Phares + Tyler — Portrait of a Young Couple

Phares + Tyler // Goose Creek, South Carolina

Content warning: suicide and domestic abuse

Phares and Tyler, who had their wedding on October 31st, 2020, live in Goose Creek, South Carolina, a quiet mid-sized suburb of Charleston, within a military-housing community built for the many Navy personnel stationed at the weapons base nearby. They share their home with a skinny black cat named Maizie and a handful of shy hermit crabs, and flecked around their living room are assorted signs of their interests and lifestyle: Japanese scrolls on their walls; an original Nintendo console next to the TV; a robust collection of spirits and mixers in the corner of their kitchen countertop; pictures of the two with various partners on the fridge; a pair of cheeky throw pillows on opposite sides of their couch, one of which says, “We Had Sex Here,” the other, “And Here."

On the evening of my arrival, as the heavy South Carolina air lightened with sunset, Phares and Tyler welcomed me to their home with hugs and a warm meal of pot-roast, mashed potatoes, and dinner rolls. We made small-talk about wedding planning and my travels—what errands were still left to run, which states and couples I'd recently visited—before Tyler checked the time and changed hurriedly into his work uniform (a branded blue polo with black slacks) and gave Phares a kiss on his way out for the night shift as a security guard.

Phares and I continued to talk after Tyler left for work, and as he shared about his life, I found myself growing quieter and quieter, my body curling into a corner of the living room couch across from him as a blurred fog of stupefaction wrapped itself around my mind. To call the sequence of events Phares described over those evening hours his "life story" would be like to call the President's job "very interesting,” a comical oversimplification.

I asked, cautiously, how Phares bore his traumas without becoming crippled, both physically and emotionally.

“I have always been a dreamer,” he replied after a few seconds. “Honestly, part of the reason I’ve survived as long as I have has been hoping for a better future. Nothing's ever going to be set in stone. I have learned that life is going to smack you as soon as you think you've got it all figured out. No, this is not where I saw myself 10 years ago. But I wouldn't change it for anything in the world.”

He spoke of how he wanted his story to positively impact others. “I hope somebody gleans something from my story that they can use to protect themselves. I had to learn things the hard way, but that doesn't mean that other people should have to as well.”

The hard way for Phares has meant many things: disownment from his family, depression, Complex PTSD, a suicide attempt, an abusive marriage, broken hips, three miscarriages, and a transphobic pause to his dream of becoming a Marine.

How a couple plans their wedding can tell you a lot about the people they are. The decisions they make—what guests they invite, how much money they budget, what religious or cultural ceremonies they include—collectively present a miniature manifesto about who and what they value.

Phares and Tyler together after their ceremony — *Phares and Tyler together after their wedding ceremony*

But a wedding is still only one day; and how can one day out of thousands convey the full depth and complexity of life?

Traveling for this project and writing these stories is only possible because I offer to photograph a couple's wedding. But if that's all you want to read about, then I apologize in advance. Phares and Tyler’s wedding was beautiful, but their story is far more so. As you read, I hope you'll agree with me.

For Phares and Tyler, the process of planning a wedding fared similarly to the process of planning anything else in their lives: they had a plan, but hardly expected the cosmos to be so kind as to cooperate with it. “The stressful part for us has been that so many things have had to change,” Tyler told me one evening. “Over half of the people who were originally supposed to be in our wedding party dropped out for various reasons.” I nodded in understanding; most couples planning weddings amid the pandemic have kneaded guests lists so much they could probably be bakers.

*Tyler (second from the right) playing poker with some of the wedding party the night before the wedding*

Phares and Tyler were legally married a year earlier on October 31st, 2019. “It was halloween, and all of the county clerks were dressed as Dr. Seuss characters,” Phares recalled with a broad grin, “so we got married by Thing 2 and witnessed by a couple sneetches and the Grinch.”

Tyler and Phares at their civil ceremony in 2019

They had wanted to host another, larger celebration to mark their one-year anniversary, but doing so safely became impossible when the pandemic hit. “I was expecting something a lot fancier, so it's a little disappointing, ” Tyler said. "But we talked about it, and agreed that, right now, this is what’s safe, and this is what we can afford.”

They decided, then, to celebrate with just a few family and friends. Tyler's brother would be his best man, and his parents and grandparents were due to be among the few people in attendance. Most of his family had been supportive of his marriage to Phares.

Tyler grew up in Slidell, Louisiana, near New Orleans, where his father worked on an offshore oil rig while his mother stayed at home to raise the kids. The family wasn't particularly political or religious, and their moral system was simple: "Don’t be a dick to anybody, and don’t kick anyone’s dog." His social group at school were “the nerds, geeks, and video game crowd,” and after high school he enlisted in the Army before being medically discharged during boot camp due to a heart condition.

He tried college next, but never enjoyed it, and dropped out to work in various tech-related roles and companies; AT&T, GameStop, and RadioShack were among his past employers. At the encouragement of a friend, he gladly moved to South Carolina in his mid-twenties.

Tyler paused often as he shared about his upbringing, and I wasn’t sure whether he felt nervous or simply unfamiliar talking about himself. I asked if thinking about his future or his past was something he did often. "Not really," he replied. "I jumped from short-term job to short-term job and lived with my parents until a friend invited me to come to South Carolina. And once I met Phares is when I really started to pay more attention to the future."

Unlike Tyler's family, none of Phares' would be attending the wedding. “They aren’t really supportive of my lifestyle," he said to me, emphasizing the final word to suggest he'd use a different word; identity, perhaps.

Phares grew up far away from and far differently than Tyler, in Northern Virginia instead of Southern Louisiana, and on a farm instead of a suburb. His mother was a "city girl," while his father was raised in rural West Virginia. Both were well-read and well-educated. “My mom was a double major in English and Child Psychology, and my dad a double major in Animal Husbandry and Rocket Science,” Phares told me. I noted a gentle pride in his voice.

*Phares (white jacket) with his family in 2009*

The family often struggled for money. "If we didn’t have the farm, we probably wouldn’t have eaten a lot of the time," Phares told me. During the 2008 recession, his father had been laid off from his job as a mortgage loan officer. "A few months before that, my sister and I had gone to the county fair, and she fell in love with the baby chicks there. So our dad promised to buy a bunch of them for us." 55 baby chicks showed up in the mail a few weeks later. "We decided we'd keep all of the hens for eggs and one rooster. And out of the 55, there were 52 roosters only three hens."

Phares' father lost his job the same week they butchered the other 51 chickens. "We ate chicken for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for nearly two years," Phares told me, "and literally the day that we finished the last of the chicken was the day that my dad got a new job." (He doesn't much like to eat chicken anymore.)

*One of Phares’ family chickens, named ‘Colonel Sanders’, in 2009*

His family also adhered strictly to their Pentecostal faith, a movement within Protestant Christianity that believes in the absolute accuracy of the Bible and in spiritual gifts, such as speaking in tongues and divine healing. Phares’ grandfather was the pastor of his church, his father the associate pastor, his grandmother the choir director, and his mother the Sunday school director. Phares’ personality fit the environment; he was well-behaved, and listened to his parents. “My dad and I were really, really close,” he said, “and he instilled in me this determination to always do my best.”

