Tag Archives: trust

relationshipping

I gave it up.

I gave it up

It took love and a beautiful transsexual-in-transition woman to make it happen.

I’m talking control.
This control thing is a strange bird.  I liked having it but releasing it is infinitely better for me.
And that’s not been the easiest thing.

Looking back, all of our shared experiences were actively growing baby steps that ultimately enabled me to simply let go, a realization revealed many, many months after the fact and only upon sober reflection.

I now understand that our adventures, though seemingly 100% spontaneous, had a deliberate quality to them.  She purposely led me on a sometimes dark and mysterious path that forced me to let the fuck go of rigidly held expectations and change my mental processing.  Of course we got absolutely shit-up-a-creek lost at moments but always managed to find our way back.

Control was lost, trust gained.

That trust proved absolutely priceless when we were completely devastated by unexpected death, freshly flown too many damn miles to get back to grieve on-site.  So we quietly sat, side-by-side on bar stools in a strange city, shattered on the inside and shed silent tears in our drinks, absolutely heartbroken.

Shared grief strengthened trust and the presence of control was significantly diminishing from my life, which led to what has been my ultimate letting go experience…of him.

I decided to just be so he could as well.

Relief.

I stopped fighting her transition, freaking out, questioning an ‘us’ and…
acceptance happened.  

Quietude.
It’s not overrated.

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relationshipping

Tact or truth?

Truth or tact

asks my date the other night.

Truth.
Always truth, I say.
Duh.
I want to know where I stand; judge me openly.  Yeah, it fucking smarts at times (actually always) but truth enables me to move on after the hurtful thing is said.
And I can trust you if you’re honest.

Then I hear his reasons for tact via a three-year relationship break-up story.

Tact goes like this:
I told her it felt like we were friends more than anything else.  

Truth:
The sex wasn’t good enough.
For three years not good enough.

He explains:
I figured if she read between the lines, she’d get what I was really talking about but I wouldn’t have to spell it out for her and hurt her in the process.  I’d already accidentally given her body issues.  She was fishing for it though!  She wouldn’t let up, wanting me to name a physical imperfection; so I was honest about the only part of her body that was less than fairly perfect.  And she never got over it.

In his defense, he was a professional athlete at the time; I sure as hell wouldn’t have probed hard for his opinion unless I wanted harsh motivation to tone some shit.

So when it was time for The Talk he chose tact.

It makes me see him and tact in a different light.
Wow, he’s actually a nice guy and he really cared about her feelings.

And my choosing haughty truth makes me feel like a less thoughtful, not-as-kind person.  In the realm of relationships I always thought that I wanted to be told exactly what’s up and why because then I’d know where I stand, which leads to ultimate trust.  But sometimes it takes processing time to get at the why so in the meantime, how about don’t not tell me something just to spare my feelings.

They say it’s not what you say but how you say it, which like so many clichés is so annoyingly true.  Historically, I’ve cloaked the damn truth with so many rusted daggers that, fuck communication, all I accomplish is deeply infected hurt.  So my current goal is successfully marrying tact and truth, which means I lied.

Okay, ask me again- truth or tact?
I say yes.
Because I have turned into fucking Switzerland.

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