Lillian always imagined herself marrying “a dark bald black man.” After years of being single and realizing she’s happy being by herself, she met Michael on a personals site. After developing feelings for each other, Michael told Lillian that he was transitioning. Lillian recalls:

He told me he was transitioning. … And in just those few seconds, I said, “I want to go through that with you.” And then three months later we were married.

Continue Reading to watch Lillian’s story and hear more about how their relationship and marriage developed and strengthened.

TRANSCRIPT:

My name is Lillian and I am a native Arizonan. I have lived here, mostly in the Phoenix area, most of my life. I have been single, had been single, all my life. When I was younger I always thought I would get married. The person who I thought I would marry was a dark, bald, black man. That’s who I always picture, tall dark black man. That’s who I pictured I would always marry, that was the person. And every time I would see one I thought, “Oh, is he the one?” Just crazy young girl stuff. And after I got older and started going to work and all that stuff, I just kind of realized, “You know what? I’m happy with my life. If I’m going to be single, that’s okay. I’m okay with that.” But then after a while, living alone just wasn’t what I wanted. And actually I just stepped out of the way pretty much. I just stopped looking, stepped out of the way, and through the personal ads online is how I met Michael.

We met one day on Friday and all weekend we realized we were thinking about each other the whole weekend and we got together again on Monday. And when I met him on Friday he didn’t tell me, we actually met, I met him on a woman-to-woman site and he didn’t tell me at that time that he was transitioning. And after that weekend we got together again and he thought, “Well I’m having these feelings for her I better tell her what’s going on.” And he told me he was transitioning. And I don’t know that I ever thought or knew anything about transgender or trans men or transwomen or if I’d ever met one, I probably knew one or two, but didn’t really think about it. But in those few seconds I said, “I want to go through that with you.” And then three months later we were married.

Every time we’d gotten together before that we had talked about future stuff together and we were going to do this together and we were going to do this together and how neat it would be to do this together and stuff like that. We had been talking about that for quite a while and we were driving apart, driving to our places, I called him on the phone and said, “You know we had been talking quite a bit about doing things together, do you think maybe we ought to get married?” And he said yes! And that was it! And we talked a little more about it when we got together the next time but yeah, that’s how that happened.

Michael: And I’m very opposite of her dream man.

Lillian: Yeah, but you know what, love conquers.