Guided, Not Pointed - Phases Archive

I’m polyamorous and I’ve got two partners, and one of my partners is trans. So when I started working [at my current job], I was working on a team where they quite often referred to us as a group as ‘ladies’, and it really, really bothered me. I was frustrated by how much it bothered me, because that word has bothered me all my life, and I couldn’t tell if it was just because I was hearing it more often... but I couldn’t get to the bottom of it. So then I was having a conversation with [my partner] and he said, “is it maybe the gendered nature of the word that’s doing it?”

So he was a very safe space to have a conversation about how maybe it is something to do with my identity that I’ve never scratched the surfice of before... He helped me think through that... and when I eventually got to the point where I realised after reading a book he’d recommended that, “oh, agender. That fits me.” But I thought that I can’t be non-binary, and through more chats with him I realised it was because I’d fallen into that trap of thinking that if you’re non-binary, you have to be androgynous... And it just felt like my whole world had opened up. I’m so grateful that he sort of guided me through that conversation rather than pointing me in a particular direction. I guess he was asking the questions he either was asked or wanted to be asked years ago. I feel like that has always been me, I just had no idea how to realise that until recently.