So, as I alluded to in the not-at-all-dramatic ending of my last post, Leif and I split up. Sort of. Basically. It’s a little complicated. Bleh. Okay, so, here’s the gist. He and I had been having some trouble for, well, a while. But, we loved each other and were trying our best to make it work. In July of 2023 we moved here to Boston. In October we decided after ~7 years of talking about it to finally open up our relationship. Leif started seeing this guy, who we’ll call Link for now as he is also rightly Legend of Zelda obsessed and I think he’s a lovely human and I want to protect his privacy. 

Leif doesn’t do hookups–which is what I had initially wanted–he needs more intimacy. So, he and Link became close FWBs in a way that was initially really hard for me to deal with. I was overwhelmed with feelings of jealousy when they would spend long evenings together which to me felt like dates especially when they ended in sex. I was having some hookups myself, not many, but a few, but they were short and simple. I wasn’t having dates-dates and I was learning that I had actually desired that. That I was missing the intimacy as well and wanting that and not just a quick fuck. Enter January, 2024, Stage Left.

In January, Leif and I were supposed to go Cape Cod (or just The Cape, here, apparently 🙄). The idea is that every year we rent a cabin (read: more often than not just an Airbnb house) with friends in a place nearby one of us and that cabin has a hot tub. Leif and I were having some troubles, and I wanted to have some dates. I thought this would be a good time to do so. So, he went with his friends as originally scheduled and I decided to stay behind. I planned 3 dates, one for each day he was gone (Fri-Sun). I had no idea that those 3 dates were going to destroy the little shell left of my trans-egg.

Friday, I went on a date with this trans-masc guy who I’ll omit naming for privacy purposes. We had been flirting for a month or two and had hung out as friends with others a couple of times, and decided to finally connect 1:1. We kept it PC, but there was some polite flirting and discussion of more, but I was pretty scared/nervous being on my first date-date in, well, like 13 years with anyone else other than Leif. (This guy would later get mad at me for reasons, but that’s another blog post for later…)

Saturday I had a lovely date with this woman who I’ll refer to as Tory. (Another fake name, but I feel weird naming her here without discussing it with her.) She lives in DC but is from the Boston area and was back for the weekend visiting friends. We had met on Bumble in early November and she was having a really similar situation with her partner as I was with mine. We had some bonding through it, and also she made me laugh a lot and we had started developing a friendship. Since she was in town, we decided to go on a date. It was lovely. Except for us getting rained on and all my makeup getting ruined 😤. But it was an excuse to return home and change, which led to some fun conversations and after some dinner and drinks at the local lesbian-owned pub, some fun makeouts. She pinned me down against the couch and threatened to top me and I was living for it. I hadn’t been with a woman in over a decade and Tory was a powerhouse. She knew what she wanted, and she was not afraid to go for it. She was hot. It was hot. I realized the feelings I was having were definitely sexual in nature but different than what I had experienced with others. I wanted her to touch me, but not just my dick. I wanted her to touch me everywhere and when she pinned me I felt like I was hers to do whatever she wanted. We kept things mostly PG-13 since it was just a first date, but it was a 🔥🔥🔥 PG-13  🔥🔥🔥. I never got hard during our date, but I was crazy aroused. It was insightful, to say the least…

The next day, Sunday, I had a date with my good friend Liz (guess what, fake name). She’s a trans woman I’ve met here and have grown close with. Also, she is the partner of the guy from Friday 😅🫠 (Scandalous! But also not, they both knew and are in an open relationship, but I suspect this led to some of the aforementioned drama with mr. anonymous). I talked with Liz about desire, and my sexuality, and about my gender, in-between some hot makeout sessions on the same couch. (I wonder what my neighbors thought if they saw all this with different people day after day?) Before this date, we went out to brunch with a few other trans friends. I had posed the question “how often do you all think about bottom surgery?” Looking back at this question 5 months later, I laugh as I remember them all looking at each other and giving the “this fucking egg” glance. To no one’s surprise, several of us thought of it pretty regularly, and as a nonbinary person who thought of it every fucking day, I was starting to see a trend…

Back to Liz and I making out – well, it was fun and it was hot – but more importantly it was helpful. I was able to spend the time I desired with women and have the experiences I needed to help me understand fluidity and borders between my sexuality from my gender. I was able to talk with both Tory and Liz about them. It was truly fascinating and clarifying. That night, after Liz left and I had some hours to go for a walk and think, I would end up texting Leif: “I have some (good!) things to talk with you about tomorrow when you’re home […] the gist is that I’m going to consider HRT & bottom surgery again.” 🐣 This was the beginning of the end of our relationship. Well, maybe not the beginning. But, it was certainly the beginning of this chapter, which would be the final chapter in our 13 year romance.

I came out that night, January 14, 2024 as trans-femme and not just non-binary. I quickly booked an appointment at the local LGBTQ clinic, Fenway Health, and started up on HRT pretty quickly. Leif and I had many conversations, most of them difficult and painful, about my identity. We struggled for months figuring out what we wanted and how we wanted to do it it. In mid-March, Leif let me know “This isn’t working for me.” These words were a dagger in my chest. I knew it was coming but I wanted to Ostritch my head into the sand as long as possible. When he came clean with his feelings about my gender identity and how it made him feel romantically, I wanted to run away. I wanted to be anywhere except right next to him. But, I sat and listened. He would go on to apologize and say many more things about how he wished he could be what I needed, but I can’t remember all the words. I just remember a flood of tears building like raising water pressing against a dam. And, eventually, the dam and I both lost our structural integrity and the flood gates opened. I cried. I cried and cried for what felt like hours. I knew it wasn’t his fault but this was the end of our near 13-year relationship. Near the anniversary of when we met. We had just bought a house together. We had plans for our future. Now, everything was in jeopardy. I hated being trans in that moment. This identity that felt like it ruined my life. I wished I were different. I wished I could be who he wanted me to be, in the same way he wished he could be who I wanted to be. But I can’t be, and neither can he.

Let me just say that since mid March things have gone flawlessly and that neither one of us has said or done things we regret over these last ~7 weeks. No more tears. Everything is perfect 🤩. (Note to self: …Yep, I’m still terrible at lying it turns out. Worth checking.) So things have been a fucking shit show, right? Like, absolute dumpster fire. But, we’re trying our best to figure things out. This post is already SO LONG and I wanted to talk about 172 other things here that I’m skipping and not getting to. I’ll write again soon as I have to go. But I promised lesbianism and there hasn’t been enough of that, so let me foreshadow: Guess who is a woman?! SHOCKING, I know. Try to contain your surprise. ALSO, guess who is now dating another woman!? Look, coming out as a woman was one thing, but working through the implication that means I am not in the gay men community but now the lesbian community has been a real mindfuck. Truly wild. BUT, I’m having a good fucking time with it as well and while things are complicated (see first paragraph), I’m also having FUN. Lots of it. Passionate, hot fun. I’m exploring parts of life I didn’t know I would have. I’m exploring feelings I never knew I could have. I’m exploring my identity and it is fucking brilliant. I’m exploring my life as a lesbian. 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏳️‍🌈