Women whose husbands came out as transgender during their marriages have spoken about their heartbreak and opened up about alleged abuse they suffered at the hands of their partners when they struggled to accept their new gender identities.

Behind The Looking Glass, a documentary by Lime Soda Films, claims to be the first deep dive into the stories of ‘trans widows’ – women who have split, or want to split, from their male transitioning partners. 

In the film, the women say they are forgotten victims of domestic abuse and reveal that their partners were often unfaithful and took advantage of them financially.  

The women explain that while their partners received therapy and support through their transition, they themselves were left without access to the same resources. 

‘It often feels though that our stories are just whispers in a storm,’ confessed one widow, who chose to keep her identity hidden.

Behind The Looking Glass tells the stories of 18 women and explores the impact of the partner’s transitioning on their wives and children. 

Anonymous ‘trans widows’ have revealed their heartbreak after their husbands came out as transgender. They shared their real voices but were given a cartoon alias (pictured here for Marigold) 

Most of the women chose to remain anonymous, sharing their real voices but using a cartoon alias to protect their identity.

One woman named Ginny revealed how she is now reduced to a ‘blubbering mess’ when she speaks about how her husband, with whom she has four children, revealed they wanted to transition. 

She is now part of a support group after her experience co-parenting with her husband.

She said that for a period of four years, she would have the children for three weeks, while her partner only had them for one. 

She said her partner was ‘living like a single person’ while she tried to cover two rents at once and was ‘broke’. 

Others spoke of the abuse they received during the transitioning process, particularly if they didn’t ‘affirm’ their partner’s new identity. 

Julietta said: ‘It didn’t take me long to end the marriage, especially after Jack physically assaulted me for not affirming him. My son and I moved out of the family home and couch surfed for a few months.’

As well as physical assaults, there was emotional manipulation. One woman, known as Dinah in the documentary, said she ‘knew’ she was ‘being cheated on’ throughout the transition process.  

Julietta said she was forced to couch surf for months after her husband began physically assaulting her

Julietta said: ‘Over time he had me convinced I was mentally unstable and too far damaged to be fixed. It took me months after the separation to see that this was mental and emotional abuse.’ 

While Julietta has a Domestic Violence Order against her ex due to the physical assault, the ex is still allowed contact with their child. 

Meanwhile Angela said her partner began stealing her journals, meaning she began to lose her ‘grounding’ on reality. 

Her partner would then tell her falsehoods, and she had no concrete proof they weren’t true, meaning she was ‘manipulated more and more’.  

Another, Marigold, said the abuse even began extending to their children. She said: ‘He would get home and he would just start yelling for hours, about all the ways I failed him. 

‘And then it got to the point where if the kids touched something, he would take their hand and smack it on the table. He blamed me and said my lack of good parenting has forced him to take more action.’ 

Marigold claimed her partner told her that she must identify as bisexual if she wanted them to stay together, despite her protesting she is a straight woman.

Dinah said she knew she was being cheated on and that her husband was being unfaithful

Her partner then told her they had taken strong painkillers (which she had been prescribed but never took) before the couple had sex, saying they had to be in an ‘altered state of mind’ in order to be intimate with her. 

Marigold continued: ‘I felt like a body, like it didn’t matter who I was in bed. He was like a different person to have sex with, he was a stranger. 

‘And I would ask him to stop and he would not stop, or he would want to do something that was painful to me and he didn’t seem to care.’ 

As well as the emotional turmoil caused by the transition process, the group of ‘trans widows’ also shed light on the financial impact it had on them. 

Julietta said her partner ‘drained’ her accounts with his ‘erratic spending’ during those years. 

Uno says her husband was unemployed when he came to live with her in Tokyo, having quit his job. 

Uno was forced to pay both of their rents and, though her husband picked up some sporadic part-time work, he said he couldn’t find full-time employment unless it was ‘as a woman’. 

‘I had to stop working because of stress,’ she said, adding that her severance pay quickly vanished with two of them living off it. ‘He told me over and over he was not going to return the money he owed me.’

Uno was faced with financially difficulty and eventually had to stop working due to stress

While the husbands apparently received focused therapy and support to deal with the change of transitioning, their wives were left with almost no support – even while a fundamental aspect of their marriage was changing. 

Julietta said she and her husband tried both couples and individual therapy, but she was expected to simply apply an attitude of ‘acceptance’ and ‘tolerance’, while her own individual feelings were not ‘affirmed’. 

Shannon, another trans widow, said: ‘In a marriage, where a man started to use drugs or cheated on you, you would find therapists and support groups and other women who would say this is not your fault, but on this topic people are very quick to question whether or not you responded to it correctly.’ 

Lime Soda Films, which made the documentary, is led by Vaishnavi Sundar, an Indian filmmaker who describes herself as a ‘radical feminist’.

A biography on her website reads: ‘I put women first in every project I pursue.’

In a clip on the Lime Soda Films YouTube channel, Sundar reveals it took her three years to make Behind the Looking Glass, which she began researching towards the end of 2021. 

She says she intends for her film to ‘combat relentless misogyny’ in what she describes as a ‘first of its kind’ story.