The Little Prince and the Fox

Lost my sense of purpose

In his impactful and moving memoir “Man’s search for meaning”, psychiatrist & Nazi concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl observed that those who survived were not the “physically fittest or strongest” but those who had a purpose, something to look forward to. He even credited his own survival to having the goal of completing a book, a purpose that was bigger than himself and above or beyond the daily horrors. To put it simply, he said that what keeps us going — i.e. what enables us to thrive in our daily life but also to survive horrors — is a sense of purpose.

Yesterday evening, as I tried to weather the storm of the most recent stressful event in my life and shared my sense of burnout, fatigue, and anxiety with my buddy Ron, he said: “You know, one of the theories about burnout is that it’s actually due to a lack of purpose rather than too much to do”. Ron is very open with me about his own experiences of anxiety and depression, so we talk about these topics quite freely. And while his being a cis-het man building a very normative life makes it hard for him to understand some aspects of my pains and fears, I do think that in many ways his comment about burnout hit the nail on the head for me right now.

I have lost my sense of purpose.

At the end of high school and throughout college my goal was to get a degree in Physics, go sailing, and leave my parents’ home where I was so stifled and not allowed to be my authentic self.

Then, my goal became earning a PhD and becoming a scientist.

So, I did: I got my B.S. in Physics while sailing competitively and enjoying life with my boyfriend-sailing-buddy; then, I got into grad school in a beautiful city that I loved, earned my PhD, and tried working as a scientist for several years.

Then, my longtime dream of moving to the U.S. became the next concrete goal, eventually becoming more specifically moving to California.

This dream took a while to come true as I also tried to juggle a relationship, but I eventually broke free, moved to California and rebuilt my life there, coming more and more into my full authentic self. I went back to the world of Physics, started sailing very frequently again, and generally opened up to the world, exploring and doing lots of new things that had been on my wish-list for years or decades (motorcycle, triathlon, rock climbing, etc.).

After the height of COVID, as life started “going back to normal” in 2021, I was hit with PTSD and a strong dissatisfaction, unhappiness even, with my life. My professional life felt unsustainable and my social life was almost non-existent, definitely not fulfilling my needs. Plus, my gender-journey had started gaining importance, really coming to the forefront of my thoughts and feelings. So, I moved to Colorado where, in the summers of 2019 & 2021, I had had a glimpse of dreams that might come true.

Once in Colorado, I had some very strong, directed purposes: to rebuilding a career in academia and to live even more fully as myself, as a man and as an adventurer/climber. These were very concrete, specific goals, requiring many practical steps: paperwork; surgeries; doctors’ appointments; planning; job applications; dedicated, even strenuous yet fulfilling, full-time work; climbing courses; regular climbing buddies.

In many ways my first three or four years here in Colorado were a transition phase: not in the (trans)gender sense of the word transition, but in a broader perspective, as I was transitioning, figuring things out, figuring myself out, between an old phase and a new one. It was like a youthful, exploratory phase, involving friendships with “buddies”, a lot of exploration in terms of geography/travels and activities, and limbo or precarious solutions when it came to my jobs and living situations. As I was still becoming my fuller self, everything was in flux: my job, my housing, my car, many of my relationships even.

Now my gender-journey goals are fulfilled, i.e., my outside looks at this point align with my inner gender identity and I can live in the world as the queer man that I am. But the rest of my life feels purposeless. I feel I don’t have any goals now — or, rather, that the goals I had cannot be fulfilled and I haven’t found anything else to substitute them with. Emotionally, I have outgrown that youthful phase (including the “buddies” relationships) but I haven’t found solid ground, yet, from a practical viewpoint (job, housing, car I can trust, fulfilling social life). I still feel in a limbo but now this limbo feels uncomfortable, insufficient, not fun as it was a couple years ago.

A couple years ago, I didn’t care about not having a stable living situation or a stable job: all I wanted to do was explore, climb, travel, hang out with my buddies, live the boyhood I hadn’t been allowed to live fully earlier in life. Now, while I still wish I could do more exploring and traveling and I wish I had adventure buddies or companions to share experience with, the weekend trips or a day at the crag or even a summer vacation are not fulfilling because then I have to come back to a daily reality that isn’t satisfying.

I cannot continue escaping my unsatisfying daily reality by going on trips and adventures. These are only temporary solutions, placebos, band-aids.

Time has come for me to sit down and figure out what I want to do with my life, as the grown man that I now am.

The problem is, I have no idea what I want to do or where to start.

“The buddy days are over”?

I can hear the song “The dog days are over” by Florence + The Machine playing in my head. And maybe, for me, “the buddy days are over”.

