‘Had our entire marriage been a lie?’
Tiffany Grimes, 43, says: People say it all the time, but from the moment I met Dade – then a woman called Tiffany – I knew we were meant to be together. I’d found my person.
I proposed a year later – on New Year’s Eve 2009 – and our wedding passed in a happy daze.
We’d been going through the process of artificial insemination when in January 2011, Dade met me on my lunch break from my job as a social worker. We went to a little Mexican restaurant, and Dade sat across from me fidgeting. I’ve since heard people say they were heartbroken after a partner has revealed they’re transgender, but my reaction was utter anger. Had our entire marriage been a lie? Did I even really know this person? There’d been no hint Dade felt this way. I felt so tricked and mortified – how was I going to tell people? I realise now that all I could think about was how it affected me.
Immediately I said we had to stop trying for a baby. And, over the next few weeks, I ranged from anger to complete devastation. But, as much as I wished the issue would just disappear – as though Dade would just somehow forget – of course, it didn’t. Sometimes Dade would try to convince me. ‘I’m already masculine,’ he’d say. ‘This is just another step.’ Then we’d start arguing. It just wasn’t fair. I’d only come out as a lesbian a few years before. Now I was finally settled and happy, my wife wanted to become a man? I felt like screaming.
It was only as our first anniversary neared that it dawned on me – I was fighting a battle I couldn’t win, that I shouldn’t want to win. I couldn’t deny the person I loved the right to be who they really are.
So, I agreed: as Dade transitioned, we’d stay together and try again for a baby. Still, that didn’t mean it was easy. I mourned my wife. I remember going into the garden and crying – the way you do after a death. ‘I’m still me,’ Dade would say. But I had to explain: no, he wasn’t.
For a while, I found myself question my own identity. Was I still a lesbian? But then I asked myself, does it really matter? What I do know is I’m attracted to Dade – his mind, his body, all of him. And what makes me happy is my life with him and our daughter.
Just like any other couple
Watching him go through each surgery, watching the body I loved broken down and rebuilt, was heartbreaking. For two years all physical intimacy disappeared, while Dade healed. But while there was no big reveal, no monumental first time, making love with Dade’s new body, slowly, we learnt how to appreciate each other again. We had to be honest – to say what felt good and what didn’t. But finally, we’re at a place where we’re just like any other couple.
The only thing that bothers me is when people say they don’t think they’d have coped if they were in my position. What they need to realise is while it took me a long time to come to terms with: Dade didn’t do anything to me. Instead of saying Dade is transgender, I say we’re a transfamily – because that’s the way I see it. We’re in this together.
‘physical intimacy Disappeared’