Three Trans People and Their Partners Reflect on Their Relationships
by Adam Polaski and Shane Stahl
This profile series was produced in conjunction with the Freedom for All Americans Education Fund, which builds broad-based support for LGBTQ non-discrimination and develops educational, organizing, and advocacy strategies to secure full nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people nationwide.
Finding Strength in their Faith, a North Carolina Couple Navigates One Partner’s Transition
In the early summer of 2016, Sean Carroll was intently focused on relaxing, clearing the mind, and finding stillness. It was an intense time, one filled with tremendous work responsibilities, a divisive presidential election raging full-time on the news, and ongoing adjustments from a recent move to North Carolina. On top of all of that, Sean was physically exhausted: Severe anxiety made it hard to fall asleep, and once sleep finally came, it was interrupted by jolts of vivid dreams.
Sean prayed every night, eager to seek clarity from God on a question that had popped up over and over again for years. “God, if there’s a way for this to come out to the surface, please make it happen,” Sean prayed. “If this isn’t wrong, please bring it out for me.”
The following afternoon Sean’s wife Sarah approached Sean. She had noticed that her spouse was unsettled, like something was off, and a mutual friend had expressed their own concerns — about Sean’s health, emotional state, and more.
“Sean, is there something we should talk about?” Sarah asked.
And then, like floodgates that were no longer a match for the immense power within, everything came out — tons of information, concern after concern, Sean’s deepest repressed feelings, stored inside for so long, desperate for oxygen.
“When I have dreams, I see myself as a woman,” Sean said.
Sarah paused as she surveyed Sean’s male face, male haircut, male clothes.
“And how does that make you feel?”
“It made me feel whole,” Sean said. “It’s how I’ve always seen and known myself.”
Sean remembered what she felt God say in response to her prayers earlier that evening: “You are who you’re supposed to be. I love you.”
Keep reading Sean and Sarah’s story at the Freedom for All Americans Education Fund.
Austin’s First Transgender Police Officer Shares How His Wife’s Support During His Transition Was Invaluable
Joan Abbink always had a rule for herself when it came to getting involved in romantic relationships — and that was to never date a police officer. Joan worked as a police dispatcher, and throughout her years of employment it had become a cliché for dispatchers to date cops.
“She wrestled with the idea of whether she would break her streak of never dating cops,” Greg laughed. “I charmed her just enough, and we fell in love.”
The couple met in 2009 and fell in love. That was before Greg transitioned genders from female to male.
“My wife fell in love with me pre-transition, but she told me later on that there was always something different about me,” Greg told Freedom for All Americans. He ultimately confronted what he was feeling about his gender identity shortly after his 19-year-old nephew came out as transgender in 2014. “I said if this brave kid could begin this journey at 19 years old, then surely I could. I needed to be whole and complete and honest with everybody, and I wanted to be my best self — not just for myself, but for my wife, too.”
Greg and Joan worked through Greg’s transition together, and the couple is now happily married as husband and wife after tying the knot in May of 2016 in Texas. “She is my hero — the complete definition of unconditional love,” Greg said. “She has loved me for the person I am since Day 1, with no strings attached. I adore her and appreciate her for doing that. I met her and she could see beyond my outer shell and love me for the person that I am. She realized that although my transition was difficult for her, it was also difficult for me, since I was experiencing the physical and psychological and emotional changes. She let me deal with a lot of things and made me the focus, which takes tremendous restraint and patience and love.”
Keep reading Greg and Joan’s story at the Freedom for All Americans Education Fund.
“We Still Get Butterflies,” Says Married Couple in Florida
With the technological advances in communication that began in the 1990s, the opportunities to meet people from all walks of life and virtually any location in the world opened up entirely new doors for people. A person in New Hampshire could start up a conversation with a someone in Iowa, for example, and in the case of SueZie and Cheryl Hawkes, speaking with each other became a trans-Atlantic affair.
“In 1997, then living in England, I stumbled into an internet chat room,” SueZie said. “Chat rooms were a different world where you could be yourself or who you wanted to be without face-to-face confrontations. We felt there was nothing to lose by being open and honest, so we shared our inner thoughts and feelings.”
Cheryl further elaborated, “SueZie spared no details and explained herself so clearly, I was refreshed by the honesty. We got to know each other on the inside, long before we physically met.” One of the many things SueZie shared was that she desired to transition to female.
“I did not choose what gender was to be written on my birth certificate, and likewise it was not my choice to present as male,” SueZie explained. “I was a child afraid to publicly reveal my inner identity. Occasionally I had given some clues that I was really a girl inside which, for the most part, were received negatively. For 50 years I could only sleep as a girl.”
After three years of talking via the Internet, in 2000 SueZie decided to move across the ocean in order to be with Cheryl, and the two were married later that year.
Keep reading SueZie and Cheryl’s story at the Freedom for All Americans Education Fund.
Adam Polaski is the Senior Director of Online Programs & Partnerships at the Freedom for All Americans Education Fund.
Shane M. Stahl is the Digital Specialist at the Freedom for All Americans Education Fund.
