ET sat down with Gabe, who talked about making history on the franchise and why he's sure Isabel isn't using him.
90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way star Gabe is new to the franchise and making history. The 32-year-old Florida native is the first transgender person to be featured on the hit TLC show and ET sat down with him to talk about his feelings on his groundbreaking inclusion and his romance with Isabel from Colombia.
Gabe said his sister, Monica, was the one who actually wrote to the show and pretended to be him to get him on. He admitted he feels pressure in representing his community.
"It feels like I have to live up to an expectation," he tells ET's Melicia Johnson. "And it's scary, because I never know what I'm doing. I'm kind of just winging it at life. So it's just ... I just don't know what to expect, ever. Because I just I don't plan anything. Really."
But he also had specific insecurities.
"I'm just thinking, 'Oh, a lot of people are gonna make fun of my nipples.' That's exactly my thought," he shares. "So that's the first thing I thought about, is how many memes my nipples are going to be. ... And then I'm like, well, you know what, I guess, you know, people make fun of me for my nipples, but then it's like, everything is gonna be beneficial to everybody else because I'll go out of my way and be a fool if it's going to help somebody else."
"Overall, it'll be better for the thousands of people," he continues. "Because I know what it feels like to be in a transgendered person spot. So it's like, I wish somebody would have told me all the things that I know now. So I feel like it's a good thing to show people that, you know, trans people are not just like, weird, or, you know, or a freak or they're never gonna find love because you can live a normal life and still be trans."
Gabe said he doesn't want to be "the poster child" for a transgender person.
"I feel like I'm human," he notes. "And I'm a little bit too reckless. ... I don't want to be like, 'Oh, that's the trans guy.' ... There's a lot of trans women out there. But like, really what trans guy is like, really out there? So it's a little scary, honestly. But I'm just trying to not make us not look bad."
Gabe's journey this season includes him moving from Florida to Colombia to be with Isabel, a single mother of two. Gabe and Isabel hit it off after meeting through a mutual friend and before they started making out at a club, he didn't get the chance to tell her he was transgender. In an episode this season, Isabel tells cameras she was shocked when she found out through his social media.
"I’m not gonna lie, we were, like, dancing real nice together, and we was, like, making out together," he says of the night they met. "And I'm like, 'Oh, crap. She doesn't know.' And I always tell people because I do have a YouTube channel and I give people advice -- like, if you're trans guy, you're transgender, whatever. I always give people my social media before I even get on the date with them, before, like, I even give them my phone number. ... Because people, when you see me, they won't know."
He agreed with some viewers who think he should have told Isabel he was transgender before they started kissing.
"I 100 percent should have, like, that's why I never get myself in this position," he responds. "But then it's like, when you meet somebody in person, and you're with them, like, do I say it, like, right before? It was just everything happened so fast. ... Yeah, no, it's terrible."
"I wish that, you know, in a perfect world I would, but I didn't know that she even liked me in the first place," he continues. "So it's like, do I tell her that and I'm never going to see her again?"
As for his loved ones questioning Isabel's intentions with him, including being skeptical about him paying for things, Gabe explained why he doesn't think she's using him.
"I don't think that I'm paying Isabel's bills if I was living there because I was living there half time," he explains. "So an apartment in Colombia is a lot cheaper than an Airbnb in Colombia. Like, I could pay three months, utilities and my rent with one month of an Airbnb. So I'm like, how am I losing money and how is she using me if I have things there as well? I have all my clothes and I have everything there. How's she using me? If anything, I would be using her to house-sit."
As for providing for her children, he has no regrets.
"Yeah, well, that's what you do, you take care of a family when it's your family," he says. "I just felt like, I don't know. I love her. I love her kids. So it's not like she would say give me money for this and this and this and this and then she's, you know, buying lavish things. She's buying food and clothes."
When it comes to what he wants viewers to know about his relationship with Isabel, it's that it's not about him being transgender.
"I want fans to know that my relationship with Isabel just because I am transgender doesn't make it all that different than if I wasn't transgender," he says. "I feel like every relationship has its ups and downs, it has their problems. If I wasn't trans, then it would just be, you know, different problems they focus on. No relationship is perfect. It's just the cards you got ... just got to make them work."
"I want to say open your mind to who you're dating because never in a million years would [Isabel] have ever thought that she would be with a transgender guy, ever," he adds. "She wouldn't ever, ever think that. So just because you don't think it's right for you, you know, it might be the best thing that you've ever had."
90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on TLC.
RELATED CONTENT:
