Monstrous.

Imagine growing up, knowing you’re trans. You see these shows, and dozens of others just like them, that tell you and everyone you love that you’re the most horrific form of existential evil. It was so common that there are whole tropes about it—a documentary that goes through through all the ways trans people have been villainized had to get made just to catalogue it all.

What would you do to try to bury that part of yourself? What would you do to keep it from coming out? What would you do to be the person that your family told you you had to be? Your partner? How far would you go to try and make that part of yourself go away, nobody else ever knowing it ever existed? And that’s before we even look at things like religion, that can double down on these same pressures.

They didn’t tell you because they probably hoped to carry this secret to their grave. To be the version of themselves they have been up to now forever.

And generally, they told you now because they realized they simply can’t be that version of themselves anymore.

That’s… a lot…

…yeah. Yeah, it is.

One of the reasons I wanted to lead with these examples is pretty simple: in almost every single respect, the story you’ve grown up hearing about trans people and our reality are just… completely and totally different. It’s so bad that you’d almost be better off forgetting absolutely everything you think you know about trans people and starting over from scratch.

Okay. Okay. Well, things are going to change a lot for us, right? That’s really scary.

Yes and no. A lot’s going to depend on what your partner’s gender is, and how they want to express it.

So, let’s start at the beginning.

It’s totally normal and valid to be scared of big changes in your relationship, especially if you’re really happy with how things are. After all, if things change, they could get worse, and that’s not what you want.

Well, what changed in my relationship with my wife when I transitioned? Just for a sampler.

• We cuddle more. Turns out I’m a lot more touchy-feely when I’m more in touch with myself and my body.

• She does most of the driving. I never liked it, but my wife has discovered that she really enjoys taking care of me in that way.

• Our household chores aren’t split on gendered lines anymore—they’re mostly just split by who has the free mental energy to get them done when they need to be done.

• We go out on dates more often. It’s more fun going out when you want to be seen.

• Our communication has improved a lot. We’re much better about talking about our problems before they become Problems, if you catch my meaning.

• There’s more crying, both about good and bad stuff, but that’s mostly on my end. Again, being more in touch with yourself tends to do that.

• She supports me emotionally a lot more than she used to, which is almost inevitable because before I came out, that amount was almost zero. I fought really hard to not need that support, out of this idea that that’s what I had to do to be a guy.

Seems kinda like small potatoes stuff, huh? Well… it is. Most of the stuff that’s going on in the relationship really only got emphasized by my transition—the good stuff got better. All of the problems that came up for us were always there; transition just made us deal with them instead of avoiding them.

Well, they’re going to change a lot, right?

Maybe. Maybe not. You see, not every trans person transitions. Even when we do, transition looks different for every trans person.

I know a lovely couple where one member is nonbinary. They don’t feel dysphoria, so they decided that they didn’t want to transition in any significant way. For them, all that transition meant was using an androgynous version of their given name, they/them pronouns, and playing with their wardrobe and jewelry a little bit. It fits them, they feel good, and all they ever wanted was to be more true to themselves. It’s a little bit how like sometimes a bisexual person will come out publicly, even though they’re in a long-term, committed heterosexual relationship—nothing necessarily changes. It’s about being seen for their whole self by the people they love, nothing more.

But yeah, transition involves a lot more for many trans people, and what it involves can change over time.

I feel like I’m losing them! Like they’re dying!

Believe it or not, that’s really, really common.

First thing’s first: you’re not losing your partner. They’re still them, in an unbroken line from who they were, to who they are right now, to who they’re going to become.

But it’s incredibly normal to need to grieve. It’s not about grieving their loss, even though that’s probably what it feels like right now. You’re grieving the version of the future you thought you were going to have with them—the dream of a perfect tomorrow that we all have of life with the people we love.

That dream was never going to happen… but usually, you give up on that dream a tiny bit at a time, like grains of sand slipping between your fingers. This? You’re tipping the hand over and pouring it all out at once. Of course it feels sudden and overwhelming.

My advice, though, is probably not going to be what you expect: I think you should engage with the grieving process, and work to move through it. We need to grieve for all sorts of different things, but grieving is a healing process. Find an LGBT+ affirming therapist and do the work. You’ll come out the other side feeling a lot better.

Won’t they leave me for a man?

Ahh, I bet you’ve got a transfeminine partner, don’t you? This is probably the most common question I get from partners of transfeminine people, and it’s really understandable, believe it or not.

