A partner’s gender transition can test a marriage, but these couples have stayed together, grown and even thrived under the light of new honesty. Here’s how they make it work. Marissa Lasoff-Santos and the person she would marry quickly fell head over heels in love.
Lasoff-Santos was a gay woman. Her girlfriend was a bisexual woman - or so they thought. Now her partner has become her husband, and they both identify as queer .
And things are better than ever. “We’ve always just had this deep connection, so that’s why, like, I never stopped loving him throughout any of this,” says Lasoff-Santos, a 33-year-old librarian in Michigan . “I’ve become more attracted to him.
I guess part of it is just, like, that confidence in him and, like, he just seems so happy.” Lasoff-Santos’ relationship and others like it show a partner’s gender transition does not necessarily mean a death sentence for a marriage . Data is scant, but couples and therapists say in many cases, a relationship grows and flourishes under the light of new honesty.
Such marriages, when they do prevail, can underscore the resilience of love, the flexibility of sexual identity and the diversity in LGBTQIA+ relationships 20 years after the first same-sex marriages in the US and with Pride Month in its sixth decade. “Even though he was the one transitioning, I felt like I was going through my own transition,” Lasoff-Santos says. “It was definitely hard to not, I guess, come across as kind of se.