Phares excelled academically, and after high school had scholarships to every school he wanted to attend. Except, of course, the one he fell in love with: Texas Bible College, a Pentecostal university two hours north of Houston whose curriculum "trains and sends workers into the harvest field" to evangelize Christianity. “As soon as I got there, I knew I wanted to go to school there,” Phares told me, “and my mother was furious because it was the one school I didn’t have a scholarship to attend.” In a wild stroke of luck, Phares was chosen in a lottery the school held for prospective students to receive one semester of tuition for free. His parents, presuming it to be a message from God, allowed him to enroll.

I asked Phares what drew him to the highly religious school. “Studying religion, in general, has always been a passion of mine,” he replied. “My dad really pushed me to question everything, to find my own answers.” He paused, then added, “and then wondered why I questioned everything later on."

August 2011.jpg — *Phares in 2011, around when he began college*

Phares described himself as having a fervent faith at the time and, after being ordained as a Pentecostal minister, began actively looking for a potential husband. "I was supposed to inherit my grandfather's church, but it wouldn't allow women ministers"—Phares still identified as female then—"so it was only to my advantage to find somebody whom I could marry and who could vouch for me so I could also speak."

He referred to the man he met as simply "M." The two began dating, and Phares returned to Virginia that summer to work and save money for the following year's tuition. "My parents and I agreed that if I got a job and worked hard all summer to save money, then they would cover what I couldn't." The week before he and M were to head back to school, Phares' parents suddenly said he couldn't go back. His father also cryptically pushed for Phares to break up with M.

M and Phares did the opposite. “We paid $35, went to the Justice of the Peace’s house on a Friday to get married, and ran off,” Phares told me. “I left a note for my parents, left my cell phone behind, and we turned off our Facebook pages." They were both 19 years old, and because neither could afford to go back to school, they moved in with M's parents in Texas.

When Phares called his parents to tell them where he was, his father finally explained why he'd wanted them to break up: he had had a dream that M was going to start beating Phares. “My dad told me, ‘The day M starts beating you, I want you to call me so I can say I told you so.’” So, when M did start beating him, Phares obviously didn't call his father. “I didn't have anybody I could talk to. M had isolated me from all of my friends and close family.”

*Phares (left) with his family at a wedding in 2015*

M, Phares told me, was always emotionally abusive. Phares had a catchphrase when they'd argue: You’re right, I’m wrong, Drop it. The physical abuse came later. M broke Phares' wrist twice, and nearly broke his leg one time, too. Phares also had three miscarriages, one being directly caused by a punch M threw at Phares' gut. “I hit a real depressive spiral," Phares told me, "a combination of postpartum depression and dealing with this abuse that nobody knew about.”

There were a painful number more stories like this that Phares shared, and I asked, less as a journalist now and more as a friend, why he stayed in the marriage for so long. “Mostly, it was a lot of forgiveness,” he replied. “In the church I grew up, divorce was not a thing. I did consider leaving him on several occasions, but it was more of doing a separation where we could work on our own separate issues. I knew he had things he needed to work out with a psychologist or psychiatrist, while I was already under care for my stuff. So I wanted to give us that time to process through these issues."

He continued. “It was also the extreme difference in his personality. I could not see them being the same person. How could somebody who was so charismatic, who had been so romantic, also do these things?" When both were still in college, M gave a gift to Phares every single day for the 15 days leading up to their first Valentine’s day. His goal was to propose on the last day, but the process made M so nervous that he became sick and began throwing up. "So, M did a scavenger hunt instead around our entire college campus, knowing that I loved those," Phares said.

"By that point, I had built up so many years in our marriage, put forth so much effort into it, that I didn't want it to end. I didn't want it to be a waste of my time. I also had three kids with this guy. Yes, they were all miscarriages, but they're still my babies. And despite everything else, M was the one who was there for me.”

“But, at the same time, he had made me dependent on him.”

Phares participated in a sleep study a few days before his and Tyler’s wedding. “I've always had really, really bad nightmares," he told me. "I have Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from childhood trauma, and it just got worse due to relational trauma throughout the years. And in the last couple of months, the nightmares have gotten to the point where I wasn't sleeping hardly at all.”

When Phares does sleep, it's of poor quality, and the medications he takes don't always help. "The doctors think that I have sleep apnea in addition to the C-PTSD, which team up. Basically, I'm trying to sleep, and I'm already having a nightmare because of the PTSD. And then, all of a sudden, sleep apnea causes me to stop breathing, which just freaks out my PTSD more.”

Phares has always looked towards the future as a means of helping him manage his past traumas. But he conceded that he also manages it in less healthy ways. “One of my coping mechanisms is basically just to work myself to death," he told me. "Because if I'm working, I can't be thinking about any of that other stuff in my life." Phares would take as many shifts as he could, working, for a time, 12 hours as a security guard followed by eight hours as a Sonic car hop. Most of the remaining four hours in the day were spent driving between the jobs and home.

"Alcohol has also become one of my main coping mechanisms," Phares added, reminding me of the substantial collection of spirits and mixers in the kitchen, “even though I know it's not the most healthy way to express it and process things. Basically, in my mind, drinking is the solution to everything. If I'm upset about something, I can drink to forget. If I'm stressed, I can drink until I relax. If I'm excited, I can drink to celebrate.”

He saw some of the worry on my face. “It’s much better now than it used to be, but it's still my go-to. And it's always going to be a problem for me. I've definitely cut back. But my biggest issue is that I can't have just one. I can usually stop myself from having the first drink, but after that, I can't stop."

Phares also writes. “Mostly poetry,” he said, “although I am working on two novels. I just… never seem to have the time to work on my novels.” He pulled out his phone and messaged me a link to one of his pieces, a short story about a transgender man who disappears after visiting a bar down the street from where he lives. I took a few minutes to read it, and asked whether any or all of his writing came from his own real-life experiences. “It usually does come mostly from real-life,” Phares replied, “or at the very least it comes from dreaming. I do a lot of my writing from my dreams and nightmares."

“That particular story… there was an apartment that my ex husband and I shared after he and I separated, and there was a bar just down the street. I would walk down, sit at the bar in the corner, and read a book while I was drinking. And then when I was done, I'd walk back home. And everything that happened in that story, up until the disappearance of the character, happened to me in the bar.”

You can read the story Phares showed me here — *You can read the story Phares showed me* *here*

“Tyler is the one that brought that extra edge of concern. Literally any night that Tyler wasn't over, I was going down there. So anybody could have picked up on that pattern. He was understandably concerned that somebody was going to jump me, and he'd never seen me again. So I wrote what that story would be.”

Tyler and Phares in 2017 — *Tyler and Phares together in 2017*

He looked back at my phone and scrolled down a bit further to another story. “The other story that's on there is pulled directly from things that happened in my childhood. A lot of the poetry I write comes from various and sundry emotions that I'm dealing with at the time. Like the novels that I'm working on, one is an epistolary novel, written from a mother to her unborn child, pulling from my experiences with my miscarriages. The other one comes from my biggest dream world that I have built. Not just actual dreams, but daydreams, too, building this entire world that these characters live in.”