Not because they will leave you. Statistically speaking, they won’t. And no, their sexual attraction probably won’t change either—and if it does seem to, that change will almost exclusively be to become more inclusive of other genders, not to lose attraction to you.

Until pretty recently—we’re talking the mid-1990’s—trans people were actually required to divorce their partners, and were only allowed to transition if they were exclusively attracted to members of the other sex. That was horrible, and has been done away with, but it was probably policy in your lifetime. It built the stories you heard about trans peoples’ transitions. Those stories are what’s telling you what you should expect right now.

And sure, once in a blue moon—one or two times out of a hundred—someone’s attraction patterns will change. That’s about the same rate that it happens in cis couples. People are messy and weird and complicated.

But, like a lot of stuff, it’s almost never true. For example, my wife and I just recently celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary with a vow renewal.

My wife agrees with me wholeheartedly that my transition is the very best thing that ever happened to our twenty-year relationship. We’re closer, more intimate, more loving, and much, much happier now than we ever had been before.

But don’t take my word for it—love blossoms in transition all the time! Read about it yourself:

• Love Lives Here, by Rowan Knox, is a wonderful memoir of a trans wife and child.

• Us, by Sara Soler, is an absolutely heartwarming autobiographical graphic novel about the author’s transitioning girlfriend and the author’s own exploration of her sexuality.

• Pageboy is Elliott Page’s memoir, and it talks about his relationship with his wife in beautiful, tender detail.

So we don’t have to break up?

No. There’s nothing you have to do—or not do!—if you don’t want to. And believe it or not?

Most relationships make it through transition.

According to the 2015 US Transgender Survey, one of the largest surveys ever done of trans folks, only 27% of trans people had had a partner who broke up with them solely or partly because they were trans. That means that, for the overwhelming majority of relationships? Someone being trans wasn’t really an issue.

Relationships end from time to time, for all sorts of reasons, and transition puts a lot of pressure on everyone. It’s absolutely okay if you both give it a try and things don’t work out.

But it’s your choice, and nobody else’s.

But I’m straight!

First of all, I want to validate that. Your sexuality is absolutely valid, and if you’re not attracted to your partner once they’re in transition, it’s normal and healthy for the two of you to find partners that are a better fit for each of you.

But the thing is, you might not be straight.

Remember the part earlier where a lot of trans people don’t know they’re trans for a really long time? The exact same thing happens with people’s sexualities—especially for bisexual people—because of heteronormativity. In essence, the way our society is set up, straight and cisgender are sort of assumed “default” states, and any way of being LGBT+ is a difference from that default.

That’s not how it actually works, though.

People like who they like, and there’s a huge range of attractions out there. Now, we know that who people are attracted to is pretty firmly determined by genetics, but one thing we’re seeing a lot more of among younger people is being queer, and especially bisexual. A recent Gallup survey, for instance, found that over 15% of all Gen Zers are bisexual… and only 1.9% of Gen Xers. But if we dive deeper, it gets even more dramatic, because almost thirty percent of all Gen Z women said they were bi—fifteen times the rate of Gen Xers.

The only possible reason for that difference is heteronormativity; in other words, there are a lot of Gen Xers—and every other generation—who aren’t straight and haven’t figured it out yet, because they’re attracted to the opposite sex and haven’t explored any farther. Remember the bit a moment ago where I said some trans people do seem to have changes in their attractions in transition? Mostly, it’s exactly that: trans people discovering they’re bisexual.

If you look at the books I linked earlier—Love Lives Here, Us, and Pageboy, each and every partner in those books had to grapple with their sexualities as part of transition, and found attraction where they never dreamed they would. In each case, the partner, like you, thought hard about breaking up.

And then they didn’t.

I think that one of the best pieces of advice in any of those books comes from Rowan Knox: give transition six months, the same way you would any other major decision. Try to keep an open mind and an open heart. See what actually happens, rather than what you’re afraid will happen.

The reality is almost always much better than your fears.

They’ve been talking about Hormone Replacement Therapy and that’s so scary!

That’s really, really, really fair. There’s something really important I want you to understand first, though:

HRT is slow.

Fundamentally, taking these hormones is beginning a second puberty, but before we get into the weeds, I want you to think back to your own puberty. It took the better part of a decade to finish, didn’t it? And your partner is older now than you were then—older means a slower metabolism, which means that that second puberty is going to go even more slowly than yours did. I promise: your partner isn’t going to wake up a month in with a full beard or with D-cups, depending on what kind of hormones they’re thinking of taking.

