Just in time for summer. Just in time for Pride. It’s season two. Watch our promo here. Episode one drops this weekend!
We’re back….
How You Create Reality Through Stories You Tell
Your Happiness: The Fastest Way To A Life You Love
Your life is supposed to be an ongoing series of happy experiences that get better and better. Then you return to where you came, reveling in the joyful adventure you had on earth. Transgender or trans-attracted, this is supposed to be your life experience.
That includes all the lovers you might want.
We call it living “happily ever after.” That’s why you’re here.
A lot of people would probably say being transgender or transamorous means you’ll be or must be unhappy. Feeling bitter, frustrated, angry, scared, annoyed, jealous, or insecure seems to come with the territory.
But there is no circumstance in which you can’t be happy. You only have to learn how it’s done.
In happiness you get all you want. Including love and security. No matter how many transgender women get murdered. No matter how many work in the sex industry. Those numbers don’t condemn you to an unhappy life.
The only thing keeping you from being happy and having all you want is literally “doing” life wrong. With practice and patience you can not only have the life you want, you also can be an example for others.
How to be happy
Happiness is not the result of doing. It results from being.
In other words, it’s a “being state”.
You become happy by being happy.
“That sounds like a circular argument, Perry. What do you mean?”
Let’s clear up some misconceptions.
Pursing happiness through material consumption or acts, including sex, is bound to disappoint. That’s because feelings you get from buying things, or from your action aren’t meant to be permanent. They’re meant to make you want more.
Which they do.
That’s why the good-feeling from buying a new pair of shoes, for example, goes away after you’ve worn them a while.
It’s why when you have a casual sexual experience, after the orgasm, you tend to feel hollow.
When you figure out how to be happy as a being state, not through doing things, then actions you take from that being state are the way you express your happiness, not how you achieve happiness. They are also more powerful regarding getting what you want, including a lover.
In other words, your doing is an expression of your happy state, not a means to being happy. How do you find happiness? By first understanding what happiness is.
Happiness is an emotion. Yeah, you know that. But, what is the role of an emotion? Have you thought about that? In all the conversations we have about this, no one (so far) has thought thoroughly about what emotions are for.
They just accept their existence.
Emotions serve a purpose. Figure that out and you understand why being happy is important. Then, when you’re not happy, you know why.
Next, learn how to make happiness happen. Then and only then can you become happy when you’re not happy. It’s not true that you are not happy because of what you’re experiencing. You’re not happy because you’re not trying to be happy.
If you know how to make happiness happen, then when you’re not happy you can become happy. You only have to know how. Then practice. Once you’ve practiced, becoming happy at any time is easy.
Stay happy long enough and you’ll create “happiness momentum”. Happiness momentum is when happiness becomes your steady state. It takes a while to get there, but when you’re there, it’s easy to keep it going. This is crucial for living happily ever after.
Here’s why.
Once you have created your own happiness momentum, then you’ve got it all. Because a consistent, happy state is the open door through which all you want easily comes.
There are other things you must to know. For one, you must learn to see signs telling you your practice is working.
What do we mean by that?
The world around you is your subjective life experience. Your life experience comprises a series of accretion events. They look like random compositions of people, circumstances and objects coming together in a certain timing.
These accretion events show up through a process guided by something. It’s not random.
What seem like random events actually are planned events. Who is planning them? You are. How? Two ways that work together. One is what you pay attention to, the other is how you feel when you pay attention.
Look at happy things or think happy thoughts. That organizes accretion events to match your happiness. These become your life experience. Look at unhappy things or think unhappy thoughts. That organizes accretion events to match your negative feelings. These become your life experience.
So, you decide what events, people, elements and circumstances become your experience. And you know which ones are coming by how you feel.
It’s that simple.
Nearly everyone on the planet forgot this is how life works. And that’s why people try to “make” happiness happen through doing: buying things, going on trips, being with others, having sex etc.
The pursuit of happiness doesn’t work because the pursuer forgot she carries her happiness with her. Happiness is not found in the physical world. That’s not what the physical world is for.
We know this seems preposterous pseudoscience. But a little test on your part can prove that it works 100% of the time. Like many things requiring mastery, you need someone to remind you how to see the signs of it working.
