In this KARAMO episode, host Karamo interviews Victoria, a trans woman who has recently found romantic love with her fiancé Christopher after a childhood marked by severe bullying and early transition at age 14. Victoria explains that despite being in a supportive relationship and having undergone bottom surgery, she still struggles with self‑love, persistent gender dysphoria, and a desire for extensive facial feminization. Christopher shares his perspective as an ally, describing why he introduces Victoria publicly as his "trans fiancée" to combat stigma, while also expressing love and support for her. The conversation explores how past trauma resurfaces in everyday interactions, the emotional impact of being labeled as trans, safety concerns for trans women (noting 2021 as the deadliest year for transgender people), and the tension between Victoria’s wish for further cosmetic procedures and Christopher’s differing view. Karamo offers affirmations, a mantra against comparison, and invites the audience to repeatedly affirm Victoria’s beauty, aiming to replace internalized negative messages with positive reinforcement. The episode weaves personal narrative, relationship dynamics, societal context, and therapeutic encouragement to highlight the complex journey of self‑acceptance for a trans woman in love.
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Listen, we all wanna experience base emotions such as love, acceptance, and happiness. When those emotions aren't met, it can cause conflict with those around you. Well, my next guest says that the people around her said she would never find someone to love her, but she did find someone to love her. But now she's having trouble loving herself. Everyone, please welcome Victoria to the show. Hey, hey. Hi. How are you doing? Good, good to meet you. Good to meet you, beautiful. Take a seat. Yes, no, great.
Thank you.
Okay, so Victoria, tell me what is going on while you need my help?
So I'm having trouble loving myself. So I found love after so many people told me that I never would or that I would always be seen as my assigned gender at birth. And I'm at a place now where I have found that love and I wanna learn to love myself.
Okay, what do you think it is that's making you not feel like you are the beautiful woman that we're all seeing in front of us?
Well, I grew up in a small town and I was severely bullied.
Well, I noticed something first of all. When I said you're a beautiful woman that we all see, you swished by it. You don't take compliments in?
I try to when I can, but it's hard for me to see that myself.
Got it. So you were saying you got bullied?
I got bullied. I transitioned at age 14. So as you can imagine, that's not easy for people to digest, especially back in the day. So I really carried a lot of that with me. And when I see myself in the mirror, although I have done several changes along the way, I still see the same face.
Mm. The person you're now in love with, his name is Christopher.
Correct.
And you met him in high school.
Correct.
When you were, had you transitioned yet or no?
I had, I transitioned like freshman, sophomore year.
Okay then, tell me about how it was when you met him and what that was like.
Well, so we, although we had similar friend groups in high school, we never really crossed paths in that way. So he was sort of an athlete, he was a jock, I was, myself and heavily bullied.
Was Christopher a part of that bullying?
Well, Christopher was not a part of the bullying. The other athletes of the school certainly were a part of the bullying. So when I first saw him years later, I was a little hesitant.
Of course, 'cause the people he was around made you feel uncomfortable and insecure about the beautiful person you are.
Absolutely.
So how did you and Christopher reconnect?
So Christopher and I reconnected years later on a dating app. Okay. So I had just gotten my, sex reassignment surgery, my bottom surgery, and I thought, I wanna experiment and see what's going on in the dating pool. So, you know, I was recovering for months and months. I had my hair up in curlers, just swiping, you know? And so, you know how it is. And so that's when I saw Christopher's photo. And at first I didn't recognize him, but we matched and here we are.
Is this the text that you sent to each other?
Yeah, these are actually our first ever messages on the dating app.
You've become quite a beautiful woman, Victoria. I'm proud. "of you for the pushing through this terrible hate and living your truth." Oh, he was so supportive and loving.
He was, yeah.
Whoa. Good job. I love that. Okay, so my question is, how are people's response to you and Christopher being together?
So generally it's all very accepting and supportive. When he will sometimes see an old classmate in public, he'll let them know that he's with me and be like, "Do you remember Victoria, the trans girl, the girl that transitioned?" And that's when they immediately go, "Oh, yeah, I do." And they kind of have an issue with it, but they're not in our lives.
