Open Wins Over Stubborn Shuns

I waited a couple of years after I came out to start dating women. First of all, when I was younger, there was only one woman that I was kind of interested in and she didn’t like me the same way. Second of all, there wasn’t a large amount of LGBTQI people in my area, so I really didn’t know too much about dating women. I also didn’t know what I was interested in.
See, I knew the traits that I wanted in the person that I was dating, or at least I thought that I did, but I didn’t know where to meet them or how to start a good conversation with them or even how to progress these interactions into a relationship. I had absolutely no experience in this area, and most of the people that I was around were straight. So, I felt absolutely alone.
Then, when my family moved to a larger city and I started working at a hotel, I began to meet more women that caught my eye. I started to make friends and I found a community of LGBTQI people, which opened my eyes to a world that I had never known. When I had first come out, I was told that I was going through a phase. I was told that being gay was against my religion. I was also misunderstood a lot. For instance, one of my teachers had an open discussion in her class where the students could ask each other questions, and I was asked who I was attracted to in that class. I felt like an outcast, and the way that people reacted to me coming out was to do everything that they could to put me back in the closet.
There wasn’t a lot of education back then on LGBTQI people. They didn’t have any laws protecting people that identified with that group, and they weren’t really worried about hurting other peoples’ feelings. People just did or said what they wanted to, and if you weren’t the same as them, then a lot of the time you were outcasted. There were more incidences of hate crimes, deaths, and suicides pertaining to the LGBTQI community too, and there really weren’t any known resources that were widely available to the general public. The Internet wasn’t as big of a thing. In fact, the first Internet that we had in our house cut off the phone line and made a lot of noise when you logged into it.
Anyhow, when I came out, I didn’t know what I was looking for or what would make me happy. I had hung out with a lot of men growing up, so I considered myself more masculine, but I didn’t really identify as butch. Therefore, the first few women that I dated were ones that considered themselves more feminine than I was and they were the ones to make the first move. It was easier that way, if I let them call the shots, then I knew they would be happy, and I would be happy for the companionship. At first, dating like this worked for me. I got to experience taking a woman out to dinner for the first time. I was able to have long conversations in the park, and it was nice to have the company of another person after a long day at work.
However, after a while, I knew that I needed more. I just didn’t know what. I was tired of dating women that expected me to pick up the tab all of the time. I felt like I had to be more concerned with what was going on in their lives without them giving me the same consideration, and I also thought that in order to have a girlfriend, these were things that I had to deal with. I had to deal with constant chaos, fighting, cheating, and there were even a couple that treated me poorly when they were around their friends. I dated a few that needed or wanted me to pay the bill when we went out, and sometimes, this would break the budget that I had set for myself for the week.
There were even times when a girl that I was dating wouldn’t talk to me again until I got paid. I had never been with a real partner, a person that was willing to pull half the weight, was equally concerned about my wellbeing, and truly wanted to experience life with me. Most of the women that I was dating didn’t really show a huge amount of interest in my life. They were more concerned about their own. They had a picture in their head of what I should be, and for a lot of them it was a stereotype of what a butch woman should do for her partner. The thing was, I wasn’t butch. I wasn’t femme. I wasn’t anything but me, and for a lot of the people that I went out with, this was confusing.
I lost some of my respect for relationships around that time. I was tired of having to deal with people that were more concerned about themselves than about me. I was annoyed that there wasn’t give and take in our conversations, and I had a couple people that I had gone out with that were dishonest and unfaithful. So, after talking to one of my friends, I decided to put the idea of being in a relationship on the backburner. I didn’t want to spend my life unhappy and I knew that if I continued dating the same people, I was never going to get very far.
So, I stopped looking. I stopped dating, and I just concentrated on myself and hanging out with my friends. I also talked more to a woman that I had become friends with at work. Now, this woman wasn’t always someone that I had gotten along with. She was a manager, and she replaced the job of my original manager, so when I had first met her, I told her right away that I didn’t like her and I didn’t want anything to do with her.
Ironically, I worked a lot, and as time went by, I had gotten to know her better. We had similar experiences growing up. We had people in our families that were alike. We even thought alike when it came to our interpretations of the world and other people. It was uncanny. The more we got to know each other, the more I wanted to be around her. I liked her company. I liked to see her happy, and she genuinely cared for me and the things that were occurring in my life. It was an unlikely friendship, and the more time that we spent with each other, the more we relied on each other.
Then, one day, I went out with one of my college friends. We hung out, talked, and the woman at work came up in our conversation. At the end of the conversation, my friend smiled and told me that I needed to tell my friend at work how I felt. She explained that the way that I was talking about her made it seem like I was in love with her, and if I didn’t tell the other woman how I felt, I might risk never knowing if a relationship between the two of us could work out.
Of course, I shook my head and told my friend that I wasn’t going to do it. I was too worried about there being someone else or the woman at my work turning me down. I didn’t even feel like I was in the same league as the woman that I worked with. She was so nice and caring, and she really did want the best for everyone. There was no way that a woman like that would want to be in a relationship with me. However, my college friend insisted that I talk to the woman at my work and tell her how I felt even after I told her that I couldn’t do it, and those words swirled around my head for the next few days, making me wonder if I should have that conversation.
After a few days, I went to work and the woman that I had grown close to at work told me that she needed to talk to me. I agreed to conversate in private, and the two of us went to the back of the building. As I looked at this woman, the woman that I had slowly become friends with, the woman that had won my heart, I wondered why she looked so nervous. I could tell by the expression on her face that something was up, and I knew that if she had a look like that then it probably wasn’t the best time to tell her that I had feelings for her.
She began to talk, and then, she would stop. The anticipation of what she had to tell me was making me anxious, so anxious that I started guessing what she was going to tell me, because waiting for her to tell me was too difficult to handle. After a few bad guesses, she finally told me what she had to say. She was in love with me, and she wanted to pursue a relationship.
I was astounded. I didn’t know what to say. Of course, I wanted to date her. She was unlike any woman that I had ever known. She didn’t judge me. She didn’t have a preconceived notion of how I should act. She just treated me like a person. She cared about me. She talked to me about my feelings and the things that I wanted out of life, and I did the same for her.
We ended up dating, and that evolved into marriage and kids and several other experiences down the road, and I realized that in the romance department, this was the woman that I needed to be with. She made me a better person. My faith was stronger with her by my side, and I had the freedom to be myself without being told what I should do or how I should act. I didn’t know what I needed so it came to me when I least expected it, and I didn’t have to settle for something that made my life harder.