Evolution

I have now been on this roller coaster for over 5 years. It seems crazy to own this. 5 years 8 months to be more exact. In this time I have evolved, they have evolved, we have evolved. And yet many things have stayed the same

I spoke with a close friend last week. She lost her husband 7 years ago very suddenly and started dating a couple of months before the lockdown started. She went from living completely independently living in parallel with the memory of a lost love, to living with a new someone, intensely. How is that for you I asked her? Well it just happened, she said, and we’ve just adapted to the new reality. Simple on the one hand ......

That is the only certainty I have. I can evolve. We reminisced together about all the advice people gave her when she was widowed. People advise you with hope in their hearts ‘time will change things’ ‘1 day you’ll feel better’ But we reflected it’s rarely what people say that makes your perspective change, it’s just that it does.

Relationships evolve, they have to. Hoping things can stay the same is not an option. It is 1 of the biggest sources of argument between us now. My partner loves meeting up with old friends from their twenties. This happens maybe once a year as they live in a different country. They are a great group of people and I used to really enjoy their company. Now when I meet them I feel sad that their friend can’t be honest with them and can’t tell them the truth about themselves. They joke about the longer hair and ask me relentlessly why I put up with it. It makes me sad and lonely. My partner, on the other hand, gets angry that I can’t let this go. ‘I just want a night where we can go back to normal’. I have a visceral reaction to that statement. It really makes me want to throw up.

So inevitably the evolution is that I will retreat from this part of our lives. They can celebrate the past and I will live in the present. They can meet their old friends on their terms and I will understand how hard it is for them to know who to trust and how comforting the past is to them.

I do understand that telling the truth creates risk of further loss. They have evolved to be brave enough to tell 1 close family member, which was a huge step. There is so much trust to imply in communicating this and the truth is you can’t help it. You look at everyone differently. Could I tell them? What would they do if they knew? Relationships evolve.

The other side to this, of course , is that talking normalises things. I have indirectly created a support network for my partner among my close friends and family who know.Talking helps. Although the number of people I have told is small in number, the telling of the story has helped give me some ownership over how to live my life as the partner of a transperson, rather than living my life as if I was the transperson. I have evolved to understand this was not my secret to own or to out, and to stop blaming myself for not knowing. I have evolved to accept my life as it has become rather than regret what I thought it was. I have evolved a little braver than I was before.

And that’s the thing about evolution . I’ll just keep evolving.