“[…]

The buddy days are over

The buddy days are done

[…]

Run fast […]

[…]

Leave all your love and your longing behind

You can’t carry it with you if you want to survive

The buddy days are over

The buddy days are done

[…]

“

Within the first six months from moving out to Colorado in Jan. 2022, I met and bonded with four cis-het men that quickly become trusted climbing buddies and close friends. Then, by the spring of 2023, I had also made two close friends as running buddies, also cis-het men.

These six men were among the most important people in my life. The four climbing buddies I met when I had just started using “they” pronouns and presenting as non-binary, before my top-surgery and before starting GAHT. So they met me when I looked like a girl, when I was still in that caterpillar phase of trying to define myself while my outside looks didn’t align to my inner feelings. Despite probably “seeing a girl”, they totally treated me like a “bro”, like the boy I said I was. They were like brothers to me, incredible allies, helping me discover my masculinity along with my identity as a climber. The two running buddies, instead, I met shortly after my top-surgery, at the first race I was able to do after two months of recovery & no running. So they, too, met me in a very delicate and important phase of my life, in a limbo when I was still adjusting to my “new” body and the GAHT hadn’t had its full effect, yet, on my facial features & body-hair. They, too, were there for me as allies and “male havens”.

For a couple years, I reveled in these close friendships, in the camaraderie, in the frequent runs or climbs or adventures with these guys.

Then, gradually, these friendships started shifting, or ending even.

My Italian climbing buddy — who had been the first non-medical person to see my “new” chest, my boy’s chest after top-surgery, and to this day is still the only cis person to have seen the photo-shoot I did in Dec. 2022 to commemorate my breasts before chopping them off — moved back to Europe.

My French climbing buddy — who had been the very first friend I made when I moved to Colorado in the winter of 2022 and was the buddy who took me to my top-surgery in Jan. 2023 — moved to California.

The younger of my running buddies and I both moved away from the town where we were living when we met; the effect of that, combined with his increasing family duties and the differences in our running goals, is that now we see each other only two or three times a year instead of once a week. He was the buddy who supported & shadowed/paced me in a race where I protested for the rights of nonbinary & trans athletes, and the friend who took me to my salpingectomy.

The older of my running buddies has basically stopped all communication with me since last Sept. 2025, for “mental health issues” of his own, according to his wife with whom I’m still in touch. He was partly a friend and partly a father figure for me.

So, of those six men who had been so important in my life, with whom I had had such strong camaraderie and the experience of being “male buddies”, an experience I longed for so much, had craved for so much of my life, only two were left: E. & J. And with both of them I have recently had final friends-breakups.

The loss of these six buddies over the past year or two has had different causes for each of them. Some of these losses have been more gradual or “organic”, due more to “life circumstances” than actual conflict or abandonment/rejection, whereas the recent friends-breakups with E. & J. were caused by actual breaches of trust. But regardless of the causes or modalities, all these losses are painful. Having deep, platonic male friendships that felt like brotherhoods — that male camaraderie, those adventure buddies — was something I had craved and sought out my entire life and found here in Colorado, at last. Or so it seemed. Those relationships were fundamental to my own coming into myself as a man, fundamental for my gender journey, key in finding or establishing myself as a climber & adventurer. Those friendships were fundamental for me in a delicate, key phase of my life. And those friendships are now over.

“The buddy days are over”.

I’m struggling with the end of that phase — or with having to acknowledge it, to face it.

But face it I must: a phase of my life has ended. Whether it’s because they moved on with their straight, normative lives or they broke my trust or I grew out of needing a certain type of “male model”, the end result is the same: “the buddy days are over” for me. I don’t have any more friendships that are of that youthful yet profound male-buddy type.

But maybe, instead of pining over the end of that phase (& the loss of those men from my life), I should embrace it, taking the cue from the song “The dog days are over” by Florence + The Machine who encourage to embrace the sudden happiness. In my case it’s not sudden happiness but it is, nonetheless, the opportunity for a new beginning. After all, I have changed and grown a lot from 3-4 years ago when I met those guys and bonded with them…

Yes, six doors have closed for me, but for every door that closes, there might be another one that opens, somewhere else…?

Washing off the grime

[Trigger warning: objectification/sexualization, unwanted sexual attention.]

Yesterday, I went for a swim in the small pool of our apartment complex, then took a shower, and finally took a bath at night.

I feel terribly about it from the environmental viewpoint but I really needed it for my emotional health. I needed to wash off the grime that I felt from having been so carelessly, selfishly sexualized by my friend Jack. Or ex-friend, at this point.

