Relationshipping

I'm in South Carolina today. All the flights yesterday seemed to work themselves out, my luggage made it, I was able to find my car in the parking lot where Elizabeth left it, so all in all what could have become a logistical nightmare went smoothly for a change. And, once everything calmed down here I slept like a baby. Thank God.

Even though it's not summer here yet the humidity makes my hair crazy. It was like that when I lived in Austin, too. One thing about Phoenix is that there's little or no humidity so (a) hair behaves itself and (b) everything dries out. Having moisturizing lotion, lip balm, and water available at all times is a necessity.

Today has been full of taking care of business. I'm a list person - that's what keeps me whatever level of organized that I am - so I put one together of the things I need to do here before I leave. I'm working my way thru the list item by item. As I said in an earlier post I need to be careful not to overdo things because I'm still far from 100% so I'm sitting down for a few minutes before taking care of the next items. I'm a very focused person so handling all of this in a workmanlike way is just the way I do things. So far so good.

The flight from Phoenix to Atlanta is over 3 hours long so I had some time on my hands. I decided to write a little bit about relationships. It's not necessarily specific to me or my current situation and I'm certainly no "expert" but that doesn't stop me from writing. As I've mentioned - it's a cathartic thing for me so the more I do the better I am.

I wrote this yesterday while I was flying:

I’m somewhere over America, as usual. I’m sitting in what I call a “double jeapordy” seat. That is, I’ve got the bulkhead just in front of me and I’m sitting right next to the emergency door so if there’s a problem I’ll either (a) be the first one out of the airplane after throwing the door open or (b) be trampled to death by everyone who ran over me before I could get rid of the stupid door. The good news about these seats is that there’s lots of extra legroom – I’ve got lots and lots of space. The bad news is that you can’t have anything on the floor in front of you so my stuff is all up in the bins.

I didn’t want to leave the perception in my last entry that I’m some tragically wounded love-struck fool. Sad? Yes. Confused as to how things got here? Very much so. Despondent? No. Disappointed? Hell, yes. Hoping that things get back to where they seemed to be a couple of weeks ago? To be honest - no. That is gone.

In all of this the thing I’m saddest about is the loss of a friendship that has been a special one for a long time. I don’t even have the words to describe our relationship – since the earliest days it seemed to defy simple one or two or three word labels. I remember her earliest days and I've watched her grow over the years just as I've watched our relationship change. But the foundational pillars to any sort of relationship have got to be friendship, trust, commitment, and respect. Everything else is extra.

I used to have a rule. When I say “used to have” I mean that it has always been there and I had always respected it until fairly recently. I think it's a good rule, and it has proven to be a wise one. My rule was – to paraphrase – that I “never get intimately involved with my friends”. The thinking was that when a friendship moves past the friendship phase and becomes physical or otherwise deeper in terms of intimacy things change. And, if issues with the intimacy part get in the way it can undermine the entire friendship – something I’m generally not willing to do. It's all about risk, and whether you're willing to risk the simpler friendship things for the sake of taking it deeper. There are no easy answers.

I’m not going to use my time here in the air to rehash details that are personal and that I plan to keep that way. I don't feel that sharing my disappointments of recent events are a breach of trust, but by and large I think I've done a good job of keeping relationship stuff private. I don't expect that to change. In light of recent events, however, I have been doing quite a bit of thinking and want to articulate a number of general things here.

When I first transitioned I wrote an essay about things I missed. I should probably write an updated version of it – ten years into it. One of the wittiest responses to the question “Do you miss anything about your old life?” that I’ve heard is when Oprah asked Jenny and without missing a beat Jenny said, “Yes. Pockets.” Now THAT was funny.

That has led me to ask myself about some of the things that I miss at this point. Many of them are pretty simple. For example, I miss holding hands. I miss being kissed to the point of closing my eyes and getting lost in it. I miss sharing the weight of the world instead of feeling as though I need to carry it by myself. And, there are things I do that I hate doing. For example – I hate being the one making all the decisions. I hate being the one who’s expected to be the strong one all the time. I hate long-distance relationships. There is an entire world or need/don’t want/don’t get things that I think each of us faces in the relationships in our lives. I’m certainly not unique in any of this. It’s just that sometimes things happen to either gently or forcefully remind you.

As with most things in life I think there’s a tendency to focus an urgency try to fix something when it’s causing acute pain for some reason but when the pain subsides so too does the urgency to fix it. It’s easy to become passive again to things we’re not getting or that we need from the relationships in our lives. I’ve seen it in others, and I’ve seen it in my own relationships.

