The trick to finding the love you want, whether trans or trans-attracted, is first loving yourself. Doing that is easier said than done though.
That’s because so many of us loathe ourselves. That loathing happens sometimes even when we think we accept who we are. In other words, it’s easy fooling one’s self into believing they love themselves when, really, they don’t.
Figuring this out as a trans-attracted man is simple. Clues show up readily. Hiding our trans-attraction or feeling shame about it is a clue. Too embarrassed to be seen out with a transgender woman? That person doesn’t love themself. Afraid of co-workers or friends finding out? That’s another clue.
Transgender women have easy-to-see clues too. But such people are less willing to acknowledge the obvious. Refusing to be seen as trans? There’s a clue. Trying to pass or go stealth? That’s a clue too. Hating your penis? There’s another.
If someone reading this is transgender, “hating your penis” could be triggering. Let’s flesh that out.
Just because someone prefers and seeks out a different bottom configuration doesn’t mean they must HATE or feel revulsion over what’s currently there. Hate and revulsion both are strong emotions. When a transgender person hates their body, and for the time being, the penis is part of the body, it’s likely other parts – shoulders, hand size – meet with similar ire.
It’s why many transgender women adorn their bodies with tattoos. Tatoos are like make up for such people. They conceal aspects the tattoo bearer can’t accept.
Lack of acceptance is lack of self love. Unless we love ALL that we are, love eludes us. Or, the kind of love that shows up, reflects our own lack of acceptance of what and who we are.
Finding the easy path to love
We all can find ourselves in love with ourselves. And, it can happen fast and easy. Acceptance is the first step.
Self acceptance means realizing one wants to change parts of who we are, but not being reviled by that thing we want changed. It’s being ok with it being there….for now. Acceptance begins the path to loving ourselves.
In acceptance we’re comfortable in our own company. We don’t need another there for that moment to be ok. Sometimes we might feel negative about some aspect of ourselves, but we quickly talk ourselves out of those negative stories. We use negative feelings as indicators for immediate action, then use them to our advantage to practice self acceptance.
Self love means genuinely loving and enjoying one’s own company as we are. In self love, another’s company is a nice-to-have. Not a must-have. Even among cis people, however, self love is rare.
A higher level is UNCONDITIONAL self-love. That means loving every aspect of one’s self with no conditions dislodging us from that state. That means accepting one has a penis and enjoying it being there, even while knowing one day it may not be. It means accepting one is trans and finding all aspects of that existence enjoyable, freeing and empowering. It means accepting and not caring that people think we’re gay for finding transgender women attractive. And it means knowing our trans-attraction is wholesome, good and appreciation-worthy no matter what others say.
Unconditional self-love can be a stretch for most people. For some, just plain self-love can try our self-image. For most, attaining acceptance is easier.
Why loving self must come first
The problem with trying to find love in a relationship is, if we either stand in lack of self acceptance (at least) or lack of self-love, the odds are very high the people we meet will be in similar places. And relationships between two such people are recipes for problems.
That’s because two people unwilling to accept or love themselves will make their relationship and their partner responsible for their problems. They’ll also make that person responsible for how they feel. Both parties therefore show up needy, whiny and negative. They pick on the other person regularly and anger easily. Such people complain a lot. And, because they blame others for their problems, they feel no agency in making themselves happy.
No wonder so many people think a relationship will make them happy. Most people don’t accept who and what they are. Let alone love who and what they are. The other problem is…IT’S NOT THE PURPOSE OF A RELATIONSHIP TO MAKE YOU HAPPY.
Relationships aren’t meant to make anyone happy. Our happiness is OUR JOB. Ideally, relationships comprise two WHOLE people. They create a relationship from which something larger than either person brings as individuals or as a couple.
Two people coming together who don’t accept or love themselves can’t build something larger than who they are. That’s because neither is brings a whole, authentic person to the relationship. So instead of two whole people making something bigger, you have two incomplete people squabbling and creating all kinds of drama.
Which is why so few relationships last. And why so few trans or trans-attracted people find lasting love. Or love period.
The easiest place to find love
The key to finding love is to find it first in ourselves. Do that first and we can’t help but eventually find love “out there”. When we love ourself, we become matches to the love we seek. Seeking love when we don’t love ourselves just attracts more of what we’re being.
That’s no fun.
It’s amazing so many of us live not loving ourselves. As transgender and trans-attracted people, we sometimes live in dissatisfaction, then blame the world for how we feel. Transgender people even blame being trans on someone other than themselves. But no one else made them trans. That’s a choice they made before coming into the world. Why they made that choice is a topic for another post.
The same holds for trans-attracted people. No one “makes” a person trans-attracted. That also is a choice self-made.
I know it feels impossible to accept that we own creating ourselves. None of us are accidents. We are not some random thing that went wrong. Realizing we choose our status (and everything else about our lives) offers huge rewards. The main ones being a sense of extreme empowerment, satisfaction and eventual impervious joy.
It doesn’t have to suck
Transgender women often find a smattering of that when, through surgeries, their body eventually closely matches who they know themselves to be. But as we know, some of those same trans people, even after surgeries, still don’t feel whole. Let alone feeling self acceptance, self love or unconditional love for self.
Any state of non-self-acceptance sucks. That’s because we all came here for the pleasure and joy of expressing our unbounded love to the world, then get that in return. Getting that in return first requires the ability to express it. That expression comes from accepting, loving then unconditionally loving all that we are.
Everyone can get there. And the road to that can be immensely gratifying. Fooling ourselves that we accept who we are when we actually don’t is easy. But life will always show what’s really going on behind our eyeballs, evidenced in the kinds of people and relationships we create.
Struggling with any of that or got a question? I can help.