That said, hormones are really powerful, and they’re going to affect every part of the body, given enough time. You will have time to adjust. I can’t emphasize that enough.

But just the same, you should know what kinds of things to expect, so I’m going to give you a timeline of what estrogen did to my face for the first two years of my hormonal transition, so you can see, month by month, what happened for me.

If you compare that first photo and the last one, the difference is pretty significant, but expand the picture and zoom in a bit. Compare Month 0 to Month 2. Month 0 to Month 6. Even Month 12. There are real changes there, but they’re gradual. Subtle.

All of hormonal transition is like that. It’s not one big change. It’s a million tiny, almost-unnoticeable ones, that pile up like grains of sand, and because they’re small, you have time to get used to them.

All that said, here’s a catalogue of what you can expect from HRT:

• If they’re thinking of taking testosterone.

• If they’re thinking of taking estrogen.

What about… you know, their private parts? I like those the way they are!

I get it. Sex is a really important part of a relationship, so while I’d normally give a cis person a bit of a finger-waggle for focusing too much on people’s privates, you’ve got a pretty understandably vested interest here. So, first thing’s first: let’s disarm your fears a little.

We’re going to break down information by general identity categories, so it’s a little more readable. All this is according to the 2015 US Transgender Survey, the largest study that’s been done on this stuff for which we have data.

For trans women:

• 12% have gotten genital surgery

• 54% want genital surgery someday.

• 22% aren’t sure what, if anything, they want.

• 12% don’t want genital surgery.

For trans men (As a note: there’s two very different types of transmasculine bottom surgery; some people want one, some the other, and some are okay with either, which leads to a range of answers:

• A total of about 5% have gotten genital surgery.

• Between 19-25% want it someday.

• Between 43-49% aren’t sure what, if anything, they want.

• Between 24-35% don’t want genital surgery.

For nonbinary transfeminine people:

• 1% have gotten genital surgery.

• 11% want it someday.

• 29% aren’t sure what, if anything, they want.

• 59% don’t want genital surgery.

For nonbinary transmasculine people (again, we have the range because of two different procedures):

• Less than 1% have gotten genital surgery.

• Between 2-4% want genital surgery someday.

• Between 19-24% aren’t sure what, if anything, they want.

• Between 72-79% don’t want genital surgery.

A really important note here is that there’s been some big steps forward recently in bottom surgery that are very likely to change these numbers some, and one of the biggest is that penile-preserving vaginoplasty and vagina-preserving phalloplasty and metoidioplasty have become much more well-known and common. So, because the 2015 USTS only asks whether someone wants or has gotten, for instance, a vaginoplasty, we have no way of knowing how many of those people still want, and/or still have, their fully-functional penis. Moreover, I want to throw an asterisk in there: there has been a new US Transgender Survey since the 2015 USTS, and it got over 97,000 responses, about three times the size of the 2015 Survey. They haven’t released their full data yet, though, so we have to go with the data we have for now.

But I expect some changes from the old numbers.

That’s a lot of people who want bottom surgery…

It is. It’s also a lot who don’t.

Let’s talk about that a little. I want to start off by showing you something:

That’s an article I wrote about a year ago on how transfeminine people can maintain erections suitable for penetrative sex while they’re on estrogen. As of the time of my writing, it’s the fourth most popular thing I’ve ever written, with nearly 13,000 unique reads.

That doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

I’m going to be frank: I think that when the 2022 US Transgender Survey releases its full dataset, we’re going to see some really big changes in the proportions of trans folks, and particularly trans women, who want bottom surgery. I think the proportion of trans women who don’t want bottom surgery, or who specifically want a bottom surgery option that leaves their penis fully functional, is going to rise by a lot. Here’s why:

• Until 2001, it was virtually impossible to pursue feminizing transition if you didn’t want a vagina, because of some deeply transphobic science that has since been disproven. Like, if you admitted you didn’t want bottom surgery before then, you’d be ejected from HRT, therapy, everything. The 2015 USTS numbers are going to have a very very large representation of trans women who transitioned in that mindset, and in that system, which will inevitably bias the results. So, one of the best ways to read the 2015 USTS numbers there is that in only 14 years, the proportion of trans women, just to single out one group, who were either not sure what they wanted or who actively did not want bottom surgery went from virtually zero to over a third of all respondents. That’s a huge shift in a very short period of time.