Make your life purpose happiness and you will live happily every after. Including finding all the love you could possibly want.
A Normal Man’s Guide To Loving Transgender Women
I love transgender women. Because I am out and proud about this, I get emails and calls from all kinds of people (men, women, transgender women, trans men) asking all kinds of questions about their transamory.
Men have the most trouble finding reconciliation. They find transgender women beautiful, worthy of love and, frankly, irresistible. Even while realizing dating transgender women sometimes comes with extraordinary drama levels. Despite that, many of these men aren’t struggling with that. What’s difficult is reconciling their attraction with being a “normal” man.
I’m writing this story –– my story –– for those men. The following is universal. Yet it is uniquely helpful for men right now. I mean “normal” men.
I write “right now” because men face intense (self-inflicted) scrutiny. Scrutiny well deserved. This January, the American Psychological Association (APA), said traditional masculinity is sociologically harmful. “[It] stunts male’s “psychological development, constrain[s] their behavior, result[s] in gender role strain and gender role conflict and negatively influence[s] mental health and physical health”, they said.Traditional masculinity is what I call normal men.
Feminism suggests the APA’s findings originate in male awe, envy and ignorance. Feminists call this Womb Envy. That’s a term coined by German psychoanalyst Karen Horney. Normal men find awe in what they instinctively know: Every human enters life through a womb connected to a vagina. At least for now. Forgetting their part in life-creation, normal men feel insecure and envious. Their envy becomes all-consuming. Willful ignorance replaces envy, allowing the subordination of women. Normal men gain superiority this way.
The result: Masculine wholeness –– which recognizes the female in the male –– gets lost.
This is what I’m seeing in the Gillette controversy. Men’s life experience is reflecting back to them their out-of-balance-ness. Like children, some men are reacting first, to Gillette’s spot-on ad, then thinking. Or not thinking at all.
What does this have to do with loving transgender women?
A lot.
It is this acting out first then thinking, or not thinking at all, that gets a lot of men in trouble. It also gets many transgender women killed. All, believe it or not, for the sake of love.
· · ·
I realized I was transamorous in my 30s. Before that, I saw “masculinity” and “femininity” as two parts of a whole being. Sometimes I felt more feminine than masculine back then. Even though I was having sex with girls.
Sometimes I would sneak into my mom’s closet. It was an endless sea of femininity. There, I would dress in my mom’s clothes. I used her lipstick and pranced before her full length mirror, with its ornate wooden frame and chipped paint. Her lingerie particularly intrigued me.
Often these sessions would end with masturbation.
That’s how I got busted.
One day my mom called me to her room. How did she know it was me and not one of my brothers? Let’s just say it was mothers’ intuition. Otherwise I don’t know. In any case, my mom’s love trumped anything else in our little chat. She didn’t want me playing in her clothes, she said. But it was ok that I was exploring.
That could have gone a lot worse.
This was before “transgender” was a thing. I mean, it was a thing. Transgender people have always been around. But it wasn’t in the public eye as it is today with high-profile transgender models, actresses, politicians, Julia Serranos, Stef Sanjati’s.
Even it if was, I was too young to know what “transgender” was. Thinking about that time, and times today, I can imagine how it feels to be transgender. Not knowing you are transgender. Then discover the word “transgender” for the first time.
It must come with profound relief to know you’re not alone.
The same is true for men attracted to transgender women. They think they’re alone. But they are not.
When I discovered my transamory, “transamory” wasn’t a thing either. I didn’t know, for example Lou Reed had a long term relationship with a transgender woman. But I sure loved his song.
Nor did David Bowie’s gender-bending persona catch my eye.
So when I fell in love with the first transgender woman I ever saw, in a Yakuza bar in Osaka, Japan, I was blown away. Blown away by her beauty. Blown away by the circumstances. And blown away for how deep and instantaneous my attraction was.
I was in the Marines at the time. My girlfriend, who would become one of my few fiancés to never cross the threshold, took me to see her home town. She thought I’d get a kick visiting a Yakuza bar. I don’t think she knew how profound that kick would be. It kicked off what would culminate in everything I am today. That and how I tell my transamory story with recovering “normal” transamorous men looking for solace.