Yeah, but still, the fact that he has to mention your past, it has to affect you.
It does, and frankly, it puts a target on my back.
Why do you think Christopher introduces you as his trans girlfriend and not just his girlfriend?
I think Christopher does that because he's proud of me and he's proud of all the progress that I've made. And while I appreciate that, 2021 was the deadliest year on record for people of transgender experience. Yes, it is, yeah. And you really never know when you can have a target on your back.
Completely. When you talk to Christopher about that, what does he say?
He understands and he's, you know, worked along with it, but he also doesn't get why I'm not more proud and vocal, especially because I am on my social medias.
Yeah, so how does that make you feel when you hear him saying those things?
Sometimes it makes me feel like he doesn't understand or that I'm being perceived as a trans person and not a woman first.
Mm-hmm. So you have a dysphoria where you don't like things about your face.
Right.
What is it that you wanna change on your face?
Well, I always say it's, I'm not talking like fillers, Sherman Williams, we're breaking down walls.
Okay, okay.
Like I want top to bottom. And a lot of times you see this with trans women on social media. From the forehead to the brow bone, to the nose, to the lips, to the chin, to the jaw. And that is something that I've always wanted and something that Christopher and I don't exactly see eye to eye on.
What does he say? What's his feedback?
He listens.
Yeah.
As anyone can, but trying to describe dysphoria to somebody is like trying to describe color to a colorblind person. It's something that you can, you know, sort of empathize with, but you'll never truly understand.
Got it, got it. Christopher, come on out please. Hey, how are you? Hi. Nice to meet you. You look great. Give me a hug. Nice to meet you. You look sharp in this blue. Okay. You heard it, everyone. Mm-hmm. So I wanna get right into it.
Yeah.
You introduced your fiancée as your trans girlfriend, your trans fiancée. Why do you do that?
In my eyes, I'm like Victoria said, I'm so proud of her, you know. And we talked about 2021 being the most deadly year on record for transgender women. And as somebody who's in a relationship, I want to show that it's totally normal and okay to be in a relationship with someone that's transgender. And when I meet family that have questions, it's an opportunity to break some of the stigma and to have conversations about it.
So yeah, so when you hear that She also has these feelings of like that she wants to change her face. How do you feel about that?
You know, I love Victoria so much. It's heartbreaking to know that she feels like she needs an upgrade, that she needs to change something to be my wife and to make me feel like she's the wife that I deserve. She's so beautiful and everybody that knows her knows.
Yeah.
Everyone can see it.
Victoria, do you trust him when he says that?
I trust him. I don't necessarily agree with it, but that's all you can really do.
Yeah. Victoria, I wanna go because when I said something, you hesitated and I read body language. Do you trust him in general?
I do trust Christopher for the most part. The only issue is my dysphoria gets in the way.
Okay.
So for me, say for example, a cis woman, someone assigned female at birth, walks by, someone that's pretty, and if his eyeline is even remotely near her, my day could just be ruined. And for me, it feels not necessarily that I'm not pretty enough, but that he deserves somebody who fills that role in the way that I've always been told that I won't.
Have you ever heard the statement, "Comparison is the thief of joy"?
I have not.
I need you to use that mantra for yourself every single day because what's going on is that you're comparing yourself of women you see in this world. And it's natural, whether you're a cisgender woman or a trans woman, I think we all look at somebody else and compare ourselves and say, oh, look what they got, look how they look. But every time you compare yourself to someone else, you steal your own joy. What's going on right now? What are you thinking?
I'm thinking that I must be crazy because I can't see past what I've always seen.
It's funny that you say you can't get past what you've always seen. It's really you can't get past what you always heard.
Exactly.
And because we forget that sometimes looking in the mirror, you think you're looking at a reflection back at yourself. You're looking back, a reflection back at all the words that people have said to you your entire life. It's the messages that we get that inform how we feel about ourselves. It's not what we're seeing in that mirror. And you've been receiving messages for years that have told you, you're not good enough, you're not worth it from both in school and then also society. So, That's why you want this reconstructive surgery because you feel like it will make, it will validate you in some way.
