What is love?

What is loveOn this Valentines Day, it’s a timely opportunity to explore Love. What is that?

Is it weak knees, fluttering heart, goo-goo eye stares, candies and dinners? Is it an expression? Is it “love” when someone does something for you, something you want them to do, or expect them to do? Or is it “love” when sweet nothings the focus of your affection talks “sweet nothings”? Or is it that feeling you have just after sex with someone you deeply care about?

If these experiences, objects and responses to others’ actions is love, then why does it so quickly turn to frustration, anger, rage, hate, annoyance, bother, impatience, jealousy, obsessiveness, fear, intimidation and more?

Love is none of these. Love is not something you feel for another. Love is an advanced stage indicator that comes with practice. Love, the kind I believe in, is a feeling a person has about him or herself, that indicates something. In the sign, that person’s reality changes, or rather, the negative stories that person uses to create reality falls away, revealing a reality consistent with that person’s dreams and desires, including a relationship that works, families who love them, and joy, joy joy.

Period.

Love comes when you choose to stand in awe of your own invulnerability, the place where you create your stories which create your reality. It’s a joyful, inviolable response you can feel. Love doesn’t turn into other emotions.  It stands on its own.

Sometimes you have to choose continuously, second-by-second even. Especially in the face of realities your negative stories create. Over time, however, you create a permanency. You stand there in love. And all is right.

The former love –that stuff people do in your reality that makes you love them – that love needs people behaving a certain way. That love is not dependable. The latter love endures, as it needs nothing: in it you already have everything.

Love is a practice. Love is a gift: to yourself. Not your partner, or your relationship.  Here in The Transamorous Network you’re going to learn how to create your reality deliberately and not like a loose cannon. You’ll take back control over your life.

When you do, you’ll stand in your invincibility. Guaranteed.

On Hari Nef

I found out about Hari Nef on Pinterest, where I have a board dedicated to my desire to find my transgender partner. Today I just saw her on Transparent, the Amazon series about an older transwoman, who makes her decision towards achieving freedom and happiness. Anyway, Hari looks fantastic on the show – remember, this is fantasy, it’s not life – and the show, this season seems (at least in the first couple episodes) to take it to another level from the stupendous start it had over a year ago.

I also caught cameos of other transgender notables. You think Hari is pretty? I do. But talking about how beautiful some transgender women are is not what this post is about, nor is this website or any other property of Transamorous Network dot com.

What this is bout the state of the nation…the transnation as I see it. Hari is just one more of a list of notable figures bound to emerge on society’s main stage as transpeople make their way to the mainstream. Meanwhile, many transgender women are living their ordinary lives far from stardom, experiencing their own lives, lives far from the fantasy we see in the media. There are plenty people talking about the challenges of being trans. I don’t lean that direction as I believe there is a divine plan in place which every transperson and transamorous person participates.

What is this “plan”?

There is a shift taking place right before our eyes. While Hari is at one end, there is a lagging, yet no less powerful other end emerging. That end is the rise of guys who aren’t going to shirk from their love of transwomen. The number of guys “out” about it is still miniscule. But that’s going to change. In the meantime, transwomen are going to find, more and more, refreshing changes in their environment as people like you, assuming you’re a transamorous male, begin to accept the natural part of you that you’ve been hiding or running from or avoiding.

Maybe this post will do the trick. Maybe it will be the videos on the way, or the Man’s Guide to Finding Your Transgender Partner (due out in a few weeks). Or something I haven’t even begun to create. But the state of the (trans)nation needs you man. It needs you, not your partial self you are being when you hide from your social circle this dramatically important part of who you are.

Hari Neff is hot. But you’re hotter. Because unlike Hari, your romantic attraction to transgender women can turn the life of a transgender woman on its head.

 

Photo credit: Hari Nef (Instagram)

What is transamorous?

Blog 3 photoI didn’t know the word hadn’t been created when I first used it in speaking to my wife about creating The Transamorous Network. I thought it was mainstream.

Nope.

Turns out Piper’s Tumblr account was the first place it was coined, way back at the beginning of 2013 (lol). Maybe there are earlier records, but I’m not taking time to find out. This isn’t a journalist’s blog and I’m no researcher.

