One State of Compromise
This is where a matter of opinion rests, not judgment, that is no one can say what is right and what is wrong for another person, and we will all handle our affairs in a way that we see fit and best at the time. So long as all things are done with compassion I say. This is just something to consider...let me add, please forgive the simplfication of all this. This is an ideal.
In writing about opening up to a spouse I have this also this to add, "What world do I live in?" yes me, my world apart from all others, as if I were alone, "What is best for my world?". Sounds "selfish" perhaps, but it ultimately is not, one must be "selfish" enough so as to consider the happiness of all we love.
Because, we create the world we live in, if we are not in tune with who we are or selfish enough to know ourselves, and we are in a way where we reflect the expectations and emotions and approval of all, even our spouses, at the expense of our own, we fall victim to such "giving" decisions such as marriage to a person when we are so incomplete and disconnected.
Under such circumstances we all know of the potential catastrophy that can result, along with its mediocre existences. Yes we may be married by now, but should that philosophy now alter, why? Must I only be partially complete for my love once I have discovered myself? And would that be any good? Bare with me.
Marriage for me is not a martyrdom, nor is it a possession. I own no one and no one owns me. Yes, that certainly does leave me open to the whims of another philosophically, but the reality is we are anyway. But more inportantly, it leaves me open to be loved truly and completely for who I am and not what I am expected to be, for my love loves me for free. With that idea, would I also not be more likely to give my love the same in return?
I do not believe in that kind of compromise, where we must soften what we are or withhold truth any longer to spare a loves feelings. Feelings have a way of sticking around with such compromise, because the ground under which we stand is soft! Sounds harsh, but faith is what I had to learn in my loves ability to understand. Faith that one could see past their fears eventually, to make a choice of what is good for us both. My job? To just stick around and let them know I am not going anywhere.
Yes it could be a great upheaval and I dont say that lightly. But no life is without drama and I will not stop myself because prison, and a diluted life is a drama too, because for me the cost is far greater then finding my love leave me for something else better for them, and again faith in the process of truth is a surprising thing, with many ups and downs sometimes, but never ultimately regreted for itself.
Freedom next to love, is the most important thing to me even within a marriage. Not the kind that has no regard, or care, that is not love. But as difficult as it may seem, I for one would comply if my love wanted to build a ladder to the moon, I just might even hand them a hammer. It is not my place to tell my love who they are, it is only my place to accept it or not. If they change can I ask them to only be 50% of what they are? Not me, I wont do it, personally I don't feel I have the right, and secondly I don't want 50% of a person. If I don't like it, that unfortunately IS my problem, and yes I must make a choice and will. But then again, in such a place I can also build a ladder to Venus, and what can my love tell me but, "do it honey"?
So you see for me it is all about the nature of the relationship and what we think relationships are. It is a conscience matter, left to the individual, because there are no rules in love. How I see it, I want 100% of my love, not just for me but for the relationship itself, and my loves happiness, how can I claim to want that for someone if I wont let them fully and completely be. To have a fraction of the one I love facing me, would frankly leave me cheated, and left with that all to familiar feeling that one is living a diluted experience.
I write this also with the children in mind...
"there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." - Martin Luther King Jr.
In writing about opening up to a spouse I have this also this to add, "What world do I live in?" yes me, my world apart from all others, as if I were alone, "What is best for my world?". Sounds "selfish" perhaps, but it ultimately is not, one must be "selfish" enough so as to consider the happiness of all we love.
Because, we create the world we live in, if we are not in tune with who we are or selfish enough to know ourselves, and we are in a way where we reflect the expectations and emotions and approval of all, even our spouses, at the expense of our own, we fall victim to such "giving" decisions such as marriage to a person when we are so incomplete and disconnected.
Under such circumstances we all know of the potential catastrophy that can result, along with its mediocre existences. Yes we may be married by now, but should that philosophy now alter, why? Must I only be partially complete for my love once I have discovered myself? And would that be any good? Bare with me.
Marriage for me is not a martyrdom, nor is it a possession. I own no one and no one owns me. Yes, that certainly does leave me open to the whims of another philosophically, but the reality is we are anyway. But more inportantly, it leaves me open to be loved truly and completely for who I am and not what I am expected to be, for my love loves me for free. With that idea, would I also not be more likely to give my love the same in return?
