Goodbye husband, hello wife

No, I was told. He didn’t want the focus on him.

I was tempted to try to change his mind, but I didn’t push. I figured that being a face behind a cause as sensationalized and vitriolic as transgender rights would be at least tiring - and at most life-threatening.

I will find out for myself soon enough.

I am not a transgendered person, but I am happily married to one. Her name is Lina and she is a “male-to-female’’ transsexual. She is 47, and I am 53.

We met at Logan Airport on Valentine’s Day in 2003, when we both lived in the area (we have since moved to North Carolina for work). I had left The Boston Globe copy desk the year before to be a freelance writer, and I wrote about a crazy ice-skating trip he took in my column for the Globe Travel section, “Where They Went.’’

After that, we dated, fell in love, lived together, and married.

The things I loved about Wessel are what I love about Lina, and, yes, in a romantic way. She is big-hearted, intelligent, emotionally mature, athletic, and adventurous. She has great legs.

We had been together for almost two years, but married for only two months, when Wessel shared his news. He wanted to be my wife, not my husband.

He had come to this realization with a sense of clarity and joy. I reacted with confusion and despair.

Had there been signs? Yes and no. I knew he had struggled with society’s rigid gender lines, but so had I. I knew he sometimes liked to dress in women’s clothing, but advice columnists and a host of psychologists will tell you that does not necessarily mean a man wants to be a woman. We talked about it a lot and he assured me he didn’t.

Counterintuitively, perhaps, it was my love and acceptance of him that gave him the strength to become on the outside who he was on the inside: a woman.

I detached emotionally and physically. I cried every day. I wondered what else he hadn’t told me. I feared something was wrong with me to attract this kind of mate. I was angry and ashamed.