My ex-wife used to call me her “gay boy”. It’s true, my feminine side is well-developed. I don’t cross dress or anything like that. I do enjoy reveling in that part of me that is soft, kind, receptive and open. And yet, I do present male, although I consider myself gender neutral. I recognize the female in me as much as I do the male.
And here’s where love comes into the picture. And by that I’m referring to self-love.
Many of my fellow Marines weren’t as appreciative of my nature as my ex-wife was. Or my mom. It wasn’t constant, but Marines can be callous towards someone not embracing the macho, natural-born-killer persona believed to enshroud what it is to be a Marine. Of course, the occasional taunts ended once I became a Sergeant of Marines. Yet, the juxtaposition between my feminine side and my masculine side represented a crossroads back then. The path I took was embracing both. Choosing to be me, I said to hell with everyone else. After all, if I could take shit from Marines, I could take shit from anybody.
In other words, I chose loving myself for all that I am. I chose that over caring what other people think about what I am. An aspect of what I am is a man who loves transgender women.
As I love myself, I love the blend that is the transgender female form. I love the struggle transgender women must go through. I love their strength. I love that they are sometimes reviled not only by men, women and society, but also by their parents sometimes. I love them because I know all these challenges make them who they are.
As my challenges made me who I am.
Today, I am no longer married to the woman who was my wife. Ours was a marriage of convenience. By that I mean, there was no better relationship for us than the one we had, which called us to become more of that which we each are are: more clear about what we want and more clear about our authenticity.
· · ·
I met my wife online. I hadn’t been successful dating transgender women. I had relationships, but the early ones reflected my own trans-attraction insecurities. My insecurity showed up in meeting transgender women who also were insecure. Insecurity is no foundation for healthy coupledom. It didn’t help that I dated in secret. In between cis-gender lovers.
Maybe that sounds familiar.
Insecurity transamorous men feel initially shows up in many ways. One is fear of being seen in public with the woman they find attractive. It’s an early “trans-attraction” stage of transamory. It sounds dumb, but it’s real. And it’s a step older transamorous men go through more than younger ones these days. Some younger generation transamorous men reflect their generation. Their generation accepts gender fluidity, so they do too. So they don’t experience as much insecurity.
Pro-tip non-sequitur for transgender women: Ridiculing and shaming men for being in this stage prolongs it. Want men to be proud to be with you in public? Stop shaming them.
When I met my wife, I was not intending to marry. I was open to a non-traditional relationship. Anyone I found attractive and compatible would do. Yet I entertained preference for a transgender partner. I knew, however, my insecurity wasn’t going to match me with a transgender partner of my dreams.
Today, many of my clients are having to unpack decades of being married to cis-gender women, when they knew they were trans-attracted before they got married, but didn’t own their authenticity. In some ways, I was no exception.
My wife was determined to break her streak of meeting men who were not good for her. Like me, she realized she was her problem. Not the men she dated. So we were a perfect match.
Relationships are always like that. Perfect matches.
Our marriage was a training ground. In it we were helping prepare one another for partners we eventually will have. It was our agreement.
As we together grew into our individual security borne of authenticity, we accepted who each other was. Our marriage’s dissolution reflected that.
If you’re trans-attracted or transamorous, married or not, you can’t love the object of your affection until you first love yourself. Especially if you’re married. A lot of transamorous men are married to cis-gender women. There is nothing wrong in that.
Still, if you are married, your wife knows on some level that you are different. I assure you fights between you two have a lot to do with insecurity born of that awareness.
Hardness creates more struggle. So does insecurity. Extreme cases result in death. Almost half the murders of transgender women in 2017 happen in the context of intimate relationships gone awry, according to research I’ve done online. Seems to me the sooner you embrace who you are, the better you and everyone else will be. You’ll be one less transamorous man hiding in their shame. That can prevent a murder.
Men loving transgender women is normal.
Love between humans is the norm. So it is normal that a human would express love for another human. Both men and transgender women are human. So love between them is as normal as any other love.
But I would argue there is no such thing as a “normal” man.
There are all kinds of men. The Gillette controversy shows that. If you’re trying to be a normal man and think that’s ok, you’re not expressing your authenticity. You’re expressing insecurity. Your “abnormality” is the norm. Your “perversity” is the norm. Your “sin” is the norm. Abnormality, perversity and sin are words reflecting societal judgment.
