Get staff. 90 day fiance star Gabriel “Gabe” Pagoga showed his fiancée Isabel Posada‘s father a picture of himself before his transition.
“The change from seeing yourself as a girl to seeing yourself now with a beard, with facial hair, how do you really feel?” asked Isabel’s father in a teaser clip for the Sunday, April 9 episode of 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Side, which was shared by People on Friday, April 7.
Gabe, 32, responded by explaining that he likes who he is better after his transition. “When I was that other person, I didn’t like anything in my life,” the TLC personality explained. “I didn’t like my body, my face, nothing.”
After Gabe shared a photo of himself before his transition, Isabel’s father admitted in a confessional that he understood his soon-to-be son-in-law better. “Hearing Gabe say that he hated himself for being a child in so much pain amazes me,” he shared. “But I see how difficult it is because he didn’t accept himself.”
The Florida native later told Isabel’s father that looking at the old photos reminded him “that every day that I was alive, I wanted to die.”
“I felt like I had body parts that didn’t belong there. It’s like, if you have an imaginary arm sticking out here, and only you can see it, no one else can. It’s like, this doesn’t belong here. Everybody says, what are you talking about? You look like everyone else. But you feel it. And you just want to change it,” she said in a confessional about her life as a woman. “I didn’t feel normal.”
Gabe also recalled wanting to wake up every morning as a man during his childhood. “When you want to be someone else every day, it’s really depressing,” he continued. “I went through hell just so I could be in the body that feels like mine, and I no longer feel like I want to die.”
The reality star spoke to Isabel’s father after she expressed concern that her family might not accept Gabe because he is transgender.
During the March 26 episode, Gabe asked Isabel if she would choose him or her father if her parents didn’t approve. “I don’t know. If you don’t know what you’re going to say [to my parents]So I don’t know what decision I’m going to make,” she replied.
Despite their initial fears, Isabel’s father surprised the couple when he said he accepted Gabe during the April 2 episode.
“I expected any kind of reaction from my parents,” the Colombian native said in a confessional. “But I didn’t expect them to have open arms right away. I honestly didn’t expect us to feel so supported, so loved. … My father surprised us because that love that he showed when we gave him the news shows how beautiful the person is. It is really beautiful to have an unconditional, loving and respectful family. I feel very lucky”.
