Cory hands Ben a brown paper bag while he sits on the bathroom toilet hyperventilating. Ben is ready for a freak-out, and feels entitled considering what Cory, his girlfriend, just told him. He plays it all back in his head. He thinks about Greece. He thinks about when he finally decided to transition. He remembers a couple days ago, sitting Cory down to tell her about his decision to take testosterone. He dwells over what she just said-- over dinner she told him that she could not promise her love when he began to alter his sex. He stands up from the toilet seat and leaves her house.

Ben Lunine had the important conversation that many female-to-male (FtM) transgender partners have with their significant others. The question of is if the other partner can continue to commit after the intake of hormones as the female body slowly becomes male. The gender issue is more complex than most intimate topics of conversation, and what it means to sexually transition during a relationship with a significant other varies with each couple. Nevertheless, gender is becoming more fluid and changing with each passing generation, making unconventional bonds like trans-relationships more visable.

Ben Lunine and Cory Wechsler met on a December day while riding BART. They didn’t expect the conversation to flow so easily and fun. Before exiting the train in San Francisco to take a law exam, Ben gave Cory his card with his number. However, during that time in 2003, Ben’s business card was different than the card he gives his clients today. The centered black print listed a female name.

“We both lived in the East Bay and did lots of hiking, watching movies, making dinner and just being together,” says Cory. “And when he started exploring his gender, then we went to a lot of queer clubs.”

Ben couldn’t rap his mind around being a transgender at the time they first began to date. He viewed gender as having more than two options, but knew few FtM’s to understand that identity.

“Then I heard genderqueer,” says Ben in his downtown Attorney’s law office. “It was an opening and it felt comfortable. I asked people not to use pronouns for six months.”

However, Ben’s quest for the perfect gender didn’t end there and he soon coined himself as a “genderqueer drop-out.” With more trans-visibility and FtM friends, Ben decided to come out as a male-indentified trans-person.

“It was much easier when I came out as genderqueer,” says Ben, dressed in nice black slacks and shinny black dress shoes behind a white Mac desktop. “It didn’t mean that I was going to change my body.”

But Ben did have plans to change his body. He put off transitioning for a couple of months to prioritize the relationship, when he noticed that coming out changed the relationship between him and Cory.

“I think a lot of people prolong not transitioning because they are afraid of losing their support system; their jobs, their friends and their partners,” said Koen Baum, who is a licensed family therapist and Senior Gender Specialist. “There is a lot of potential gain, but I think the fear of the potential loss and also the reality of potential loss-- and that prolongs taking hormones.”

For many transgender guys, transitioning is a big decision and the repercussions of it loop in their mind like a broken record. For Ben his girlfriend’s hesitation led him to put off hormones until he visited Greece in search of Socrates and one of the famous philosophers quotes began to repeat in his mind.

“An unexamined life is not worth living,” quoted Ben. “ And there I was 6,000 miles away from home and I realized that I do identify as a guy.”

When Ben returned to the Bay Area, he would sit Cory down and tell his girlfriend of a year and a half that he was going to begin transitioning to a more masculine body with chest surgery and testosterone. And a couple days later, she would sit Ben down and tell him that she could not promise to commit.

“At some point early when he was genderqueer, I thought that this was not the end of it and that he was going to take T (testosterone),” says 32–year-old Cory. “However I fell for this person and that didn’t surprise me. There were parts of him that were attractive and I definitely realized that my spectrum leaned towards the more androgynous to genderqueer. There were some dynamics that worked and some that didn’t.”

Cory opted to continue dating Ben through the process of his transitioning, but she felt that it was a lot to ask of her to go through the process.

Ben’s transition was quick. Chest surgery required him to lay low for a couple of weeks but testosterone took to his body well and he went through “the good, the bad and the ugly” stages relatively fast.

“I would tell people that I was trans and they wouldn’t believe me,” said Ben, spooning a bowl of clam chowder in a downtown bistro.

“He got so much denser and hairier,” says Cory. “There were parts of it that I liked. Our sexual relationship was fascinating—everything was cracked open for exploring experiences with no boundaries—gender got to play out under the sheets.”