Fuck that.
Your individuality is the norm. That means there’s no such thing as a normal or traditional man.
Transgender people are here to help all humanity to come to grips with the fact that to be human is to be different. There are a lot of normal men out there confronting their normalcy in light of their transamory. Some respond violently, with tragic consequences for both victim and perpetrator. Others call me, or send an email.
If you find transgender women attractive, you’re in good company. All men will find the attractive ones attractive. Until they discover that attractive woman is transgender. But that doesn’t negate their initial attraction. It only masks the attraction with shame expressed as revulsion. You’re still attracted to her.
If you find transgender women worth loving, but struggle with it, that’s ok. You don’t have to figure it all out now. You will in time. My experience is, the journey is worth it. For you, for your relationships and for the human race as a whole.
The journey is sweeter, though, after you accept what you are.
On your way, consider doing something now to sweeten life for LGBTQ people. You might meet your match in the process.
Feeling Good: The Best Way To Find Love
Make a habit of feeling good. It’s a sure way to find love. Especially if you’re transgender, or transamorous.
Feeling good eliminates drama too. It also makes improving your life easy.
Finding trouble finding love? Finding it difficult to accept your transamory? Or maybe you’ve accepted it privately. Now you want to “go public”. But something is stopping you.
Feeling good can help with all that. And a lot more.
We are all meant to be happy.
Feeling good is happiness. Happiness includes prosperity and freedom, including financial freedom, time freedom and freedom of an easy love relationship. Everything you think as necessary to being happy, you can have.
You don’t have to deprive yourself. Or compromise. Especially in relationship.
You’re meant to be continually happy. If you’re not doing that, you’re making life harder than it needs to be.
It’s funny how we sometimes say “If I have that guy or girl I’m looking for as a partner I’ll be happy.” Or “He makes me happy.” Relationships don’t make a person happy.
Having that perfect partner in your life doesn’t make you happy. That relationship, no matter how wonderful, comes with button pushing, unmet expectations, and lots of growth opportunities.
Can you be happy in a relationship? Yes.
But not because of the relationship. You’re happy because you’re happy.
Happiness doesn’t come from having that new job, or that car or house you want, or that money you’re wanting either.
When you satisfy a want, you feel the satisfaction, sure. But notice: over time, that satisfaction fades as new wants come up and old satisfied ones get…well…old. 🙄
Relationships are like satisfied wants. They are meant to be fulfilled. And, just like you have satisfied wants, you’re supposed to have satisfying relationships.
It takes a while to get to lasting happiness. Not because it’s hard – it’s easy.
It takes a while though because you have to slow your old way of living’s influence. Thinking life is hard, that you must work hard, that relationships are hard, that “you don’t always get what you want”, that men are all X and women are all Y, these kinds of thoughts act against your happiness. You have to replace those stories with new ones. Then you have to make them as automatic as the stories you now tell yourself.
Once that happens….oh my.
So the trip is worth it.
So here’s how to start the journey to feeling good:
Step one: Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate. Write down how much you appreciate. Try expressing appreciation for things you take for granted, such as the device you’re reading this on, the shoes on your feet, soap, toothpaste. Start with simple things.
Step two: Pay attention to what you’re feeling. Your feelings tell you what kind of story you’re telling. Develop a habit of checking in with yourself throughout the day. We can help you develop these powerful habits. We’re really good at it.
Step three: Stop listening to the news. We know this is difficult for some people. But the more you listen to the news, particularly negative news about the transgender community, the more unhelpful stories you create and the more you reinforce your old stories. It’s hard being happy and listen to the news.
Besides, very little – actually almost nothing – in the news pertains to you.
Step four. Get out more. Take more walks. While you’re out there, practice step one above and notice things in the world you take for granted. Getting out in nature has huge mood enhancing benefits.
Step five. At the end of each day, acknowledge all the good that happened, including your success in doing these five steps.
Practice these five steps daily. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself well on the way to unshakeable happiness and freedom. Then, and only then you’ll get all you’re wanting. Including that relationship. And you’ll get it all with little effort. We guarantee it.