• When you compare the trans women numbers to the trans men numbers—and there has long been less policing of transmasculinity than transfemininity, at the cost of increased erasure—there’s a huge gap in who wants what. Like, a net of, at most, 30% of trans men have either had or actively want bottom surgery, compared with a net of 66% of trans women. Even if we attribute some of that difference to how big a surgery phalloplasty and metoidioplasty are, it beggars belief to assume that the proportions of who does and does not want bottom surgery simply inverts because one surgery is harder than another.

• Compare the proportions, on the other hand, of what transfeminine and transmasculine nonbinary people want:

  • About 1% have gotten it, for either category

  • 2-4% versus 11% want it someday

  • Mid-20ish% aren’t sure what they want

  • Everyone else doesn’t want anything

The nonbinary numbers line up pretty closely, with the largest single gap—the group who know they want surgery someday—seeing at most an 8ish percentage point gap. Transmasculine folks remain the lower part of the curve at every point, and that adds up to a higher “total no” percentage, but that’s an amalgam of small differences elsewhere, not larger in and of itself. Those numbers, in short, are pretty similar, and they’re even pretty similar to the numbers for trans men.

But the numbers for trans women are way, way out there, by comparison to any other group’s numbers, aren’t they?

In research, believing that this is normal and appropriate is what we call a special pleading; it can be legitimate, when there’s a clear reason for it, but is usually leftover garbage from something else that’s interfering with the research. Almost always when you have a case of special pleading in research, something got messed up, and especially when you’re studying human behavior, which is always messy and unpredictable. And I think that bottom dysphoria has been one of the big, driving things, historically, that’s both driven trans women to realize that they’re trans and the absence of which has kept them from realizing their trans identity.

I think it’s pretty likely that trans men’s bottom surgery numbers are suppressed some, because phalloplasty and metoidioplasty really are tough surgeries. I also think it’s almost certain that trans women’s bottom surgery numbers are inflated a lot. What should they be, in a world of perfect knowledge, shame-free and cost-free access to surgery, and magical versions of surgery that aren’t super difficult to recover from? It’s hard to say, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all at a 50/50 split, or maybe a 45/55 split favoring no surgery, for binary trans folks—but that’s total speculation. What portion of the surgical group would want nontraditional options, like penis-preserving vaginoplasty or vagina-preserving phalloplasty, it beyond what I’d be comfortable even guessing at.

But my partner says they do want bottom surgery…

Now, don’t get me wrong: it’s still quite common for binary folks, and for nonbinary folks to a lesser degree, to want and get bottom surgery. And for those who need it? It’s lifesaving.

If your partner ends up needing that kind of surgery, they’ve always needed it, and that’s the single most important thing that you need to understand in this regard. Their bottom dysphoria is already a part of your sex life, and it has been for as long as you’ve been with them. It’s something that’s actively and continuously hurting them right now. The surgery to correct that? For them, it’s absolutely necessary. Every medical and psychological authority who’s studied it agrees.

Think about that for just a minute. Really think about it.

If your partner was hurting from something else, you’d want them to heal from it, right? Even if it was hard on you, them being able to be whole and happy and healthy is something you want, right? This is just… well, a big instance of that, and a lot of partners find that it’s not as huge a deal in the bedroom as they thought it was going to be.

It’s still your partner. They’re still the person you love. No matter what parts they have, they’re going to be the same person. Mostly what’s going to change is the way they’re that person.

One of the most brilliant stories a cis partner once told me about how she came to terms with her trans wife’s need for bottom surgery was that her therapist had asked her if she’d get a divorce if her wife had gotten into a car accident, and had lost her bottom bits in it. Would she get a divorce over it? Almost immediately, she said, she’d told her therapist that of course she wouldn’t, that there’d need to be adjustments but that she’d find a way through.

So, asked the therapist, how precisely was her wife’s need for surgery any different?

Think about that. Maybe ask yourself the same question, reflavored if need be depending on what your partner does need.

Gosh, I really need to talk to someone about this.

You should.

Both you and your partner are under enormous stress right now. You both need more support than you can probably provide right now. You should get it—both for your own, individual sakes and because doing that work is the best thing you can do if you want your relationship to make it. I mentioned earlier that you should get a therapist, if you’re feeling the need to grieve. Even if you don’t, you need support for the stress of what you’re working through right now, the same as your partner does. A queer-affirming couples counselor would be even better!

