Tommy Dorfman is ready to tie the knot! The star announced her engagement on an episode of Rachel Bilson’s podcast Broad Ideas, saying she found “the person I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.” Without revealing her fiancée’s identity, Dorfman simply said her partner is “just a gay girl” and “my person.”
Having split from her ex-husband Peter Zurkuhlen in summer 2021, the former couple filed for divorced in February 2022 after five years of marriage. Dorfman came out as trans last summer when she began exploring her interest in women.
“I knew I was interested in women in a way that I hadn’t really been aware of since high school,” she explained. “I had this unresolved, unexplored thing. I was like, ‘This is the year that I’m gonna go on some dates with girls and feel that out again, and not feel ashamed about it.'” She added that her fiancée is the first woman she’d “been with a very long time.”
“There are people who fetishize trans women,” she said when talking about navigating the dating world. “So that’s another thing to be cognizant of. I’ve been fortunate enough to not have that experience as much, because I was so insular and private during my transition that I wasn’t like out in the world. Then, I fell in love with someone who doesn’t fetishize me in that way.”
The 13 Reasons Why actress shared how her fiancée has supported her through her transition, helping Dorfman with her estrogen shots and her medication administration. “My fiancée, she knew how, so she did it for me the first time. Then she was out of town and we FaceTimed and she walked me through it.”
“It’s very affirming,” she said of her relationship. “It’s very safe — also, not safe. Being in love is so scary, so uncomfortable and so painful,” she said. “All the universal feelings of being in love.”