In our phone call yesterday afternoon to clarify where our friendship stands now, he did some blatant back-pedaling, a full 180-degree-turn on me. While admitting that his relationship with his girlfriend is “flawed” and that it’s “changing but he doesn’t know what the timelines are”, he said that she’s also being “supportive and compassionate with him” now with his business worries and struggles — once again forgetting all the times he complained to me about her lack of support, lack of compassion, her mean and manipulative behaviors towards him, etc. But he can lie about their relationship as much as we wants to, that’s his problem. What’s worse for me is that his backpedaling and 180-degree-shift were about me, too, about his feelings for me: i.e., he maintained that he’s able to see me “only platonically” with no effort or pain now.

That’s a complete shift from the last time we talked four weeks ago.

At the beginning of April, while being in a monogamous relationship with her (& not telling me about it until later) he was telling me in great detail about all his sexual fantasies involving me, with no encouragement from me. And now it’s all gone?!?

I am disgusted. It makes my stomach revolt. Even if he truly had no more interest beyond platonic for me now, the way he came onto me in March & April, while being in a monogamous relationship with a woman, describing all the details about his sexual fantasies involving me and with no encouragement from me*, is awful. And it didn’t start then. It didn’t even start with his joining me in Chicago and asking me to have sex with him then. Now, in retrospect, I can see all his comments on my body, all his little gestures & touches from last spring & summer as the early symptoms of that objectification/sexualization of my body.

I’m not prudish. While being aro-ace, I’m sex-positive and I know many climbers tend to be body-positive, making comments on each other’s physical aspect or athletic capacities. So, since Jack & I had started our friendship as climbing buddies, I took his repeated comments about, and looks at, my naked torso, or his light touch on my arms, as a brotherly camaraderie between male athletes & friends. I felt no attraction for him and I assumed that he, as a “straight” man, intended those comments and gestures in a platonic “bro-y” way. But they were always more frequent, more insistent than with any of my other climbing/running buddies. And now, those comments, those looks, those touches from him feel “dirty”, objectifying & sexualizing me without my permission. And without my knowledge even, at least at the beginning.

I trusted him. I trusted him to be a close platonic friend, a “brother”, as we called each other.

I never talked to him about my sexuality, it wasn’t important — until he asked me about it, saying his girlfriend had asked him about my orientation. I shared with him openly about my “gay-leaning, high-libido asexuality”. I thought I was telling a brother, like any of my other straight climbing or running buddies. And maybe at the time I was… I’ll never know. But then something started shifting for him and instead of either keeping it to himself (for the sake of our friendship & of his monogamous relationship with a woman) or of sharing with me, openly, honestly, with vulnerability, his feelings and thoughts about being attracted to another man for the first time in his life, he treated me like a disposable sexual object.

Because he couldn’t keep his sexual frustration (with his girlfriend) and his attraction for me under control, he treated my friendship, my trust, my feelings as collateral damage of his boner for me.

I am not a sexual object and I will not be collateral damage for selfish, careless, and entitled behavior from someone who should have been a friend. Someone I thought I could trust.

My body (as sexually attractive as it might be) and my sexuality are my own, they belong only to me. And this violation on his part, I know, is what is fueling my anger and disgust today, causing that need for washing off the grime in water yesterday.

*[NOTE: on the contrary, in a moment of great vulnerability & need of brotherly support on my part.]

More loss — Making space for the new

[Content warning: friends-breakup, loss, grief.]

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s a good guy. But if he’s stuck in a toxic relationship with a manipulative woman, that says something about him, too. You cannot be around toxicity without some of it rubbing off onto you…”

My buddy’s words from ten days ago echo in my head. He’s one my newer climbing buddies, one of the ones I’m closest to on the team, and he was talking about my friend Jack. But his words apply equally as well to my closest climbing buddy, too, the one with whom I’ve gone on a couple of climbing trips and who, in this past year, has let me down several times pretty badly because of his own jealous, manipulative wife.

The last time he let me know was yesterday evening. And I mean “last”, not simply “latest” or “most recent”: “last” because I’m never going to let him do it to me again, because I’m going to walk away from this friendship and tell him as much explicitly.

It’s going to be terribly painful for me. It’s painful already. But eventually, it’s going to be less painful, and for me also definitely less unhealthy and more aligned with my values, to not have him in my life anymore rather than be, through his weakness, the puppet of his jealous, needy, controlling wife.

Once again, I need to remind myself that I have not come so far, I have not fought all those battles to liberate myself from toxic relationships or unhealthy situations, to just put up with more of them now, in some other form that was/is more indirect or disguised.

The toxicity of these relationships with my buddies here in Colorado was indirect or disguised because it wasn’t directly between me and them but, rather, between them and their wives or girlfriends and from there having effects on the friendship between me and my buddies, at first limiting the camaraderie between us or the time they could spare for me, and then eventually getting to the point where they actually let me know really badly — bailing on me for trips or plans; not offering me or taking away from me support in moments of need; acting in non-appropriate, selfish, or careless ways with me.

