Keri Renault
Many of us have significant others. Guess what? We've held back. Cheated. Deceived. Yes, we've been guilty of denying our most critical inner feelings. For good reason. Perhaps...
Maybe it's that our SO has no idea of our TG identity. Perhaps we've come out to her and she's not accepting. Just maybe, we've come out to our SO and we've been blessed with their acceptance. But how far can we push that acceptance?
On top of that many of us cannot express who we are to family, neighbors, friends, classmates or co-workers. We keep the lid of our feelings on extra tight... The heat is on.
It seems rare that we express our transgendered thoughts & feelings as spontaneously as we experience them. We spend so many moments of each day contemplating who we are and what our "genderism" means to us. When all is said and done we end up repressing many of our thoughts, censoring them from expression to those we love.
That creates the "boiling teapot". Our minds percolate with thoughts that cannot--or are not expressed. So they fester and brew. Eventually our "teapots" reach the boiling point. What happens next is as obvious as what happens to a tea kettle that's been heated too long. Our anger boils over. But onto who? The unsuspecting friend or co-worker...brother or sister? The recipient of our displaced anger more times than not is our unwitting spouse.
We vent about chores around the house, family finances, obligations--anything but what's really making us boil. Our suppressed feelings about our transgenderism. Let's not kid ourselves. Our spouses are on to us even if they mimic us much like sympathy pains gone awry. They intuit our uneasiness. They feel our latent aggression, our anger just under the surface. Slowly they begin to percolate with their own inner rage as they are tauntingly burned by our steam.
It's only a matter of time before their inner rage matches our own displaced anger.
Perhaps it's better to vent our feelings before they brew out of control. Whether we release our "steam" to friends of "confidence", a therapist or our significant other is moot. The point is to communicate how we feel before we get to the boiling point of no return. Releasing our feelings slowly as they begin to build within us is the only sure fire way to preserve balance. It offers the opportunity to grow together with our SO's--whether or not they know our "secret", are intolerant or accepting.
Rather than suppress we should express our feelings. We may not be able to share all of our thoughts at first, but we can still build a bridge to understanding that creates the opportunity for a better tomorrow--step by step--by sharing what we're feeling with someone we trust. That will help assure our significant other's intuitive sixth sense won't transform into an inner rage, mirroring our own anger in a somewhat ironic twist of fate.
