May 112018
 

I had some conversations with the wonderful Erin over my week at WotF, about gender identity. It clarified some things for me about the meltdown of my previous relationship, which I hadn’t realized at the time.

I don’t have an internalized gender identity. For most of my life I’ve just defaulted to male (poorly) and ignored the issue. Then, for a few years, I tried performing masculinity. I was pretty good at it, and it was fun. Like role-playing, and seeing just how far you can take it! It also came with certain advantages, and finally resulted in a fulfilling sex life. But it was like wearing a false identity. It wasn’t natural, it was a neat mask.

For clarity, I didn’t think of it as wearing a mask at the time–just as trying out something new, and having a lot of fun with it. I was proud that I could perform masculinity well. It’s nice to find a new talent, especially one that’s richly rewarded! And now I know that, when I need to temporarily strap on the masculinity for advantage in certain situations, I can do so. But eventually it got old, and it started to really wear on me to be wearing this mask day in and day out, my entire life. It had taken over every interaction with everything in the world, and that was too much.

Unfortunately, I had met my then-current life partner near the beginning of the performing masculinity phase, and she loved it. Trying to move away from it while in a relationship with her was like coming out as gay while being in a serious long-term relationship with someone of the opposite gender, or deconverting after marrying a fundamentalist. They’re going to be unhappy that the person they married has changed into someone else. It woulda been easier if I’d known more about gender identity and performance when we’d met, but I was just learning and starting to try stuff out then. I couldn’t have any sort of conversation about this stuff, cuz I didn’t know it myself.

This tendency of people to change over time is why I consider all relationships to be limited-term engagements. Maybe we could’ve kept this particular relationship going longer if this was the only thing complicating it. But combined with all the other issues, it could not hold.

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