My two oldest and closest climbing buddies have been doing this with me for a couple years now, on and off. I have put up with it, partly because of my own neediness. I have had conversations with them to try and change things, I have processed my own pain and anger, I have tried to be patient, I have blamed them, and told myself that I had “no choice” but accept the limitations imposed on our friendships by their jealous, controlling girlfriends or wives.

I’m done with that now. I have a choice and, as reasonable as it is to blame them for their cowardly or unfair behavior towards me, it does me no good to sit and dwell on that blame while putting up with their behavior, putting up with friendships that don’t meet my needs. I have a choice, even if it’s a sad one because it involves walking away from these friendships that meant so much to me. It’s a sad choice but it’s also the only truly healthy one for me at this point. I need to recognize my own responsibility in the pain these relationships have caused me, my own weaknesses and patterns. I have been putting up with more than is good for me because of my own neediness and, I believe, because these two guys reminded me of my own father in some ways. At the beginning of our friendships, they were single or less entwined with their girlfriends so the camaraderie and male bonding had real space to form and grow between us. That was lovely: it allowed for true, deep friendships to evolve and, among other things, was deeply affirming of my masculinity in a very delicate and important phase of my gender journey. But as their romantic/sexual relationships with those women got more involved, other sides of these guys’ nature started to show, the sides that are similar to my dad’s: they’re good men, truly good men, but they’re also, to a certain extent, cowardly, weak men who will choose jealous, needy, manipulative women as romantic/sexual/life partners to control their lives. And the effect of that, as with my father & mother, is that these guys end up being puppets in the hands of those toxic women with the consequence on our friendship being, concretely, that I get let down. I don’t simply get “less time hanging out with them”, which would be painful but understandable and bearable. No, I get actually let down, kicked out of the house in moments of need, refused support, bailed on for plans — literally, concretely, and painfully (for me) put aside.

Probably, I put up with it for so long not only because I love these guys to pieces as brothers, but also because this type of treatment was, unfortunately, familiar to me. That’s where my responsibility lies. And that’s also where my choice lies, i.e. in stopping this vicious cycle for myself by stepping away from it.

And so, with tears in my eyes and heaviness in my heart, I am stepping away. For my own good — even if it might take a long time for me to feel the beneficial effects of this decision in my life.

In fact, this decision comes at a difficult time, at a time in my life when I am losing, for “practical” or “external” reasons, all of the five or six buddies I had made when I first moved out here. But, I guess, one’s got to clear out the old stuff that doesn’t work anymore to make place for the new.

My godmother is gone

[Trigger warning: death, loss, grief.]

“M.B. passed away this afternoon. Her sister sent me a message to let me know.”

I’m sitting at my desk, checking old, archived messages from my mother — old and archived because I generally don’t want to communicate with her and have her blocked most of the time. Her message is from nearly three weeks ago, April 23rd.

M.B. was my godmother and had been a very close friend of my mother’s, at least before my teenage years. M.B. had always been very present in my life and had become a true mother figure for me since age 17, when things started going really south with my biological mother. The latter was very upset by my godmother’s involvement in my life and support of my dreams and identity that clashed with my mother’s vision. My mother’s discontent with my godmother was so intense that it led to a friends-breakup between them and to me & my godmother having a secret relationship for decades. She was one of my strongest supporters and allies in almost all my dreams and endeavors. A lot of what I risked and achieved was thanks to my godmother. A lot of what, or who, I became was thanks to her. Until four years ago.

As my nonbinary/transmasc identity became stronger and I got to the point where I was not only ready but also in need to share with the world, starting with the trusted people closest to me, the truth of my gender identity, my godmother was naturally one of the first people I told. One of the first people I asked to use gender-neutral language for me. And she refused flat out. “For forty years I’ve known you as a girl, ‘A…a’. I’m not going to start now to contort the Italian language to address you in unnatural ways”, was her response to my coming out email.

That was four years ago. We never really reconnected after that. I was too hurt, too angry. My natural instinct, which she had for decades supported and nurtured and encouraged (& for which I’m immensely grateful), to unfold and become my true, authentic self, against all odds guided me even in this rupture.

Hence, I guess, my finding out about her death through my mother instead of directly from one of her siblings or other family members or common friends we had.

The shock of her death (not unreasonable given her age) is still so intense that I hardly know how I feel. There is immense pain, of course. I hardly slept last night, and this was probably the main reason. But this pain hasn’t taken shape, yet. It hasn’t taken on its full reality. The reality of another person who was of fundamental importance in my life now being gone. Forever. And without knowing me or accepting me as I am truly, authentically.

