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| Friends! Nikki in middle and Kim on right... |
Despite of all of my early successes (along with failures), when I was experimenting so alone with being a cross dresser, the fact remains the friends I made later in life proved to be the most valuable experience of my life.
Even though I had arrived on many public stages on my gender journey, it seemed there was always another major step to take. After all, I had gone through the difficult steps of sneaking out the door of my gender closet and into the world but the process just taught me I still had so far to go. I somehow needed to find away to develop as a full fledged transgender woman. To do it, I needed to take the plunge and seek out public acceptance.
I began similar to so many back in those days. I explored several on-line dating sites which were still relatively new. Predictably, I was a dismal failure on the sites. To try to do better, I would change how I approached the dating world. On a few places I would advertise as a woman seeking woman (then tell them in my profile I was transgender) while on others I would post a woman seeking men profile. Over all I failed miserably with just a few responses who actually showed up at venues of my choice to meet. Most of them just stood me up and didn't show at all. One less than memorable night, I even had a guy show up and want to wear my panties.
Amazingly, I did strike success when over twelve years ago now my wife Liz answered my woman seeking woman ad on a dating site. Following writing back and forth on line nightly I finally gathered up the courage to talk to her in person. The problem was, I was afraid of how my voice would sound over the phone. Through it all and eleven years later we were married. I guess you can say I believe in long courtships before I got into my third marriage. Mainly, it was my daughter's doing because one day she suggested why don't you two just get married and we did. For you new regulars to the blog, I should mention Liz is a cis-woman (born female) and identifies as a lesbian. Our first date was a drag show and the rest is history,
I would also be remiss if I didn't mention several other cis-women who accepted me into their world and taught me so much. Through my entire life, I thought a woman's acceptance of me would basically just include helping me with my appearance. The idea was blown away when my first fiancé helped me to cross dress one day. I was not impressed with her efforts which came back to haunt me later when she tried to "out" me to the world. Lesson learned and I took responsibility for my own feminine appearance. What I didn't learn until much later were all the other factors which went into being a successful transgender woman. Ironically, my second wife told me I had no idea of the feelings I would have to develop to learn what she was talking about.
Phase two of my attempt to pursue my own coming out just occurred when I began to visit my favorite sports bars as my new authentic self. In a relatively short period of time, I was able to meet two other women whom I was able to bond with and we had a great time. It was with them I learned more of the essence my second wife was trying to tell me about. I learned I didn't really need a man to be validated as a transgender woman and went on to build my new life from there. I owe them all so much and will forever be indebted to them.
Through my life, I have always had a difficult time finding who I considered real friends. Friends are a learning process to me and I did learn so much.
