Francesca Farago says she and her fiancé, Jesse Sullivan, are the face of the “new modern family.” They’re just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
“Couples like us don’t necessarily exist too often in mainstream media. You don’t see a bisexual woman and a trans man starting a family — and having a positive light on it,” she tells TODAY.com.
“There are so many new families like us and there will be so many more in the future once people start to fully accept and be themselves, and live their true lives.”
Farago, 31, rose to fame flirting on two of Netflix’s raunchiest dating shows. Just four years later, her life is worlds away from the hot tubs and tropical getaways of “Too Hot to Handle” and “Perfect Match.”
Today, she lives in California with Sullivan, 34, his teenage child, Arlo, and a bevy of pets. They've announced they’re expecting twins, who are due this fall.
“I definitely always knew this was my end goal,” she says. “When I met Jesse, I knew I met my future.”
With a platform of over 6 million combined followers on Instagram, Farago and Sullivan hope to help others “fully accept” themselves through the radical but simple act of sharing their existence. Farago posts trips to the Renaissance Faire, walks with the dogs and date nights. Sullivan posts the meals he makes for Farago's pregnancy cravings and sweet messages about their love story.
“We just are so regular and we act like everyone else,” she says. “The world is curious, but in our day-to-day, his identity and my sexuality is not a factor in our relationship.”
They post about their lives, partly, as an example to other people in the queer community — and Sullivan has seen the positive effect in his DMs.
Farago has found her own “support system” online when it comes to pregnancy, but she can also turn to Sullivan, who gave birth to son Arlo 15 years ago, for support. “If I feel something, I’m like, 'Is that normal? Should my back hurt? Should my side hurt?’ And he’s like, ‘That’s normal. I felt that,’” she says.
Farago is aware her journey to parenthood was different from Sullivan’s. Sullivan was 17 when he became a parent and “wasn’t scared of anything going wrong.” Farago, meanwhile, is considered a high-risk pregnancy and talks about her struggles with anxiety.
She also had to undergo medical procedures, like egg retrievals and IVF, in order to conceive. They dealt with the "disappointment and loss" of a failed embryo transfer, Sullivan shared on Instagram.
Early on, Farago and Sullivan shared more details about the mechanics of the pregnancy, but recently stopped because most of the questions were “coming from a place of hate and not curiosity.”
As a result, they’ve decided to keep the identities of the sperm donor and egg private.
“We wanted to avoid the extra hate and negativity so people wouldn’t say, ‘It’s Jesse’s egg. You’re not the mom.’ Or saying I was just a surrogate to a baby that wasn’t even mine. Or asking, ‘Where’s the father?’"
Farago saw former “Bachelor” Colton Underwood deal with similar questions when he announced he and his husband were expecting with the help of a surrogate. She noticed commenters saying the baby “needed a biological mother,” echoing what was written on her own posts.
“People don’t realize that queer families exist. We went through so much to have this family. A child being in a loving family matters way more than a child being with the biological mother or father. That doesn’t make you parents,” she says.
But rather than make them cower, the hate “fuels them” to “change people’s minds.”
“We can handle the hate. Everything we’ve gone through as a couple has made us so strong that honestly, we’re unbreakable. We work through the hate together,” she says. "But when other people in the community get it, or when Arlo gets it, it really bothers us, so it’s been really important for us to try and change people’s minds.”
We can handle the hate. Everything we’ve gone through as a couple has made us so strong that honestly, we’re unbreakable. We work through the hate together."
And their account has gotten through to people, she says.
“We get a lot of comments from people saying, like, ‘When I first stumbled on you guys, I thought very negatively, and I apologize for thinking like that. You’ve completely changed my mind. I love your journey. I love your family. I love your animals. I love your relationship with Arlo. And I’m so happy to be here,’” she says. “People owning the fact that they came into my social media with a negative light, and then are continuing to follow in a positive light.”
Farago says a moment from her own childhood helped her become more comfortable with trans people, the same way her account is functioning with her audience. She remembers the year her aunt brought her boyfriend to the holidays, who had been introduced as her girlfriend the year prior.
“I loved my aunt so much and I loved their love. I think that led me to have a level of acceptance in me that I wouldn’t have had if I wasn’t exposed to it that young, which is why I think it’s important for representation in mainstream media. If people learn about it young, they’ll be accepting, like I was when I learned about it at 12,” she says.
Knowing the prejudice people are capable of cultivating, Farago says she and Jesse are trying to “raise the most badass, caring, loving, well-mannered children that are accepting and loving and will go on to make a difference in whatever community they’re in.”
Farago says she and Sullivan were raised in families where they felt they couldn't express themselves fully. “It was, ‘What they say goes. Your opinion and your thoughts don’t matter at all,'” Farago says. “Me and Jesse both dealt with that. I didn’t have opinions. It was very constricting.”
Contrasted with her own childhood, Farago wants to be as “accepting as possible.” Sullivan has practiced “blank-slate parenting” with Arlo, which basically means “letting your child have a lot of freedom and reigns to choose for themselves.” She might be a bit more “strict” than Sullivan, but wants her kids to know “they are so loved and they are so accepted.”
The couple hasn’t discussed how they’re going to tell the twins about their identities one day — but they’re not worried, either.
“We revert back to how Arlo was when Jesse came out as trans. They were, ‘OK, cool. What do you want me to call you?’ We know if we raise them properly that if they encounter people, or bullies at school, they’ll have the knowledge to shut it down,” she says.
Farago is also hopeful the twins will be born into a more accepting generation. “In the future, the kids won’t have as much hate as the adults do,” she says.
While Farago is open about most things, there are a few secrets she’s keeping close. In a viral video, Farago mentioned a few of the names they’ve considered, but ruled out, including Monday, October, Heart, Lovely and Lyrics. The unconventional name choices made headlines. They have chosen the final names for the twins but she’s “superstitious” and won’t share them.
“The names we do have picked mean a lot to us and represent certain parts of our relationship. One of the names is something that Jesse had given me for an important event we had in our lives, and we just turned it into a name, and it’s so beautiful,” she says.
Looking back on the 27-year-old who went on "Perfect Match," Farago says, "My message to my 'Perfect Match' self would be that it's going to come a lot sooner than you think, and it's going to be a lot more amazing than you could have ever imagined."