Phares and I talked while Tyler was out running some wedding errands; when he returned, I asked what his emotions were supporting Phares through his trauma, and its effect on his and Phares' relationship. “Learning about his different triggers and his trauma and also the stories behind it,” Tyler began, “it’s difficult at first, because you are sharing in what was a pretty difficult experience for a person to live through. And yes, I was there to witness some of the more recent stuff, so I understood that firsthand. But it is still a process, coming from what most people consider to be ‘normal,’ then being thrown into this kind of lifestyle that not a lot of people hear about until much later in their lives. It takes time for someone to understand the different types of trauma, how to process them, or how to even talk about them.”

He continued. “I think about the idea, ‘What do I need in my life and how does that translate into into our marriage as far as what we need?’ And how I can process my own trauma in a healthy way and then also process his, keeping in mind the different triggers we have for different traumas.”

Phares nodded along, adding, “Tyler was not at all prepared for living with somebody with PTSD. And for a while, he did not understand how to take care of me when I was going through these mental breaks. It took actually getting physical help from my psychologist and from other people who've dealt with these kinds of situations before to help train him to understand how to take care of me, when I can't take care of myself.” Among other techniques, Tyler learned to help with grounding, or the process of focusing on the present to help pull oneself or someone else away from traumatic flashbacks or emotions, memorize Phares’ speech patterns and mannerisms to understand his emotional and mental state in any given moment, and learn basic ASL to communicate with Phares during non-verbal mental breaks.

“Most of our issues have been communication issues,” Phares continued, “when one or both of us has failed to communicate something. And it's always come down to stepping back, sitting down, and talking. He has some trauma in his background, but mostly my trauma has been... a lot, and my mental health issues because of it.”

The two have gone so far in the last year since being legally married as talking about divorce, not because either wanted it, but because they felt it was necessary to talk through the emotions that would predicate it. “It was saying, ‘I'm not happy, and I'm actually considering a divorce, so what can we do to fix this to make to make us come together stronger as a couple instead of driving us apart?’” Phares said.

Phares suddenly looked as if he remembered something. He went to his bedroom, and when he came back, he handed me a copy of Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married by Gary Chapman. It was an extra, he told me, and said that I could keep it. He continued his previous train of thought. “Much of how Tyler and I communicate now is deciding that we are not going to touch specific topics at certain times, because we know we're going to disagree, and don't want to get into an argument in that moment.”

As I flipped through the book’s pages, Tyler added, “Phares has been married before, but this is my first time. He’s been through all this, but I haven’t. It’s been a huge learning experience for me, talking about the ideas of a career, the ideas of living the rest of our lives, 401k, retirement, all that kind of stuff. Phares brought up most of it, and he’s tried his hardest to help me learn how to approach relationships. Communication, understanding, actually listening and trying to work through things.”

The first time Tyler and Phares met, they literally ran into each other. “It was the spring of 2012,” Phares said. “I was going to college in Texas, and he was working at a GameStop at a mall nearby. I was distracted talking to friends when we ran into each other walking opposite directions.” Phares spent the rest of the day complaining to his friends and family about the "rude asshole at the mall who literally ran into me!”

Phares made the connection soon after their paths crossed again years later in South Carolina. “We were going through old Facebook pictures and I was like, 'Who's that guy in that picture there? ' And Tyler said, 'That’s me.' And I was like, 'no that was the asshole who ran into me at the mall in Texas! '"

I asked what, or who, in South Carolina brought them together. Phares responded, “M, my ex-husband, was dating someone named Rai, Rai was dating someone called Rhys, and Rhys was dating Tyler, who at that time was still living in Texas." I must have been visibly confused, because Phares added, "Basically, Tyler's boyfriend and my ex-husband’s boyfriend set us up with one another.”

The two became acquainted on a night out. “I was trying to move to South Carolina from Texas," Tyler said, "so I came out here to explore my options for housing, jobs, and friends.” Tyler’s friend group decided to take him clubbing and, through their string of mutual partners, Phares was also invited. "I immediately said yes," Phares said, the excitement blooming across his face even as he recalled the memory, "because I’d never been to a club before."

When he got off work—teacher at a private Christian pre-school—he joined everyone else at Texas Roadhouse for a hefty dinner before their night out. Phares stayed silent. He didn’t easily open up to strangers, and was still dressed in work clothes: a floor-length pink skirt, pink cardigan, his hair up in a bun, and very proper glasses. (“Very traditional librarian-esque,” he laughed.)

Phares obviously needed to change and, after dinner, the group made a detour to his home. “I was still presenting female back then,” Phares said, “so I put on six-inch stilettos, a green mini-dress, let my hair down, everything. And I took one step down the stairs, and everyone looked up and their jaws hit the floor.”

At the club, Phares got "super, super drunk." "I've always been one of those guys who will always do a dare. Someone dared me to dance with Tyler, and because I was drunk and everything, I was all over him, dirty dancing. It was very embarrassing."

When he woke up the next morning, Phares was mortified. “I’d been grinding all over Tyler, whom I’d just met, and I am very white, and have no ability to dance unless I’m very drunk.” Their mutual friends organized a casual meetup to play Cards Against Humanity and work off their hangovers together. Phares hoped nobody would bring up the previous night's events. “We were all texting back and forth across the table. Rhys was insistent that Tyler had a crush on me; I kept saying 'no way.' And eventually Rhys just slams his hands on the table and says ‘Phares, you have a crush on Tyler, Tyler, you have a crush on Phares. What are you gonna do about it?'”

“So, Tyler and I started dating after that,” Phares concluded.

Polyamory is often seen as the sum of its made-for-TV moments, a lifestyle inseparable from convoluted and asinine situations, like a teenager filling in Mad Libs and relishing a newfound joy for swearing and sex. And, certainly, polyamory has those moments. But monogamous relations are no less messy; they're just arguably more familiar within our culture, and the issues present in both monogamy and polyamory are caused by the same fundamental issues: breakdowns in communication, and lapses in commitment.

How polyamory is different, then, is in the way it defines those terms—communication and commitment—and the number of partners. Where healthy monogamous relationships require open communication and commitment to a single partner, so polyamory also requires open communication and commitment to multiple partners.

In some ways, it assumes a more, not less, practical assumption about love: that a person will never be able to satisfy all of their partner's needs (sexual, emotional, and intellectual) at all times, and thus, with consent, a couple should be able to define if and how they're comfortable sharing the responsibility of meeting those needs with other people.

This idea, that it's not only possible but often beneficial to have different partners for different reasons at different times, is more common than you might imagine: greater than 20% of US adults claim to have had an experience with non-monogamy before. Much of this likely results from the mainstreaming of well-defined rules for "ethical" forms of non-monogamy (such as polyamory) which hold as core tenets principles of consent, communication, dignity, and transparency.

Tyler, who described himself as poly-capable more than polyamorous (he is not currently in a relationship with anyone other than Phares, but is open to the idea of having other partners) gave an analogy. “Imagine you're a mechanic, with thousands of things you need to do or problems you need to fix in your life. There are different ways and tools you can use to fix each problem, and the existence of one particular tool doesn’t necessarily devalue any of the other tools, because they serve different purposes.” Possible partners in one’s life, he said, were like various tools, each employed for different reasons and in different circumstances.

(He admitted that the analogy wasn’t perfect, given the connotations of “tool” and “used” being imperfectly matched to the topic of relationships, but asked if I understood the premise; I replied that I did.) “It’s not just about romantic relationships or sex, too. For example, I'm really into PC gaming and I know Phares is not, and so I have other people in my life who I can gush to about the newest update in a game I’m playing.” The same would apply, he said, if there were certain emotional or sexual needs that he and Phares couldn’t satisfy for each other.

Phares added his own analogy that paralleled Tyler’s. “It's like puzzle pieces,” he started. “Some people are monogamous; having one partner is what works best for them. They’re like a corner piece. But for us, we’re like center pieces; we can, and need to, fit with multiple other pieces.”

Having a relationship, he continued, was obviously not all about sex; many types of “soulmates” existed for many different reasons. “I tried to be monogamous early in my life,” he said, “but it just didn't work for me. I needed those other puzzle pieces.” Phares spoke confidently about his views, but, knowing some of his story, I couldn't help but wonder just how he'd attained that confidence.

Phares’ introduction to polyamory was preposterous. He and his ex-husband, M, had recently moved to South Carolina, where Phares found a teaching job, and where they lived with M’s father and stepmother. While supposedly looking for a job, M suddenly disappeared.

“I had no clue where he was, and I was freaking out,” Phares told me. M showed up at home a full two weeks later and tried to pretend that nothing was wrong. Phares demanded an explanation, and the two drove to a Walmart parking lot.

M began to explain why he’d disappeared. "I met this girl and I’ve fallen in love with her," he told Phares. "She's married to somebody else and dating other people, but I want to stay married to you. So I want to try something called polyamory.” Phares had never heard of polyamory before; M described it as an open marriage. Phares was furious but, still unable to accept the idea a divorce, felt he had no choice but to try and make it work.

After their conversation, M dropped Phares off at his father and stepmother's home before going back to be with his new girlfriend; he’d already begun living with her and her husband. When Phares entered the home, he found that M's stepmother had packed all of his and M's belongings. "I am getting a divorce from M's father," she'd told Phares. "You are M's wife. This is my house. You do not belong here." She threw Phares and M's suitcases onto the front porch and shut the door.

With nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to, Phares called M and explained the situation. After some silence, M responded, "So, I haven't told my girlfriend that I'm married. Can you pretend that you're my ex-girlfriend, and you can move in and live on my girlfriend's couch?"

They made up a story: M and Phares had been dating before Phares had a miscarriage, and the grief caused them to break up. M had moved to South Carolina to be closer to his family to process his own grief, while Phares had coincidentally also moved to South Carolina for a new job. He didn't have a place to stay yet, and thus needed to crash on the couch.

“So, I moved in with my husband, and his girlfriend, and her husband, and his girlfriend,” Phares said, adding, unnecessarily, "It was a mess."

"I really was not happy at all. I felt like I was lying to everybody, because I didn't feel comfortable with the situation, but I also didn't feel like I had any other choice. I had never heard of polyamory before that day, and now I was living in it. It was a nightmare.”

I asked how, with such an absurd introduction to polyamory, did he ultimately become attracted to it. “While I was living there, M’s girlfriend and her husband introduced me to the concept of ethical polyamory,” he responded. “Polyamory is open and honest communication between all partners, where everybody has to be consenting, and part of what attracted me to it was understanding that what M had done to me was cheating. It was hurtful and harmful. But there was a version of polyamory that could work, and the longer I spent with these people, the more I realized that M was the one who was cheating on all of us, while these others opened up their home to me, accepted me as part of their family, and became some of my closest friends.”

As Phares learned about polyamory and gained an ability to call out his ex-husband’s abuse and infidelity for what it was, he also gained new views into his own identity and life. He made a new friend named Rhys, who had recently come out of transgender. “Rhys started talking about transitioning, and I was like, 'What the hell is transitioning?'" Phares recounted to me.

As Phares began to share about his own transition, he offered a word of caution. “I’m very open about being transgender, and I try to answer as many questions as possible for those who are curious. But not every transgender person is going to be okay with that.” He acknowledged what should be a more widespread mentality: that you should never make assumptions about someone just because of their identity, and that everyone is an individual and not just a sum of their identities or experiences. His own willingness to share, in other words, shouldn't be construed to mean that other transgender people would, or should be, equally willing.

(Please note that all photos of Phares used in this story are included with Phares’ express permission. Under no circumstances should you “expect” someone who is transgender to be as willing as Phares has been to share photos from before their transition. As Phares described to me, he’s comfortable with sharing these photos because, ‘I hated having my picture taken back then, so if a picture was taken, it was because I was actually feeling fairly confident at that time. Perhaps my dysphoria wasn't as bad that day; there was a period in my life where I wasn't comfortable looking at myself in the mirror, where I would shower in the dark just so I wouldn't have to look at myself. And now, for me, it’s a wonder looking back at those pictures and going, Holy Shit. This is a completely different person. I’ve since grown into who I really am.”)

“I’ve always known I was trans; I just didn’t have a word for it,” Phares said. “I used to ask, 'Why do I have to wear skirts all the time? Why do I have to have long hair?' I didn't feel like I fit into that feminine role and into the box that people were trying to put me.”

He told me how awkward he felt. “I wasn't exactly a very 'pretty' girl; puberty did not do good things to me, and while my parents are good people, they did not understand what I was going through. I never felt validated.”

When Phares’ friend Rhys began to tell him about the experience of discovering his own transgender identity and of the transition process, Phares resonated with nearly all of it. One of the first people he told was his ex-husband, M. “When I told M that I thought I might be trans, he was like, ‘I've always known,’” Phares recounted. “And I was like, ‘Wait, what? You've known that I was trans?’ And he said, ‘Yes, because I'm gay. I've always known you were a guy.’”

Phares quickly began his social transition. A few friends donated his first chest binder, he cut his hair, and he began asking others to refer to him with male pronouns. A year and a half later, in May 2018, he began his medical transition, self-administering a prescribed shot of testosterone each week.

As we talked, Phares asked, “Have you ever heard my original voice?” I shook my head. “You would not believe how much it has changed in the last two years." He began searching for a video on his phone. I insisted he not feel any obligation to show me, but he said it was fine, eventually finding a video of him trilling a slightly modified Sit Still, Look Pretty by the artist Daya:

Could dress up, to get love
But guess what?
I'm never gonna be that girl
Who's living in a Barbie world
Could wake up, and make up, and play dumb
Pretending that I’m not a boy
Like that would bring my family joy
I know the other girls wanna wear expensive things, like diamond rings
But I don't wanna be the puppet that you're playing on a string
That’s why I’m my own king
Oh, I don't know what you've been told
But this guy right here's gonna rule the world
Yeah, that's where I'm gonna be because I wanna be
No, I don't wanna sit still, look pretty

When the video ended, Phares commented, “My voice always sounded really, really shrill. It was too high pitch for me. I could hear myself with a much deeper voice, and so hearing my voice on a recording used to annoy me. But listening to my voice now, it's the opposite. I hear myself with a much higher-pitched voice than it is on recordings.”

