Category: Cis-trans relationships

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The Hidden Sabotage Pattern In Trans Relationships

TL;DR: The author examines how conscious awareness interrupted a destructive emotional pattern, revealing a powerful turning point inside a transamorous relationship.

When I wrote “When the Honeymoon Ends: Powerful Truths at Work Like Magic,” I described a stage of relationship development many people never fully understand until they are inside it.

The “honeymoon phase” is intoxicating. There, projection is still doing much of the work. In that phase, the relationship’s novelty conceals through chemistry what’s really happening. That undeniable flood of endorphins and other positive chemicals in our bodies hides patterns of belief that ordinarily would trigger insecurity in both parties.

From another perspective, the perspective that is the practice through which I help clients with their relationships, what’s happening in the honeymoon stage is, two people see one another from the pure positive lens that is their “enlightened” way of seeing the world. They see each other as they see themselves – free of fears, negative expectations, free of insecurities. That’s why the honeymoon stage feels so good.

That’s also why, when “the honeymoon is over” many are bewildered about how they got where they are. Desire no longer overrides unresolved thought and belief momentum. That momentum then, begins to taint what was once blissful. Common, familiar belief patterns surface and what was once blissful turns burdensome.

Meanwhile, desire overrides unresolved momentum allowing a perception that ignores what’s always there. During the “Honeymoon”, both people can temporarily feel larger than life.

“Reality” begins pressing upward through the fantasy. And when it does, that moment offers an opportunity for glorious expansion for both parties. If, that is, both parties are aware.

Old attachment “wounds” reawaken, fear of abandonment emerges, possessiveness appears and control strategies activate to sooth those “wounds”. These are the opportunities. But, for many, this is when people withdraw. Others become hypervigilant while certain other individuals unconsciously begin creating chaos. That’s because chaos is more familiar, more comfortable to them than stability and love.

And that is where the real work begins.

An extraordinary moment

“Bob” recently experienced one of the clearest examples of this dynamic I’ve witnessed in some time. What made it remarkable was what he did with what happened.

During one of our sessions, he described how one evening he became triggered around his transgender partner. Jealousy surged through him over something she said or something he believed she had done. The specifics of the trigger matter less than the pattern it activated internally. Almost immediately, he recognized an old impulse arising inside himself, one he knew intimately from previous relationships.

He wanted to blow everything up.

In earlier periods of his life, Bob had a tendency, particularly during emotionally overwhelming relationship moments, to create massive upheaval. He spoke candidly about old situations where he nearly detonated entire relationships, jeopardized his stability, and created destruction around himself simply because the emotional intensity became too great to regulate.

Many people reading this might understand exactly what I mean. Some people do not just react emotionally. They escalate situations until the entire relational field falls apart. Once that process starts, they often feel powerful, righteous, or liberated while simultaneously destroying the very thing they value most.

As Bob recognized that impulse beginning to rise in real time, he fell back on what we talked about in our sessions. He realized this relationship he had, which was powerfully affirming his transamory, was way more valuable than his desire to feel safe in the moment. He also realized the beautiful connection he’s found with his transgender partner I’ll call Maria, was something that brought him a completion he’d never felt before.

For Bob, that moment of recognition was extraordinary. And it was enough to shake old, knee-jerk responses to insecurity.

Benefits of “The Practice”

Most people can’t catch themselves like Bob did until after the damage is done. Awareness usually arrives post-explosion. They send the text or they cheat and then later regret those acts. They will scream or they will disappear. Sometimes they project, accusing their partner, or they provoke them, hoping the partner will do the dismantling.

In other words, when people don’t catch the impulse, they will unconsciously sabotage out of the need to protect themselves from an imaginary experience, one that’s not real. Afterward, they’ll reflect on what happened and wonder why they did it. But it’s too late by then.

What unfolded for Bob, however, was different. As a result of his work with the Transamorous Network processes, which build powerful cis-trans relationships, he became conscious while the pattern was activating. What’s remarkable, to be honest, is, Bob didn’t really allow much of the actual process into his life. He preferred to drive his sessions and not do homework assignments which are part of the process.

But the conversation itself is powerful. It alone influences clients in ways they find remarkable. Just yesterday, at the time of writing this, two clients mentioned positive contributions to their lives meeting with me has created. Clients who put in to practice what I share in-session, enjoy an altogether richer experience. 

As a result of his work with the The Transamorous Network processes, which build powerful cis-trans relationships, Bob became conscious while the pattern was activating.