I do not believe in that kind of compromise, where we must soften what we are or withhold truth any longer to spare a loves feelings. Feelings have a way of sticking around with such compromise, because the ground under which we stand is soft! Sounds harsh, but faith is what I had to learn in my loves ability to understand. Faith that one could see past their fears eventually, to make a choice of what is good for us both. My job? To just stick around and let them know I am not going anywhere.
Yes it could be a great upheaval and I dont say that lightly. But no life is without drama and I will not stop myself because prison, and a diluted life is a drama too, because for me the cost is far greater then finding my love leave me for something else better for them, and again faith in the process of truth is a surprising thing, with many ups and downs sometimes, but never ultimately regreted for itself.
Freedom next to love, is the most important thing to me even within a marriage. Not the kind that has no regard, or care, that is not love. But as difficult as it may seem, I for one would comply if my love wanted to build a ladder to the moon, I just might even hand them a hammer. It is not my place to tell my love who they are, it is only my place to accept it or not. If they change can I ask them to only be 50% of what they are? Not me, I wont do it, personally I don't feel I have the right, and secondly I don't want 50% of a person. If I don't like it, that unfortunately IS my problem, and yes I must make a choice and will. But then again, in such a place I can also build a ladder to Venus, and what can my love tell me but, "do it honey"?
So you see for me it is all about the nature of the relationship and what we think relationships are. It is a conscience matter, left to the individual, because there are no rules in love. How I see it, I want 100% of my love, not just for me but for the relationship itself, and my loves happiness, how can I claim to want that for someone if I wont let them fully and completely be. To have a fraction of the one I love facing me, would frankly leave me cheated, and left with that all to familiar feeling that one is living a diluted experience.
I write this also with the children in mind...
"there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." - Martin Luther King Jr.
Comments
Now the TG issue. Many of us find our TG feelings later in life after we are married, or at least they come to a boiling point then. But let me ask you all this. Did your spouse know about those feelings you have had since you were young before you were married? I know we tend to hide them, repress them and hope against hope they go away. But that does not in any way relieve us of the RESPONSIBILITY to inform a person we intend to spend the rest of our lives with that we have these TG feelings. Believe me I know and have told myself all the excuses for not telling someone, I have lived them, but it does not make it right. We all say that we want to be loved for who and what we are. Is that possible if we are less then honest with ourselves or our spouses, or if we have repressed the feelings in hope it won't be a factor in our lives. How can we love ourselves or let someone love us, for us if we don't know who we really are? That is why it is SO important to understand and communicate your feelings, no mater how hard that may be, prior to getting married or entering into a long term relationship.
What if we realize the "truth" 15 years after we have been married? Things get much more difficult in this case. But you must need to realize that your course of action may result in the end of the relationship. Not through any fault of your own (I am assuming everyone was honest and upfront about their feelings), but in the fact that your spouse may not be able or willing to have a relationship with someone who is TG. That is in no way her fault either.. Had she known before the marriage she most likely would not have gone through with it. Put yourself in your spouse’s shoes (so to speak). If your wife came home after 15 years of marriage and said "I am thinking I need to start sleeping around, I have always felt some kind of need to do that but in recent years I have begun to feel the need to actually do that". What would you say? Sure go for it honey. We need to go to counseling. No way, you do that and I am out of here. My point, while a bit extreme is this. Marriage does not obligate a person to stay with another when one person fundamentally changes who or what they are. If you got married and based your relationship on a known and communicated set of ideals, but then later change them drastically, well many spouses can't and won't make that change. Some spouses will be able to handle the change, some won't. Either way it is not their fault. If there is any fault to be found it may be in the fact that all the “truths” were not openly discussed prior to the marriage. I am so glad we can exchange views and ideas on this topic. I in no way intended to “preach”, but just wanted to share my wife’s and my experiences in this matter.
Children are another matter entirely. But I will save that until later!
