[adorable]

I too am tired of this “I identify as________.” Yet, without it, I am unable to find the missing piece to the puzzle. I am a human being. Almost all of us in here are. However, I don’t want to spend my days and nights with just any human being. Otherwise, I could have stayed with the human beings I was previously with and just been happy they were human.

Some of us are tired of being a disappointment to people. To be loved and accepted is a very human need. It hurts when someone that you love looks at you and wishes you were someone or something else. The question of who I am is an important one to me. I prefer to partner with like minded others. Love is a verb. If I can’t love someone the way they need me to or they can’t love me the way that I need – how can it work? There must be a starting point. The older I get the less tolerance I have for experiments.


The core of who I am is just that, my core. My ID is very much a part of that core. When I look back I can say that my ID hasn’t really changed, it was my vocabulary and ability to explain it that did. As human beings we tend to see others in our reflection. On the whole, we tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, allowing ourselves to remain in the blissful ignorance of thinking that everyone is basically like us. It keeps the murder rate down. The downside to that is that we can easily erase who other people are by seeing them as we are. The worst case scenario is that you end up in a relationship with someone, who one day turns to you, and says, “You would be perfect if…”

That communication of basics, that ability to say “I identify as ______” makes it more likely to fill the empty box marked “potential love match.” How anyone in the “friend” box IDs doesn’t matter to me. I want to look at someone who gives me butterflies and to say “I am ______and actually be able to fill in that the blank for them and then say to them “And who are you?” If they answer me like Popeye and say “I am what I am, take it or leave it” – well, today I’m smart enough to leave it. Sometimes that answer is the result of not knowing, other times it’s an unwillingness to be honest – either way, for me, it’s a set up that leads to disaster.

This thread (and others like it) are an important (I think) for so many reasons. There is hope here for the people who are looking for their missing piece and can answer the question of who they are and how they ID. Hope is important. I think meaningful love is important too. Without these answers, we are all just pictures in other people’s imaginations with put upon expectations of who they think we are or who they want us to be in relation to themselves. Until the questions are answered, who we actually are remains a mystery. While there is beauty and excitement to be found in mystery, there can be equal heartache and despair. It’s a unique pain that comes from falling in love with everything about a person before you know their ID or what it means to them. Talking fast about everything you have in common and thinking they are so wonderfulandjustsoperfectandhowdidIeverlivewithout youandomgmetoo!!

Only to find out, that, while it is entirely possible, because you are both human, to physically have a sexual relationship, they need things that you simply don’t want to do and worse, if you do them it changes how you feel. The relational dynamic falls flat. It’s not about acceptance or lack of acceptance. It’s more like a religion that you practice, one that’s important to you. Some relationships can work around it, but for most people they wouldn’t even bother to start with upfront knowledge. To continue with that relationship generally leads to a sense of longing, and to a worse loneliness than actually being alone. Ultimately, it leads to either being a disappointment or to being disappointed.

There are questions to be answered when getting to know someone. (Lots of them.) The ID, IMO, is a starting point and from that place we can begin to see where and if we fit together. Going backwards from everything else about a person to their ID is dangerous. (For me anyway.)

I wish more people would say “I identify as______” and this is what that means to me ______. Followed by, what I am looking for is someone who is_________________. (And actually be honest about it – don’t just say what you think someone wants to hear out of some twisted insecurity.) Most of us spend more time putting our grocery lists together for the week then we do on finding a real connection. It can be tough to navigate especially in forums because to say you don’t like something that someone else does (or if you use the wrong word when trying to explain it all) can require a PhD in verbal kickboxing that few of us have. The exhaustion of having to explain why we are who we are or why we feel like we do or why we like what we like is difficult enough one on one, much less in a virtual room full of people who only know their own paths to here.