The “Blow it Up” Strategy

For Bob, his awareness was powerful. The old momentum was still there, his nervous system activation was still there as was the primal emotional energy, the energy to destroy a really good thing. Yet another layer of awareness emerged alongside all that.

So instead of becoming the reaction completely, he observed the reaction occurring inside him. That distinction may sound subtle, but it is not subtle at all. That distinction changes destiny. And Bob saw that.

One of the reasons I emphasize conscious awareness so strongly in my client work is because awareness interrupts momentum. Momentum itself is not evil or even bad. It’s actually very positive when harnessed. Momentum, once a client understands what it is, allows clients to create anything they desire, including ideal romantic relationships.

The practiced energy that momentum is, therefore, is actually good. As such, most destructive relational patterns are not happening because someone is “bad.” And all relational patterns are based on momentum. Patterns people label “bad” are happening because the nervous system has rehearsed a particular emotional strategy so many times the body executes it automatically.

For some people, that strategy is withdrawal, while, for others it’s manipulation, accusation, physical abuse, even infidelity.

For Bob, historically, one of those strategies involved dramatic destabilization. Blow it up before vulnerability fully lands, it asserts; burn it down before abandonment can happen naturally, it cries; create chaos before intimacy becomes too exposing, it pleads. Again, many people live this way for decades without ever becoming conscious of it.

Yet Bob saw it while it was happening.

An Amazing Shift

Even more importantly, Maria’s response helped stabilize the moment rather than inflame it. That mattered a lot. In prior relationships, Bob likely would have entered a feedback loop where both partners amplified each other’s insecurity. This time, though, the emotional field shifted in a different direction.

Maria saw what was happening and, as I often counsel my trans clients, she asked a question, then relaxed. That communication opened a door to reflection. It made space around the impulse which gave Bob time to respond rather than react. Maria’s choice wasn’t something independent of Bob’s awareness. Rather, it was a reflection of it.

Bob had practiced for a year being aware of his inner state and doing something about that. So when the crucial moment arrived, all aspects of the Universe, on the subject of his relationship, reflected his improved awareness. “All aspects” included Maria.

That was the “miracle”, the “magic” of manifestation available to everyone who chooses to line up with what they want instead of being lined up with what they don’t want. As a result of that alignment, Bob could choose in the face of automatic impulses. Having that choice is literally relationship gold.

Many trans women and trans-attracted men don’t have such a choice. They move through the world in-deliberately, unaware of what they’re creating in relationship, partners, friends, life circumstances. It’s no wonder so many don’t find the love they’re looking for.

People dramatically underestimate the spiritual significance of interruption. When a person can bring deliberateness to where they were once oblivious, amazing shifts happen.

Powerful shifts

When someone who has unconsciously repeated a destructive pattern for twenty years suddenly pauses in the middle of the pattern and chooses differently, that is enormous. The external world may barely notice. Yet internally, an entire timeline may have just shifted in favor of the person experiencing their life. That’s how my trans clients produce amazing lives including, lovers arriving at the perfect time, jobs landing in their laps with no effort on their part and more.

It’s how Bob produced his deep appreciation for his trans-attraction, transmuting it into transamory.

Now, the fact that Bob interrupted the pattern once does not mean the pattern is permanently gone. I do not believe in pretending people are suddenly “healed” because they had one successful moment of awareness. Human beings are layered. Momentum revisits us. Emotional patterns often recycle repeatedly until they lose energetic charge through conscious practice.

Bob understands this.

Part of what made his realization so powerful was that he was not pretending the tendency no longer existed. He recognized clearly that this old impulse still lived somewhere inside him. The difference was that he no longer identified with it completely.

That’s the real growth.

When someone who has unconsciously repeated a destructive pattern for twenty years suddenly pauses in the middle of the pattern and chooses differently, that is enormous.

Enduring love

Many people think transformation means becoming incapable of darkness, fear, jealousy, rage, insecurity, or destructive impulses. In my experience, transformation more often begins when a person becomes capable of witnessing those impulses without automatically obeying them. Awareness creates choice. Choice creates new momentum. New momentum eventually becomes our reality.

This entire episode also beautifully illustrates why the end of the honeymoon phase is not something to fear. The honeymoon phase feels wonderful, yes, but it is often unstable because it depends heavily on projection and emotional amplification. Once reality begins entering the relationship fully, however, both people finally get the opportunity to meet each other consciously rather than symbolically.