Beyond that, though, you need regular social support. Talk to your partner and ask them to come out to a friend who you trust absolutely (I can’t over-emphasize that enough; it’s never okay to out someone, and especially a trans person early on in their journey), so that you have someone you can talk to and process your feelings about all this.

Respect your partner’s wishes and privacy, obviously. Talk to them about who they’d be comfortable knowing early. But you need this support if the two of you are going to make it.

And there are whole groups out there built from the ground up to support people like you. The /r/mypartneristrans subreddit, for instance, is one of the best support resources out there for people in your position, and there’s a Discord-based support group with weekly live meetings unofficially associated with it.

Oh, no, what about the kids?

The kids are going to be just fine. No, seriously.

Here’s the thing: kids younger than about 8 often don’t have something called gender constancy. To oversimplify a bit, it’s more or less the same thing as object permanence, except with other people’s gender. What that means in practice is that if your kids are young? They won’t even blink when your partner comes out to them. Heck, out of everyone in my entire extended family, the four who had, by far, the easiest time with my transition were my four little nieces.

But there’s something a lot more important here.

Like sexuality, we know that gender—and, specifically, being trans—is majorly genetic. That means that, if your partner is trans, any kids the two of you have together are much more likely to be trans as well. How much more likely? Over a dozen studies have found genetic heritability rates as high as seventy percent, but most clustering between 30-50%.

Your partner being out to your kids isn’t just going to be a good thing—though it will be—it might be the single most important thing either of you do for one or more of them in their whole lives.

But the things they’re saying? Everyone feels those things.

…so there’s this thing that happens weirdly often. Somehow—we have no clue how—trans people manage to find each other before any of us know that they’re trans. In the first year after I came out, for example, seven of my old friends came out as one way or another of being trans. Partly, it’s just seeing our stories in other people, and realizing that the things we’ve always assumed everyone feels are, in fact, very very trans.

And once in a while, that’s something that happens with our partners.

It’s not the most common thing, for sure. But… well, especially if you find yourself having some really big feelings about all this, it might be a good idea to look inside a little. Worst case? You find out for sure you’re cis, and now you can be confident. Those books I suggested a little bit ago? You might notice that Love Lives Here has a different name on the cover than Rowan Knox. The reason for that is that he figured out he was a trans man a few years after he published it.

At least 5% of the population is transgender. That means there’s a one in twenty chance that anyone is trans.

And anyone includes you.

Almost every partner ends up questioning their gender some when their partner comes out to them, so it’s incredibly normal for you to need to do the same.

Okay. Okay. So, what should I do right now?

Things are probably pretty intense and overwhelming right now, and that’s completely normal. This is a big change, and people generally kinda sorta hate change. Most of what I’d suggest is that you do the same things you’d do when there’s any sort of major upheaval in a relationship—losing a job, having a baby, stuff like that:

1. Find a therapist if you don’t have one already. Think about switching to someone with experience in trans issues and supporting partners of trans people if your current one isn’t an expert. You need, and deserve, Big Time Support from a professional right now. A couples’ counselor on top of a regular therapist would be even better!

2. With your partner’s permission, bring a friend you can trust absolutely to keep a confidence into the loop, so you can talk about what’s going on and process your feelings.

3. Give yourself time. No part of transition is quick, even assuming that’s in your partner’s future. You don’t need to make any decisions of any kind right now, and nobody else needs to know about any of this until both you and they are good and ready to tell them. Moreover, no decision you or they make needs to be final! You’re allowed to change your minds about anything, at any time.

4. Reach out for support communities, especially /r/mypartneristrans. You don’t have to go through this alone. It does get better.

5. When you have the mental space to do so, read the Gender Dysphoria Bible and talk to your partner about their feelings. It’ll help you understand where they’re coming from much more clearly.

6. Rest. Take a sick day or two. Or three. You’re in the middle of a huge personal crisis. You’ve got some feelings to feel, and you deserve to feel them, to work through them, in a safe and private place.

It’s going to be all right. I promise. And someday, you’re going to look back on right now and thank yourself for every single kindness you show yourself.

Be gentle with yourself.

And you deserve to be happy.

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Afterword: I would like to thank the many cisgender partners who read the advance version of this article and helped me refine it. Without you all, in this case and many others, we wouldn’t be here.