Peace
Shari
P.S. this is something my wife said. Look at your relationship without the TG issues. How does it stack up? Is the relationship a loving, caring, open, friendly and has mutual respect? If it is most likely it will survive the TG issues. If not you may be in touuble. You need a good foundation to build on if you intend to introduce TG issues in to a relationship. Once again that is whay it is better to build those TG issues into the foundation. It makes the relationship stronger
First let me thank you, your tone is bright and your words are thoughtful. You care about what you are saying because it is clear you know first hand what you are writing about, and please know as I am sure you do, that this was not directed and anyone’s relationship but my own and if I understand what you are writing I don’t see any disagreement with you.
In love and marriage, for me I belong to the other, I feel that too. Now that may seem a contradiction from what I have said about no one owning me, but not if one where to think of giving oneself in love as in terms of a gift. I am a gift to my love, and my love has become a gift for me. But this gift is a galaxy. It is a complex gift, like giving one a universe, with all of its splendors and chaos. It is an ever changing gift with stars and moons that sometime lose their axis or crash into monstrous rocks that change the face of milky ways forever. Each night you would receive a new view of the heavens because all things are in a constant movement, and yes one can predict the vast majority of the time what the stars will do that night especially if one is looking, but so much is uncharted.
We accept the heavens for what they are, partial because we have no choice but to. We know we cannot change it or alter it, but only benefit from it and yet still we remain at the mercy of it. Everything in its relative position gives life to all that is here so we love it. That is love for me. So as in all gifts, it is given as it is. We take them or we don’t. Do we tell the one that gave us the gift to please return it to give me one we would enjoy better? Can we tell the galaxy to hold the sun in it place for an hour longer so that we may enjoy the day because we are late? We can shield ourselves from the sun, but stop it from scorching the ground? Fairness and what is not fair, is not as we know it in the heavens and responsibility is what it is in the sky. 15, 20, make it 100 years until fruition, who wants to live a life half way, and who wants to ask a person to do so?
I feel your wife is right, I agree with what she said. My SO, knew nothing about my TG issues and said she did not have a clue. At the time we met I knew not about my truest self. I did know of my drives as a child, and teenager, and even into my early 20s when I thought I had the whole thing under wraps and cured. But I did not connect at the time the impact that it could and would one day have on our relationship. So it would only make sense that I did not feel the need to tell her about it nor did I even remember it nor did it even come to my mind. I was a military professional when we met, and my mind was bound by that world. So in effect when it did become an issue I was just as bewildered as she was perhaps even more, because it was happening to me, I was the one changing in what seemed in a way out of my control. She asked if I had some idea about myself. I said yes I did in the past but not now. But because of the above reasons I did not say it, and it never came to my mind to say it. We were together 4 years when one morning I woke up and was a different person even to myself after years of dormant _expression.
When relationships end…we go into them feeling they never should. But sometimes, some relationships should. I agree with your wife, if two people are connected and intimate from the beginning and each with a open constitution, the chance is better for survival of such a great change. My point was that no matter how we conceal something, it is still there. Concealing or soften what we are is perpetuating an illusion, and that is the one thing in my mind that lead to such stress in the first place. With such matters minimized, I see it a condoning of a type of thinking that leads the relationship down a path or pretending.
What is at stake? That’s what this is really all about I feel. What do we stand to loose, but also it is not selfish in a loving way to ask “what is there also to gain, that is for me and my love?” This is my approach on that matter. Also, I am not one to believe that all relationship should last forever, nor do I now understand them to remain forever great, everything has a season.
Thank you Sharon, I actually deleted this piece because I thought it to self involved and not group relevant enough, so I am pleased you questioned it.
Thanks girl,
A
Let me thank you for your openness and amazing perspective. All we want for each other is to be happy. I can tell you are at peace and for that I am grateful and extremely happy for you. My letter was not intended to question your statement, but maybe to offer an alternative to folks out there who may not have the presence of mind or experience you do to see things so clearly. As we all do here, I was just trying to offer an alternative. I think we owe it to people seeing the GE site for the first time, possibility looking for answers, to see as many varying POV's as we can supply. As you well know there is not a one size fits all for every problem we TG folks encounter. TY again for your caring enough to share of yourself sis. You rock!
Peace
Shari