And, since I am single and estranged from my biological family, I have no one to support me in this pain, in this loss. When I read that message from my mother yesterday evening, I had no one to go to, no one to share or process the news with. I’m sharing it here, putting it out there into the universe, to my few readers, because there’s nowhere else to put it and it’s too much for me to bear by myself.

Deep wound

“

Wolf mother, where have you been?

You look so worn, so thin

You’re a taker, devil’s maker

Let me hear you sing, hey-ya, hey-ya

Wolf father, at the door

You don’t smile anymore

You’re a drifter, a shapeshifter

Let me see you run, hey-ya, hey-ya

Holy light, oh, burn the night

Oh, keep the spirits strong

Watch it grow, child of woe, oh

Keep holding on

When I run through the deep dark forest long after this begun

Where the sun would set, the trees were dead and the rivers were none

And I hope for a trace to lead me back home from this place

But there was no sound, there was only me and my disgrace

…

“

[from the song “Wolf” by First Aid Kit]

My mother was overbearing, an often too-present figure in our daily lives at home. Bustling with energy, effectively she was the head of the household. The person who made the big decisions but also the parent more involved in child-care, often with almost suffocating attention towards me and my younger sister.

My father was quiet, almost subdued, at home. In public, instead, his friendly, joyful, playful personality would come out, and he could be very pleasant, outgoing, engaging. But at home there wasn’t space for it — the space being all taken up by my mother and her energy.

My mother and her energy, or will-power, also took up the space between me and my father. The relationship between me and him was somehow mediated by my mother, especially the older I got. During my teenage years, the mediation was, in many ways, a blessing. With his catholic upbringing my father would certainly have been much more strict with us “teenage girls”, probably making life quite miserable for us in that phase. But still, I missed my father, I missed a closer, direct relationship with him. I sought it out, in my awkward teenage way, usually through confrontation, like the big philosophical or intellectual arguments he & I would have over the dinner table. We’d go on arguing for hours, often just playing the devil’s advocate (at least, I) just for the sake of prolonging the debate — the only way I had to interact directly with him, get close to him, be seen by him without my mother in between. Without my mother in the way.

I’m not sure when I realized how angry I was at both my parents for this. But that anger is there, intense and deep. With my mother for being, or getting, in the way. And with my father for allowing her to be in the way of a direct relationship with me. I am still profoundly hurt by my father’s lack of courage to stand up for himself, to stand up for me, to claim a direct relationship with his eldest child. What it left in my heart is the sense that he let a woman get in the way of a relationship with me because he was too weak, too coward.

And this old wound in my heart has been reopened by my buddy Jack’s behavior towards me. He, too, is letting a woman get in the way of a relationship with me because he’s too weak, or coward, to step up for himself — step up for me.

Of course, the ages and situation and feelings are very different in many ways — Jack isn’t my father, I’m perfectly aware of that. But he is — or was — one of my closest friends, and the only cis-man friend I have — or had — who could be affectionate towards me even physically, who could hold me in my most vulnerable moments, who could help me hold the grief around my father, with a tenderness that none of my other cis-guy friends are capable of. So, while I know Jack’s not my father and my feelings for him are completely different from those for my dad, Jack’s recent behavior towards me reawakened, at a deep, vulnerable, emotional level, painful situations I experienced with my father. Jack’s recent behavior towards me touched deep, old wounds of mine that are still painful.

I know it is on me to do the work to get over my “daddy wounds”, and acknowledging these wounds and how they are being reopened by this situation with my buddy is the first step in my own healing. But I still cannot deny the pain, the depth and intensity of this pain. Jack, along with one other climbing buddy of mine, is the only cis-man friend I have here who has known me throughout the medicalization of my gender journey, who saw me evolve, literally undergo physical changes in becoming my authentic self. And he accepted me throughout that journey, as the caterpillar came out of its cocoon and the chrysalis turned into a beautiful butterfly. He was there, holding the cocoon, holding the butterfly. He saw, sees, accepts me in the entirety of my masculinity and femininity in ways that are unique and extremely important for me, in ways that people — especially cis-men — meeting me now & moving forward cannot understand. There is a grief in this, a grief from this loss, that feels as deep as an underground cave, as painful as the sharpest granite.

This loss feels irreparable to me now and I really don’t know if the friendship between me & Jack will survive this blow.

Yet another loss

Knowing what Jack & I could have had, or what we could have, if only he mustered the courage, makes it impossible for me, at least for now, to just hang out as buddies for chai or for a run or hike or climb, like we used to. Partly because I’m hurt by the way he handled this whole situation and partly because Pandora’s vase has been opened for me.

