BANG Showbiz English
Tommy Dorfman reveals she is engaged to a woman.
The '13 Reasons Why' actress – who came out as transgender in July 2021 and divorced from ex-husband Peter Zurkuhlen earlier this year – is staying coy about certain details of her relationship, but she confirmed her fiancee is a cis woman who she described as “just a gay girl”.
Speaking to Rachel Bilson on the ‘Broad Ideas' podcast, she revealed she started to explore her attraction to women following the split.
She said: “I knew I was interested in women in a way that I hadn't really been aware of since high school.
“I had this unresolved, unexplored thing. I was like, ‘This is the year that I'm gonna go on some dates with girls and feel that out again, and not feel ashamed about it.'”
The 30-year-old star described her partner as “the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with”, and admitted she's the first woman she's been with “in a long time”, which is “very affirming”.
She added: “It's safe. Also not safe and like being in love is so scary. So uncomfortable, so painful.
“All the universal feelings of being in love that are probably the same. “
Meanwhile, Tommy's fiancee has also helped her with administering her estrogen shots since they got together, and actually did it for her “the first time”.
She explained: “My fiancée, she knew how, so she did it for me the first time. Then she was out of town and we FaceTimed and she walked me through it.”
Tommy came out as trangsnder in an interview with TIME magazine in July 2021, revealing she had “been privately identifying and living as a woman – a trans woman” for a year before publicly coming out.
She and her ex-husband – who were together for nine years at that point and later split after five years of marriage – both decided to “redefine” their relationship “as friends”.
She said: “It's wild to be 29 and going through puberty again. Some days I feel like I'm 14. As a result of that shift, the types of romantic partnerships I seek out are different.
“I was in a nine-year relationship in which I was thought of as a more male-bodied person, with a gay man.
“I love him so much, but we've been learning that as a trans woman, what I'm interested in is not necessarily reflected in a gay man.”