Tommy Dorfman Announces She’s Engaged to “a Gay Girl” – Vanity Fair

Tommy Dorfman has found her special person.

The actor announced on Monday’s episode of Rachel Bilson‘s podcast Broad Ideas that she’s in love and engaged. While Dorfman didn’t share any details about the identity of her new partner, referring to her as “just a gay girl,” she did add that their relationship has been “very affirming” and she feels completely ready to “spend the rest of [her] life” with her. The 13 Reasons Why star explained that despite being married to a gay man for the last five years, she’s always had a lingering interest in dating women. “I knew I was interested in women in a way that I hadn’t really been aware of since high school,” she said. “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.’”

Dorfman and her ex-husband, Peter Zurkuhlen, decided to go their separate ways in February of this year. The couple was first introduced by a mutual friend in 2005 and got engaged a decade later in April 2015. They wed the following year in November 2016 in a small ceremony held in Portland, Maine.

In July 2021, Dorfman came out as a transgender woman in an interview for the cover of Time magazine, explaining that her transition had understandably shifted the dynamics of her marriage. “I was in a nine-year relationship in which I was thought of as a more male-bodied person, with a gay man. I love him so much, but we’ve been learning that as a trans woman, what I’m interested in is not necessarily reflected in a gay man,” she said. “So we’ve had incredible conversations to redefine our relationship as friends. Transitioning has been liberating and clarifying.” The actor added that because of her transition it’s almost like going through puberty all over again as an adult. “Some days I feel like I’m 14. As a result of that shift, the types of romantic partnerships I seek out are different,” she explained.

A month after publicly coming out, Dorfman confided to InStyle, “I’ve never felt better in my life. I spent 28 years of my life suicidal and depressed and recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction. I don’t think I’ve ever been genuinely happy until this past year.”