That meeting can be terrifying. It can also become profoundly intimate.

Bob and Maria are now entering that territory together. Their relationship is no longer operating purely on erotic novelty, fantasy, projection, or idealization. They are beginning to encounter each other’s deeper emotional architecture. Fear is surfacing, attachment is surfacing. Insecurity is surfacing too. Old survival strategies are popping up. Remarkably, however, love remains present.

That is the part many people miss.

Is the past prologue?

Real intimacy is not proven by the absence of activation. Real intimacy is revealed by what two people do when activation appears. Do they weaponize it? Do they flee from it? Might they collapse into it? Or do they become conscious inside it?

Bob did something many people never manage to do. He recognized the bomb while his hand was still on the trigger. Then he stopped. For someone with his history, that is not small progress. That is explosive progress.

The flood of chemicals that make the honeymoon stage so swooning offers tremendous opportunity. For that feeling is how a relationship can remain through the life of the relationship. Most people, however, allow old patterns to surface, turning what was once blissful into something not that.

Sometimes they turn it into something much, much worse, all in favor of hidden sabotage patterns and a false sense of safety.

It’s not a foregone conclusion this happens. Past is not always prologue. My clients are discovering this. If you’re struggling with finding a partner, building a relationship or find your relationship is on the rocks, I suggest you contact me.

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The Rare Kind Of Love Trans Women Fear

TL;DR: The author explores a rare form of love — transamory — where a man loves his partner’s transness as part of her complete identity and beauty.

The first time “Bob” said it plainly I got it. Even when he told “Maria,” she got it too.

“I love her because she’s Maria, and she happens to be trans,” he told me during one of our sessions. Then, after sitting with the feeling a moment longer, he laughed and added, “I fell in love with a trans woman. Fucking how great is that?”

That statement may sound simple to some people reading this. It may be off-putting to some trans women. But it is not simple, nor is it off-putting. In fact, in all my years working with trans-attracted and transamorous men, I can tell you that what Bob expressed in that moment represents something extraordinarily rare: the transition from attraction to integration. From trans-attraction to transamory.

Bob no longer found himself merely aroused by Maria’s transness. He was no longer experiencing her transness as novelty, taboo, experimentation, or fantasy. To his credit, Bob never experienced Maria that way. Nevertheless, Bob had crossed into something much deeper.

He loved Maria wholly. More importantly, he loved her transness as part of that wholeness. That’s what distinguishes mere trans-attraction from transamory.

Fragmented perception

Many trans women struggle to believe this kind of love exists. Some believe it intellectually but cannot emotionally accept it. Others dismiss it entirely as fantasy or projection or a fetish. And I get it.

A number of trans women have experienced so much objectification, fetishization, exploitation, secrecy, abandonment, and conditional desire that the idea of a man authentically loving them because they are trans feels almost impossible to trust.

And that’s because far too many men interact with trans women from fragmentation. They compartmentalize and conditionalize their attraction. Such men eroticize the trans body while emotionally withholding from the trans person. They split desire from intimacy in other words.

In those cases, the transness becomes an object rather than an integrated expression of the woman herself. That dynamic creates profound confusion for everyone involved.

What made Bob’s realization so powerful was that he was describing the exact opposite experience.

At one point in our conversation, he reflected on the possibility of Maria eventually undergoing vaginoplasty. Surprisingly, he admitted something that many men would find difficult to understand. He said that if Maria somehow magically became a cisgender woman overnight, complete with a biological vagina, he would actually feel despair. The reason startled even him.

Misunderstanding fetishization

This had nothing to do with her penis, nor the vaginoplasty she planned to go through. Bob didn’t want Maria to stop being trans. He loved her as Maria, the person who had gone through…is going through…the journey of being trans. He loved her history. Bob loved the integration of femininity and transness together. He loved what he described as her “very womanly” nature combined with her unmistakable trans essence. Bob even described the thought of her future “neo-vagina” as uniquely erotic precisely because it would still be Maria’s trans body evolving into another form of itself.

Now pause there for a moment. If you think that’s fetishization, you’re wrong. Fetishization isolates a body part from the person. What Bob was expressing was exactly the reverse. He was integrating her body, identity, history, energy, femininity, sexuality, vulnerability, and transness into one coherent experience of love.

That is transamory.

When I told him this during our session, he immediately understood the distinction. “Yeah,” he replied quietly. “True.” The emotional maturity present in that realization cannot be overstated.

