I’ve been moving towards surgery since I started testosterone in 2014. It was an inevitable closure for me, and my goals for transition.

John Cena is not representative of how I actually look.

As such, there has been a bit of anxiety in my marriage about this step. I have always had a bit of residual anxiety about getting top surgery. It changed my body’s generous breasts to a flat chest. I was always worried such a masculinizing step might cause my husband to decide he couldn’t be with a man.

This is ridiculous. He has never ever been the type of man that cared about those things. He’s always been attracted to people regardless of their gender. It was never realistic that he’d actually leave me.

For my husband, he was worried that once I had hit this stage of finality, I might decide to fly off and love someone else. His anxiety being the flip side of mine.

A photo of a woman squeezing a stress ball

We are both idiots, really. I couldn’t love him more, and he is the most devoted person I’ve ever met. I guess we are both a bit anxious though.

The operations were successful from day one. Even swollen, and waiting for everything to heal, I am ecstatic about the results. I can wear T-shirts, without fear of my binder’s bunching up like sports bras.

That little bit of flat chest goes so far in confirming my gender to outsiders. To the casual observer, there is no way they’d ever consider me feminine in any way. Between my age related wrinkles, and my flat chest, I look like any other guy.

A few days after surgery, my husband looked at my now flat chest, and smiled. I could tell he was so happy for me, and that he was just itching to touch me when I was healed up.

That kind of relief just can’t be bought. All my worry evaporated. Finally, we can just be a couple, without this surgical deadline hanging over either of us.

I hope for his part, he knows I won’t be fleeing, now that I have surgery. I think he does know, because he has stopped asking me if I’m going to go find someone younger and prettier.

It was a weird anxiety that we both shared, but I’m not sure it’s that unusual for couples, with one party transitioning. There is such an unknown to the transition process. Everyone has to pioneer what works for them. With couples, you have to not only work with your own anxieties, but your partners.