First was Ty and Danielle Mansfield's story... besides just being wonderfully uplifting and encouraging, theirs has the unique characteristic of having been subject to intense public scrutiny due to their engagement and marriage having happened after the publication of Ty's first book detailing his struggles with same-sex attraction. Danielle took it all in stride. Would my Dan be able to do the same, if I was publicly recognized as a trans-identified person? Dunno, guess I just get to wait and see.
Embedded in their story are some great statements on the nature of sincere love, and how it differs from simple sexual attraction... in Danielle's words:
I think so many people rely on their hormones and/or their emotions to drive them that they get stuck feeling for their spouse whatever those things tell them to feel. And then if they try to feel otherwise, to love their spouse more than what hormones or emotions tell them to do, they feel like they're doing their spouse a favor rather than recognizing that they hadn't understood how to truly love in the first place.
I feel sad for people who don't get it and who have reduced love and marriage to a mere shadow of what it was intended to be and how beautiful it can be.and in Ty's:
The thing I love most about my relationship with Danielle is the friendship we share. If there's anyone who knows how to make me laugh, it's Danielle. It's one of the first things that drew me to her. We love to spend time with each other.That last quote in particular brought to mind a wonderful tidbit of marriage advice that I first heard from a former co-worker:
It's great to be married to your best friend.Because my identity is asexual and I barely experience sexual attraction, one of those nagging doubts I've lived with for so long is "Am I even capable of love?" I find the above quotes to be hearty evidence that it is entirely possible to experience love and a successful marriage without the traditional level of sexual attraction. Even in my current relationship stage with Dan, I've experienced a wonderful shift towards emotional connection that was associated with a setting aside of sexual appeals... one more piece of evidence that I'm at least headed in the right direction this time around!
The second story I read was Jarrod Call's. From his story of transition from struggling with what he considered to be a terrible secret to openness and acceptance, a single line jumped out at me as accurately describing the root characteristic of these situations that creates so much pain and fear:
[T]hroughout my life I had often told myself that people only loved me because they did not know all of me.In all of my struggles with identity, depression, hormones, and every other private trouble THAT was a thought that was always present in my mind, typically making the situation an order of magnitude worse than it would have been with human support and connection. I was putting on a show pretending to be the kind of person that others wanted me to be, fully believing that if my mask were to slip for a moment then my relationships would be instantly doomed. It's a miserable existence to live a double-life like that... and even though one appears to be happy and successful on the outside, the real self inside dies a bit more every day that the suffocating mask is worn.
When asked why/how it is that I'm doing so much better (not suicidal, don't need a service dog, etc) now compared to where I was at just a few years ago, I've been answering that I finally got properly medicated. Now that I'm thinking about the double-life though, I realize that I've also made a partial escape from it... I wonder if maybe that's making as much (or more) of a difference than the medication? That would explain why I feel so comfortable at Affirmation gatherings, despite being 'straight' and an active member of the LDS church (both of which are anomalous conditions in that setting)... because that is perhaps the only place I've found where I can completely drop the act of pretending to be a ciswoman and openly talk about my genderqueer real self, with people who are honestly interested in understanding my experience.
After skimming the next two posted stories, I did a scan of the featured photos/names... and found one I recognized. Ed Hayward is somebody I had previously communicated with through the North Star "Transgender, Intersex, and Gender Identity" email list, whose transdaughter is in the process of pursuing SRS. Excited to have found a story on the site that discusses trans issues, I took the time to read that one.
Ed's story is a wonderful demonstration of parental love, understanding of God's love for each individual, and even church leaders who have refrained from passing judgement on the daughter's need to pursue a surgical treatment.... definitely a recommended read, even though I'm only mentioning it briefly here. The single line from his essay that I'm going to draw into my own personal discussion is:
When I realized that she was determined [to] walk this path and that there was no way I could stop her, I decided it would be better for me to walk it with her than have her walk it alone.Drawing a connection with my discussion of the second essay... living in secret/isolation magnifies the pain of the concealed condition; the alternative is to surround oneself with people who are caring, understanding, and supportive. None of us can ever really completely understand a condition that we've never experienced... but sincere efforts to understand as much as you can and to relate whatever parallel experiences you may have really do make a world of difference.
I think that's why I've been prompted to out myself at church... because it's a necessary step towards making the human connections that will benefit both my own spiritual growth and that of others who face similar situations. A brief assessment by church leadership that "there's no sin being committed, no disciplinary action is necessary, go back to business as usual" doesn't technically violate any gospel principles... but it does stymie the openness and honesty that are necessary for me to put aside the self-crippling mask and become a more temporally productive and spiritually strong member of the LDS church. I'm not asking for any policy changes or to turn everything we know upside down, I'm just asking to be the REAL me within the established system instead of maintaining an illusionary presence that benefits nobody.
