Marriage, Change, and Eternal Commitment

From the New York Times: Modern Love - My Husband Is Now My Wife

I’d wept without warning after dinner because I would not see his face again, his perfectly average face with a sizable nose and weak chin, the face I’d held and kissed and been happy to greet for eight years.

“Do you still have your wedding ring on?” I asked. “They said to take it off.”
...
It wasn’t until we were married that my husband, finally feeling loved, admitted to himself that he was transsexual. That he was, inside, a woman. That he did not want to be the man I married.

Stunned and wounded, I located a therapist, read transgender books, found support online and confided in the lone friend I entrusted with my secret. My husband and I continued to talk, to love.

Over time I came to believe that my husband, as my wife, would be in most ways the same person: intelligent, compassionate, mature, with the same slim build. I’d had a relationship with a woman in my early 20s, so living as a lesbian was agreeable enough, though I mourned the societal ease we would lose.
...
WHEN we reached the house, I asked if she minded staying in the car while I tended to the pets, knowing our entrance would be chaotic otherwise. She nodded yes.

The house was warm, but I turned the heat up to make it toasty. I imagined my life if the person in the car didn’t exist. Easier, but empty.

I returned and roused my dozing partner, spouse, wife. We shuffled inside and into our bedroom, which I’d stocked with her medications, ice bags and gauze. I maneuvered her under the covers and fluffed her pillows. I took her wedding band from the beaded box and slipped it over her finger.
...
We’d been in bed almost 12 hours when a gray light filled the room. Still under our covers, we were warm and safe. Soon enough, we would face the world. I pulled my right arm from the sleeping bag and took my partner’s hand. We stayed like that, side by side, until the sun rose on our first day in this foreign land.

I teared up a bit when I read that.

I didn't require skull reconstruction - for that is what aggressive Facial Feminisation Surgery is. My Face may not be my fortune, but it's mine, and never was terribly masculine anyway. Similarly, I've had no breast augmentation, no prosthesis, even though with my barrel chest my breasts get a bit lost in the shuffle.

Genital reconstruction though was needed due to the mess that was left after the change hit. It was important to me psychologically too.

I was never much of a husband, and never thought of myself as one of those - and I don't think of myself as a wife - but I was, and am a partner.

I wish this couple well, and I hope both can settle down into a common or garden lesbian relationship. My partner and I are both straight, so that wasn't our fate, but our love remains eternal. We no longer have intimacy, but we do have physical affection. Our marriage hasn't changed at all there, we love each other just as much as we did over 30 years ago.