This week is a very special week in my life. Today marks my TWO-YEAR anniversary with my wife, Samantha. If you’ve talked to me IRL basically at all, you know that I’m literally obsessed with my wife. We’ve been together for 7 years, and each year has brought more joy than the last. In reflecting on my journey towards love and lovability, I want to share our story, the lessons I’ve learned about love as a transgender person, and some of the pieces of media that helped me learn that I, too, was worthy of a heart-stopping, life-building, fairytale romance.
At this point, it’s probably obvious to you that I’m a bit of a softie. Ask anyone who knows me personally, they can confirm I’ve always been this way. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that I’ve also always been a romantic. Transitioning pulled the rug out from under me, romantically—I had no idea whether I would be worth loving. Early in my transition, I got to see the openly transmasculine actor Elliot Fletcher star in multiple teen and family dramas as a romantic interest, and I decided that if he could do it, so could I. I wore my heart on my sleeve and pursued crushes and dates like any other teenager.
I had my heart held with love, I had my heart broken, and I rebuilt it a little stronger each time. Sometimes I fell on my face—one particularly notable first date in my senior year of high school found us in a bowling alley sharing a lane with every single gym teacher from my high school. There was not a second date.
While some of my experiences fit into the shared woes of every teenager trying to learn how to love, every ending was met with a belly-deep fear: did I just blow my last chance? Is anyone going to be able to love me as I am? TV shows that featured trans characters often showed their transitions and their bodies as an obstacle, a trap, a trick. Unfortunately, some of the experiences I had confirmed that narrative for me.
Some of the partners I had made me feel loved, while others made me feel like they were doing me a favor out of pity by dating me, or that my body was something I needed to apologize for over and over again. In my real romantic life I felt alone, but I felt seen by the messiness of trans romances in shows like tales of the city.
By my sophomore year of college, I had decided to come to terms with the reality that maybe love wasn’t for me. After a series of painful relationships and messy breakups, I swore off dating and decided that I would just find love in other ways, and maybe I wouldn’t notice a lack of romantic love in my life.
Then, I found my opposite. For every class I may or may not have slept through, she worked extra early hours in her research lab. For my meandering interests in different subjects and majors, she was driven by an intense focus towards her STEM career. She came into college set on attending medical school, and I dropped AN ENTIRE PSYCHOLOGY MAJOR just so that we could hang out (#NoRagrets).
Technically, Samantha and I had met a year prior. We’d worked on a series of plays together with her as a by-the-book, hard driving stage manager and me as a new actor dead-set on derailing our rehearsals. She didn’t like me very much, and I thought she was very scary. A year later, I was cast in the fall play she was stage managing (Noises Off, for all the theater nerds in the crowd), and since I’d become marginally less annoying, Samantha didn’t need to be quite as scary.
I liked to walk her home after our late-night rehearsals. Then I started coming in to her suite, just for a few minutes. We’d meet up occasionally to run lines, or to get lunch, and the next thing we knew we were spending every evening laughing ourselves breathless over mac and cheese until 2am.
By the time the show rolled around, I had realized that the ways I was feeling—wanting nothing more than to make her laugh, to make her life easier, to learn how to cook so I could make her dinner, to be around her constantly—was budding love.
I asked her to go on a date with me at the conclusion of our last show, and we were off to the races.
At so many turns, I carried with me a fear that eventually all the complications that came with my transition would be too much and she, too, would tap out.
Instead, at every turn, she stayed by my side and doubled down. Through our year of cross-country long distance, she loved me. Through my top surgery, she loved me. Through my decision to leave my teaching program and go full time into the unknown world of public speaking and advocacy, she was one of my loudest supporters. Through my fears around moving to Missouri for her medical school, she loved me. Through starting testosterone and growing into a newer, handsomer version of myself, she loved me enough to do my injections for me every week for the first three years because I’m afraid of needles.
As I read and watched more hopeful stories of trans characters experiencing love and romance and desirability—shows like Heartstopper, Dispatches from Elsewhere, and Our Flag Means Death; books like A Shot in the Dark or A Lady for a Duke—I continued to get evidence from my own life that it was deeply possible for transgender people to receive unconditional love.
I look back on young Ben’s feelings about love and I want to shake him, hug him, dance with him. I want to say “just you wait, buddy. It’s out there. It’s possible. It’s everywhere.”
Two years ago, on October 15th, we brought together everything that matters in life: our closest friends, our families, a bounce house, and pasta. We declared for all the world that we were partners in this life.
My wife, the recipient of the inaugural Jules Gill-Peterson Award for Emerging Scholarship as a researcher dedicated to trans health, makes me a smarter person every day. My wife, always the first to find a way that something could be better and set out to fix it no matter how major, makes me a more passionate advocate every day. My wife, a dedicated and brilliant pediatrician, makes me proud every day. My wife, my best friend, my board-game buddy, makes me feel loved and safe and lovable every day.
Now, two years in, we are just a week away from our first IVF appointment and are asking all sorts of questions about what we want our family to look like—questions it had never occurred to me I would be allowed to ask. But here I am, falling in love not just with my wife, but with my family, with the concept of a future we are fighting to build. All of a sudden I get to ask myself what kind of father I want to be. Truth be told, I can’t stop thinking about that question. I can’t wait.
For anyone reading this, wondering if it’s possible to find love as a transgender person—whether for yourself or for a loved one that you’re worried about—know that it absolutely is. and I promise I am doing everything in my power to build a world where that is true for as many people as possible.
Ben, I’m crying, this is so sweet and adorable. So much love to you both, and happy anniversary!! 💕
Happy Anniversary to you both