Most trans-attracted men begin with fragmented polarity. The attraction often arrives explosively. Many describe feeling overwhelmed by the combination of femininity and masculine. Some become obsessed with the erotic tension itself. Others experience shame, confusion, secrecy, compulsivity, or identity destabilization. That last stage is what many trans-attracted men experience and often get stuck there. I’ve worked with many men there. I was once there.

Yet what Bob was expressing had moved beyond polarity into devotion. And devotion changes everything.

Struggling with self-acceptance

Once devotion emerges, the transness no longer exists as an erotic stimulus. It becomes inseparable from the person herself. At that point, for the man, the relationship ceases to revolve around “Can I handle this?” and begins revolving around “I love who this person actually is.”

That shift is what so many trans women hunger to experience but often struggle to believe is possible. And in not believing it’s possible, they prevent themselves from experiencing it.

Unfortunately, many trans women themselves carry profound discomfort about their own transness. Some tolerate it. Some battle it. Others dissociate from it entirely while longing to become “fully” cis in every conceivable way. That’s what “Stealth” is about. Consequently, when a man expresses authentic love specifically for their transness, it can almost feel insulting or invalidating for some trans women.

“How could you love the very thing I’ve struggled with my entire life?” That question lives underneath many relational conflicts I witness between trans women and men growing to love them.

Maria herself wrestled with versions of this tension. During our sessions, Bob repeatedly tried to communicate that his love for her included her transness rather than existing in spite of it. That distinction proved difficult to fully land emotionally for her at times, even though she clearly felt loved by him. She even believed Bob himself might be trans, or that he wouldn’t remain with her once she got her surgery.

Again, this makes complete sense.

Human beings often have the hardest time accepting love directed toward the very aspects of themselves they still struggle to fully embrace.

Transamory: authentic love

What fascinated me most about Bob’s evolution was how relaxed his realization eventually became. Earlier in his journey, he likely would have obsessed over labels, implications, fears, or what his attraction “meant.” By the time we were having these conversations, however, he simply sounded peaceful. His groundedness was obvious. Bob’s integration felt like it had been there all along.

He no longer argued with his own heart. Instead, he was witnessing it honestly. The “it” was and is the growing part of him that feels whole and complete. That honesty produced a level of intimacy many people never experience in any relationship, trans or otherwise.

You see, authentic love is never merely tolerance. Nor is it reduction. Genuine love does not erase difference. It doesn’t flatten uniqueness, or politely look away from complexity. Real love moves toward clarity. It becomes increasingly capable of embracing the totality of another being without demanding fragmentation first.

That is what Bob found. He loved Maria because she was Maria. And part of Maria is her transness. Her transness isn’t an accident, it isn’t something to regret, keep secret or hide. It is just another facet of the beautiful diamond that is Maria.

Is this love trust worthy?

Over the years, I have now witnessed enough versions of this dynamic to say confidently that transamory is not a myth. It is not a fantasy. Nor is it some ideological aspiration. I have watched men evolve into this level of integrated love repeatedly. Struggle typically accompanies that evolution. That’s because prior to evolution a lot of fear exists around what men see necessitates tremendous internal reorganization.

But it’s worth doing that work.

Importantly, reaching this stage does not mean relationships suddenly become easy. In fact, deeper love often exposes deeper layers of insecurity, attachment, jealousy, fear, and vulnerability. As Bob and Maria have already discovered, the ending of the honeymoon phase has challenged both of them profoundly.

Still, something irreversible had already happened inside Bob. He no longer loves Maria despite her transness. He loves her, in part, because of it.

For many trans women reading this, I know that statement may still feel difficult to trust completely. Some of you may even feel resistance rising while reading these words. Yet I encourage you to remain open to the possibility that there are men capable of seeing you far more holistically than your past experiences may suggest.

Those men do exist.

I know because I’ve met them. If you want to meet them, they’re right in front of you. Meeting them, however, requires you to remain calm enough in the presence of evidence proving your fears are valid long enough to ask a question.

What’s the question? I suggest you find out by becoming a client.

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Freedom for Trans People Demands A New Perspective

TL;DR: In this post the author reframes the trans experience through their mirror consciousness lens which shifts causality inward and away from blame narratives. Releasing blame, the author writes, restores agency, transforms relationships, and invites freedom through lived awareness rather than living a life constrained by seeking external validation or control.

