When Courtney got married, she had her whole future mapped out.
She had settled down with what she called a ‘very accomplished’ and ‘macho’ military man after initially being introduced through the Mormon church.
The pair, who tied the knot just one year after meeting, welcomed two children together and Courtney thought they would be growing old side by side in a traditional, religious family unit.
But in just one afternoon, her picture-perfect vision was shattered.
Her entire life changed almost instantly when her then-husband, Joe, whose name has been changed, admitted to wearing her underwear when she was out of the house.
Courtney, a pharmacist from Alabama, was left blindsided, with Joe officially coming out as transgender eight years into their marriage.
‘I’m grieving not only the person I thought I married, but the whole future,’ the now 38-year-old told the Daily Mail.
And the ordeal has torn her apart.
Courtney and her ex married in 2015. In May 2022, the Alabama-based pharmacist’s future was thrown into turmoil after her husband and the father of her two children came out as transgender
Courtney first met her now-ex at church while they were both practicing Mormons in the early winter of 2014, marrying in the fall just a year later.
‘Basically, you’re going to [church to] meet someone to date and marry,’ Courtney explained.
‘He ended up joining the reserves, going to school, working and he ended up deciding to go on active duty,’ she said.
Describing her ex-husband as ‘very, very accomplished in the military,’ she admitted she sometimes wonders if that inhibited his true identity.
‘I think it just submerged him even more in this macho, testosterone-filled world in which it was like it wasn’t safe to even consider these feelings,’ she mused.
Courtney said Joe, who now goes by Sarah, had long suppressed that side of herself and it wasn’t until a colleague of hers passed away and she turned 30 that she started exploring her identity more.
‘She wasn’t [hiding it] maliciously,’ the mom explained. ‘She just suppressed it so much, and part of that might even be just the military, the ability for them to compartmentalize and how they deal with everything.’
Courtney discovered Joe’s secret desire one afternoon after coming home from work, innocently asking him what he got up to during their kids’ naptime.
Courtney has been sharing her story on TikTok, where she said it resonated with many people who have been in similar situations
In response, her then-husband said that he painted his toenails pink – which shocked her.
‘That’s not the biggest deal in the grand scheme of things, but it was so out of character for my husband,’ she reflected. ‘He never expressed any interest in [anything like that], so that was the first thing.’
But it was the next admission that left Courtney with a feeling of dread.
‘She said “I wanted to feel a little sexy,” and [Sarah] showed me that she was wearing my sports bra and my underwear,’ she recalled.
‘I was just in such shock, because it was so out of character of anything I knew,’ Courtney admitted. ‘And how she told me was just so nonchalant.’
The pharmacist said her initial reaction was to demand that Joe leave their home, confessing she felt completely blindsided by what she’d been told.
‘I basically was like, “what the hell, you need to pack yourself up and figure out what’s going on, because this is not the person I know,”‘ she said. ‘I was pretty harsh.’
Courtney said she knew from that moment on nothing was going to be the same.
‘I went to my room and cried,’ she shared. ‘It was one of those pivotal shifts in life where you can feel that everything is changing.’
Courtney and Sarah’s children were just one and two when she came out as a transgender woman. Courtney pictured with her children in 2022
A few weeks later, in May 2022, Courtney’s ex started seeing a gender-affirming therapist and when the family was on their way to an extended family reunion, Sarah told Courtney she identified as a transgender woman.
‘I think that there was just a lot of confusion and kind of hurt there,’ she reflected, adding that she was in denial for a while afterwards.
‘It was really hard because I didn’t fully know what it meant,’ Courtney added.
While the doting mom was trying to embrace the changes happening around her, at times she found it extremely overwhelming.
‘We went on a little trip to some springs in Florida and even then on that trip, I remember asking questions like are you going to be in a bikini, and are you going to want a breast augmentation and it was just so hard for me to imagine,’ she said.
While Joe said she wanted to stay with Courtney even after she transitioned, the mom-of-two admitted she was struggling to adjust to the pace at which their lives were changing.
‘The person I married and who I have kids with is different. [Sarah] is different from [Joe] as a man,’ she explained. ‘She has different kinds of interests, she’s very different than the person I married.’
‘It became this back and forth of me being upset that she was starting hormone therapy, and her being upset that I wasn’t supportive of her starting it,’ Courtney said, adding that she was also upset that hormone therapy would mean no future children together.
‘Every time she would take steps and do things like start hormone therapy, start dressing like a female, presenting like socially transitioning and things, and every time I would kind of ask to slow down, and she wouldn’t be willing to,’ she added.
‘I think deep down, we both knew that our dynamic wasn’t going to work in this new life,’ Courtney said.
The couple divorced in January 2023 and are now coparenting their two children, aged five and six.
While it’s mostly harmonious, Courtney admitted she does have some concerns as the kids get older.
‘I just tried to be open-minded, but as we get into the school years, that’s where I have more concerns about things and what other kids are going to say and what they’re going to do, and I don’t feel like my ex has those concerns,’ she confessed.
Sarah remarried a woman in early 2025, whom she was close with after coming out, with Courtney admitting it was extremely difficult but she is supportive of her ex.
‘Everyone gets to find their happiness again and the choice I made is that [my ex’s new partner] has been good to my children, and they continually like her and love her’ she explained.
‘It’s also funny, because we’re very, very different people, so I think at one point I also was like, wow, if this is truly who my ex actually is, we definitely were not the right match for each other. It almost helped with that,’ she reasoned.
Courtney urged people to be patient and remember that no one’s coming out stories are going to be the same for anyone involved.
‘Truly, I wanted to share my story because I felt alone,’ she said. ‘And [so far] it’s actually reached people who needed to hear it.’
