Tee and I always say that our relationship followed a very “Benjamin Button” process. We’ve gone from a domestic marriage in quarantine, where we spent all our waking hours together, to seeking some distance, time to take each other on dates like we’re new lovers that met on some cramped dance floor. It is this fluidity between lightheartedness and depth that colors our relationship. This love dynamic is present in my other T4T connections. The people in my life, other trans lovers, those bonds never strengthen or weaken: they just adapt to our needs, wants, abilities, and emotions. T4T love is non-linear in nature because of its openness to change. Our existences are based on transformation.
As a 2Spirit person, nature teaches me how to love. The mountains know connection and partnership — non-monogamy, too. When the clouds touch their peaks ever so briefly, or when fiery petals spread across buds on branches then fly off with the wind, it’s all like sweeties coming and going, punctuated by periods of solitary renewal. In these varying dynamics, all kinds of love shelter one another, knowing some stay, return, fall out, and regrow. There are people that I talk to for hours on end over the course of months, no expectations attached, that I meet in person and we instantly connect. The chemistry between us is so powerful it draws us into each other. Others I see after loving them intimately for years, begin to feel familial and the dynamic becomes an emotionally nurturing friendship.
I’m learning to accept that I won’t always wake up in the bed of the same nesting partner, that sometimes things need to drift for tides to pull back even stronger. Too often we think holding something tightly in our hands will keep it there. If our loves were water, it would escape our hands in an instant under such constraints. So I let my lovers fill up my space like bathwater. Something that I can return to that wants to hold me when it is there.
To the many possibilities and inevitabilities of my “romantic futures,” I understand that if my home space needs to shift, or my ties to others, then I will be open to that. There will always be another day where it can take a recognizable or former shape. I can be in a home again with a lover. I can go on another coffee date or park visit. We can love on many timelines.