If there is a common reaction I receive when I write from the mirror-based perspective, which is fundamental to the life approach I advocate, it is this: people hear blame where none is being offered. What’s meant as empowerment is received as accusation. While I’m offering liberation it is often interpreted as dismissal of lived pain. That interpretation comes exclusively from trans women.

And that reveals just how deeply blame narratives are woven into our collective understanding of harm, justice, and identity—especially within marginalized communities. Pretty much every marginalized community expresses the same narratives. These days, even majority communities often share those narratives.

Some Christians, for example, claim they are being persecuted. Even white men these days blame woke culture for their pain. But the focus I’m bringing in this post is to the trans community, which, of course, includes trans-attracted men like me. This is my audience. And so I’m offering an opportunity for liberation from a narrative that imprisons more than it liberates.

I’m not arguing against anyone’s experience. What I am doing is this: I’m offering a different framework altogether, one that doesn’t rely on blame to create change and doesn’t require anyone to be “wrong” for someone else to be free.

What a Blame Narrative Actually Does

Blame narratives arise for understandable reasons. People feel hurt. Some feel marginalized. Those same people are experiencing mistreatment for sure. Naming injustice, therefore, can be clarifying and necessary.

But blame narratives do something very specific: they locate causality outside the self. In a blame-based framework, healing depends on other people changing. Safety depends on the world becoming different. Self-empowerment and opportunity are something granted—or withheld—by external forces.

That orientation may feel morally solid, but it comes with a huge cost. When causality lives outside of us, so does agency. What’s more, externalizing causality makes the future conditional. It slows growth and advancement. Familiar unsatisfying patterns keep repeating and for good reason. Those patterns are offering feedback we can use to get out of those very patterns. But we can’t get out of them when we blame others for what’s happening to us.

Blame, therefore, can be accurate and still be limiting. It can also create repetitive patterns that unwittingly lock those doing the blaming in unsatisfactory lives.

Blame can be accurate. But it also creates repetitive patterns that lock those blaming into unsatisfying lives.

Mirror Consciousness: Not Blame, Not Bypass

Mirror consciousness, on the other hand, offers a radically different orientation. It does not say “this is your fault.” Nor does excuse harm. It also does not deny social realities. Instead, it asks a totally different question: What is this experience showing me about what is active within me right now?

The mirror does not assign guilt. What it does is it reveals information. From a non-dual perspective, life is not happening to us. It is happening with us—responding to our beliefs, expectations, fears, and unintegrated parts. Life reflects our stories in other words.

It’s reflecting back to us persistent stories we tell ourselves on many, many subjects. Again, it’s doing this so that we can do something about these stories, stories from which our reality springs. The mirror, therefore, is not punishing us. It’s not rewarding us either. It’s just giving feedback. What we do with that feedback is pivotal.

And if we do nothing, usually the feedback intensifies. Why? Because All That Is is intelligent and it wants us all to enjoy the blissful, joyful state of being that is the natural state of All That Is. It therefore lovingly offers this feedback, this mirror, so we can tune in.

There’s no morality involved in mirror consciousness. In fact, we could say that this process is mechanical, not moral. And that’s why it’s so powerful.

So why do so many in the trans community refuse to accept this perspective? Why do so many trans women push back when I tell them they are creating their experiences, particularly in relationships? And why do they blame men for their relationship experiences?

Why This Perspective Often Feels Unacceptable

Simply put, it’s because owning that we are the Source of our experience can be emotionally painful at first because it supposes that perhaps the problem is within us, not “out there”. Mirror consciousness threatens something many people, especially those in the trans community, rely on for stability: righteous positioning.

Blame narratives provide clarity. They establish heroes and villains. Such narratives demarcate the difference between us (those who share our pain) and them (those we blame for our pain). Mirror consciousness removes that scaffolding. Instead of asking “Who is responsible for this?” it asks “What is this preparing me to see?”

That shift can feel destabilizing, and, as I wrote above, emotionally painful. Especially for people whose identities have been forged through rejection, fear, struggle and survival. It’s also why this framework cannot be adopted through intelligence alone.

One cannot think their way into mirror consciousness. It can only be lived into. And this is another reason why many trans women reject this approach. They think they’re right about their life and won’t accept another has a better approach. Especially a cis-appearing trans-attracted man, someone who represents the very people trans people blame for their experiences.

That’s unfortunate for such women. For they attack the messenger instead of trying on a message that can radically transform their experiences for the better.