We’re all also forced to make trade-off’s. It’s very rare to find Mister or Ms. Wonderful that provides every single thing you want and need in a relationship. If you’ve got that – you’ve got Nirvana. On one hand I feel almost hypocritical to imply that anyone needs to “settle” for anything less than perfect (whatever that is) but the simple fact of the matter is that life in general and certainly intimate relationships in our lives involve some level of compromise. That doesn’t devalue or somehow diminish the relationship. It’s simply the way it is. The question isn’t whether a relationship in it’s current form involves compromise so much as how much compromise are we willing to make in order to have the things we want? That’s not an easy question to answer and, in fact, I’d argue that it’s a moving target.

Regardless of any of this there are some basic principles that need to be a focus. For example, the special friends in our lives need to be a priority. That’s not to say that your intimate friendships or relationships need to be the TOP priority – if that’s the case then there may be bigger problems at hand – but the relationship can’t be a priority in our lives where words and actions imply that it doesn’t really matter.

Each of us needs to be there for our most special friends when they need us. That’s what differentiates them from more casual relationships that come and go in our lives. There’s a commitment involved and if we can’t or won’t live up so even the basic levels of that commitment then we need to be honest with each other to manage expectations accordingly.

We can’t wield the emotional connections that we develop as weapons. That’s abuse.

We need to find ways to remind the special people in our lives that they ARE special. We need to focus on simple things like fun, and laughter, and smiles. Perhaps most importantly in all of this – we need to communicate. When the fun is gone - it becomes apparent. It needs discussing before it

This is all pretty obvious stuff, I think. I’m certainly no genius when it comes to relationships or needs or the complex interrelationships between our selves and the people in our lives. But when any one or more of these things is missing and gets missing for a long time it’s an indication of something. Special relationships give rise to expectations – that’s part of the blessing and the curse – so when expectations aren’t either set or met then that’s an indication of something. And, despite romantic notions of unconditional love that I’d argue any day of the week there are ALWAYS conditions.

If you ever come to hear me speak you’ll probably hear me talk about some of the basic stuff we learn in Psych 101. I’ve written about some of it here on my website in the past. Most pertinent to this specific discussion is the model that is Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. In it he outlines 5 levels of increasingly complex human need that require fulfillment to move up this hiercharchy to the top – the nirvana that ALL of us are seeking – of becoming self-actualized.

Some of these needs involve feeling appreciated, feeling loved, feeling secure. And, if we don’t find these things in our lives there is NO way to move forward to become fully “happy”. Happy is one of those nebulous words that means different things to different people and I’d argue that it’s more of a mood than an enduring state of being but that’s neither here nor there in this context. These are things we need to find in our lives and that we need to provide to others. They don’t just happen by themselves. And, just because we have it today doesn’t mean we’ll have it tomorrow or the next day. As with anything – giving and getting these things requires ongoing effort.

This is probably all a lot of psycho-babble for some who are reading it but I’m confident that there are people nodding their heads in recognition that what I say is true.

The bottom line is that if we’re not getting these things in our lives we need to do something about that. Or, something will happen to force change. And that’s what brings us back full circle to how I started this little tome – about the pressures to change things in our lives that just aren’t working for some reason or to wait until the pressure passes and continue as is.

The hardest part of losing my family as a result of my transition was the hole that it left in my life. Something that had been very, very important for a long, long time – that took energy and attention and was a source of both happiness and sadness – was now gone. I had no say in the matter – it just was. That was a decision borne from the chess-game of move, counter-move that is life and it was a decision that I respected just as I would have expected it to be respected if I were the one who made it.

I’ve been fortunate to have had a number of special relationships in my life over the years. All of them helped to make me who I am today. All of them were treasured and valued. Some of them lasted past the point where one or both of us outgrew it – they transformed into something different – while others didn’t. When you’re emotionally invested it’s easy to see things in purely black and white terms. But the good news is that each of us has the capacity to love and be loved back. As far as I’m concerned – none of us can ever afford to forget that.

In the future if/when I talk about any of this again it’ll be simply in the terms of the logistics and the basics. I’ve said what I’ve said over the past week or so – and I’m comfortable with all of it – and it’s just time to move on. I’m tremendously thankful that I’ve got the capacity to feel, I have been blessed to be a passionate person in ALL aspects of my life. I have high expectations for myself and for others, and I believe in a bigger picture that will eventually make itself clear. I don’t see any negatives in any of that – that’s certainly not to say I’m perfect – but by and large I don’t see anything to apologize for in any of that. If I do find something to apologize for I certainly won’t be shy about doing it.

And that, my friends, is that. I hope to make my connection. I hope things go smoothly tomorrow. And I hope that things heal quickly. Other than that – life goes on. ☺

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Time to get back to work. Still stuff to do, and only so much time.