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Apple: Thank you. Those are very kind words, and I'm very glad that you feel I wrote appropriately.
Dianne: I think you make your point very well, and I do hope you don't feel I'm criticising anyone for using the word 'normals'. It's just something that I think has to be said again and again until the world believes it. 'Normal' is at best a minority, and perhaps it doesn't actually exist. Actually I understand that something physically uncommon can make intimacy more difficult, but so can so many many things.
I know a neighbour who is around 40, physically (& 'genderly') ordinary, and has only had one very very brief (& scary/oppressive) relationship ever (and now has a child) - before realising that she liked women. But she hasn't had the courage ever to tell a woman that she has been attracted to. It doesn't sound like her parents were ever that demonstrative either. Now closeness/love comes only from her young child, who in 10-15 years will leave home. And she's so unconfident that she drives everyone away - she's so sure that people don't like her that she behaves as if they don't and doesn't bother saying hello or phoning people back - a self-fulfilling attitude. Oh, and just to add to this all she also hears voices in her head.
Yet from outside her world she looks about as 'normal' as it gets.
Then there's my other friend, who is absolutely ordinary in all gender/orientation/physical ways, yet has had few if any intimate relationships (at 45). Yet she seems so confident and ordinary. And she's absolutely miserable about it. And because she's so sure she's alone for life she's put up a front that tells the world 'I'm OK'. So nobody ever thinks to ask to get closer, because they assume that she wouldn't be interested.
And I could add many other stories.
It's worth saying also that many people I've come across are fed-up about having to try to search for relationships only within their minority. For instance (and generalising wildly here please forgive me) people who use wheelchairs don't necessarily want to have to go to places/clubs for people who use wheelchairs, where they have little in common with the others who attend. They want to go fishing, or to a writers group, or to join an environmental campaigning group, or to learn French - where they will meet others with the same attitudes and interests. But physical constraints may make this impossible. That's surely just as frustrating?
So where does this take us? Hmmm...? I'm not sure... Perhaps to thinking that relationships just are difficult, for almost everyone. A little easier for some, but easy for almost nobody. How many stereotypical marriages actually are both happy and long term? And how many of those only work because one party has been happy to compromise, or because one party has kept their secrets well?
Scary stuff - I guess it means we all have no alternative but to get out there and tell the world what we're dreaming of. And to remember that there are always some people who are happy to connect with us whoever we are. And no matter who we are there are a whole load who won't be.
Again - feel free to tell me I'm writing rubbish. I'm exploring the ideas in my own mind here too, trying to find the words...
My very best wishes.
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