Phares singing shortly after he began HRT

Phares never expected transitioning to be easy. Although more people have a better understanding of transgender issues (pushed along, in no small part, by the high-profile and very public transitions of celebrities like Laverne Cox, Caitlyn Jenner, and Elliot Page) just as many people remain intolerant, and the demoralizing reality for many transgender individuals is that they are made outcasts, hurled insults, or violently assaulted by both people they know and total strangers.

That treatment is especially damaging to transgender youth, nearly half of whom have responded before in studies that they'd attempted suicide at least once so far in their young lives, 10 times the rate of adults in the general population.

A few months after Phares first came out as trans, he and M were not yet divorced but were, at least, living apart. One morning, M called Phares, saying he was coming over to pick him up so they could have breakfast and talk over some issues. Phares had responded, "Absolutely not, unless someone else is there to mediate. I am not getting into a car alone with you." M claimed another mutual friend had already agreed to meet them at the restaurant. Phares, "the naive person that I am," believed M, who picked him up and promptly began driving in the wrong direction.

M pulled into a Walmart parking lot, turned to Phares, and said, "I've been talking with your housemates, and I told them you're the actual abuser. They don't believe your stories anymore, and they're planning on kicking you out at the family meeting on Friday." M's implication was clear: "You have to move back in with me."

"I was losing my home and losing control again," Phares said, "And I said that I refused to go back with him. So I got out of the car, and ran off." Phares disappeared before M could catch up to him. M frantically called Phares' housemates:

"Phares ran off!"

"What do you mean Phares ran off ? Wasn't he at work?"

"No, I actually picked him up to go to breakfast together."

"Why would Phares agree to go to breakfast alone with you?"

"...we can discuss that later. The point is, Phares is gone, and I can't find him."

After running for half a mile, Phares wound up in the garden of a nearby church. The setting seemed right, so he began to pray: "You know I don't go to church anymore, but if You can do anything to help me... please... do something.”

Phares had ignored all of M's phone calls, but picked up for another friend, who offered to bring Phares his car so he could at least be safe. A few minutes later, the friend pulled up into the church parking lot. Phares got into the car and sped away.

"I didn't know where to go, but then I thought, ‘Oh, I can join the Marine Corps, and they'll get me out of here!’ So I drove to the recruiting office and pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall they were in." As Phares was about to get out of his car, he realized how his situation wouldn't change. Even if he was able to enlist, he still wouldn't ship out for at least a few days, and more likely a few weeks. "I asked myself, 'Where am I going to go between now and then?'"

"I have nowhere to go. I have nothing to my name. I have no escape. I have no one I can turn to."

"My only option is to kill myself."

Phares dug through his purse; the sharpest object he could find was a set of bladed throwing cards. “I'm sitting there, and I've got the blade against my wrist and I'm debating, ‘I should probably tell Tyler goodbye.’ At the very least, he was a good friend. A good boyfriend. So I messaged Tyler, ‘Goodbye.’”

His text set off a panic among Tyler and the rest of their friends, who were now together trying to figure out how to get in touch with Phares. M called Phares again, who this time picked up. "Just tell me where you are," he'd said, "And I'll come there and we can kill ourselves together. Because I can't live without you."

Phares responded with his location, and hung up the phone. “I honestly don't know why I agreed to see him,” Phares told me as he recounted the painful memory. “The only thing I can think of, looking back, is that he was the only person who had known me for an extended period of time, and since he had alienated me from everyone else, he was the only person I knew well enough to be with me in what I thought were going to be my last moments.” Their friends stopped M from leaving to join Phares before putting him and Tyler on suicide watch, getting Phares’ location from M, and calling the police to Phares' location.

As Phares waited for M to arrive, the police arrived instead. He spent two days in the hospital, and spent the entire time waiting for someone, anyone, to come rescue him. No one came. Late in the second day, he called M and begged him to take him back. He was stuck living with him for another 6 months

Once he was independently stable enough, Phares filed to formally separate from M. "At this point, I just wanted him out of my life," Phares said. He and M had talked of a "trial separation" in the past, where they would each work through their personal issues and where, when he was ready again, Phares would propose. But they were already far, far past that point.

When I write these stories, I often yearn to connect every quote and meaningful moment into a cohesive narrative; to use my position as a writer and simplify the complexity of someone's life into a few clean theses.

This way of interpreting someone’s life is necessary in a written story, but it's also not how we actually learn about others in normal day-to-day life. Our understanding of someone else is rarely formed by a single, well-articulated narrative they give, but by the long series of ad-hoc reactions we have to their actions and words. Something they say sparks an emotional resonance; something they do causes offense; their tone of speaking makes us animated; or it fills the air with tedium.

Around their home the few days before their wedding, I sat and mostly listened as Phares and Tyler talked with their friends about topics both familiar and foreign to me, and which showed their personalities and experiences better than I can directly describe. Wedged between the sillier banter of bad dates or memorable vacations were moments of surprisingly penetrating insight into human nature.

"We went to decadence in New Orleans one year. Phares was hella drunk and already dancing on the dance floor, while I'm just standing in the corner, and this old 60 or 70 something year old dude just parks next to me and starts talking about the packages on the '76 Olympic swimmers. And I'm just like, 'Bro, you didn't break the ice, you didn't say hi, you didn't even introduce yourself. You just came up to me and started talking about a package on a fuckin Swedish swimmer?'" "Is it terrible that I'm just sitting here singing to the tune of Sound of Music, 'You are 60, going on 70, cataracts are in your eyes'?

"With COVID, it's been really limited, us going out and enjoying ourselves. I think the one last thing we did that was cool is that we met up with a couple of friends and built Gundam models, before COVID actually got really bad."

"There's one gay bar in Charleston; there used to be two, but after the Pulse shooting, the owner of Cure—which, by the way, we all thought was a really weird name for a gay bar—decided to get out of the business, and sold it."

"For the most part, as long as people can see me as either female or male, they're ok. You get weird looks occasionally if people think we're a gay couple, but it's only if they realize that I'm transgender that we have more problems. There was at least one trans woman that I know of who was murdered in Charleston because she was trans, and so it can be scary walking out of the door. Tyler and I aren't particularly fond of the area, but of course we don't regret coming here because we would've never met. We just don't want to live here long-term."

"In our last house, I had my trans flag on the front porch, and someone left a note for us saying, ‘Hi, my name is Alex, and I just came out as trans to my parents. I really appreciate you having a flag and showing that there is a community out there that supports me.’"

"Why do you care if I have a dick or not? It really should not matter. And the fact that you're asking says more about you than it does me."

"Tyler's grandfather just passed away yesterday. He always had dementia, and then last week, he fell and broke his leg. So his mom and dad probably won't be able to show up for the wedding."