Absolutely.
You have this opportunity to start to rewrite the narrative. I asked you why you don't see yourself feeling like you're beautiful enough and you said because you don't think you're gonna have the future that you want. What does that future look like for you? When you were younger, what was the future you wanted?
I really wanted to be a mother and a wife, frankly. And while that's still something that I can achieve, It's always in the back of my mind that maybe he could be with someone that he deserves more or that could carry his children or doesn't have these personal issues.
Is this causing issues for you with her when she says things like this?
It's not an issue, it's this desire, this massive desire of mine for her to be able to surrender into the relationship the way that I get to. But there's this barrier between that life for her and where she is now. And as she walks down the aisle, I want her to be able to know that the life we're walking into is something she's gonna be able to enjoy fully.
My producers told me you have one big thing that you regret. What is it? Back in school.
So I would hear kids on my baseball team screaming her dead name at her while she tried to just run around the track and just live her life. And I would tell them to shut up. Leave her alone. But you know, I didn't understand the full gravity of what was happening in the school. And knowing now what was going on right next to me, I wish I knew more. It's so, especially when we think about the impact that the environment has on how she sees herself, I wish I could go back and make a difference. It's a huge regret of mine that it was happening right down the hall from me.
Well, I'll tell you one of the things of having that regret of wanting to go back and help is understanding that now as an adult, you do have a chance to help. You do have a chance to be a better ally. And part of it is listening to what your woman is saying to you. And she has clearly stated that by identifying her as her trans, your trans girlfriend, your trans fiancée, it's causing her pain and it's causing her, and there's a double layer here. And that layer is, is that you're a direct, you're a direct relation to the trauma that she experienced in high school. And I don't know if you realize that. She gets to see her trauma every single day, every time she looks at you. Do you realize that? Never thought about it like that. Because the fact of the matter is, the people that made fun of me in high school, I don't wake up to them every day. And even though you didn't directly bully her in high school, you were part of what she felt was attacking her and making her not feel beautiful. Am I near it?
You are.
Yeah.
Yeah. I never put that together either, but you're right.
You're waking up next to that. And so for you, when she says to you, "Don't refer to me in that way," it's not because of your pride. It's not because of this. It's because she's saying, "I still have to think about that time every time you do that. It just brings me right back." Yeah. "Brings me right back." So the man you are and how much you love her, you gotta look at your wife right now and truly listen. That's what an ally's gonna do. That's what a husband does. And I would just say to you as well, as much as I want you to see the beautiful woman that we all see, honey, because you are gorgeous, I also want you to know that I acknowledge the feeling you have about wanting to feminize your face. I've had many trans friends and I understand that is what's gonna make you feel more comfortable. So I can't judge your journey on that. And I think for you, the more you tell her that she's wrong for wanting to do it, the more she's gonna feel as if like, I need to do it. She's telling you right now that she's comparing herself to other women because she's scared you're gonna leave. So just say to her like, whatever you need to make yourself feel comfortable, I'm here. And through that, That's unconditional love. That unconditional love, because like you said, you can't understand what she's going through. I can't understand what you're fully going through. But what we can do is say whatever you wanna go through and wherever you are on your journey, I love you unconditionally on that journey. That will start to support her. And I think for me, anytime I don't feel cute and someone says, well, okay, I love you however it is, I'm like, oh, okay, well maybe I am a little cuter today. But one day, One day, I pray that you lose those words of all those negative bullies in your life. And the words that you hear are mine, that you're beautiful and you're special and you're gorgeous. His words, that you're beautiful, you're special, and you're gorgeous. Audience, please tell her she is beautiful. Everyone with me. Everyone with me. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Everyone with me right now, please tell her how beautiful. Say, you are beautiful. You are beautiful. You are gorgeous. You are gorgeous. And you didn't deserve that bullying. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Here, seriously, hear our words. Let that replace the words that you're hearing in your head as you're on this journey, because we do love you.
Thank you.
We do love you. Hold on, where you going? I'll tell you where you're going. Right here to subscribe, and right here to watch more. Period.