Even though the sex was fun and exciting, Cory had a hard time with her own transition to aspects of the relationship. She was challenged by the fear of the unknown, unsure of what the testosterone was going to do to her partner. She also felt a loss of community and missed being in a lesbian relationship. This transition of identity is a struggle for many trans-relationships, when their queer identity gets mistaken for a heterosexual one.

In addition, there are a lot of identity politics that circulate through queer communities as a whole. Sometimes, lesbian identified partners fear a vanishing of their community, since they no longer fit into the neat mold.

“Like the lesbian community if you are in it,” says Baum. “You feel like family and then your life takes a different turn, like you fall in love with someone who is transitioning and that community feels threatened, like you are going to the enemy and becoming mainstream.”

Another trans-couple, Aimee Hodgekiss and Gabe Scelta, hadn’t really given much thought to the identity question as they mildly argued if Hodgekiss would care if she was mistaken as straight again.

“I think you might have a harder time than you think,” says Gabe, explaining to his girlfriend the realities of when he does transition. “People are going to treat you like how you treat straight girls.”

Aimee sits on a lime green floral couch in a Mission District café and reveals a bit of discontent over an aspect she hasn’t thought about much. Her three-month relationship with Gabe has been nothing but fun and love filled. They both laughed over being “a Lexington Bar success story.”

Aimee identifies as queer and already has a desire for transmen.

“They are the best of both worlds,” she says sipping on her cup of Yerba Mate. "I love the attitude and the dress—besides tits have never been the thing for me, I am an ass person.”

Gabe admires Aimee’s beauty, intelligence, and temperament. He also thinks she has a great ass.

“I think we complement each other,” he says embracing her hand while she nods with agreement.

Gabe wants to have chest surgery as soon as possible, but is without the proper funds. He only wants to transition partially and only temporarily take testosterone. He doesn’t want to be seen as a straight dude and enjoys being a transman with an emphasis on being androgynous.

They continue to joke on the couch together, poking fun that Aimee is a trans-red-head and how she started the bottle (hair-dye) when she was sixteen.

“There are some that don’t even know what I am,” Aimee pulls her fingers through her short, curly reddish brown hair.

However, Gabe is concerned for passing as a heterosexual and explains how it is a bigger issue for the femme when a lot of their identity comes from who is standing next to them.

“I really don’t see it being a big deal,” Aimee interjects. “ I don’t think my identity has anything to do with you—I am just going to be me and I am proud to be with you, baby.”

“The females [partner] have their own invisible transition to be recognized,” says Kim Hraca, a Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) at a private practice in Berkeley. “And the couple is going through it at different places with different experiences.”

Hraca is working with Max Fuentes Fuhrmann Ph.D. on a couple’s retreat in Southern California scheduled for February 2007. Trans-identified men and their partners are expected to increase communication, deepen intimacy, enrich the relationship and hear about how others handle similar situations. “We will address the unique issues that arise for couples who have questioned gender as well as universal themes that come to all couples is relationships.” she says.

“We felt like there isn’t enough resources for that community,” says Hraca who specializes in working with people who have different gender and sexual identities. “There isn’t enough depth about going through a relationship after transitioning.”

Cory could relate to what Hraca described as invisible transition. She felt that Ben’s transition was central to their relationship and that time couldn’t handle other issues that came up—so much energy was put in that she stopped imagining the future.

“Parts of me closed,” Cory says. “I lost my voice.”

“Transitioning is a very self-absorbed process,” Hraca says. “One partner is excited about what is going on in their body and the other partner is grieving about the losses. For some couples they don’t carry and sometimes they absolutely carry through.”

Even though Ben and Cory’s relationship ended, they are still loving friends and take great value in the time they shared. Both have moved on with other relationships, but will never forget their own.

Aimee and Gabe have yet to go through the process, yet they both feel confident that despite how much T can throw off a relationship, their strong personalities will illustrate how being with the best people during such a rough period is what matters.

“I’m seeing relationships survive transitioning more than not,” says Hraca. “Now there is an attitude that it can survive and if the relationship has the strength and foundation, it actually gains more honesty and depth.”

“I feel really honored to do that with Ben,” Cory explains. “I grew so much with our process and feel so blessed that we got through the hardest parts to try again and let us be in each others lives. I feel at peace and it was just what it was.”

The couples retreat is scheduled February 23-25, 2007. For more information contact Kim Hraca at (510) 601-1859.