It was unrivalled in terms of revelations; so shocking that Sandra Onate assumed it was a scam.
Mike Chowney, her ex-boyfriend, had called her unexpectedly after 20 years after their breakup to tell her something ‘unusual.’ She laughs now at the adjective’s deliberate understatement.
Mike’s voice was slightly lighter, but there was no indication of the news Sandra was about to learn. Mike encouraged her to take a seat.
Then he revealed to her that he had always suspected he had been born into the wrong body and was now a trans woman. It’s no longer Mike, but Zoe.
‘I’d never met anyone who was trans before,’ says Sandra, 47.
She had been raised in a devout Catholic home and had remained a virgin until the age of 21.
‘I said, ‘What?’ At first I thought it was a joke, that someone would leap out with a camera and say it was a prank for a TV show. Then I realised Mike was absolutely serious. She was now Zoe.
‘I remember hanging up the phone and telling a colleague: ‘You’re not going to believe this. My ex-boyfriend is now a woman.’
‘But I thought what a blessing it would be to revisit an old relationship in a different, platonic way. I wanted to enjoy getting to know Zoe and rekindle a friendship that had been so close and meaningful — but this time we would just be two women friends.’
Prior to their surprise meeting in 2018, they had had seemingly normal lives. Sandra was married to a man, but unhappily. Mike, 51, was a married father of two cherished boys.
And four years ago, neither Zoe, a technology entrepreneur, nor Sandra, the operations director of an international insurance business, could have predicted that their budding friendship would blossom into a sexual relationship, let alone that they would vow to spend the rest of their lives together.
To their surprise, they are now a happily married couple living in the Surrey commuter belt.
And now, in an amazingly candid and often hilarious conversation – they feel that openness is the key to trans acceptance — they describe their unusual love story.
‘I can see why people might think it’s unusual, but Zoe has all the wonderful qualities Mike had,’ says Sandra. ‘She is kind, thoughtful and caring, as well as smart and funny.’
Zoe adds: ‘I loved Sandra all those years ago, so of course I still love her now.’
She was almost halfway through her transition when she met Sandra again. She had started taking female hormones and had developed breasts, but she still had male genitalia.
Sandra had never been sexually attracted to women before, but as she grew to know Zoe, she found herself thinking about more than just friendship.
When they finally met in person, the spark was undeniable.
‘When I first slept with Zoe I liked it a thousand times more than sleeping with Mike,’ says Sandra.
‘I was pleasantly surprised. I felt there was something magical about Zoe’s new body. It wasn’t off-putting at all.’
Zoe adds: ‘We tried conventional sex once, for old times’ sake, but the hormones [oestrogen] weren’t helping in that department.’
She laughs. ‘We are still learning how to love each other in new and different ways.’
It was another scenario entirely when they first met, in Bogota, Colombia, in 1998. Mike, as Zoe was known then, was an international auditor, while Sandra, who is Colombian, was a graduate trainee in the insurance industry.
‘I first saw Sandra sitting at her desk in Bogota, this mass of dark, curly hair and a green dress, looking so exotic, and I fell in love with her,’ says Zoe. ‘I didn’t speak much Spanish so I asked if she could be my interpreter.’
Sandra agrees: ‘I loved Mike at first sight; blond hair, blue eyes. I was drawn to the differences in us. And very soon I learned he was super-quick and so funny.
‘Mike asked me out to dinner — that was the beginning. And we had a lovely sexual relationship. We connected well in that way, too.’ Sandra detected ‘no hint’ of Mike’s inner turmoil.
Since he was a young boy, he’d harboured what he describes as a ‘shameful, guilty, dirty’ secret: he hated the male body he had been born with.
‘I’d suffered from gender dysphoria — a mismatch between my masculine body and female mind — from the age of three or four and I was ashamed and repulsed by it,’ says Zoe. ‘But I believed if I could suppress it and keep it hidden, it would eventually subside.
