My future wife and I met our best friends on Pornhub

“Lesbian Tgirl.” “Tgirl fucks girl.” “Trans Lesbian.”

I’ve typed these three phrases into every porn tube site on the internet trying to find some resemblance. Harmony, my future wife (which is the gender-affirming term we use instead of “fiance”), is transgender. I fall under the category of “big naturals,” the porn term to describe women with naturally large breasts.

Everything about the way we look and love is ripe for fetishization, so it makes total sense that the only times we’ve ever seen couples that resemble us have been in porn. We’ve scoured the internet for videos of trans women having sex with cisgender women—not for sexual pleasure, but to finally feel seen in a world where we’re constantly treated like we’re supposed to be invisible.

After a particularly traumatizing trip to the grocery store, I sat alone in the living room, my head filled with chattering voices, judgmental scoffs of disgust, and a pit in my stomach. Trying to distract myself and shut up the negativity swirling around in my brain, I opened Pornhub and typed “Lesbian Tgirl.” I was hoping to find something to remind me that my relationship was normal and didn’t deserve constant scrutiny.

“Lesbian Redhead Deepthroats and Fucks Tgirl” was the third most-recommended video. I didn’t even click on the thumbnail to know that there was something different about this one. The image depicted a redheaded cis woman and a blue-haired trans woman who looked like they were illuminating the screen. “We’re a real cis/trans lesbian couple here to share our amazing sex life with you,” their profile read.

I immediately texted Harmony the link to their profile with “HOLY SHIT, LOOK WHAT I FOUND!” 

“Tell me why this looks exactly like how we fuck?” she replied. She came home later that night, and we watched one of Ruby and Kiwi’s videos together. The couple laughed and looked at each other with the type of love and affection that cannot be imitated. With a symphony of moans and slapping skin in the background, I cried. For the first time in our lives, Harmony and I found a real couple that looked and fucked just like us.

Kiwi, the transgender half of the couple, was 6’3”, still had a penis, and rocked fierce blue hair—just like Harmony. Ruby, the cis partner, had half a shaved head, a collection of oversized glasses, and a penchant for winged eyeliner—just like me. 

It didn’t feel like enough just to watch them. Armed with the powers of a verified Twitter account, I messaged them. To my surprise, they messaged back.

“You’ve said how much it means to you to see your relationship reflected in our work, but I wanted to say that you two equally help us,” Ruby’s message said. “It’s really, really nice to hear about your experiences as a couple, because finally we have something we can actually relate to.”

From that moment forward, we became friends who rant about how members of our own community treat us like lepers and bond over video games, graphic novels, and recaps of Euphoria. We’ve made care packages for each other, had double dates over Skype, and created an ongoing group chat called the “Salty Safe Space” where we are able to talk about anything and everything free of judgment.

Harmony and I have also become their Ruby and Kiwi’s official hype-women on Chaturbate. We poke other viewers by tipping, like people driving up prices at auctions. A few weeks ago, I became a moderator for their cam-chat tasked with the power of banning transphobes and regular ol’ assholes.

Ruby confessed that after I tweeted at them the first time, the two of them creeped on all of our pictures. “It was like looking in a mirror,” Ruby says. “I know there are couples like us out there, but this was the first time we could completely relate to a couple and their relationship dynamics.”

Our friendship is, as Kiwi puts it, “like the whole ‘if you’re nervous imagine everyone naked’ thing to the max—but opposite.” Ruby and Kiwi have also seen my wife and I naked. We felt that was only fair since we’ve seen their porn, but our friendship is strictly platonic.

“A lot of people that want to be your friend after they watch your cam think that they want the getting-to-know-you real stuff,” says Kiwi. “Pretty quickly learning how similar we are and seeing each other for the first time on Skype and thinking, ‘Well now we have to be best buds,’ was really fun.”

Our common interests were a quick way to make us pals, but our mutual qualms over existing cis/trans couple representation are what bonded us together for life.

“I came out and was convinced I couldn’t like just women if I was going to go to all the trouble of transitioning,” Kiwi says. My future wife shares the same sentiments. “I cannot tell you how many times people asked me why I ever bothered transitioning if I was just going to be with women,” Harmony says. “Sex and gender aren’t the same fucking thing, you clods.” 

Harmony and I frequently feel like aliens on our own island, but meeting Ruby and Kiwi completely changed our lives. “I’ve always had trouble making friends, but you and your soon-to-be-wife make me feel a lot less alone,” Kiwi says. “I feel like I can be honest around you two and not worry about what you might think of me… I mean, I always worry about that, but I worry about it a lot less with you.”

“Because of our similar relationship dynamics, it’s really nice to know people who completely understand what we go through every day,” Harmony adds. “But the fact we also have so much in common makes us friends for reasons more than just shared negative experiences.” 

Making friends as adults is already really hard, and as Ruby explains, sex work comes with its own package of stigma. 

“You either hide that you get naked on the internet, or you tell someone and suddenly they see you in a different way,” Ruby says. “It’s been a while since we’ve been able to make platonic friends who actually know what we do and don’t care.”

Harmony and I are getting married this October, and we knew that we couldn’t celebrate our love without our “best wife friends” by our side. Ruby and Kiwi are happily joining us on our special day, and it’s something we couldn’t imagine doing without them.

“We love them like we’ve known them forever,” Harmony says. “And there’s no one else in the world that has a cooler set of couple friends than we do.”