If he hadn’t brought up his more-than-platonic desires towards me, I would never have dreamed of anything more than a platonic friendship between us. But once he did, it opened up pools of desire in me, too, and the illusion of those needs been satisfied.

But it turned out to be a mirage.

So it’s painful for me now. It’s like having to put the genie back in the bottle. Not easy.

Either way, it’s gong to be painful for a while. But I think that for me it’s going to be slightly less painful to not see or talk to him for a while rather than see him and act as if everything were “normal” or as if “nothing had happened” between us.

So I have, effectively, lost a friend.

And now, I have to mourn this loss.

Yet another loss.

How much courage does it take?

Nearly two decades ago, I went through one of my most painful breakups, my first really painful breakup. At the time, I was in grad school and had been in a very intense and complicated, mostly long-distance, more-than-platonic relationship with a guy I loved very deeply and who sincerely loved me back. He was very unhappy in his job and even disliked the city where he lived at the time while really liked the city where I was going to grad school. We were both of us tired of the long-distance aspect that weighed on our relationship but I had really reached a breaking point: I just couldn’t do the long-distance anymore, and told him so. I basically gave him an ultimatum, which on paper he also found extremely reasonable: that he move to the city where I was going to grad school and find himself a new job there (which he could have done pretty easily, given the field he was in). For several months, I waited, as he tried to figure things out, to try and make it work. In the end, though, as he himself admitted, he wasn’t able to muster the courage to take the leap and move to be geographically closer to me. So I ended the relationship.

Of course, I was devastated by the loss because we truly loved each other and had a very deep emotional & intellectual connection. For me, though, there was also an additional level, or flavor, to the pain: I felt that he didn’t love, or care about, me enough to find the courage, enough to take the leap, despite my outstretched hand. He wouldn’t have been leaping into the void: he would have had to take a leap, or step, to enable the continuation & growth of our relationship. His incapacity to do so felt like a rejection to me.

Last night, I finally met up with Jack to follow up on the complicated conversation we had three & a half weeks ago. And the bottom line was that he is still in the toxic, monogamous relationship with that woman, feeling unhappy and trapped in it but unable to walk away from it/her; but his feelings and desires for me are also unchanged, beyond platonic, and his wishes would be for a deep “friendship with benefits” along lines that are very similar to what I’d like. The pain I’m feeling right now around Jack is still very raw and somewhat confused in its layers. But one layer is similar to how I felt with my ex nearly two decades ago: a sense of rejection, of not being loved or important enough for someone to take a leap despite my outstretched hand. Similarly to my ex almost two decades ago, I’m not asking Jack to take a leap into the void, to leave everything behind: I’m offering him a relationship with me, a relationship that he, too, apparently would like but doesn’t have the courage to go for. That hurts terribly. It’s painful and frustrating and disappointing. And it feels like the waste of a wonderful opportunity.

I can empathize with Jack’s difficulty in leaving the woman he’s been together with for over three years, despite having been unhappy with her, by his own admission, for over two & a half years. I was in a similar situation with my ex in Europe before taking my leap from Barcelona to California a decade ago. It was hard and it took me a long time to get to the point where I was ready to go. But in the end, I went, I took the leap. And mine was a huge leap of faith into the unknown. I understand, and can even empathize with the fact, that we often stay in a situation even if it makes us terribly unhappy just because it’s familiar, it’s known, and as such more bearable than the unknown. I can understand Jack when he says that the situation with me — a close friendship with benefits — feels like an unknown to him because it would be completely new to him: first time with another man, first time in a consensually/ethically non-monogamous relationship, first time in a serious friendship with benefits with a climbing buddy. I get it. But still, the unknowns wouldn’t be as great as the ones I faced a decade ago when I left my whole life behind to start over in California. At the time, I only had a dream, a vague idea of what life could be like in California, the force of desperation from the unhappy life I was leading, hope, and U.S. citizenship. When I moved a decade ago, I had no job waiting for me in California, no friends there, no place to live other that the AirBnb I had booked online. Nothing. Only my dreams. I was sad, I was scared, I was broken-hearted and lonely. I cried for most of the flight from London to San Diego. But I did it. I found the courage and took the leap. Pretty much a leap into the void. Jack would be “leaping” from a miserable relationship that is familiar to him to an “augmented friendship” with someone he knows and trusts and who’s already shown him availability & love (me). How much courage does that really take?

I’m trying to be compassionate and empathetic, I’m trying to remind myself that courage is different for each of us, so to a certain extent courage is subjective. But I also need to remind myself that my level of courage is often higher, stronger, more determined than that of many other people. To me, their incapacity to muster the courage to “choose me” feels like rejection. But probably it’s just that their courage, or their willingness to push their comfort zone, is smaller than mine.

