I just got off the phone with a man who happens to be trans-attracted. Like many men I talk with, he’s married to a cisgender woman. But he knew early in his life he favors transgender women. So why did he marry his wife?
Because he’s like many transgender women.
Transgender women presenting as men often first marry women and raise children. They know who they are, but can’t accept it. Instead, they accepted stories about what they “should” do as men. How they “should” be as men. It’s only later that they come into their own authenticity.
Many transgender women rail against trans-attracted men. I find this deeply hypocritical. Trans-attracted men go through many of the same struggles transgender women go through. Which is why transgender women and trans-attracted men represent perfect matches with each other. That is, if both sides can get over their negative, disempowering stories about each other.
Let’s get back to this wonderful call I enjoyed.
Like many transgender women, this guy kowtowed to family, societal and peer expectation. When his father caught him watching trans porn at age 11, his father shamed him into the closet. It didn’t help that he lives in the Bible Belt. Given all that religious tradition, pressure he felt was too great. He couldn’t accept his authenticity.
So he married a cisgender woman. It was the “man” thing to do. That was over 25 years ago.
Trans-attraction won’t be denied
What’s wonderful about this guy, like most guys like him, is his trans-attraction will not be denied. So many cisgender women contact me in disgust, rage and feeling betrayed. They don’t understand dynamics that had their husbands feel so much shame, their husbands couldn’t bear being honest about themselves.
This guy, I’ll call him Cody, truly loves his wife, who he calls his best friend. They gave birth to two children over the course of their decades long marriage. Yes, they had fights and disagreements. They both cheated on one another. The cheating represented disharmony both felt about their marriage. Disharmony that blocked both Cody and his wife’s knowing something was amiss in their marriage.
This tendency to block what’s really happening in marriage is common. Everyone knows what’s really happening in their marriage, but a lot of times the truth is too much to bear. Or, keeping the marriage, no matter how much it sucks, feels better than the alternative. That’s why I always say to wives feeling betrayed that they knew what was going on in their marriage. But they stopped themselves from seeing it.
While he knew he can’t resist transgender women, Cody told me he stays with his wife “mainly for the kids,” and the duty he believes men should live up to.
But then he met a transgender woman who I’ll call Jackie. That’s when things really started changing.
Faced with the truth
Cody met Jackie seemingly by coincidence at Jackie’s workplace. There was instant attraction. But Cody tried to be faithful to his wife. Jackie and Cody never got intimate, but their connection was real, Cody says. He couldn’t deny how he felt. After dalliances with about ten other trans girls, Cody knew this was it, he said. He wants to be with Jackie no matter what.
Still, Cody said, he feels stuck. He believes he can’t leave his wife and kids. The situation is tearing him apart. Cody told Jackie he needed to be there for his wife. Understanding, Jackie said she’d wait for him.
Five years later, Jackie and Cody found themselves face-to-face again. This time in a different place, under different circumstances. But their attraction was still there, strong as ever.
Meanwhile, Cody’s wife discovered her Cody’s escapades on dating apps on his phone. They argued, they separated, but eventually reunited. All the while Cody knew, and knows even more so now, that his trans-attraction is his ultimate authenticity.
“I know it’s not going to go away,” He said. “And I get the importance of what you say about being authentic.”
It’s not a fetish
Just so you know, transgender women, Cody isn’t looking for a chick with a dick. He’s totally a top. But he is irresistibly attracted to the “transness” of transgneder women. Like many trans-attracted and transamorous men, he gets his strong attraction is more about WHO HE IS. Just like transgender women know themselves as WHO THEY ARE. Trans-attraction not a fetish, it’s for real.
The sad thing about some transgender women is their persistent, bogus story that trans-attracted men are somehow fetishizing transgender women through their attraction. When in actuality, trans-attracted men find transgender women attractive because they are transgender among many other factors. It’s no different than a heterosexual woman being attracted to heterosexual men. Or straight men attracted to women because they are women.
I could feel Cody’s sincerity and pain oozing out of every word he used as he described his struggle. His is a struggle because he cares about his wife and doesn’t want to hurt her. He doesn’t want to be alienated from his kids. But he also sees the writing on the wall. It’s the same calculus all married men who can’t deny their trans-attraction go through. And it’s not an easy calculus to make.
“Suppressing this is not going to work,” Cody says. “I get it now. Jackie and I are finding ourselves drawn irresistibly closer. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Fuck.”
Courage to love
I love the path more men find themselves on as they own their authentic selves. Authentic selves which move humanity forward. Selves that honor transgender women for who they are.
Transgender women move humanity forward too. When they accept who they are then live that out loud, they confront limited beliefs humanity must give up to evolve.
Now imagine how powerful a transamorous/transgender couple could be. I imagine it and every time I do, I get excited for what’s possible for such individuals, and for society at large. Transgender women seek, often in vain, someone who will love and accept them for all they are. Yet they push against and resist the affection of men, like Cody, who are born exactly wired to do just that.
I find it highly ironic that the love transgender women yearn for awaits them but the place it exists, is the very place they run from. It would be comical if it weren’t so tragic in terms of transgender women living alone, depressed, or worse, compromising themselves to be with a woman when so many know a man is what they want.
I relish the call I enjoyed with Cody. Not only does it confirm what I know about these men, and why I write this blog, it shows me that love exists for everyone. But it takes courage on both sides to get the love that awaits.