"I'm in this Facebook group, and this one person, who was a veteran, started personally attacking me, saying, 'Well, you wouldn't understand because you've never been in combat.' And I responded, 'I may never have been in combat, but I was in the military and openly trans while there.' And I was trying to tell him all these places where he could learn more, read this website or watch this documentary, and they eventually got on my Facebook page and looked up how many months I'd been in service, and were like, 'Well you only served 10 months anyway. You're not a real veteran. Plus, you shouldn't have any rights.'"

Phares has long wanted to be a Marine. His uncle was a Colonel in the Corps as an F-18 fighter pilot and told him that, as difficult as it was to become a Marine, Phares could do whatever he wanted if he put his mind to it.

His parents disagreed; they told Phares that women couldn't be soldiers, and that his religion only made it more impossible. "It was a safety concern to wear a skirt in the military, but it was a religious concern to wear pants," Phares described. "So, I dropped the argument.”

Instead, he searched among other possibilities. “What I wanted to do and be when I grew up changed every week," Phares said. "I wanted to be an architect; then I wanted to direct theater; then I wanted to be a teacher.” In high school, he was offered an internship with Disney but had to turn it down when his parents cited the company's "lacking Christian environment."

Phares wound up teaching for two years at small Christian schools, but when he came out as transgender to his friends, those who knew about his past aspirations encouraged him to consider the Marines again. "What’s stopping you from following through with this, now that you're a man and don't have to worry about the religious elements anymore?" they'd asked him.

Phares' recruiter joked that he was born to be a Marine because he shared the same birthday as the Corps: November 10th. He formally enlisted on May 29th, 2017, and soon shipped to Parris Island, the Marines’ rigorous training depot in South Carolina.

*Phares (all the way in the back) with fellow Marine recruits*

Marine Corps Recruit Training (boot camp) runs 13 weeks in length and consists of feverish physical and mental tests to ensure that its graduates are able to complete high-pressure missions around the world on behalf of the United States. The 13 weeks are divided into three phases: Phase One consists of physical training, martial arts lessons, and classes about topics such as history and basic first aid, Phase Two develops a recruit's weapons proficiency and field survival skills, and Phase Three merges the physical and emotional training of the previous nine weeks with the Corps' core values: Honor, Courage, and Commitment.

Phares does not have any photos from his own time at Parris Island, but there are plenty of videos and photos of the experience on YouTube and through a quick Google search

Sometime towards the end of Phase One of training, on Training Day 18, Phares was working as a team with other recruits to tidy up the base when, after helping someone else climb a bannister, he injured himself. “I clocked myself in the crotch as I went over,” he told me, “and it hurt, but I made it over, and got in line with everyone else just thinking, 'Oh, that’s going to hurt later.'”

Phares personified the Marine Corps' resilience amidst physical and emotional pain, and brushed aside his discomfort as he continued through training. After three weeks, though, the strain from repeated cycles of sharp movements—running, dropping to the ground, firing a weapon, and standing back up—caused Phares to begin visibly limping.

On Training Day 37, a drill instructor forced Phares to get an X-ray, which revealed the extent of Phares' injury: he had completely shattered his left Inferior Pubic Ramus, or IPR, half of the V-shaped bone in one's pelvis, likely when he hit himself climbing over the banister a few weeks before, and made worse by repeated stress fractures from the subsequent training.

Phares was immediately placed into a recovery platoon, where he joined other injured recruits in full-time healing. After three months, he'd healed enough to rejoin another unit of recruits and resume training.

A few weeks later, with no visible sign of his prior injury, he made it to Team Week, so called because it serves as a team-building buffer period between training and a final test: The Crucible, a hellish 54 hours during which "recruits get eight hours of sleep, two-and-a-half Meals Ready to Eat, and about 40 miles of marches."

Team Week provided recruits with a chance to catch a short break, and those who'd previously been pulled from training because of injuries were given another thorough medical evaluation to ensure their bodies would make it through The Crucible. Because of his previous hip injury, Phares was pulled for a second look.

“They literally had my paperwork in front of them," Phares told me, "and were about to sign off because I felt fine and was good to go. But then, just in case, someone recommended I get an X-ray.” When the results came back, the technician used the word "wonky" to describe them, and recommended Phares get a more comprehensive MRI. When that came back, Phares learned that he’d snapped his right femoral neck, the ball joint that connects the leg to the hip.

Phares was, for a second time, pulled out of training.

His doctors said he was lucky; he was just a few steps away from having completely halved his right femoral neck and needing a full hip replacement surgery at the age of 25. But Phares did not feel lucky. He’d been pulled from training a second time now, and with an injury that would take many more months to heal than his first.

"I was still stuck in the recruit phase, and I was shell shocked," he said. "I expected it to be physically difficult, but I was not expecting it to be as mentally difficult as it was.” I wondered aloud how breaking bones on both sides of his hip could be better than what he experienced mentally. “I have a very high pain tolerance,” he responded, “so not everybody would be able to go through the same things I did and make it through safely.”

He described the emotional and mental environment of training. “There are motivational phrases that we use throughout the training, mantras that you say anytime you're doing any sort of activity. One of the most common was, ‘One shot, One kill, Ready to die, Never will.’ Another was ‘Strength and Motivation.’ But as soon as you left training and went to the healing platoon, you were no longer allowed to say things like ‘strength’ or ‘fight’, despite the fact that those who got injured were some of the strongest people that you could ever meet.” Phares told me of one woman who broke her ankle after falling from a 50 foot tower, and who still attempted to get back up to finish the exercise; another woman snapped her femur in half during a run, crawling the rest of the way to the finish line.

“These stories of pushing to the absolute limit were the ones that inspired me,” Phares said, “and losing that ability to claim my own strength in the healing platoon was absolutely demoralizing.” Phares didn’t have much else to do while recovering in a wheelchair besides exchange stories with other recruits, watch tv, or read books, and whether because the Corps didn’t recognize the precarious mental health situation of its injured and healing recruits, or just didn’t care, Phares had scant emotional support.

“Training is designed to break you down so they can build you back as a Marine,” Phares said, “but those of us who were injured never got built back.” He described the difficulty adjusting from being a recruit in training to being an injured recruit. “When you’re a recruit, you’re not allowed to smile, and when you’re recovering, you’re allowed to, but even though it’s a basic human function, you still have to relearn to do that because of the intensity of recruit training.”

Phares should have been placed under the care of the PEB, or Physical Evaluation Board, a special recovery platoon where recruits with particularly severe injuries would be treated not as an injured recruit but as an injured Marine, transferred to be under the care of the VA and officially being a Marine assigned the job of recovering at Parris Island. Under PEB, if he was eventually deemed incapable of returning to training, he’d be medically retired with full veteran benefits.

Instead, Phares was placed into the RSP, or Recruit Separation Platoon, to be sent home without those benefits after his injuries healed enough for him to walk pain-free and without assistance.

Officially, Phares received a “general discharge due to a medical-related entry level separation.” Practically, Phares suspects bigotry. “One doctor, who was transphobic, didn’t sign the paperwork. I had several drill instructor fight to get me into PEB, but they couldn’t get it reverted.”

