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We Are Not So Far Apart

By Linda Kaye

I have been corresponding with the female partner of a F2M transsexual. My friend is a very intelligent, caring person, mother of a young son, and she is a lesbian. Somehow, she found our website, and wrote to us, hoping we had an F2M resource couple within the Couples’ Network listings. We did not, but I decided to write her back and offer to listen if she wanted to correspond with me. To my surprise, she wrote back and we have been corresponding for several months now. What is even more of a surprise is how many of her issues are the same issues faced by the wife/partner of the heterosexual crossdresser, or the female partner of an M2F transsexual.

We are not so far apart. She, too, feels fear and frustration with her F2M partner. There are the issues of the name change, for instance - she has a difficult time adjusting to the male name, when her partner has always had a female name. There are the sexual issues, which are frightening, and rightly so, to her. She is a lesbian; she is attracted to women; she is attracted to her female partner; she is worried about now having a male partner. Her sexuality is at risk here - despite her intense love for her life partner, she is frightened that she will not be able to respond to her partner as a male.

Then there are the feelings that her partner is so intensely involved with her/his metamorphoses, that my friend is being left behind. My friend doesn’t know about men, their issues, their needs, and she is fearful that she cannot make her partner happy once the transition is complete. And, my friend feels as though she is not being given the time to work through the issues, and she feels guilty if she tries to ask for patience from her transitioning partner. Her partner is so intense in the desire to transition, that he cannot relate to where my friend is. He cannot wait for her to catch up. His personal pain/frustrations/needs/plans must go forward, and my friend is finding this so difficult.

Does all of this sound familiar? I thought so. My friend and I may have different sexual needs; yet, we are both women, with special needs, emotions, desires. Those are the same. We both need honesty from our partners; we need patience and communication; we need to continue to feel desired as women, and we need to know we are loved. We need to be appreciated, as women, and our intelligence and worth as humans, as well as women, need reaffirmation.

In our gender community, we often see great diversity, not to mention great divisions. Too often we see individual egos get in the way of helping others; personal agendas abound. We are told that there can be little communication amongst the many sections of the gender spectrum; I say this is nothing more than baloney. On the surface, we may seem worlds apart, but inside, we are still humans, with a diversity of emotions, intelligences, joys, and fears. We experience so many of the same feelings, especially those of us who are gender female. We are women, and we often feel this womanhood threatened when our chosen partners are not who we thought they were. We may feel that we are the ones who will have to make the sacrifices, if we choose to remain in the relationship and make it workable and fulfilling. However, we also often forget that our partners have suffered in so many ways, over the years. It may seem that we are the ones who will have to do the changing, the adapting; yet, we often don’t realize or care to recall that our partners simply cannot help who they are and that they have been through a variety of hells over the years. Is it fair? No, but then life is rarely fair.

Relationships are basically all the same in that they cannot survive without love, the commitment and communication . It can be tiring, frustrating, overwhelming at times. Only the partners within the relationship can decide if it is worth the fight to make it good. But if that decision is jointly made, then there is hope, and the love, commitment and communication are the paths to making it workable.

However, in my mind, workable is not enough. There has to be fulfillment, a feeling of contentment, and a feeling that you are never alone. The inner connection between two committed, loving partners is an ongoing event; it never ends, just as the communication should never end. There can be no path walked alone; it must be done together.

A lesson can be learned from all of this. We, within the community are not so far apart as might be thought. Diversity does not necessarily mean that we can’t relate to what the other feels. Instead, diversity is simply an expression of uniqueness as humans, and we should rejoice in the diversity rather than degrade it. It makes me wonder how many more friends I’ve never met are out there in our genderland. Many, I hope, for I treasure friendships and you can never have too many friends.

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