Transamory, transamorous, is the coined expression describing being romantically and/or sexually attracted to transgender people. That means a guy like you (presuming you’re a guy reading this and you fit that description).

I love the term. It totally fits me and I’m proud to claim it. I’ve been claiming the idea behind it for a long time. I’m out about it and don’t care about those who may have a problem with it. Although I’ll gladly interact with a close-minded person in order to free it (their mind that is).

So what does it mean to be transamorous? It means, to me, finding transwomen fantastically, irresistibly attractive and desiring to have a romantic relationship with such a person. For me it doesn’t so much equal being sexually attracted exclusive of everything else, although sexual attraction is part of the deal. Primarily for me transamory is about the “amor” – the love. The desire to love and adore a person (in this case obviously a transwoman) in a relationship where two grow to know each other more than they know anyone else.

Transamory should be distinguished from mere sexual attraction because of this. It’s more than objectifying transpeople, be they transmen or transwomen. In my opinion, you can’t love someone if you don’t know them. And you can’t know them unless you spend time with them. A lot of time. And you can’t spend time with them unless you have some things in common. So claiming to love someone just because they’re trans falls short.

In my opinion.

This is the Transamorous Network

Blog 2 photoWelcome to the Transamorous Network. I’m Perry Gruber your host. Yes, that’s my real name. I have nothing to hide. I am a transamorous male. I was born cis-gender and find myself irresistibly attracted to transwomen.

Welcome especially if you’re a guy reading this. This network is primarily for you, however, I guarantee transpeople are going to find this network uplifting, enjoyable and informative too. I’ll be posting stuff here for you as well.

Guys, I know there are a shit-ton of men like us out there secretly discovering their natural attraction to transgender women. I created transamorousnetwork.com specifically to shake the shame off the NATURAL, NORMAL  attraction to these new people, people who really could use our genuine love.

I write “new” not because transgender people are new. They actually have been around a very long time. But as far as public consciousness is concerned, the mainstream, including entertainment, dinner conversation and the legislative arena, they are emerging as a “new” “protected” class. I think that’s a fantastic development happening exactly at the right time.

I also believe YOU discovering your natural attraction to transwomen is EQUALLY new and NO LESS FANTASTIC. Men like us are slowly coming out more and more. I created the Trans Amorous Network for men like us to connect, communicate, gain reassurance about our natural inclination, and support the people we love by loving and accepting ourselves so we can turn that love toward those we desire romantically.

The Trans Amorous Network of course is also open to transwomen, transmen, gender queer and all the rest as well, as a source of inspiration and upliftment. I bring a unique perspective I will be sharing in these pages, in the podcast, in the Network’s YouTube Videos and in the products, services and events I’ll be offering our community. What I have to offer undoubtedly will serve to create more healthy, positive relationships between Cis-and-trans, primarily, but also more love within the entire human family.

This is The Transamorous Network.

Men: Your attraction is normal

Blog 1 photo(Warning: There may be triggering words in this post for some people)

So I’m sitting here thinking about all the directions I can take this blog. Yesterday, out with my wife, I was thinking about it too. Seems to me the area that may be best is focusing on facilitating positive relationships between transpeople and cis-people, primarily cis-men and transwomen, but including other combinations.

I’m liking that approach. As a cis-guy who has had extensive experience dating transwomen, I have a thing or two to share with transamorous men that I learned listening to these women bitch about us. And, I have some ideas on how men like me can easily and quickly find happiness – joy even – in our search for the perfect transgender partner.

I also know from sharing my thoughts with transgender people I know that what I have to offer can also HUGELY benefit transwomen. One transwoman who reviewed what I will be offering on this site said she benefitted tremendously from reading it. Her life has transformed. Great things are happening for her all the time now. I’ll write more about that later.

I intend The Transamorous Network to offer something for families with transgender members in them and transgender women and men as well. I consider this my contribution to the community. You may not agree with my feeling on this, but the transcommunity, broadly speaking, includes people who aren’t trans.

I can’t provide everything to everyone immediately. I gotta start somewhere. Sooner than later though, I’ll include information for more than just guys who are romantically attracted to transwomen, and transwomen who know guys like that.

For now, I’m just glad to have gotten this thing started. I’ll continue to ponder the approach for this blog and for the Network. And I’ll encourage all of you who are visiting early on to come back as I chart this journey.