Sarah Simoni first met Harold Leenen while he was a high-flyer in the corporate banking world — eight years later Harold is now Alexandra.
The pair tell @LouiseMGannon their story 👇
thetimes.co.uk/article/what-h…
The pair tell @LouiseMGannon their story 👇
thetimes.co.uk/article/what-h…
🗣 "If you had told me at 21 that I’d fall in love and marry a man who transitioned to a woman… And then she and I would move into a big house with my mum, dad, sister and her three teenage children... Then I’d have said, ‘You’ve got to be joking. That could never happen to me'"
Sarah has now been married to Alexandra for 8 years. When they first met in 2011, Sarah was the personal assistant to a senior executive at Deutsche Bank in London and Alexandra was the high-profile chief operating officer of one of its larger divisions 
No topic is off limits, from their sex life to their views on JK Rowling, trans politics
🗣 “I am a woman in every sense but biologically. I still have X and Y chromosomes”
🗣 “I am a woman in every sense but biologically. I still have X and Y chromosomes”
🗣 “I believe in the banking world I did extremely well because I have always thought like a woman.
“I did very well in that world because I was a man. I would never have reached the positions I did if I was a woman. It is a man’s world”
“I did very well in that world because I was a man. I would never have reached the positions I did if I was a woman. It is a man’s world”
Theirs is very much a story of our time. It is not one that is all bright smiles, fluffy, flirty clothes and cute anecdotes about sharing life and lipstick together. It is about transition and identity
There has been pain, sacrifice, confusion, anger and stumbling blocks in equal measure to the laughter, liberation and compassion
There are issues that still hurt: issues of sex, identity and the navigation of a relationship they prize above all things. Sarah, who has always retained her maiden name, will not refer to Alexandra as her “wife”
🗣 “That would make me a lesbian and I’m not a lesbian. I am a heterosexual woman.” They share a bed but no longer have sex.
“Three things happened. His pheromone smell changed, he began to develop breasts and I went into perimenopause, which floored my sex drive"
“Three things happened. His pheromone smell changed, he began to develop breasts and I went into perimenopause, which floored my sex drive"
As a couple, what makes Alexandra and Sarah extraordinary is their honesty. There is no sex “but there is intimacy”, says Alexandra.
🗣 “That to me is being in bed and feeling Sarah’s foot on mine in the night. Our closeness”
🗣 “That to me is being in bed and feeling Sarah’s foot on mine in the night. Our closeness”
This year, now fully recovered from surgery, confident in who she is, happy and settled in her family life, Alexandra is planning a return to a career in finance
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