Transitions
Accepting that we change as people, as do our life situations, can smooth the inevitable transitions that occur.
Lately I’ve been pondering transitions. Perhaps that’s because I’m staring down 70 years of age soon. Perhaps it’s simply because I’ve become more aware of the subtle shifts over time in my life and in the lives of those around me. Regardless, the concept of transitions has been on my mind.
This newsletter is about all kinds of sexualities and relationships. My audience tends to be of the more adventurous variety, but much of what I write about is applicable across the spectrum of erotic experiences and relationship dynamics. One of those universally applicable concepts is transitions.
The core directive of transitions is change. Transitions are the process of us changing over time as we discover, reflect, grow, learn, and adapt to the varying life situations in which we find ourselves as well as to the changes that take place internally.
Recently, I ran across a beautifully animated video, Still the One, by StoryCorps. The three-minute video illustrates a conversation between Les and Scott GrantSmith and their two children, Thea and Amanda.
Having been assigned female at birth and living as wife to Scott for 10 years, Les finally had the courage to have the tough discussion with Scott that they felt like a man in the wrong body and wanted to transition.
For me, the most poignant passage in the video is when Scott said this.
I didn’t fall in love with a couple of body pieces.
The video is just three minutes long and I recommend you watch it. StoryCorps has a mission to help us believe in each other by illuminating the humanity and possibility in us all — one story at a time. They do a superb job of doing just that.
I’m always looking for metaphors in life. Finding one bit of information or life experience that serves to metaphorically inform other areas of life is one of the ways I make sense of the world. I found this story a wonderful metaphor for transitions generally, and pertinent to this newsletter’s focus, sexual and relationship transitions in particular.
A benefit of being my age and navigating for decades deeply within alternative sexuality and relationship cultures is that I’ve been privy to hundreds of people’s personal stories. Those stories often have a narrative arc of years or decades and they all demonstrate an overarching truth that permeates them all – change. Or, to put it another way, transitions.
The things we like to do sexually often change over time.
People who enter relationships as one person morph over time to become different people.
Sexual cultures such as the various kink communities change in their structure, interests, community mores, and so on.
Society accepts a wider range of relationship options and creates a vernacular we can use to discuss and adopt them.
These lead to constant sexual and relationship transitions throughout our lives. Some transitions are small. Some are huge. Some go smoothly. Some are bumpy. But transitions are inevitable and accepting this truth can put you more at ease with your own sexuality and relationship transitions.
You might enter into a kink community as one type of kinkster and years later realize you’ve become quite a different one.
You might partner with someone and adapt to your changing needs and perspectives, or decide (hopefully mutually) that those changes require a separation or a definitional change in the type of relationship you share.
No one remains exactly the same person day-to-day, and certainly not year-to-year. This includes our sexual and relationship needs and styles. We adapt to the differences, or we figure out another way to function.
Add into our baseline sexual and relationship needs the fact that we often drastically change our identities or experience a drastic shift in our core values and the sum total is that everyone wakes up each morning a somewhat different person than they were when they went to sleep.
So often I hear or read someone articulating something about alternative sexuality and relationship communities that is immutable. That runs entirely contrary to the reality that the people who comprise those communities, along with the social structures they create, are constantly changing and experiencing transitions. Individually, change happens. Communally, change happens. Accepting the truth of ongoing transitions because they are the natural course of events can save us the angst and consternation that can arise when we try to stop the natural progression of our lived lives.
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