It’s frustrating and painful because I’m sure that Jack & I could have a lovely friendship with benefits — we desire and imagine the evolution of our relationship along very similar lines — but it’s not going anywhere because he cannot get himself out of a swamp.

The unbearable pain of betrayal

Friday was Jack’s birthday. Exactly three weeks after the loaded conversation we had, initiated by him telling me not only about his sexual attraction towards me but in great detail about his sexual desires & fantasies involving me, despite his still being in a monogamous (& toxic) relationship with a woman that has been making him unhappy for the past two & a half years.

When we had that complicated conversation at the beginning of April, I told Jack that his relational situation, as long as he remained in a monogamous (& toxic) partnership, was a hard line, a “hard no” for any physical or sexual intimacy between me & him. He understood and agreed, and seemed to be determined to finally solve the situation with her ASAP. So the ensuing silence from him for three solid weeks, apart from a generic text exchange around mid-April, was surprising to me. Not only surprising, in fact: it went from seeming weird, to being almost unbelievable, frustrating, painful, infuriating.

I had consciously decided to give him space after that complicated conversation and the radio silence between us was helpful for me, too. In fact, as I processed the events and shared them with other close friends and heard their comments, reactions, thoughts, concerns, my own emotions became more clear, like layers of an onion peeling off: the initial feeling of being flattered by the attention mixed with being thrown for a loop, evolved into frustration and anger at Jack’s selfish and unfair behavior in bringing up his sexual desires towards me while still being in a monogamous (& toxic) relationship with someone else.

Despite my hard feelings towards him, I texted to wish him happy birthday on Friday morning, with the familiar tone we used to have between us: “Happy birthday, brother! Hope you’re having a lovely day!”

His reply came almost immediately and struck me in its apparent dryness, or coldness: “Hi. Thank you :)”

A few hours later, mustering all the compassion I could find, I texted him simply asking how he’s doing. But got no reply.

As I turned on my phone in the early afternoon on Saturday and still found no reply from Jack, I felt a surge of anger come up in me. Red-hot and almost out of control, the anger of a wild beast. I wanted to physically smash some objects, physically grab Jack by the scruff and punch him, man to man. Something I hadn’t felt in over a decade, apart from another, slightly less intense, instance with my European queer ex-lover nearly three years ago. The instance this past Saturday was so intense, it was scary. I went into my bedroom, threw the pillows at the bed to get the hottest steam out of my system, and then eventually was able to self-regulate by putting on some music and dancing and signing to a song that felt perfect for the moment. But still, I was shaken. Where did all this rage come from? Where did this animal fury stem from?

The answer came to me today. It came — comes — from a sense of betrayal.

I feel betrayed by Jack (as I did that time by my European queer ex-lover and as I felt in the relationship I had with my ex in Barcelona).

Jack & I were supposed to be friends. Platonic friends. Is this how one treats a friend? Is this how one behaves in a platonic friendship? There was an agreement between us, wasn’t there, even if implicit for years? We’re bros, we’re buddies. I was there for him, always, when he needed to vent about the difficulties in his relationship with that woman — there to listen and hold space and show empathy and give advice, if required, as a brother, as a platonic friend. Then, all of a sudden, here I am, not his buddy but now the object of his sexual desire? And he tells me when he’s still monogamously together with her (& additionally in a moment when I’m feeling out of spirits for reasons of my own and am thus emotionally vulnerable)?

That’s bad enough. But on top of that, he then ghosts me for three weeks and doesn’t even reply to my text message enquiring after him?

This is more painful than the bailing of a buddy for a trip or a planned adventure. That bailing, which I have experience several times, unfortunately, is terribly painful because I feel let down, abandoned and/or neglected. It’s a sharp, intense pain coming mainly from disappointment. But this pain re. Jack is deeper, more intense, more hurtful, because it comes from betrayal (what to me feels like betrayal).

To me it feels like the violation of something sacred: our friendship. The violation, or betrayal, of the (more or less explicit) fundamental agreements we had as platonic friends.

This is the root of my fury, of my animal rage. And as scary as my rage was on Saturday, as much as I felt like an infuriated beast then, I think it is a very reasonable anger, caused by real facts, by the unfair and incomprehensible behavior of someone I love(d) & trusted dearly. Someone who, I feel, took advantage of my trust.

Mid-life crisis?

I’m not sleeping well. I wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble falling back asleep because I start ruminating — or my ruminations make the whole night restless.

A lot of the rumination comes from practical issues making me anxious right now: politics, my own financial instability, looming work deadlines. But the deeper reason for my ruminations and sleepless nights is unhappiness.

I am unhappy with my life.

