YouTube sensation Jonathan Joly says he is grateful his wife Anna Saccone “didn’t run away” when he told her about his gender identity issues.
Dublin native Jonathan and his wife Anna are the husband and wife duo behind the Saccone-Joly’s, a family who have amassed serious fame and millions of followers on social media by sharing videos of their lives on YouTube.
The couple are parents to four children, Emilia, Eduardo, Alessia and Andrea and live in London.
Fans of the famous family are used to watching their day-to-day lives on YouTube, but many were astonished when Jonathan revealed in a video last summer that he feels like neither a man nor a woman.
This topic is something he explores in his brand new book, ‘All My Friends Are Invisible.’
The book details Jonathan’s childhood in 1980s Dublin, and he tells how he never felt like he fit in and conformed to what a little boy should feel like. He explains that he doesn’t identify as transgender or non-binary, but is simply just Jonathan.
The title of the memoir refers to the YouTuber’s ‘invisible’ friends, who he says saved his life, and how his imagination as a child helped him to escape the reality of dark thoughts and depression, which he harboured from a young age.
Jonathan says following a string of failed relationships, when he met his now wife Anna in 2005 he told her the truth about everything in his life, from his gender identity to his invisible friends, and is glad that she stuck by him.
He told RSVP Live: “I met Anna while working on a music shoot video. We got along, and I just told her the truth about everything.
“I had nothing to lose, I just wanted to be me. And she didn’t run away.
“Here we are 14 years later, still together with four kids.”
While Anna was supportive of Jonathan, he has unfortunately faced a lot of backlash for going public with his story.
He says there is a lot of pressure to put a label on his gender because not everyone understands his situation.
“People get so angry with me,” he explained.
“When I announced the book back in June, it was probably the most hated video on YouTube.
“This will go down as the most hated and potentially most loved book. It will be hated by people who thankfully, lucky for them, have had a life where they’ve never had to do this and don’t understand. And then you read the reviews, and people engaging with it tell me it is the most incredible book I’ve ever read. It’s only for certain people.”
Jonathan always felt different growing up and has carried that emotional trauma into his later life.
He said: “I felt so sad all of the time as a child because I couldn’t be me. And I knew if I was to ever be me, my parents would go mental, it would just keep getting worse and worse.
“The only thing I knew how to do was hide and think, ‘Maybe someday I will come back when everything is better’.
“Unfortunately I forgot to come back and spent the next 30 odd years just hiding until I started writing the book. I didn’t know what I was going to write, I just wanted to tell a story and the more I started writing, the more I connected to those past emotions.
“If I wrote this book in my 20s it would have all been anger, but now as a parent I know how hard, difficult and challenging it is being responsible for another human being. That’s why I’m I’m not angry at my family or my parents, it’s not their fault, it’s just a mixture of different things.
“In this book I’m not telling you what you’re supposed to do because I’m not a doctor or professional, but I’m not afraid to tell you my story because I’ve no job to be fired from and I’ve got no friends to lose.
“I don’t care, I’m willing to sacrifice myself by telling you this story.”
Get the latest RSVP headlines straight to your inbox for free by signing up to our newsletter
Jonathan decided to write a memoir during the pandemic because his children Eduardo and Emilia were struggling with their mental health in lockdown.
The dad-of-four shared his story of how he coped during dark times in his life thanks to his invisible friends, and when he realised that he helped his kids out he wondered if he could do the same for people out there who are struggling, just like he did.
He said: “I’m not a doctor or a professional, I’m just their dad and during that year of helping my kids I started to unravel myself a little bit more and started to think about who I was. I was a very depressed and anxious child, I had identity issues, but I’m still alive and here.
“The memories just came flooding back, and I decided if I was able to help my children with my story maybe I could do the same for other people.”
While Jonathan has faced negative comments and nasty trolling over his new book, he has also received a lot of messages of love and support and he says that makes it all worth it.
“I see people on the Internet who think it’s funny to take the piss out of me and it hurts because they now know something about me they never knew before,” he explained.
“But my DMs are filled with people who can relate to my story, saying, ‘Thank God I’m not the only one.’ They are the people I’m doing this for and that makes it all worth it.”
‘All My Friends Are Invisible’ is published by Quercus
