"You need a haircut."
My wife isn't the most able communicator, but she has mastered the art of saying the same thing in a variety of ways.
"You really need a haircut."
"You'd look so much better with shorter hair."
"When are you planning on getting a haircut?"
The answer has usually been the same - "I'm not ready to." - but it's not a sufficient reply. Therefore, I hear it a lot.
Occasionally she injects a key pronoun, which drags her point a little closer to the light:
"I need you to get a haircut!" Every now and then, a clarifier: "Your hair is extremely unattractive."
On this sliver of dialogue alone, one may glean the entirety of Erica's feelings for my cross-gendered nature.
There's much more to it than that, of course, like any emotionally charged opinion. She's my wife. She didn't marry a woman. She feels an attraction for my masculine side. My masculine and feminine sides are bonded, which may result in the spark of certain other emotions she senses but also resents. You see? It gets so much more complicated.
Our relationship began in ignorance, as so many often do. This is so much more convenient where attraction is involved because you don't have to question it. You just know it. Feel it. With the benefit of hindsight, I can guarantee it wasn't my masculine presence that drew Erica to me. If anything like that at all, it was my boyish frivolity that kept her interested. I made her laugh. I still do. She says it's one of the main reasons she married me.
But also evident was my tendency to rely on the submissive, feminine side to communicate with women. I'm not saying Erica was into the softer, girlish traits which I revealed carefully so as not to out myself prematurely, but I'm not saying she wasn't, either. This was me all along, after all. She had no reason to dissect my personality and label its separate components. She just loved me for everything she knew me to be.
The same can be said about me, of her. Except that I'm fully aware of my attraction to this darling, barely-restrained valkyrie. I see Erica's feminine body, her frailties and emotional insecurities, and I long to care for them. And then I observe how they merely lend beauty to the dynamic, authoritative core of her being. She is woman, but she wields a power I cannot resist, nor abandon. Yes, much of her personality is decidedly masculine. She knows this for a fact, and hates it.
I once gave Erica a present, a half of a whole for both of us to share. They were equal pieces of a yin yang, and I told her that this is what we are together. One leaving off where the other began. Two vital pieces, without one of which neither would be complete.
The gesture meant everything to her.
Unfortunately, symbolism is still a difficult thing for Erica to identify without assistance, especially since her impressing of where our traits begin and end isn't exactly what she believed, or hoped, they would be.
I believe we were meant to be. There is harmony in our love-making. A sense of calm when we are near one another (unless we remain together for too long, but that's another blog under a different heading). Even our clashing ideologies forge faster bonds. Yea, our tempers are legendary, and all the more so when we turn fury fully upon one another. (It is odd, one who longs to be submissive as I do putting up such great struggles against the one I wish would subjugate me. Perhaps I just want her to want it badly enough?) When the furnace cools, our friendship always remains intact. This is why we'll always be together.
And that is why, for the most part, I've been one miserable little cross-dresser.
Next: History... no, her story... wait, how about THEIR story?
