Mini-Love-Lesson #195
Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson is designed it to help people get clear on the confounding romantic and heart-mate love, lifestyles & sexual issues that stress and distress people who have gender diversity issues and those who seek to understand and assist them.
Love and Gender
We all are built to give and get love. Also we all are built having gender and with that comes our sexuality. Our gender factors influence our romantic and heart-mate love thinking, love feelings and love behavior. Science increasingly shows much of our gender and love processes are natural phenomena largely occurring in our brains but also affecting our bodies in a great variety of ways. Love, gender and sexuality all turn out to be a lot more diverse and varied than we used to think. We should not be surprised about that because nature can be said to love variation and diversity. That probably is because of its great survival value for our species. By the way, science shows all this to be true not only for humans but for a lot of different kinds of higher order species.In regard to gender, there is a lot more going on than being just strictly male or strictly female. Some people are born physically both. Some are understood to be born both genders in their brains but not in their bodies. Others have the brain of one gender and the body of another. There seem to be others who go back and forth, and still others who spend part of their life as one gender but then natural forces within them emerge bringing about a change to another gender. After that, natures variations start to get complicated and hard to describe.
Now, let’s add in sexuality. Did you know that some people are sexually attracted to both men and women but may only want to do heart type or spousal love with one of those. Then there are those who romantically love and want to live married to both. Are you aware that occasionally a head injury can result in a change of sexual preference. On and on variety goes.
The truth is if you can think of a love, lifestyle or sexual relationship variation, it is a good bet that somewhere on our planet there are people doing it. Not only that, but all that diversity may be backed by naturally occurring, normal, healthy variations in the brain motivating the variant sexual/love/lifestyle (different than usual) behavior.
Gender Is Not Binary but Your Society/Culture May Be
You do not really choose your gender. Via nature, your gender chooses you. For some people that can seem like a quite befuddling choice. For others it is a very threatening and highly stressful, confused choice. Usually that is because they live in a culture or society that pigeon holes all people into strictly either male or female. For the bisexual, homosexual, transsexual, and anything-else-sexual, this can be a really big, life warping and even life-threatening problem. In more loving societies and in those becoming so, diversity in love, lifestyle or gender variation, life can be easier, safer, healthier and more naturally actualized.Becoming Aware of the Questions Gender Diversity Can Bring
Who or what are you attracted to and who is attracted to you? Is it different from who you want to love and be loved by? Is that different from, or in opposition to what you have been taught? The questions can become ever more difficult. For instance: If you are a boy who lusts for girls but wants to become a girl, does that make the inner you a lesbian? If it does, is that a moral issue or a religious issue or maybe even a non-issue? If your questions are confused how can you ever discover what is true or real for you and about you? How can you become okay in a culture that says it is not okay to be you? How can you give and get love healthfully in society that will punish you for deviation from its norms of how people should and should not love?These are but some of the stressor questions complicating the romantic, heart-mate and spousal love lives of those having a gender diversity. We suggest this means the gender diverse really can use lots of good, healthy, friendship love, family love and help with their own healthful self-love development.
Gender Conflicted Romantic and Heart-mate Love
For those who are unresolved about their gender identity, there often is painful and confusing difficulty concerning what to do and what not to do romantically. That blends into what to do and not do socially, sexually and maritally. Romance and spouse type love for some seems like a lonely impossibility and hopeless or at best problem-filled future. Some give up trying, others decide to settle for whatever and whoever comes along, while still others pretend or work desperately to become a normal heterosexual. That can lead to becoming trapped by one version or another of a false love syndrome, a fake marriage or having a conflicted life of infidelity subject to it’s ruinous ravages stemming from deception and betrayal.Daring to reveal one’s true, sexual proclivities to a romantic interest, can present an agonizing life labyrinth to attempt navigating through. Just figuring out who you are attracted to and who can be attracted to you is hard enough for anyone having any gender confusion. Nevertheless, when romantic or heart-mate love connections do occur and are sufficiently reciprocated, real and marvelous love can occur and grow.
Another problem is what to do with one’s sexuality. Gender variant people often have gender variant sexual desires. This clearly and easily is seen in the intensely bisexual person who naturally wants to have sex with both males and females and even perhaps with others who are less easily gender identified. That, by the way, might qualify them for being a bit omni-sexual.
Sexual experimenting, toleration for variance, alternate lifestyles like group marriages, communal living & other unique relationship arrangements can come into play in these situations. Running afoul of cultural norms based in heterosexuality is common in these situations and, of course, adds to the stressors involved.
Around the world and throughout history, one can find successful examples and models of how these gender variations have been successfully handled and where healthy, real love has prevailed. Sadly, there also are lots of examples where it has not. Openness to heart-mate love of many variations is growing, especially in urban centers around the world. Push back regressive reactions against these relational variations also are growing fueled by prejudice, judgmentalism, condemnation and irrational fear. The worldwide trend, however, seems to be a bit more pro-love than anti-love for those of varying gender orientations.
A Synthesized Solution
Who do you feel attracted to? Notice that this question is not what gender do you feel attracted to. That too is an okay question but I suggest not the primary question. If sometimes you are attracted to a kind, generous, funny, sexy, particular person who happens to be a man, and other times you are attracted to the same traits in a female, it’s the traits that may count more than the gender. In this kind of case, it may be your job to carefully explore both attractions. But do not confuse attraction with love. We get attracted for all sorts of different reasons that are not love.Who do you get interested in? What do they do that interests you? How are they intriguing you? There too, your job is to explore and experiment into that interest. Something inside you has said, notice that person. It probably has not said just, notice that gender. Go explore and adventure carefully with that person no matter what their gender or gender variation is. Let the relationship grow into whatever it grows into. It may be a friendship love, a romantic love or even something without a name.
Who stirs you up and gets you puzzled as to what you are feeling? Go explore and adventure around, with & toward them – carefully. See who you become with them and what they have to offer. That is your job assignment coming from deep, inner forces that point you toward particular people you might just end up loving and being loved by.
The love you grow with a person may turn out to be a whole lot more important than their gender or gender variation. However, the gender factor is indeed an important one. It may have a lot to do with how your life and future lifestyle goes.
Now, if it totally does not feel right for you to romantically get involved with someone of a particular gender or gender variation, then probably – do not do it. Do, however, question whether those are really your own, deep, inner, real feelings or are they what you have been taught to think you should feel.
Whoever you love is whoever you love, irrespective of their psychobiological gender. Whether or not you can do heart-mate or spousal love with them is a question to face later after your relationship has had time to grow and perhaps become one of healthy, real heart-mate love or something else.
One word of caution. Usually it is wiser to be the chooser than the chosen. Of course, when it gets to be truly mutual that is even better.
Help spread love knowledge – tell someone about this site and its many mini-love-lessons, okay?
As always Go and Grow with Love
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