Boundaries

I was chatting to Katya earlier, trying to explain something.

First some background.

I've had two girlfriends in the 3 years since I came out as a tranny. One, Janet, was around when I was just starting to get out on the scene. It all went horribly wrong and we ended up splitting up in the summer of 2003 (the cracks were showing LONG before that).

Then there was a gap where I found my feet as Becky, then I met Jane. We're getting on great, thanks for asking. :-)

(By the way, I have noticed the pattern, but I've no intention of going on to have a girlfriend called Jan, then Ja then "J"... I think this one's a keeper!)

Anyway, I was trying to explain the difference in my head between how Jane makes me feel about being a tranny compared to the way Janet made me feel. A good way to describe it is to use an example from this weekend. Jane and I went shopping in town, and I saw a top in Next that I quite liked. Jane was trying on some stuff anyway, so I asked if she would mind trying on this top too. She smiled and said "sure".

That was it. No awkwardness. No questions. It was a sensible way for me to see what the top looked like without risking public tranny exposure (I'm still not too happy with the idea of being "outed" in my home town), and Jane was happy to do so.

This, I keep telling Jane, is a revelation to me. Jane has trouble seeing what the big issue is. As far as she's concerned, there just isn't a problem with me being a tranny. She's not threatened by it, and I don't need to give reasons for everything that I do.

With Janet, it was completely the opposite. I had to give reasons for everything, and she felt threatened by everything I was doing, even when it wasn't at all related to me being a tranny. With her being my first partner who knew about Becky, I had nothing to compare to, so I began to think that this was how a tranny/girlfriend relationship was supposed to be.

I felt hemmed in. Every little thing I wanted to do was questioned, frowned apon, and checked for hidden agendas. The "space" I wanted to inhabit was closing in from all sides.

When a person is pushed like that, they tend to push back. And because it's more effective, they push back in one spot, hard enough that it hurts. And they tend to push for something that's more than they actually need.

I have an image in my head of a amoeba-like boundary, trying desperately to fight back against a crushing force. It becomes small and spiky, trying to puncture it's way out.

My need for dressing became quite extreme, and I became less than forthcoming about what I was doing and when. Until eventually it got too much for Janet and it all fell apart.

Jane doesn't do that. She trusts me to find my own boundaries, to let Becky fill the space she needs. And because of that the boundaries are soft, diaphanous and rounded. I don't feel the desire to push too hard, or too much. "Becky" is a big soft good thing in my life rather than a small hard bad thing.

These are terrible analogies, Katya said it better when she said:

"Its like the champagne bottle is allowed to sit in the fridge and be brought out for special occasions, not shaken and explodes every once in a while."

That really rang true.

It all basically comes down to trust. Jane trusts me. Implicitly. I don't have to give reasons for everything, because I'm not fighting to gain trust that I already have.

I still don't really know why she trusts me, maybe all nice girls do and I was just unlucky. She keeps suggesting that she's nothing special in that regard, but I'm going to treat that as false modesty. As far as I'm concerned there's only one girl who's like this, in the world, and that's Jane.

And I'm going to make sure that I'm worthy of that trust.