My name is Sarah and I married Janet on 26 April 1980. We married as man and woman, without Janet knowing that I had cross-dressed in secret for as long as I could remember. I didn’t view myself as transsexual, indeed I don’t think I was really aware of the transgender world at the time. I’d heard of people like April Ashley, but never dreamed that anything like that could happen to me. I did fantasise that I might be able to snap my fingers and be female, but assumed that I’d have to snap my fingers to come back, otherwise things might be difficult.

I knew I had a male body, but did I have a female mind? To this day, I have no idea what is a female mind nor a male mind. I only know my own mind (maybe!) and it’s still the same one I ever had. But it was only once I became Sarah that I realised true peace of mind.

Looking back on life with hindsight shows that things might have been different. Would I have moved on from those long summer holidays lounging around at home reading, with our dog the only witness to my female guise, if my mother had not died when I was 13 and all traces of femininity disappeared overnight from our house. What if I had not been painfully shy? What if Janet had not discovered my cross-dressing in 1983 and laid down a set of rules that she thought would best save her marriage, just as I was beginning to gain confidence as female in public?

I abided by those rules for 12 years, despite a growing feeling of unhappiness that even then I never felt inclined to articulate. Even when I broached the matter with Janet in 1999 for the first time since 1983 (done in writing because I couldn’t speak for tears) I sought to reassure her that I was just TV and not TS. And I think I believed it even then. So let there be no mistake; I didn’t marry Janet out of any notion that I needed to prove my manhood. I married her because I loved her.

However, the genie was out of the bottle by this stage, and as I became increasingly confused, frightened and depressed by the decisions that seemed to be crowding in on me to the exclusion of everything else, we both assumed that the other would wish to leave the marriage. Our continuing failure to communicate over the one thing that we could never discuss nearly finished us.

We were both at this time thinking what our marriage meant to us. I was faced with all the usual fears of losing family, friends and work, but I reached the conclusion that the only real thing about my life that needed changing was me. Janet on the other hand was contemplating what life might be like without me. Yes, she admits there was an element of cold-blooded evaluation contributing to this process, but she has since said that we have done so much together, have so many common interests and so much in love that it would be senseless to part.

Not realising that I wanted to stay with her, she offered me my freedom. She was holding me back, she said, and if I needed to go, then I must not worry about her. The penny dropped with both of us at that moment that we really wanted to stay together. Yes, there was a material aspect to our feelings, but at their root was the fact that we both loved each other as true soul mates and never wanted to part.

After that, things changed dramatically, as we acted in concert to achieve my gender transition while retaining everything else in our lives. Indeed, things were better than ever before, because the taboo subject was finally totally out in the open. Our marriage grew stronger than ever as we worked our way through each stage of the change, trying to accommodate each other. Inevitably there were compromises along the way, for example, Janet learning how to cope with my changing appearance, and my coping with her concerns about how our village would receive the change. But surely successful marriage is about mutual compromise. Family, friends and work were brought on board without demur once they realised we really did want to stay together.

Then came the Gender Recognition Bill with its appalling choice between our marriage and my right to gender recognition. Somehow recognition mattered less when no trans-person was recognised; now it seemed more crucial. Not just the unpleasant feeling of being left behind, but the fear that the slow accretion of concessions made to transpeople over the years would come to an end for those without a GRC, and indeed might begin to go into reverse.

As we worked on letters to the DCA, the Human Rights Committee, the Lords, the Commons through long nights of drafting and re-drafting, of tears and tantrums from me about how totally unfair it all was, I reassured Janet at every step of the way that I would not betray our marriage for my gender recognition unless and until circumstances without a GRC made my life as Sarah untenable. But in my own mind, I felt extremely challenged, both by my gender identity and my marriage. I never shared this turmoil with Janet, for fear of undermining her feeling of my commitment to her, but I’m sure she saw that my tears were not just anti-GRC tantrums.

Some of her friends, on learning of her new situation, admired her commitment but felt they would be unable to stand by a husband who had done what I had done. I was proud of her response to them. "Would you ditch your husband if he was terribly scarred, or paralysed from neck down? So, what’s the difference about me staying with Sarah? She’s the same person. We married for better or for worse, in sickness and in health."

Don’t misinterpret this. We married in church to satisfy her parents’ religious feelings, but we are complete heathens. Caring, thinking heathens, to whom a church marriage is the same as a civil marriage. Ours is not a God-given marriage, with our vows sacred before God. Ours is a marriage borne out of our own mutual love and devotion, and splitting up while our marriage is so strong would not be a betrayal of any god, but far worse to us, a personal betrayal of each other, of all we have been through and all that we represent to one another.

Some people say, but surely you live like sisters, not husband and wife; surely it’s not a proper marriage? Surely the GRA is correct to classify you as a same sex couple if I obtained gender recognition? Well, Janet is not a lesbian and never will be. As for me, I think the whole coin of sexuality goes into meltdown once transgenderism is introduced. The fact is, however, that we behave inside our marriage in much the same way as we ever did before. Obviously there are some differences, simply as a result of my body changes, but we still remain on intimate terms and still happily fall asleep in each others arms.

While our marriage remains the same, it’s my relationship with the outside world that has changed enormously. Because I am lucky to be able largely to pass as female in the outside world, I would therefore hope to have a choice whether to declare my trans-status, which is as it should be. But we all know that isn’t always the case, because we have to declare ourselves all too often when there really should be no need. It cannot be right that we have to declare something so deeply personal without true need. This is why the GRA should have applied to all trans-people at whatever stage of their post-transition life, even if you might have to serve a two-year probation period to confirm your intention. Instead of this happy Nirvana, we have ended up with a two class system, a form of apartheid that will separate those with a GRC and those without, and I HATE IT. I am NOT a second class transperson. I AM AS GOOD AS THE REST OF YOU.

I still can’t understand why the Government has treated us so badly. ‘Hard cases make bad law’ they murmured in parliament as the bill wended it way. Too true - so let us have our recognition despite our marriages, was my response. Instead they proceeded to legislate massively to exclude us from the GRA and push us towards a civil partnership. A wonderfully disgusting edifice of callous legal logic, that has opened up a deep well of resentment within me that I never knew existed.

Our marriage is something special. It is a truly strong marriage. Not many marriages survive what we’ve been through. And ours is a marriage made in heaven, but forged in the hell of gender dysphoria. It is still heterosexual, at least chromosomally, and always will be. It looks like same sex on the surface, but legally its not, but it would be if I were to obtain a GRC. Is this really all it comes down to, a piece of paper? What a travesty. But in my view, our marriage is really no longer hetero- nor homosexual. These words were defined without regard to marriages and relationships like ours, relationships that depend on attractions to the person inside the body and not the body itself. My word for our marriage is ‘suprasexual’, a marriage whose relationships transcend the normal definitions of sexuality, whereby the partners to the marriage want to stay together despite one partner having changed gender. Suprasexual marriages are NOT same sex marriages and deserve an exception from the GRA.

So what effect does the GRA have on our marriage. NONE. I will get a GRA over my dear wife’s dead body. The one thing I most regret about my life is that I didn’t have the courage or self-knowledge to live as Sarah earlier. The thing I least regret about my life is my marriage to Janet. Of course, I want to be recognised as legally female, but I will not let this undermine my marriage. The only prospect for me to be recognised as female is for this law to be changed. Please give us your support.

(c) Sarah 2005 All rights reserved