It’s a Saturday night in London, UK and lockdown measures here are nothing compared to what I went through for 5 ½ months in Colombia, South America.
I have a date … I mean, I made plans … do I cancel … do I go on a date… but my body is not reacting as I would expect … why?
Yes, why?
Remember, why is a question we ask to understand, so I must not be accepting without understanding then.
Hang on; I am the acceptance without understanding gal!
Would that mean I don’t understand my body? Perhaps it’s not a body issue at all?
I need to know.
How will I know?
One technique I use from my days working in the technology field to get to the root cause of a problem or concern is the seven Why technique. Since we abbreviate everything, let’s call this the 7W technique.
Let me frame this for you.
Like the world of sales where it takes addressing a customer’s objections seven times to close a potential deal, the 7W technique used in this example is a way to get to the bottom of my behaviour.
I accept that my body was not responding, as I would have otherwise hoped. Not unlike learning to listen to a child to show interest and develop their self-awareness, I had to show myself I was interested in the response and ready to listen.
When you keep yourself so busy that Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) becomes an avoidance pattern, you recognize and know that you need to slow down and listen because you missed something important.
As I went from my physical response of cocooning on my bed rolled into a small ball, believing that I can’t go on this date to writing this piece, which is my first new content created in London. It has taken me three weeks to write fresh content, perhaps art imitating life in this case.
Using the 7W technique, I began by asking why I was cocooning, using the wise woman inside me to help draw out the answers.
Ultimately through some time doing this with every answer I heard from within me, the process refined as I kept asking why until I got to the trigger.
That trigger told me that I was so focused on the possibility of the date with a man who is accepting that I am transgender, that I wasn't listening to what I already knew. We had met online in and we did video chat numerous times while I was still in Colombia, and using his words, “we had some sort of connection.” It was telling me that I wasn’t listening to what I already knew.
He had made it clear that he hoped our first contact would lead to an intimate evening. I just wanted to meet him first without worrying if we would end up being intimate, he knew that, yet he decided to share his desire with me again as we confirmed our date. That meant that he wasn’t listening to me and is only interested in his resulting pleasure.
By the way, gentlemen, this is a lesson for you; it’s one of the observations I have of things women wish men grasped when it comes to the differences.
The fact he chooses to put his desired pleasure before my let’s just meet first; meant that my safety boundaries get called into action as I must be on guard meeting this fellow for what he wanted as a more than a friendly meet-up I was prepared for.
That’s what my body was telling me to be consciously aware of my safety; make a decision to go on this date or not based upon the changed parameters.
Gentlemen of the audience may ask why I need to be on guard when he was open and honest about his intention?
It’s not a question that I would rather have him lie about; that would be worse. As he was true to his intention, I can then make a fair assessment of safety that I am comfortable with in light of that. In this case, it means he wasn’t listening to me; he was being selfish thinking about what he wanted only and by vocalizing that my safety systems were kicking in to protect myself.
On the date, I will have to be extra vigilant as to where he wants me to meet him. The location, people around us, extra careful with drinks to ensure they don’t get spiked as he was a digital acquaintance up to this point, tonight will be the start of our possible friendship.
As he lives here, and I just arrived, I asked him to pick somewhere in the middle between us. I don’t know where he lives, and neither does he know where I live so we used local train/tube stops as points of reference. I need to question if he was selfish about the location of our meeting?
I will need to use the trains, tube (subway), and buses to move about, including getting to his chosen meeting place. That further adds to my complexity of getting home if needed or alternative plans as a backup.
There’s more, but you get the point, being selfish and expressing that honestly calls into question many safety issues for women who have to navigate the desire to meet new folks, one I could decide to get intimate with later on but didn't want to start there. By the way, if you lie, women are blessed with an internal sense of knowing your lying, and it also triggers a lot of the same responses.
A person’s safety systems are a matter of survival, not just a selfish preference.
So, the moral of the story is to listen to others, don’t set expectations beyond what you agreed to as the outcome could be a lonely Saturday night for both of you instead of finding new friends.
What did I do? I don’t know yet; there are still 3 hrs before I need to leave, and I have a lot to think over.
Epilogue:
I shared this blog post with him as he kept asking what concern I had?
His response;
“Amazing blog let me tell you this
I totally understand where you are thinking from as you are new here worried about safety and location
Don’t think that I didn’t hear you saying the first meet will be a casual one and I was always ok with that
I like your thought process
I would prefer your safety over my selfishness”
This meeting was our chance to connect before he had to go away for a month or more on a job assignment.
I told him if he is still interested when he gets back, I will be here and we can meet then.
What would you have done?