It’s a different feeling from what I’ve often written about when mentioning my relational needs not getting met. This is a deeper, more existential unhappiness. This has to do with my life as I’m living it, what I’ve built up to here, how I’m living it daily, and what, if anything, I’m going towards in my future. This feeling is more similar to the one I had a dozen years ago in Barcelona, a year or two before making the biggest change in my life and moving to California. I had similar feelings 4-5 years ago, which led to my move from California to Colorado, but those were also skewed by the intense emotions and complications of the pandemic. The crisis I’m feeling now seems more similar to the one I underwent in Barcelona over a decade ago because it seems to stem from a deep unhappiness despite an overall “okay” (albeit uncertain) life. From the outside, one could think that, apart from the political hell we’re all in and apart from my own financial insecurities & professional instability (that I share with many other people), I’m doing “okay”. One could even venture to think that I have “all I could want”. But I really don’t. Far from it.

The main reasons for my move to Colorado, apart from the weather, were that I wanted to climb outdoors a lot, trail run more, and find community to share these activities. And during my first two years here, in fact, I got this. That’s when I met most of the cis-men who then became my close buddies. For my first two years here in Colorado, I was climbing outdoors two or three times a week and running on trails — real trails, not the flat open spaces or neighborhood gravel path — at least a couple times a week. I was going out scrambling, meeting new people, making new, lasting friendships, pushing my limits, exploring, adventuring. And all this while still being at the very beginning, and then in the midst, of my “medical transition”, i.e. starting GAHT and getting gender-affirming top-surgery. That means that, despite it being a time of my life with huge upheaval and deep, even difficult changes, I was still able to get out there, make deep connections, have fun “bro-time” and, most importantly, live authentically as my adventurous self. The time I was spending out on the trails, up in the mountains, up on the wall with my buddies, all that male bonding, was wonderful as it nourished both my needs for adventure and the affirmation of my masculinity.

In the past couple years, ironically as I’ve come more into my authentic self, I have been living less and less in the way I’d really want to. What’s going on?

Part of it has practical reasons. A thumb injury requiring surgery in the spring of 2024 and then a severely sprained ankle in August of the same year, kept me first from climbing and then also from running or hiking for months on end, which limited my activities and also made it harder to have bro-time with my buddies. My having moved several times within the same general region here but changing towns has also been a disruptive factor, making it logistically harder to meet up with some of my friends. But I also feel like there had been a fire burning in me, fueling me, during my first two years here, giving me all that energy to get out, explore, while also moving, settling into a new place, getting gender-affirming care, doing name-change paperwork, etc. And now I feel exhausted, chronically fatigued, like I have nothing left in me to fuel me even through a normal day.

And then, there’s the other side: my buddies’ side.

My Italian climbing buddy I lost because he went back to Italy.

My French climbing buddy I lost because he moved to California.

My older running friend I lost because he’s depressed and doesn’t feel like talking to me (or, apparently, anyone else).

My younger running friend I lost because we both moved away from the town where we were living when we met so it’s logistically difficult for us to meet up now, especially given he has a wife & daughter to whom he’s very committed, which limits his availability a lot.

With my two closest climbing buddies things have changed a lot, to the extent that from a practical viewpoint I’ve lost them, too, because they are both shifting out of their “young, adventurous phase” and going down the normative path of getting married, having children, buying a house, and getting steady office jobs with a tight schedule that doesn’t allow for as much “weekly adventuring”.

And with my oldest climbing buddy things have been complicated for a while, first because he & I both were kept from climbing at different times due to our respective injuries, and now because of his physical/sexual attraction towards me (& ensuing drama).

That’s all of the buddies I had. All the close male friendships I had built in my first 2-3 years here in Colorado which had brought me so much joy and validation, through our bro-time together, both from the viewpoint of gender and from the viewpoint of being “adventure buddies”. I was living the life I wanted, had dreamed of, and felt really aligned to myself, both gender-wise and adventure-wise.

Now, I have no buddies left with whom I can hang out regularly or go explore. My old buddies I’ve lost due to “life circumstances”. The new people I’m meeting, like the lovely people on my climbing team, are nice but we don’t “click” in the same way. My buddies and I were “platonic soulmates”, there was something in our natures, in our approach to life, in our experiences, that made us “click” instinctively and connect deeply, immediately. With these new climbing folks it’s not the same. And it’s not a question of time: that kind of connection you can feel instinctively, immediately. I’m not finding it anymore, and don’t know where, or how, to find it again.

And I miss it terribly. It undermines my identity as a boy as well as my identity as an explorer, adventurer.

I want to live my life like I was doing when I had just moved out here to Colorado. I want to be out in nature, climbing, hitting the trails, more often and with the “right people for me”.

But where do I find those “right people”?

And how do I get my energy back? What if I never get over this chronic fatigue that has been crippling me for the past year and a half?