What is Love
By Linda Kaye
Linda Kaye has long been active in the transgender community. She has been on the board of SPICE, an organization for the significant others of MTF transgenders. She has written extensively on family issues.
For my birthday, Vanessa, my partner, gave me "The Book of Life," by
Krishnamurti. It is a series of daily meditations. Once I began reading it,
I thought that the author had actually written much of it with me in mind.
One meditation begins with, "Love is the unknowable. It can be realized
only when the known is understood and transcended. Only when the mind is
free of the known, then only there will be love." He goes on, later in the
meditation, to say, "...Love alone can transform insanity, confusion, and
strife. No system, no theory of the left or of the right can bring peace
and happiness to man. Where there is love, there is no possessiveness, no
envy; there is mercy and compassion, not in theory, but actually....Love
alone can bring about mercy and beauty, order and peace. There is love with
its blessing, when "you" cease to be."
I've read and re-read this meditation several times, in an attempt to relate
it to my life and to my self. Each time I read and re-consider it, I come
up with the same thoughts. To me, true love is totally unbiased and
unselfish; it is a complete giving and accepting of self, without boundaries
or conditions.
In a partnership, I believe that there can be no communication, let alone
development of the relationship, without such love. As one enters a
relationship, he or she is often blinded by "new love" or possibly "lust."
We tend to see only that which we wish to see. We are blind only to that
which we want to see in our new partner. It is only as the relationship
develops and lengthens that we begin to see who this person really is. The
blind lust or love is suddenly whisked away, leaving reality. If, in fact,
the emotions we are feeling are strong and real enough, then they may, at
this point, extend to the reality facing us. We are at a point where we
must learn that our partner is really a human being, not a god or goddess,
and that if it is our choice to join lives, there needs to be more than
simple attraction and lust. There needs to be the beginning of
communication; the acceptance of each other for who we really are.
In discovering that your partner is transgendered, reality hits home rather
quickly. Not only are you faced with understanding that your partner is a
real person, with all the foibles, moods and lord knows what else, but is
also transgendered. Now you realize that you have a partner who has a need
to express an another part of their personality by adopting the clothes and
manners of the opposite sex. There is no right or wrong here; it is simply
a matter of fact. The feelings have been there for a lifetime and cannot go
away. They continue to return, time and time again.
Our transgendered partner is who he or she is....no matter what we say, what
we feel or how we wish to change things, reality is that they are who they
are.
Society imposes its bigotry on us from our earliest moments. We are
structured into what others think, in terms of right or wrong. Very often,
we are never given the opportunity to think freely, away from biases, and
therefore, when faced with a partner who may not be who we thought they
were, we allow those taught bigotries to surface and influence our part of
the relationship. We have a hard time accepting our partner as they are; we
have an overwhelming desire to change our partner, to impose boundaries and
restrictions. It is how we have been taught; I dare to say that we have
been taught wrongly. Rather, we need to learn to accept not only our
partners, but all our sisters and brothers on this earth, as they are, with
no condemnations, no attempts to change what we perceive to be different,
and therefore, "wrong."
It takes far more courage to look inward than it does to look outward at
what we feel is wrong in our partner. By condemning our partners for being
different, we give credence to the bigoted beliefs of others, and in doing
so, we betray the very love we claim to have for them.
I also suggest that in confronting ourselves, we expose our own deficits; we
allow ourselves a window-view into our souls. It may be a brutal revelation
and one which some people will never be able to handle. It is far better,
in my mind, to confront self, and face self with brutal honesty,
acknowledging those things we see in ourselves that we don't like, rather
than attempt to dissect our partner and condemn him or her for simply being
themselves. Have you ever seen hurt in your partner's eyes? Have you ever
purposely attacked your partner, with hurt as your main intent? Would you
inflict such condemnation on your own child? I think not. Why, then, do we
want to do this to our partners, and attempt to change them into what we
think they should be, or to deny part of them?
My partner is a crossdresser. I knew this long before we became partners,
and in falling in love with him, I also fell in love with his femme side.
It is important that I love all of this person, not just segments. His
femme side is as important a part of him as is his male side. By
expressing his femme side, he is sharing an otherwise secret part of himself
, that which he has hidden away through the years, in guilt, in fear and
always in pain. He needs to know that he has the freedom to share this part
of himself, without condemnation, without fear and certainly without guilt.
And, I want to not only give him that freedom, but to acknowledge and
welcome his femme side as a vital part of all he is, and of our
relationship. In doing so, and by loving all he is, I am allowing mercy
and beauty, order and peace, to thrive in the relationship. I am putting
aside prejudice, and all that I have been taught to dislike or abhor, to
simply accept and to love freely. I offer understanding, compassion, and in
doing so, this part of him comes alive, to flourish and to become as real a
part of the relationship as it is as real a part of him.
When you love someone, you simply love and accept them as they are, with no
attempt to change him or her. It is unfair to ourselves, and to our
partners, to restrict our love to only those parts of them that society
would readily accept. This is true in transgendered, as well as
non-transgendered relationships. Putting conditions on our love defiles the
meaning of the emotion and word. Only when both partners give their love
unconditionally and freely, will the relationship flourish and both partners
grow.
Linda Kaye is married to Vanessa Kaye, who also writes for Transgender Forum. The have their own web site you may enjoy.
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