Bruce Jenner came out as transgender to his ex-wife, Linda Thompson, decades before coming out to Diane Sawyer, and the world, during a “20/20” interview that gave the ABC program its highest ratings in 15 years.
Thompson,
who married Jenner in 1981 and gave birth to two sons during their
romantic relationship, details how the Olympian shared the secret he had
been hiding from the public his entire life, and how it affected their
family in a Huffington Post blog titled, “How Living With and Loving Bruce Jenner Changed My Life Forever.”
When Brody was about 18 months old and Brandon was about 3 and a half
years old, Bruce came to me one day with a very somber look on his face
and said, ‘There’s something about me that I really need to tell you,
something you need to know,'” Thompson wrote. “I truly thought he might
possibly tell me he had had an affair while on the road. But that’s not
what he wanted to confess to me. Bruce told me that he identified as a
woman.”
As
long as he could remember,” Thompson explained, “he had looked in the
mirror and seen a masculine image staring back at him where there should
have been a feminine reflection.”
She
wrote that Bruce called his struggle with gender dysphoria “a living
hell,” and informed her he would begin his journey to transitioning to a
female.
“People
have asked me, ‘Were there any signs or clues through the years that
Bruce might have had this issue? Any evidence he wore your clothes?,'”
Thompson wrote. “No. Not a clue. Nothing. Nada. Never.”