Some of my readers, mostly trans women, attack the messenger instead of trying on a message that can radically transform their experiences for the better.

Relationships Are Not Tests of Readiness

One of the most persistent myths in modern relational thinking is the idea that people must become “emotionally ready” before entering relationships. “He’s not ready for a relationship with a trans woman” some say. Or, “He’s fetishizing me in secret because he’s not ready to be with me in the open.” From a mirror-based perspective, however, this is backwards.

We are ready for every relationship we enter—because we entered it. Relationships are not rewards for emotional maturity; they are the mechanism through which maturity develops. Every relationship, therefore, is real and on purpose. Each connection serves everyone involved. That’s especially true for painful relationships. Not all relationships are meant to last after all. Many, nearly all of them, are meant instead to teach. And the teaching goes both ways.

But many people who feel righteous in their pain believe they must hold on to that righteousness, especially in relationship, in order to survive. It served them in the past, they say. Some even say holding onto this righteousness is an act of self love.

And here’s where we must make a distinction. This distinction matters deeply. There’s a big difference between “self love” and self preservation. Self-preservation is survival-based. It says, “I must do this or I will not make it.” Self-love is expansive. It says, “I trust who I am becoming.” Many courageous acts—coming out, transitioning, leaving unsafe situations—can be rooted in either. Both are valid. But they do not produce the same results.

Self-preservation stabilizes life. Self-love changes what shows up next. Confusing the two keeps people stuck repeating similar relational patterns while believing they have already “done the work” when they haven’t actually. And if the same relationship patterns keep happening there’s still work to do.

Why I Don’t Center Blame—On Anyone

My work does not blame trans women. It does not excuse men. It does not reduce complex dynamics to psychology or pathology. What I do with clients also does not place empowerment “out there.” Blame—no matter how justified—keeps power external. Mirror consciousness returns it inward, where it can actually be used.

My approach is about being free. Not “right.”

Freedom requires something deeper than insight and intellectual understanding. It requires confirmation—moments where life responds differently because you are different. That’s when this framework stops being theory and becomes evidence in life experience, especially relationship experience. When someone embraces the mirror consciousness approach, their life experiences change immediately. The change first shows up in themselves. Then, since life is a mirror, their external experiences change too.

My work with clients isn’t about assigning or validating blame narratives. It’s about creating satisfying lives by centering empowerment within the individual.

In time life changes so profoundly, the person changing want’s more and more. Amidst all that evidence they become convinced they create their reality. And in that state, they step into an immense amount of empowerment. When they do, they are ready to meet the relationship that mirrors that empowerment.

In the meantime, relationships prior to making that internal change keep reflecting the distortion that people outside of us are to blame for experiences we have.

Making such a switch takes a while for many reasons. For one, life is not magic. We cannot create a life we want without first doing something about the one we have, the reflection we’ve persistently created. We must first retire that life and that takes a while. But along the way, we get glimmers of our new lives. The lives that contain everything we want, including better lovers.

This Framework Is Not for Everyone

All that said, mirror consciousness is not a universal solution, and it is not appropriate for every stage of healing. It is for people who are tired of repeating the same relational dynamics. This approach is for those willing to feel destabilized before feeling sovereign. It’s for those ready to experiment with causality rather than argue about it or being right about why their life is the way it is.

For others, validation and advocacy may be the medicine they need right now. I see that as a timing issue. When someone is ready for the medicine they need, that medicine often shows up at the right time. Not before.

Where we place causality determines where power lives. When power lives outside us, life feels adversarial. It looks that way too. When power lives within us, life becomes responsive. Mirror consciousness doesn’t ask anyone to deny harm. It asks us to notice what changes when we stop organizing our future around harm. It asks “can life be better if we are willing to let go of putting our identity on the harm we have experienced?”

That noticing, that questioning — tested, lived, and confirmed — is where real transformation begins. For those ready to explore this framework experientially, The Transamorous Network exists as a space for inquiry, not doctrine. A place to test ideas against lived reality.

Understanding isn’t enough. Only lived confirmation makes the life my clients and I know is possible real. It’s available for anyone willing to try something they perhaps haven’t before: letting go of blaming the world for the world they experience.

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How Trans-Attraction Offers Potential for True Self Love

TL;DR: The author argues that trans-attraction dynamics repeat not because of blame or fetishization alone, but because relationships mirror unresolved beliefs, requiring lived integration rather than intellectual agreement to transform outcomes.

