MikeLigalig.com

By Oscar Lopez
9 hours ago


The text was sent to 2.4 million people by Freddie Bologno: "I've texted for DoSomething as Alysha for 3yrs, but I've been struggling. Im trans, Im Freddie!"

Bologno, 27, works at Do Something, a digital organization that helps young people push for social change through social media and text messaging. For Bologno, the text was a way to both come out publicly and start a conversation about being young and transgender. But before coming out to the world, Bologno had to talk to his girlfriend, Tile Wolfe. "I just started crying," says Wolfe, remembering the moment Bologno said he wanted to start taking hormones to transition from female to male. "Not because I was sad, but because this was suddenly so real."

Wolfe, 23, has lived in New York for five years and has always identified as a lesbian. She met Bologno four years ago while standing in line for the bathroom at Metropolitan, a grimy gay bar in Brooklyn. "I said something like, 'I hope to meet you again in a less gross place,'" Bologno recalls. Wolfe remembers the moment as "deeply corny." They've been living together for two years now, alongside Buddha, their chubby gray cat. "We're so in love," Wolfe says, blushing.

Like Wolfe and Bologno, there are hundreds of couples across the country with one or both members transitioning. And while transgender celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox have offered profound insights into what a transitioning individual goes through, there is little out there concerning what it's like to transition as a couple, or even what it's like to date as a transgender person or fall in love. "It's quite common for trans people to wonder, Will anyone love me?" says Walter Bockting, a psychiatrist and co-director of the LGBT Health Initiative at Columbia University.

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Those are statistics Alana Feral, 32, understands well. She tried to talk to her family about coming to terms with her female gender identity several times, but soon realized that "no help was forthcoming." Without money or support, Feral says transitioning didn't seem like an option. Instead, she made the extreme choice to join the Army's special operations forces—an act she describes as a "passive form of suicide." She served for six years, including a stint in Afghanistan as a medical sergeant. Though she still publicly identified as male, Feral says she actively tried to compensate for her inner femininity by "building a character…a mix of the Terminator, John Wayne and Wolverine." But by the end of her tour, the pressure of maintaining the facade was too much: "I remember sitting next to an open chopper door and wanting to jump out."

Though Feral says she had been open with her then-girlfriend about her gender identity questions, when she got back to her home in Asheville, her "body issues and dysphoria made sex very difficult." Ultimately, her girlfriend saw through the mask. "She brought me a dozen red roses, told me she loved me," Feral says, "and broke up with me because she 'didn't want to be a lesbian.'"

Feral says the breakup was a kind of relief, because it confirmed that she could no longer hide her true self, even when she wanted to. It proved to be just the push she needed to start the long transition process.

It's a common occurrence in transgender relationships: As trans people start to embrace a new gender identity, their partners often must come to grips with their own sexual identity. Often this can end a relationship, but according to Bockting it can also help both partners become more open-minded about their own sexuality and the labels they put on it.

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