Most of all, he wanted to return to Tyler. “Tyler had been my rock through everything. He’d taken me to all of my doctor's appointments before I enlisted, to all of my court dates to get an order of protection from my ex-husband. He’d been there every step of the way to protect me."

*Phares looking at Tyler during the wedding*

Phares also shared about some of his own experience being a transgender man in the military. His self-identification as a man meant he was held to all the male standards, but his official gender marker, issued by the state of Virginia, still said he was female because he hadn't yet gone through the long and expensive legal process to change it.

“As a recruit, I wasn’t treated any differently from the male recruits," he said. "In fact, being with the females helped me to shine more, because as a transgender recruit, I was being held to the male standards, while being in a female platoon competing against other females who were being held to female standards."

Phares cited a difference between how the Marines treated questions of equality internally and externally. Internally, he found little pushback to his being trans. "Within the Marine Corps, there’s only one skin color: green,” he said. Externally, though, the Marines were slower-moving to adopt more progressive and inclusive policies. “Public perception of Marines are that they’re these big buff guys covered in tattoos and stuff,” he said to me, “and I can confirm that Marines are probably the only people I know that can fit 12 cuss words in a 13 word sentence."

He rarely experienced outright transphobia while on Parris Island, though the times it did happen were memorable. “There was this woman who was called a Training Day Zero,"—recruits who arrive at Parris Island unable to complete the basic physical requirements needed to begin training, which for women are one pull-up, 1.5 mile run in 15 minutes, and 45 crunches in two minutes—"who said to me, ‘Trump is making sure people like you can’t be in the Corps.’”

Another time, as he watched TV while recovering from the second hip injury, a male recruit, also in recovery, came up to him and began berating his movie choice as being too feminine. (The movie had already been playing when Phares began watching it.) “He starts talking about how he’s so glad I’m in RSP because the Corps doesn’t need people 'like me' in the Corps."

A drill instructor overheard the other recruit and sent him to do pushups before turning to Phares and saying, “Listen, I don't care if you identify as a male, a female, or a motherfucking palm tree. As long as you've got my back, I've got yours. It's probably really hard for you being in with the female platoon. If you ever need to come over and talk about guy stuff, I'm here for you.”

President Trump’s ban on new transgender recruits being allowed to serve in the military came into effect soon after Phares arrived at Parris Island. The 2020 presidential election was days after Phares and Tyler’s wedding; when we talked before the wedding, Phares shared about how he hoped to re-enlist if the military once again allowed transgender recruits to join.

Since then, Joe Biden was elected President, and on January 25th 2021, President Biden reversed former President Trump’s ban through an executive order. When we caught up after the order, Phares and Tyler shared their reactions with me. “The ban is officially lifted, and President Biden also decided to change up some of the policies that were in place,” Phares told me. “The biggest change is that we're actually going to be allowed to take HRT at recruit training, since they put it into the same category as insulin.” The military, he said, was currently drafting official policies for how to treat transgender recruits and their unique circumstances during training.

The Marines, Phares told me, had also raised the maximum enlistment age to 40, from 28, due to low enlistment numbers in recent years, meaning Phares will no longer need an age waiver to enlist again. Before he submits his paperwork, though, he plans to get his gender marker officially changed. “Tyler and I decided to use our tax return to start the name and gender marker changes first, so that when I re-enlist I’ll be able to join the male platoons,” Phares said. The legal and enlistment process, he said, would likely take around two years.

I asked them both about how Phares’ dreams of being a Marine, and the prospect of being deployed around the world, affected how they viewed their future. “I understand that Phares is, honestly, married to his work,” Tyler replied. “It was something that we’ve had to discuss before we decided to get married, whether deployments and being in the Marines was going to be a problem. But, I understand that Phares is going to be happier in the Marine Corps than in any other job.”

When Phares returned from Parris Island after 10 months there, three times longer than the length most people stay, on February 7th, 2018, he was at first ecstatic to see Tyler again. That much time apart, though, led to misunderstandings. A rumor spread that Tyler expected Phares to spoil him when he got back, buying him a car, a dog, and a new computer. Phares had no such plans, and felt Tyler was just treating him as a sugar daddy. Tyler, for his part, told me that he also felt blindsided when he learned of the rumor. “I immediately called the person who had started the rumor and demanded answers,” he told me. “But, to be honest I never got the full truth of the matter and I most likely never will.” Tyler had been asleep when Phares heard about the rumor, and by the time he woke up, Phares had already broken up with him in a fit of rage, not bothering to talk it through with Tyler.

They'd miscommunicated before, too. When they first met and began dating, Phares had still identified as female. When he came out as transgender, Tyler had trouble accepting Phares' new identity. "I grew up in a family that was Christian," Tyler told me. "Mostly only on, like, Easter and Christmas, but it still wasn't really accepted to be gay, and I wasn't sure how to proceed with a relationship I knew my parents wouldn't approve of."

The truth is that Tyler's family would have been very accepting. He'd dated someone else in the past who also came out as a transgender man. "At the time, they told me that as long as I was happy, then they were happy," Tyler said, "But my anxiety still bothered me a lot, and made me wonder if they were just telling me that because they didn't want me to be upset."

In response to Phares coming out as transgender, Tyler made some missteps; he’d hurt Phares with blithe comments, asking about "why he wasn't shaving anymore" and other feminine expectations. "I ended up breaking up with Tyler that first time because of those kinds of comments," Phares told me, "but despite the fact that he didn't understand what transgender was at first, and had some of those issues, I always knew we had a connection. I missed him, honestly." They got back together a few months later, and again after the rumor-fueled breakup when they finally sat down to talk openly with each other.

Tyler no longer questions being with Phares the way he did in the past, though he's also still exploring his own sexual identity. "We've landed on demi-sexual for now," he said. "I don't care what's in your pants, or what your gender is. It's all about who you are as a person."

At one point during the week, I found out that Phares' current boyfriend, Rhys, who first told him about the idea of being transgender and the process of transitioning, was also Tyler's ex; Tyler and Rhys had been through a messy breakup in the past, and, as Phares told me, "It got to a point where I was very, very frustrated, because I love them both, and I want them both in my life. But they can't really be in each other's lives."

"It used to feel like I was a child of divorce," he continued. "They couldn't interact in any way with each other, and any conversation they had was only through me. I couldn't talk to one about the other." Phares visits Rhys’ home at least one day and night each week, and sees the relationship as satisfying very clear needs. "I am a hyper-sexual person," Phares told me, "and more into the BDSM scene. Tyler is far too gentle for that, while my boyfriend is really experienced, and so with him I have a safe alternative to express that side of my sexuality.”

“On the opposite token, Tyler is very, very emotionally connected and grounded, whereas my boyfriend is a diagnosed sociopath who doesn't understand or experience emotions the same was as a neurotypical person does." Both, he said, held an important part in his life and, like with friendships, he valued for different reasons.

Tyler and Phares embracing at their wedding

Phares and Tyler’s decision to be married was very organic. “We kept drifting apart and coming back together,” Tyler said. “I don't like using the word, but it really was fate. Every time we would separate, we would miss each other and be thinking of each other, and so we kept coming back to each other.”

