As I walked down the aisle in Gretna Green, I reflected on the fact that getting married was the last thing I ever imagined I would be doing.

After all, I was the relic from a long-term relationship that ended very sadly in 2013, when my previous partner – the love of my life since the late 1980s – died suddenly of cancer. I’d been with her for 26 years and it totally devastated me.

The loss of my partner was the most appalling event of my existence. Grief dominated my every waking hour and I spent months slowly getting used to living a solitary life. So much so that I didn’t expect to be in a relationship ever again.

I am a transgender person (male to female), and I felt – because of my own experiences and the cultural expectations of trans folk – that for me to find another partner was but a slim possibility. At that point, my future seemed to have ended.

Then I met Roxanne.

In that isolated time, I had been using Facebook to connect with others – it was my ‘window’ into the world, from the solitude of my Tyneside apartment.

It’s quite difficult now to recall how it happened (her account would, no doubt, fill in the details). But she was a Facebook user from the USA. She was transgender too. She was younger than me. She was a musician. And she was very beautiful.

However, I lived in Newcastle upon Tyne. And she was in Johnson City, Tennessee. It didn’t feel too promising: 4,000 miles and five hours of time difference have a wonderful way of preventing a relationship from evolving. In addition, I was in no financial position to travel.

But we stayed in touch. We got to know each other. We shared a lot. We fitted together like jigsaw pieces. 

We quickly realised that we shared the same wacky sense of humour. She is one of the few Americans that I know who ‘does’ British irony. She’s also fascinated by politics and philosophy, which is something I teach. Her confidence and support immediately made living seem a lot simpler than it had.

The first time we talked by video it was a curious mix of familiarity and nervousness. I had, by then, been messaging her for many months, and I knew her visually via her photos. But to hear her speak for the first time… that delightful Appalachian accent, and quirky sense of humour. Well, it just made my heart melt. We would talk for hours on end, and she would play me her music (which I love, especially her singing).

I fell in love. And not like last time; this was different. 

We met physically for the first time when she bravely visited me in summer 2016 – it was the first time she’d ever left the USA and I proposed while on a car trip, around half way through her visit. I hadn’t planned it, it just came up in conversation while we were driving through the Northumberland countryside one afternoon. 

It was so mundane you’d think we were talking about the price of carrots:

Me: ‘Wanna get married?’ *changes gear*

Her: ‘OK then.’

We loved the idea of being married. For us both, it was a validation step in our lives: being accepted as legally in a relationship that mattered.

Roxanne had to go home later that summer. But we then started planning for her return the following year to both visit again, and marry. It meant getting a marriage visa, organising the registry office, paying for flights and costs, sorting out invitations, etc.

We married in July 2017, in Gretna, Scotland, with five of our dearest friends as witnesses. We had to go to Scotland as English waiting times for marrying a person who is not a British national were long, and Roxanne had a limited visa.

I am not a religious person, but I felt truly blessed. The very concept of our marriage is a function of the more liberal environment we live in today. We became wife-and-wife, Mrs-and-Mrs! A new model of relationship for a new world!

But two months after our wedding, Roxanne had to go back to Tennessee, as she had her university course to complete – and her visa was going to expire. This was one of the saddest days of our lives. 

We both decided that it would make sense for Roxanne to move to the UK as soon as she could, and had visions of our life together, living happily, as a married couple. Crucially, being together. 

However, our hopes were quickly dashed as politics took a hand in destroying our plans. Until meeting, falling in love with, and marrying a US resident, I had (like a lot of folk) assumed that getting married made it possible for a partner to join a person in the UK. 

This, of course, is false. 

Theresa May’s draconian ‘hostile environment’ policy on immigration means that the chance of Roxanne and I being able to be together feels near impossible. 

This policy on immigration, which is about ‘toughening up’ who can and can’t come to live in the UK, was first introduced in 2012-14. We had never heard of it until our circumstances made us painfully aware of the problems that it created – not just for us, of course, but for a very large number of other folk who are caught in this limbo world.

We might have been legally married, but Roxanne still had no right of abode in the UK. And me moving to the USA was out of the question – transgender people have little in the way of protection under US law, and the prospect of me finding a job, health care, and somewhere to live in the States was slim.

In addition, the process for migrants to the UK included an income hurdle. The UK citizen sponsoring the migrant partner has to earn over £18,600 per annum in order to be even considered for the immigration process. This is very difficult for me, as an ageing teacher in further education – where work tends to be based on short term contracts and often poorly paid. 

Is this fair? Not by any ethical standards that I know of.

So, we were marooned from each other. Exiled. Left to live a life-on-hold via the internet. It has been going on now for five years.

It feels though we are failing to be treated like human beings in a country that, on the one hand, advocates the ‘British values’ of family and marriage, and on the other denies many unfortunate people the right to share those values.

We are not alone. We’re just a visible reminder of a very large number of couples and families divided by the UK legal system. An estimate by the independent Migration Observatory suggests that the number of families torn apart by Theresa May’s actions amounts to 60,000 people.

What we want is the simple right to be here together, permanently. Just like any average loving couple. But we do not give up hope.

Roxanne wants to come to stay for a break with me over Christmas, and because of the high cost of flights (etc) we have been running a ‘Gofundme’ campaign to help raise funds, to cover the trip, and allow us to be a couple again, for five or six weeks – it will be GLORIOUS to see her again!

To actually touch her is something I have not done for two years. It will be like getting let out of jail. Or coming out of a coma. 

But it’s always haunted by the knowledge that she’ll have to go back to the States. I will try to forget it. So will she. We’ll act as if we have an open future, and convince ourselves that this is not just a holiday, but ‘real life’. Underneath the skin though, we both know that we’ll have to part company.

When that day comes we will do the usual business of living for a future reunion. The next one will be permanent. As we’ve been saying since 2017. We live inside that very frail thing called hope.

We can then begin the rest of our lives as a married couple living in north-east England. She will be working and gigging, I’ll be teaching. We’ll go on holidays to the Lakes and to Wales. We’ll go to see our friends.

Y’know… just like ordinary couples do.

For that to happen we need support from people out there, knowing what we (and all the people like us) are facing. We need a more compassionate policy on immigration that takes into account exiled couples and families.

And we need pressure to be put on MPs and ministers across the political spectrum to take a moral stance on people’s lives, and cease to treat them as collateral damage in the immigration policy wars.

We (both Roxanne and I) are not just sitting passively by either. I am seeking work that can take me over the immigration income hurdle, and I am hopeful that this will happen soon. But help on that front is essential. Similarly, an offer of work in the UK music industry to Roxanne would go a long way to solving our problems.

Meanwhile, we will have our Christmas together, and forget our troubles. For a while.

If you would like to contribute to Bea and Roxanne’s Gofundme campaign to ‘Reunite for Christmas, you can donate here.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing [email protected].

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