There is a particular frustration that shows up again and again in conversations about trans-attraction. It appears on all sides. Trans women describe feeling reduced, evaluated, or used. Trans-attracted men describe confusion, shame, and a sense that no matter what they do, they are already suspect. Cis partners describe a persistent sense that something important is being withheld from them. Different positions, same frustration.

What makes this dynamic especially charged is that everyone involved usually feels justified. Each person can point to real experiences supporting their interpretation. The problem is not that anyone is lying. The problem is that the explanations most commonly used to understand trans-attraction do not actually change what keeps happening.

When a pattern repeats, it is asking to be understood, not judged.

Consider Daniel. That isn’t his real name, but his story will be familiar. Daniel is thoughtful, intelligent, and deeply uncomfortable with the fact that he is attracted to transgender women. He’s afraid he’s gay. He does not see himself as predatory nor does he want to hurt anyone. Yet his behavior, when viewed from the outside, often causes exactly the harm he fears. Daniel compartmentalizes his attraction, hides parts of himself, and moves cautiously in ways that feel evasive to others. That’s what feels harmful to those he encounters.

Through all this, what Daniel experiences internally is panic. The moment attraction arises, a cascade of identity questions follows. He wonders what his attraction says about him, how it will be perceived, and whether it will destroy the life he has built. That fear makes honesty feel dangerous. It makes secrecy feel like safety. From that place, he tells himself he will figure things out later, once the panic settles.

For most such men, “later” never comes. Or it comes much, much later…

The Flip Side Persona

Now consider Elena. That also isn’t her real name, but her experience is just as recognizable. Elena is trans, perceptive, emotionally intelligent, and well acquainted with being misread. She has encountered men who treated her as an experiment, a fantasy, or a private indulgence. Those experiences taught her to read signals quickly and to trust patterns more than promises.

When a man approaches her, she notices tone, pacing, and subtext. She listens for hesitation and watches for deflection. Often, she is right. Her discernment has protected her. At the same time, however, something else has quietly happened. Anticipation has begun to replace curiosity. The story about what’s going to happen gets written before it actually happens.

Neither Daniel nor Elena is wrong. Yet when they meet, something familiar unfolds anyway. Daniel senses Elena’s guardedness and feels confirmed in his fear of being seen as dangerous or defective. Elena senses Daniel’s hesitation and feels confirmed in her belief that men like him are “tranny chasers”. Each reaction reinforces the other and the loop closes.

It’s also the point where many explanations rush in. Some name fetishization. Others name transphobia. Some name trauma. Each explanation contains truth. None of them, however, explain why Daniel keeps meeting Elenas who feel closed, or why Elena keeps meeting Daniels who hesitate or misstep at the same moment.

This is where mirror consciousness becomes unavoidable. “Mirror Consciousness” is a new name I’m applying to the approach I use to help clients create lives they love.

Trans-attraction is a function of “mirror consciousness”. It is an amplified version of what happens in all relationships.

Enter “Mirror Consciousness”

Mirror consciousness does not ask who is at fault. It asks what is being revealed. Instead of treating attraction as a moral test, it treats it as a diagnostic field. Certain dynamics activate unresolved material faster than others, and trans-attraction is one of those dynamics. That dynamic affects both trans women and trans-attracted people. It brings questions of worth, identity, and visibility to the surface, in both parties, with remarkable speed.

In that sense, trans-attraction is not uniquely broken. It is uniquely efficient.

Fetishization does exist, and when it occurs, it is real harm. However, not every painful interaction is the result of being reduced to an object. Some pain arises when someone sees a part of us we have not yet learned to hold ourselves. In those moments, discomfort does not come from being used, but from being mirrored.

This distinction matters because the two experiences require different responses. Objectification requires boundaries and exit. Mirror activation requires integration. When everything is labeled fetishization, the object in the mirror is never examined. Instead we project with blame. Meanwhile, the mirroring continues, only with new faces.

Daniel’s avoidance is not the source of the dynamic. It is the symptom of a fractured self-relationship. Until he can relate to his attraction without shame, his presence will feel unstable to others no matter how respectful his intentions. Elena’s vigilance is not the source of the dynamic either. It is the product of experience layered with anticipation and expectation. Until curiosity is allowed back into the encounter, discernment will quietly harden into certainty, negative expectation and, when what she expects shows up, blame.

Blame freezes both positions.