"I didn't get to propose in my first marriage," Phares said, "so I thought, yeah, it's my turn this time." He planned it for Halloween in 2018 at his and Tyler's favorite karaoke bar, coordinating with the DJ to play Coldplay's Something Just Like This, a song both of them love. Their friends gleefully held up their cell phones as Phares caught a clueless Tyler off-guard. "I had no idea what he was doing until he started walking towards me," Tyler said, laughing, "and then I looked around and saw all these cameras pointed at me and Phares and I was like, 'Oh, are we doing this? We're doing this??'"

Phares singing to Tyler before proposing at 2:05

Tyler, in-turn, proposed back a few weeks later. "I said, if you're gonna surprise me like that, I'm gonna annoy the shit out of you," Tyler said, laughing. He'd placed the ring in its box, then placed that in a larger box with confetti, then placed that in another box with rocks, and repeated this another five or six times, like an elaborate and more annoying Russian Doll.

Phares and Tyler hope to have biological children someday, though they acknowledge it'll be difficult with Phares taking testosterone. They've already found someone willing to be a surrogate ("she's actually our other photographer, and she loves being pregnant but doesn't want any more of her own kids") but if that doesn't work out, they'd love to adopt within the LGBTQ+ community or others from high-risk communities. "We're comfortable helping to raise a child who has disabilities, for example," Phares said.

Phares loved school when he was younger, and though he didn't finish his degree the first time, he's now taking online classes at West Virginia University, his father's alma mater and a dream of his to attend. "If I had all the money in the world, I probably would go to school full time," he said, and his educational pursuits mirror that. His plan is to earn a Bachelor's in multi-disciplinary studies and three minors in agricultural business, communications, and forensic science, a Master's in Linguistics after that, and then a doctorate in Etymology, while his ideal role in the Marine Corps will be within the Meteorology and Oceanography fields, the linguistics training complementing any job by giving Phares unique language and communication skills.

Phares is also finding ways to combine his education, identity, and occupational interests by leading a research project to study how best the various branches of the military can accommodate transgender recruits. "I'm working with a group called Sparta, which is a nonprofit advocating for transgender service-members and their families, to compile information about what paperwork recruits need and how it needs to be written, so that both recruits and recruiters are more prepared and can streamline the process."

A screenshot from Sparta’s homepage — *A screenshot from Sparta’s* *homepage*

Tyler also plans to return to school at a technical college nearby funded by the state with incentives to join in-demand fields within IT. "I've always had a problem with college because if I want to learn it, I'll learn it," he told me. "I will put days into doing research and putting information together and recite to you the finer points of chaos theory in theoretical physics just because I find it interesting. But I can't do long division, because I find it boring."

Neither sees religion as taking a particularly large role in their future lives, too, though Phares still considers himself spiritual. “While religion may not be a big part of my life, spirituality still is,” he told me. “I've tried going back to church but struggle with scheduling conflicts and transphobia within the congregation. I just don't see how the God who created me in his image would send me to hell for being the person that he made," he told me, referencing his past religious community's vehement disapproval of his being transgender and of the wider LGBTQ+ community.

He now sees himself as Christopagan. “I still hold to a lot of the same beliefs that I grew up with,” he told me, “but it’s difficult to find a church that accepts me as I am. Having felt God’s presence strongest in nature, His creation, it was easy for me to understand Paganism and its connection not to the worship of nature necessarily, but worship through nature. Praising the gods in the open temple of their creation.”

He continued. "Within paganism, there's a little more freedom to express beliefs for whichever path works best for you, and to identify with the spiritual side of creation. It's been a journey in an of itself, because a lot of pagans identify as witches, while witchcraft itself is completely banned within Christianity." He likened his journey to the analogy of the blind men and the elephant, where each man touched a different part of the animal (the trunk, the ear, and the leg) and made entirely different conclusions about what they were touching (a snake, a fan, and a tree). "They're all right, but they're also all wrong, and just with religion, there's something you can learn from each."

Phares and Tyler's wedding ceremony, a traditional handfasting performed on the small bridge of a nearby local park in the early afternoon of October 31st, 2020, reflected those beliefs. Save for a handful of guests, all those in attendance were a part of the wedding party, who dressed in coordinated outfits to form a rainbow on Phares' and Tyler's side of the bridge.

Phares and Tyler with their wedding party at the ceremony — *Phares and Tyler with their wedding party at the wedding ceremony*

Tyler's parents had originally planned on attending, but his grandfather died suddenly just days before the wedding, and his parents decided to cancel their trip from Texas to take care of the funeral and burial. Tyler’s brother was able to attend, though, along with Phares’ half sister and her family, and a few close friends representing all ages throughout Phares and Tyler’s lives: elementary school, teenage years, and even a fellow recruit from Phares’ time at Parris Island.

The officiant began the ceremony with an explanation of the significance and symbolism of a handfasting:

"For those who may not be familiar, a handfasting ceremony is a little different from a traditional wedding ceremony in that it recognizes that love, like life, is dynamic. Traditionally, these ceremonies were done in Celtic lands, and vows can be taken for a year or they can be taken forever, because those Celtic ancestors understood that love changes moment to moment, and that every couple is unique, as is every relationship.

Phares and Tyler have chosen to commit to one another for the rest of their lives, but they understand that the love they commit to is dynamic and fluid, and that what we celebrate is the eternal connection between them.

*Phares and Tyler’s handfasting ceremony*

Today we call upon the elements God has provided for us: air, fire, water and earth, to bring to this union the same harmony that they share.

We look to the east and acknowledge the element of air, opening the lines of communication between Phares and Tyler. May their future be as bright as the dawn on the horizon. As air flows freely to, from, and through us all, may their hearts and minds and souls come to know the world and each other in this manner.

We look to the south and acknowledge the element of fire. With it comes to powers of energy and will. We ask the Phares and Tyler may trust the energy that connects us all and allow it to connect them, weaving the two of them together in love.

We look to the west and acknowledge the element of water. With it comes the power of passion and emotion. We ask that Phares and Tyler make these lives feel compassionate, that they may be passionate about their marriage and relationship.

We look to the north to acknowledge the element of earth. With it comes endurance and strength. Make Phares and Tyler be grounded into the earth to be strong within themselves, that they may bring that strength into their marriage that they may enjoy together all that life may bring."

Phares and Tyler held a small picnic of cake and laughter afterwards, and as we finished taking photos, Tyler made a short speech. "With everything that's been going on this year; COVID, the natural disasters, heck we just lost Sean Connery this morning"—a gasp rose from their guests, most of whom hadn't heard the news—"The point being, none of you had to be here for this. You could have thought of any excuse in the world, and we would have forgiven you. But instead, you decided to choose today with us."

*Tyler thanking the guests who attended the wedding*

One of Tyler's friends, perhaps noticing how nervous he was speaking in front of a crowd like this, chimed, "Because we love you, you nerds." Tyler and Phares both broke into broad grins as the air grew lighter.

"Thank you for being here. Thank you."

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