I used to be married. For seven years. To a man. And I dated a number of other men before that. But in November last year, I met a woman. An incredibly funny, super smart, beautiful, driven, inspiring, completely flawed, but absolutely perfect woman.
Now, I wasn’t planning on getting into a relationship with a woman – I hear women can be high maintenance. But I had put an intention out to the universe that I was ready to be in a relationship again, and you can’t argue with the universe when it provides. It was about a year after my divorce was finalised, and I was enjoying living on my own and doing my thing. But at some stage the realisation that I missed companionship bubbled to the surface, and the thought of having someone to share my life with again was subtly floating around my head more and more.
I wasn’t actively looking for a relationship. I’d been in a really dysfunctional pseudo-relationship that is a whole other blog/therapy session in itself, and I REALLY just needed some time out for myself and to regroup and settle into me again. So I went on retreat in Bali. If you’ve read my other blogs, you might know that this Bali retreat pretty much changed my world. Well, here is yet another way this trip absolutely blew apart the idea of who I thought myself to be, and the world I had created for myself.
When I first met her, I felt instantly comfortable. I felt drawn to her. I wanted to be near her, and hang out with her. She was cool. She was interesting. She was smart, and had great taste in music. I wasn’t attracted to her in a romantic sense – after all, I was heterosexual. I knew she was a lesbian, and initially I had a very slight inkling that maybe she liked me, but then I checked my ego and snapped out of it – just because the girl is gay, doesn’t mean she’s instantly got the hots for me! Sheesh! (Turns out, she totally did).
We spent a decent amount of time together over the week, and when I wasn’t near her, I found myself seeking her out. I didn’t really think anything of it – I just knew she was cool to hang around, and I enjoyed her company.
When retreat was over, and I was back in my little townhouse safe and sound with my cats, she messaged me. I know it took a lot of courage to finally craft the perfect message and hit send, because we’ve talked about it a lot. And how if she’d never found the courage, things would be really different for us both right now. Anyway, the message was really sweet and cute, and that she thought I was awesome (*polishes collar*), and casually dropped in that she may have wanted to kiss me. I smiled and started instantly typing that I may have let her, and the rest is history, as they say…
(Side story – the last night of the retreat I had a bit of a tummy bug and I went to bed earlier than usual. Had this minor bout of Bali-belly not struck, she admits she probably would have tried to kiss me that night, and things would ALSO have been quite different! We both think it happened exactly as it should have… Moral of the story – Thank God I got the shits!)
Over the next few months, we messaged constantly, shared stories and thoughts, left each other voice notes, sent each other pics, and had video chats daily. We learnt about each other in depth, our deepest fears, our favourite songs, our pasts and histories, our dreams for our futures. And we fell in love without even having kissed each other. I fell in love with the amazing person she is. This amazing person in a woman’s body.
As I began to tell my closest friends what was happening, it was so beautiful and relieving to receive their reactions. All of them were over the moon that I’d found someone incredible, and that was making me so happy. One of my oldest friends said, “Hah! I always knew you were some sort of queer, but this is just divine!”, or something equally as gorgeous, followed by about 20 emojis expressing her joy for my happiness. It warmed my heart immensely.
And her comment kinda rattled about in my head…. Was I Queer? Was I now a Lesbian? Bisexual? What letter was I?? There were so many these days. Did it really matter? I mean, I’d drunkenly slept with a couple of girls in my 20s, and had an intense and emotional, yet brief relationship with a girl in high school, but otherwise, I enjoyed sleeping with men.
My girlfriend thinks I’m gay, but I suspect she just wants the honour of turning the straight girl for good. Technically (so far), I’m Bisexual. Personally, I think Pansexual is probably closest to it – meaning I am attracted to, and fall in love with whoever I fall in love with – it doesn’t matter what packaging they come in. Should this particular ‘forever’ come to a conclusion, my next relationship could be with someone in the ‘T’ or ‘I’ or another non-binary category, for all I know. I don’t know – it really depends on if they’re an asshole or not, and if they make me laugh, for a start. THAT’s what matters to me – if we CONNECT – not what’s under their clothes.
Not all responses were so completely joyous, though. It’s funny how some people (especially of the older generation) perceive themselves to be so open and supportive, but it’s sort of that somewhat backhanded, and conditional support. As long as we don’t tell certain people (I don’t recall ever not being able to tell anyone about any man I dated)… and I need to remember that I’m getting older and I don’t want to regret not having babies (this one especially gets me, like I should have babies ‘just because’ – this one’s a whole other blog too!)…. I get it, though – they’re only operating through the lens of what they think will make me happy, and not listening to what I’m actually telling them DOES make me happy. It’s cool. In a weird, contradictory way, they are pushing for my happiness.
There are a few obvious differences of why being in a relationship with a woman is different than being with a man. For one, there’s two menstrual cycles per month to deal with, you need to buy twice as many tampons, and you’re no longer the only one who gets emotionally fragile randomly during this time. Also, someone stealing and wearing your clothes is a thing I’ve never had to deal with before…. *cough*…. But I can’t really comment any more than that about dating women, as I don’t have any other frame of reference. You see, this relationship is the best one I’ve ever been in – not because she’s a woman, but because we have promised each other to always be honest and speak the truth. Even when it’s really uncomfortable to do so. We have promised never to hide things, and we must allow ourselves to feel all the feels, good AND bad. We have promised we will always communicate openly, and constantly, and call each other out on our bullshit. And THAT’s why this is the best relationship I’ve ever had. Not because she’s in a girl’s body.
I find it funny that people still have issues with sexuality and love. Millions of people stay in miserable relationships for so many different reasons, and divorce is almost as common as getting married these days. But if two people fall in love, you’d like to think that everyone else could just be really stoked that two people are happy. Regardless of what’s under their clothes.
NAOMI BATTAH COACHING 
Love is love.
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