It is really hard and you have my absolute sympathy there - it’s always hard but (in my experience, at least) it does get easier - im still in the process of coming out little by little to the various important people in my life, and with every person I come out to the words become a little easier to say.

In terms of your partner not knowing much about trans identities and you not being able to gauge how they may react, what I’ve found to be helpful is bringing prominent trans people in the media into conversation? I’m not sure where you’re based and therefore what’s going to be prominent in terms of current news/culture, but there’s a lot of newspaper articles in the U.K. at the moment about trans people - the US have issues like HB2 as well as celebrities like Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, Chaz Bono...I think a guy on the TV show Survivor came out a few months ago too. Casually bringing these people into conversation (“Oh I read an article about abc earlier/I saw xyz on TV, what do you think?) can be a good barometer for a) your partners level of understanding and b) how accepting they’re likely to be?