‘I had a secret cache of women’s clothes I’d wear in private, and this ability to dress in them and express myself as the woman I knew I was gave me some peace and temporary relief.
‘But afterwards I’d feel ashamed and weak. I’d purge myself by giving the clothes away, then buy some more and the cycle continued.
‘It was not sexual. Neither was I a transvestite — that would have been so much simpler. It was about being recognised as the female I really am.’
Despite this private conflict, Mike’s feelings for Sandra were genuine: ‘I loved Sandra, absolutely, and had always been attracted to women, but I was never comfortable with the equipment I had.’
As their relationship progressed, they flew to meet each other in exotic locations around the world. After a year, Sandra came to the UK to study for a Master’s degree, then moved in with Mike in Surrey. But once her visa expired, they made the agonising decision to separate and, in 2000, Sandra returned to Colombia.
‘It was awful, so painful,’ she recalls. ‘I felt as if I was losing a husband. I didn’t recover or have another relationship for years.’
For Mike, sadness was tinged with a kind of relief.
‘By then, I’d spent a long time soul-searching,’ says Zoe. ‘I was suffering all the confusion and complications of gender dysphoria and I didn’t feel it was fair on Sandra to get married when I didn’t know what would happen to me in the future.’
In fact, in 2005, Mike did get married — to another woman.
‘I’d convinced myself I could manage the secrecy and suppression, keep everything together. I wanted so much to be ‘normal’ and quite clearly now I know I should have been honest with my first wife. But I was too ashamed to accept who I was.’
Two adored children, Oscar, now 16, and Lucas, 14, followed, but by 2014 the gnawing ache of Mike’s gender dysphoria had become so insistent that it was manifesting itself in a string of devastating physical symptoms.
‘I was admitted to hospital. The doctors thought I had cancer but they found no evidence of it. Then they assumed, because I had chest pains, it was a heart attack. It was terrifying. They sent me for scans.
‘The consultant said; ‘You are dying. Your body is shutting down but we don’t know why.’ That was when I thought, I have to seek professional help to keep my male life manageable.
‘The mental stress was killing me. When I was discharged from hospital I knew I had to see a GP and admit what I was feeling.’
In 2015, Mike was referred to the Gender Identity Clinic in Charing Cross, London. A year later, an appointment came through. He still hadn’t mustered the courage to tell his wife.
‘I was naively hoping that with anti-depressants and specialist counselling I could keep my life together,’ says Zoe. ‘Why would I want to transition? I’d be moving from the most privileged demographic — an affluent, middle-class, straight, white male — to the most marginalised group in society: a trans woman. Why would anyone choose to do that?’
So anxious was he to keep his ‘guilty secret’ from his wife that Mike had mail from the clinic redirected. But a letter arrived from the Care Quality Commission, asking him to rate his experience at the gender clinic — and she opened it.
‘My whole world imploded,’ recalls Zoe. ‘We had some horrendous conversations. My wife supported me but we both made the decision reluctantly: I knew I had to transition and that we had to divorce.’
Oscar and Lucas, then ten and eight, also had to be told.
‘It was the hardest conversation I’ve ever had. I told them I’d been born in the wrong body and that I was going to start living full-time as a woman. Oscar threw his arms round me and said: ‘Good for you Dad. You have to be yourself.’ And Lucas asked: ‘Does that mean on Father’s Day I get to buy you a nice necklace?’ ‘
While there have been some difficult times, the boys have acclimatised with remarkable equanimity. ‘They sometimes yell ‘Dad!’ at me when we’re out and quickly correct themselves to Zoe. But I don’t mind a bit.’
She recounts the day in March 2017 when she formally changed gender, as well as the ‘coming out’ chat she had with her parents, Sue, 74, and Peter, 82. They have been quite tolerant and supportive, with the exception of occasionally misgendering her — which Zoe understands, ‘after all, they had a son for so many years.’
Zoe reconnected with Sandra, who had married in 2006, through a professional network.
‘I’d never forgotten her but knew it would be inappropriate to contact her during my marriage,’ she says.
‘As Zoe, I hoped that we could rekindle our closeness as female friends. How lovely and what a privilege that would be!
‘Had I been male and divorced I’d never have contacted her. But this was very different.’
So Zoe made that phone call. The rapport between them was instant and they began ‘chatting’ for hours on WhatsApp every day.
‘I’d never stopped thinking about Mike and what we’d had, even when I got married,’ admits Sandra, who had separated from her husband by the time Zoe got in touch, and lived in Madrid, where her business is based. ‘Every time I arrived at Gatwick airport for work, I wondered if I’d spot him.’
As they rekindled their friendship, Zoe told Sandra — with characteristic openness — that she could ‘ask anything’ about her physical transition, and shared photos of her new body.
Sandra was astounded to see her former boyfriend with breasts. ‘Weirdly, it ignited something physical,’ she says. ‘Perhaps I was remembering what we had together, but it felt a bit inappropriate — not the right way to approach our new relationship.’
Confused by her feelings, especially as she’d never before been attracted to women, she sought advice from a counsellor.
He advised her to be open-minded: after all, she had loved Mike, so little wonder she was drawn to Zoe.
With this in mind, Sandra, who was due to go to Switzerland for business in September 2018, booked a twin room at a hotel in Zurich and proposed meeting Zoe there. She leapt at the chance.
‘I was really nervous,’ admits Zoe. ‘And there was no way on earth I’d ever make a move on Sandra.’
But, says Sandra: ‘When I first saw her we hugged immediately. I remember thinking, you’re so tall!
‘I was shocked, in a nice way. We sat on a bench waiting for a train and I said to Zoe: ‘I feel the urge to kiss you. May I?’ And we kissed. It felt like we’d gone back 20 years.
‘It’s hard to explain but it was both reassuringly familiar and wonderfully new.’
‘I don’t remember you asking!’ laughs Zoe. ‘I just recall you grabbed me and kissed me. I was shocked — but delighted, too.’
That first night they made love, and after that, ‘we knew we would be together for ever,’ says Sandra.
It was Zoe who proposed, in a restaurant in Guildford in 2018, down on one knee. ‘And I didn’t wait a second,’ Sandra remembers. ‘I just said: ‘Of course!’ ‘
Zoe already had a house in Surrey and within months they were shuttling between there and Sandra’s flat in Madrid.
Zoe completed her physical transition in June 2019, when she had an operation to remove her male genitalia. She and Sandra considered together the ‘a la carte’ menu of surgical options, and decided on a labiaplasty. Zoe has a functioning clitoris and labia, but not a vagina.
‘We discussed this and I said: ‘Why go through unnecessary pain? You’re not going to have a male partner so you don’t need a whole vagina,’ ‘ says Sandra.
Zoe adds: ‘I don’t have to worry about budgie-smuggling on the beach now — and finally I look down and see what I want to see.
‘The greatest relief is mental. I’m not carrying a secret any more and I feel light, as if I could float off into the sky.’
Today they make a striking couple. At 6 ft 1 in tall, Zoe is statuesque with a model’s long legs and a dazzling smile. Sandra is warm, petite, voluble; her Latin beauty a perfect counterbalance to Zoe’s fair-skinned elegance.
Friends and family have embraced their relationship, although Sandra’s father was initially uncomprehending and horrified.
She explains: ‘But now he says: ‘I don’t understand it fully, but if you’re happy, I’m happy.’ ‘
They married at a small register office ceremony in August 2020, after Covid delayed their plans, with Zoe’s parents and sons in attendance.
They head to Valencia next week for a beach wedding with 50 friends and relatives.
Then it’s back to life as a couple, despite their unusual past, who are clearly attached to one another.
‘All I want is to be Sandra’s for ever,’ says Zoe. And Sandra agrees: ‘My life is dedicated to Zoe,’ she smiles.
Zoe Chowney is CEO of Bacano (bacano.io). Follow her on Twitter and on Instagram: @ZoeChowney.