Elizabeth Miller sat in her living room with her wedding album in her lap. Next to her in the pictures, wearing a gray morning coat, owlish glasses, and a thick beard, is her groom, Dan, who is now her wife, Diana. In many ways, she wishes Dan had never existed at all. As Diana talks about her response to these images, Elizabeth stays silent. Despite the years, she looks remarkably similar to that pretty young bride, but in her mind, her transformation has been just as dramatic.

Tiffany Grimes and Tiffany Barlow grew up nearly a thousand miles apart—one in a remote Arizona border town, the other in the shadows of the Sierra Nevada mountains. They would find their way to each other, and to a peaceful life in a sunny house surrounded by fruit trees and organic garden beds in rural Oregon. But it took a pilgrimage that only they can describe—starting with Barlow, known now as Dade. I was caged off from the rest of the world. I had boyfriends, went on prom dates, all very traditional; if there was a gay character on TV, my dad would turn it off. I met my future husband at Southern Oregon University. We went out for five years but broke up because I fell in love with a woman—I thought it was her , not that I was gay.

Should I stay with my cheater husband? Take time to grieve before you decide what to do. My best friend of 13 years and husband of three years has been messaging and seeing trans women. We have had the perfect love story and perfect marriage thus far. It is pure, he loves me so much and does so much for me, and I have shaped him into a better man.

Tonight I wiped away tears, waiting for a phone call I knew would never come. Phil, a handsome man in his early 50s with salt and pepper hair and dazzling, deep blue eyes, had promised to call me, to talk about what he had discovered about me online. And so today, on the cusp of a romantic weekend we planned to spend together, he dumped me in a text message.