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This weekend I will mostly be climbing the walls due to romantic angst.
Ginger (personal kryptonite #1). Crossdresses (personal kryptonite #2). I think he's cute (no accounting for taste). For once when I told this one I liked him I didn't get the "fuck off I'm straight" speech - I got "I'm not ready for another relationship". And I don't think it was lying to be polite since he genuinely had split up from someone he'd been with years not that long before.
The problem is that the ex is still around and both she and I have, which suggests to me that it's correctly, read in him that he's getting to the point where he might actually *be* interested in another relationship. Cue her suddenly acting like a dog pissing on a lamp post, only he's the lamp post. Half of me thinks he's as oblivious to being manipulated as most men and won't spot what she's up to till she's managed to get her hooks back into him. Half of me is paranoid he'll be too lazy-cowardly-heteronormative to consider dating a guy at all. Half of me is already depressed about the fact I am *always* second best to a woman and this is just going to be another opportunity to be reminded of that. Half of me is well aware what my luck is like in relationships (out past "abysmal" and into "seriously is some deity having a laugh"). I mean like all of us I don't make the most intelligent of choices about relationships at the best of times, but the luck I have on top of that is just stupid.
And that's at least two too many halves so the usual rowdy-committee-meeting nature of life inside my psyche is not exactly having a quiet week.
The thing is they split up while she was living abroad to study for a year. The two golden questions of getting back together with your ex - what split us up in the first place, and has that changed between then and now - are somewhat complicated by that. What I heard from kryptonite himself is that the distance just exposed underlying issues in the relationship - but another one of those halves of me knows how "underlying issues" have a tendency to evaporate in the glaring light of tits.
Which, given the life I've had, is not something I can offer to a partner any more. See above under second best to a woman. (Personally I think I have most of the fun bits of a woman and none of the annoying ones, like the narcissism and the never being interested in sex, but YMMV.)
I mean it makes the whole thing ten times worse that the ex is one of those obnoxious perfect-femininity types. The ones all the cis girls wish they could be. Never a visible hair on her legs. Perfect size 10. Can wear a button-front floral blouse and look sexy instead of middle-aged. Parents will instantly love her. You know the type. I have the kind of femininity that used to get me called a man-eater before I transitioned - I guess these days it's more "FTM fatale". I like bling and high heels and clear, honest communication in relationships. (Not so much German-made firearms, seedy nightclubs with implausibly hot singers and people called MacGuffin, but hey, everyone's got a kink.)
Other News
This week in "things I'd forgotten about since I got past medical transition": being reminded that my gender identity actually shifts in response to the levels of various hormones in my body. When I'm running on more oestrogen than testosterone I genuinely *feel* more female.
Not enough to make me female-identified, mind. I lived 31 years on nothing but oestrogen and still figured out I was transgender, so if it's binary gender or death then I still fall more or less into the male box. But I'd say my sense of self wanders from 47 to 55 percent male, or thereabouts.
Which I suppose technically means I identify as an androgyne. But I still think the genderqueer pride flag is the least ugly one. (The nonbinary and trans flags can both go and insert their respective flagpoles into their respective orifices. Yeesh.)
This is one of the bits of transition that brings you face to face with how little free will human beings really have. Almost all the trans men I knew had the same reasction - when you see the number of changes in you that switching hormone sets creates, it's very hard to carry on believing that none of your behaviour is ever even slightly dictated by the chemicals in your bloodstream.
Ginger (personal kryptonite #1). Crossdresses (personal kryptonite #2). I think he's cute (no accounting for taste). For once when I told this one I liked him I didn't get the "fuck off I'm straight" speech - I got "I'm not ready for another relationship". And I don't think it was lying to be polite since he genuinely had split up from someone he'd been with years not that long before.
The problem is that the ex is still around and both she and I have, which suggests to me that it's correctly, read in him that he's getting to the point where he might actually *be* interested in another relationship. Cue her suddenly acting like a dog pissing on a lamp post, only he's the lamp post. Half of me thinks he's as oblivious to being manipulated as most men and won't spot what she's up to till she's managed to get her hooks back into him. Half of me is paranoid he'll be too lazy-cowardly-heteronormative to consider dating a guy at all. Half of me is already depressed about the fact I am *always* second best to a woman and this is just going to be another opportunity to be reminded of that. Half of me is well aware what my luck is like in relationships (out past "abysmal" and into "seriously is some deity having a laugh"). I mean like all of us I don't make the most intelligent of choices about relationships at the best of times, but the luck I have on top of that is just stupid.
And that's at least two too many halves so the usual rowdy-committee-meeting nature of life inside my psyche is not exactly having a quiet week.
The thing is they split up while she was living abroad to study for a year. The two golden questions of getting back together with your ex - what split us up in the first place, and has that changed between then and now - are somewhat complicated by that. What I heard from kryptonite himself is that the distance just exposed underlying issues in the relationship - but another one of those halves of me knows how "underlying issues" have a tendency to evaporate in the glaring light of tits.
Which, given the life I've had, is not something I can offer to a partner any more. See above under second best to a woman. (Personally I think I have most of the fun bits of a woman and none of the annoying ones, like the narcissism and the never being interested in sex, but YMMV.)
I mean it makes the whole thing ten times worse that the ex is one of those obnoxious perfect-femininity types. The ones all the cis girls wish they could be. Never a visible hair on her legs. Perfect size 10. Can wear a button-front floral blouse and look sexy instead of middle-aged. Parents will instantly love her. You know the type. I have the kind of femininity that used to get me called a man-eater before I transitioned - I guess these days it's more "FTM fatale". I like bling and high heels and clear, honest communication in relationships. (Not so much German-made firearms, seedy nightclubs with implausibly hot singers and people called MacGuffin, but hey, everyone's got a kink.)
Other News
This week in "things I'd forgotten about since I got past medical transition": being reminded that my gender identity actually shifts in response to the levels of various hormones in my body. When I'm running on more oestrogen than testosterone I genuinely *feel* more female.
Not enough to make me female-identified, mind. I lived 31 years on nothing but oestrogen and still figured out I was transgender, so if it's binary gender or death then I still fall more or less into the male box. But I'd say my sense of self wanders from 47 to 55 percent male, or thereabouts.
Which I suppose technically means I identify as an androgyne. But I still think the genderqueer pride flag is the least ugly one. (The nonbinary and trans flags can both go and insert their respective flagpoles into their respective orifices. Yeesh.)
This is one of the bits of transition that brings you face to face with how little free will human beings really have. Almost all the trans men I knew had the same reasction - when you see the number of changes in you that switching hormone sets creates, it's very hard to carry on believing that none of your behaviour is ever even slightly dictated by the chemicals in your bloodstream.