Blame Versus the Mirror

Blame feels protective because it offers clarity. It establishes who is responsible and who is harmed. What it does not do is allow movement, expansion and love. Once Daniel is fixed as a problem and Elena is fixed as a gatekeeper, nothing new can occur. Roles replace relationship. Prediction replaces discovery.

Mirror consciousness, on the other hand, introduces movement by returning causality inward without moralizing it. Instead of asking, “Who is doing this to me?” it asks, “What is this showing me about what is active in me right now?” That question does not deny harm. It changes where power lives. It also creates room for love. Love for ourselves and love for the other.

This shift cannot be achieved through insight alone. The few interested in going beyond repetitive patterns often understand mirror consciousness intellectually long before they trust it. But understanding does nothing here. What moves things forward is confirmation. When someone experiments with changing their internal relationship and observes that what shows up externally changes in response, the framework stops being theoretical.

Daniel notices this when he stops managing how he is perceived and begins relating honestly to his own desire. Without forcing conversations or seeking approval, he finds that interactions unfold differently. The urgency softens. The need to hide recedes. People respond to him with less suspicion because he is no longer suspicious of himself.

Elena notices this when she allows herself to stay present just a moment longer than habits born of pain dictate. Without abandoning discernment, she lets new information arrive. Some encounters end quickly, as they should. Others surprise her. The sameness breaks not because men have suddenly improved, but because her internal orientation shifted.

These changes are subtle. But they are unmistakable to the people experiencing them. People like my clients.

Real Change Through Relationships

This is why the idea of being “emotionally ready” before relationship is misleading. Readiness is not a prerequisite. It is an outcome. Every relationship we enter is one we are already prepared for, even if it challenges us. Relationships are not auditions for love. They are the environment in which love is nurtured, clarified, received and given.

From this perspective, there are no false starts. There are no wrong or bad relationships. There are only stages we move through so that we become more of what we are.

Self-preservation plays an important role here. Many trans women transition because the alternative – suicide – is unbearable. That is not always the case, of course. But for those others, the alternative to transitioning (remaining male-presenting) is an unbearable alternative. More unbearable than facing social repercussions associated with transitioning. So transitioning is more an act of self preservation than self love.

And while self-preservation stabilizes life; it does not automatically change attraction patterns. Self-love, in the deeper sense, alters momentum. It changes what feels familiar and what becomes available. I’m dubious that trans women transition as an act of self love therefore. If it were, transitioning as an act would bring with it new, loving reality experiences reflected in the mirror of life, especially in how the trans woman feels about their life. Such reality experiences don’t usually happen. At least not for trans women I encounter online, through my work and the work of others, like this person’s work.

Experimentation: the Way Out

The same is true for trans-attracted men. Avoidance may protect them temporarily, but it does not resolve the internal split that creates repetition in the mirror. Only integration does that.

Mirror consciousness is not a moral upgrade. It is not about becoming better people. It is about becoming more internally coherent. When coherence increases, the relational field reorganizes accordingly. Learning to tell better-feeling stories about everything in one’s life is the first step to gaining internal coherence.

This framework is not for everyone. It does not comfort anger. It does not validate “truth”. It does not provide villains. What it offers instead is authorship based in love. For those exhausted by repetition, that tradeoff becomes appealing.

When the mirror is seen, the pattern does not need to be fought. It dissolves on its own.

Trans-attraction will continue to be discussed, debated, and moralized. Those conversations have their place. For people ready to stop cycling through the same sucky relationship dynamics, or the dynamics comprising their life experience, a different lens is required. One that cannot be adopted through argument, but only through lived experimentation.

Understanding this intellectually changes nothing. Living it changes everything. If you’re ready to live it, I invite you to contact me.

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How This Trans Woman Manifested a Better Lover

I manage the this blog as well as another, called Positively Focused. Positively Focused also has a YouTube channel. On that channel I dive deep into the Positively Focused practice, which is the same practice I talk about on this blog.

A transgender client recently created for herself a remarkable series of events using the practice I walk clients through. It was worthy of a YouTube video celebrating the experience because she thought what happened was impossible….until it happened. I thought it so good I would share it here with my readers of this blog. I think you’ll find it remarkable. Definitely worth watching…

Trans women, like all people, are powerful creators. The best way to express that creative ability is by telling better stories. Like Samira has done, you can do the same thing. Nothing stands between you and getting what you want but you. Samira figured this out (pretty quickly). You can too.