Opening myself up to others romantically
Transition is a large thing to go through, it’s all hugely encompassing and fills your entire brain for ages because of the sheer complexity of it. As you start to figure things out, it becomes less present in your head and slowly begins to be something that you can think about less as you know enough to move through your days without really giving it much of a second thought, until, at least, somebody reminds you that you are trans with some comment or reaction. This next phase of transition gives you space to consider your place in the world with regards to other people and relationships which are more than platonic. Dating has been something which has hugely terrified me because I don’t know how to do it in this modern age of apps and self aggrandising profiles. I was married for several years and since my divorce, 10 years ago I’ve dated sporadically. My dates have, largely, been women who I have met accidentally randomly in my life, never on apps and I’ve never gone out with the intention to go out looking for dates, or in fact, actually gone out on a genuine date for a long time. Before transition, my life has largely been trying to cope with the complexities of my own gender identity as well as dealing with the fall out of my divorce, co-parenting and my actual job.
In the past few months I’ve started to think about dating and I still honestly find the concept difficult. There’s a lot of stuff in my head which remains such as Residual Self Image and questioning whether people would even want to date me which stems from the gender-fuckery that I’ve lived for such a long time behind the scenes of my public visage. I duly joined several dating apps and despite making my preferences clear on the profiles, I’ve had a barrage of cis-men, cross-dressers and closeted trans women express an interest in meeting with me, the absolute worst of which was being told by one guy on a dating app that he saw me in my local supermarket and fantasised getting to know me in the toilet. I genuinely avoided going to that particular super market for several months afterwards because I found it pretty creepy. This experience is not at all uncommon if you’re a cis-woman but it was eye opening to me that men could be so.. forward with their desires. I would never have said something like that to a woman when I dated presenting as a man. As an aside, the terms in my community for this kind of interaction are Ewwphoria or Affirmisogyny, it’s unfortunately affirming to your new public gender as well as being hugely icky.
I guess that these types of interactions are useful in one manner because it’s clarified the type of people that I actually do want to date and helped me realise where my boundaries and desires lie.
Age Gaps
Transitioning late in life means there is a huge disparity between your apparent age and your age since second puberty started. It’s a little weird because many parts of me are this 48 year old human with lots of experience in many areas. I consider myself as being moderately wise, experienced and level headed on many subjects but, simultaneously I’m also a young woman who hasn’t experienced many parts of life living authentically. This becomes especially apparent with regards to dating as a woman and understanding some social interactions. I’m having to learn at an accelerated rate on what is normal and what isn’t for my womanhood which can be somewhat stressful for myself and others.
Monogamy vs Polygamy (or Consensual Non Monogamy)
I talked a little in a previous blog post about my dalliances with the idea of Consensual Non Monogamy, it’s hugely common in the queer community to be part of a polycule and it’s actually quite hard to find queer people who AREN’T into polyamory but as I ponder and understand more of myself on my transition and dating journey, I’m starting to consider whether or not this is really for me or not.
Having had conversations with a friend of mine who feels the same, I wonder just how many people who date in this way do so out of necessity compared to being fully bought into the relationship style. I understand and still agree with the principles of it but I’m not entirely sure that I have the strength of character to experience this on a daily basis.
One of the beautiful things about life is that we’re able to change our minds if things change in the way we feel about things, whether it be gender or sexuality or general life, it’s easy to forget this during our time on this planet and get stuck in familiar patterns and ruts. To this point, as ever, I entirely reserve the right to change my mind again if my feelings change.
Wait, The Dating Rules Subtly Changed
It’s only recently occurred to me that dating women as a supposedly straight cis guy is a whole different kettle of fish to dating queer women as a trans woman. This really hadn’t dawned on me yet as, in my head, nothing has changed with my sexual attraction, I still, fancy women (though transition sometimes causes people to flip their sexual orientation as they realise they’re open to other possibilities). The big difference, however, is that the women who might be interested in me are probably queer in some way rather than the typically straight ones I’d previously been involved with when people thought I was a guy.
I’m still much more after the actual emotional connection than I am about the physicality, I class myself as demisexual when it comes to my attraction to others. I crave a connection with another similar soul rather than just simple hook-ups. Apps seem to be rather too transactional in nature to support this style of dating, they’re actually pretty weird places to connect with humans, I’ve literally had people block me because I’ve said I need to get up and go get coffee and will message later. The apps largely seem to be similar in vein to other social media apps, targeted for quick and regular dopamine hits rather than longer term connections so before you know it, the person you have chatted to has moved onto the next swipee as you did something unknown which annoyed them. There’s rarely any explanation as to why, nobody seems to want to be that accountable to a stranger.
Having had several really good conversations with a few queer besties of mine, I’ve realised that queer women and straight women typically date in different ways. There’s a whole new set of rules that comes when dating lesbian-identified women which I’m starting to learn. I’m told that lesbians typically want to be wooed by their amours (how this even works if both people want to be approached first is a little beyond me currently). As a trans woman, who dated as a guy I kind of want to wined and dined too because it makes me feel a little dysphoric to take on that traditional masculine role again and I’ve always hated making the first move.
Female Friendships
One of the large problems with same-sex dating is that I really don’t at all understand how to differentiate between strong friendship with women and the potential of something more. I’ve had a few dates which turned out to be just friendships as neither of us were entirely clear on what it actually was, before the event. I’m still just as bad at reading the signs from other people as I was when I presented as male because I tend to assume that people only just want to be friends with me. I have little idea how to flirt and be clear about my interest which seems to be an important part of queer dating.
Women have much deeper connected friendship style than men do in my experience. If you’re a straight man and you chat to a straight woman and spend a lot of time interacting then the social norms typically indicate that it’s something more than friendship and has the potential of being more. Straight men and straight women do not tend, typically, to have connections in this form because, unfortunately, it’s largely socially unacceptable to be that close with the opposite and potentially datable gender. It’s a real shame because female friendships are really nourishing and beautiful, I’ve always found that women are a lot easier to talk to than men and I’ve always gotten a lot more out of my friendships than I have with men who, honestly, I’ve never really known how to connect with. However, the flip side is that, personally, I’ve made several invalid assumptions about the nature of my friendships because I’ve been subconsciously applying these social norms and haven’t realised that the rules of the playing field have changed because for me, mentally, it’s not hugely different in this respect. There’s also the view that I’m seen as a woman and therefore I’m a lot safer to confide in, even if it’s known that I’m same-sex attracted.
Chatting to other women who date other women, this doesn’t appear to actually get any easier as there are lots of subtleties that come with dating your own gender that aren’t really apparent when dating the opposite one, communication seems to be key with the obvious question being “is this a date or just a friendship” to try to get an indicator but that seems hugely weird and impolite to me. My English nature still resonates strongly in my soul, despite knowing that the Georgian and Victorian attitudes that so much of our culture is based on is terribly out of date. I’d honestly find it embarrassing to be that direct to somebody.
I’ll leave you with this cute song which really nails it for me which one of my close friends shared with me.
Thanks for taking the time to read my this post, I’d love to hear any feedback, critiques or just to have a conversation about this as I find the entire thing fascinating. I also want to learn from your experiences because I don’t have many of my own in this area as yet.
Love Kat
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