What Happens When You Find the One…And He’s Nothing—Nothing—Like You Expected?

Allison Cooper and home with her fiance

After years of relationships that never seemed to fit, Allison Cooper finally met her match. And he was nothing—nothing—like she’d imagined. The whole article was published in the Oprah Magazine, 18 March 2010. You can read it here:

 http://www.oprah.com/relationships/Falling-in-Love-with-a-Transgender-Man/1

This is a love story. Like every other. And like no other. This is a story about how one day I believed certain things about myself and the next day I realized, knew the way you know a good nectarine, that I had been wrong.

About all of it.

This is what real love does, of course. Transforms. Enlightens. Boils off the fat. Reveals the sinew underneath. I had read about such things in poems. Sung along with the heartbreak songs. But I had not felt that sort of love myself. The kind that shakes you up inside like a Boggle board, jangling all your letters into wholly new words, some you’ve never seen before but recognize instantly nonetheless.

It started with a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding that in the end wasn’t a misunderstanding at all.

I first saw my love online. He had written something about music in a column I often read. The column comes with a photo of the author. And it was the photo, more than the words, that captivated me. It was nothing extraordinary. Just a head shot. Him, looking sleepy-eyed and stoned (which, as it turns out, he was) in a brown shirt and narrow tie. He was sitting down, slumped and easy, and it was obvious even from the pixilated screen of my decade-old computer that this man was unlike any other I’d known. I found myself staring, leaning in like he was an insect on the sidewalk. There was something about him, intelligence, warmth, confidence, but also, something else. Something I had no name for.

The rest of the article can be found at: http://www.oprah.com/relationships/Falling-in-Love-with-a-Transgender-Man/1