Love...

One of the things I really struggled with when I was considering letting people know that I was transgender was the fact that it would completely change how I date.  And I think it's worth talking about really, it might help dispel some of the illusions that people have that telling people you are transgender is somehow just a phase or an attention seeking behavior.  On YouTube I have seen numerous comments about people being "transtrenders" which is probably an entire post on its own really.

But honestly, we are voluntarily reducing our dating options massively, that's no small life choice entered into easily.  OR we become somebodies sexual fetish which at least for me will never work.

So LOVE.... My entire life I was I guess a heterosexual man from the outside worlds perspective, and of course I was always a very sensitive soul who needed to find exactly the right types of lady to be with, all of my relationships were quite monogamous and intense.  And I had a desperate need to be loved.

When I moved to Germany it was at least partially because I had just undergone a fairly intense breakup and that is my typical response to fairly intense breakups, which is probably a pretty self destructive response but I am nothing if not a slave to my very intense emotional responses to things.
So there I was in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language, and my dating options were quite limited, I got very used to living on my own for the first time in my adult life.  And... well I feel like I have gotten stuck there really.  Like including someone else at this point would feel really strange.

And then of course it was in Germany that I first labelled myself transgender, which has somewhat changed my attitude towards dating.  I feel like it would be quite unfair to fall in love with someone and then expect them to understand my wanting to transition.  And finding someone who would be okay with it just seems so daunting.

But I have also realized recently that I deeply miss that level of affection with other people, I tend to fall in love with anyone who shows me any form of kindness at all, and that is hard too.  It makes it really difficult to determine whether I actually feel something for these people or if it is just an intense overreaction to something that I have neglected for so long.  But having experienced a few moments that were similar enough to being in a relationship really showed me how much I intensely miss those feelings, and that was just with one of my incredibly good friends.

I really want to be loved again, but I am also keenly aware that the people I have loved have quite often been the reason for me to stay firmly in the closet about who I am.  Because my need to be loved overruled my need to be me, and I just can't do that to myself anymore.  So I think I need to find some very timid way to step a toe back in the pool, find some regular affection where there is very minimal pressure, and not immediately dive headfirst in expecting it to be the last relationship of my life as I normally would.

It's a really strange position to find myself in, and I just wanted to document it, in case anyone else is feeling this way too.  And if anybody has any fantastic suggestions to resolve this, please do let me know.

And of course if that job description sounds like something you might be interested in (affection without commitment, a partner who will someday be a woman, and probably some complex emotional scenarios) then definitely let me know, and also you should probably seek some mental health advice because those would be some weird things to find appealing hehe.