“Gutta cavat lapidem”

Is it going to be sufficient for me to focus fiercely on my new job and stay in the realm of the “safe spaces” of platonic/buddy-like relationships, or is it time for another round of psychotherapy? Any maybe aimed specifically at my inability around romantic/intimate relationships? And in particular with someone who has specific knowledge of, and experience with, the queer community?

The constant trickle of rejections I’ve been experiencing, even if maybe manageable, is accumulating, the effects are adding up and undermining my confidence or emotional health, like Ovid’s water drop that hollows out the stone (“Gutta cavat lapidem”). 

I feel I’m stuck in a vicious cycle of misleading attractions and often unexpected rejections that are creating an unhealthy pattern for me and causing me recurrent pain. And I’m starting to really worry about this vicious circle, because it’s unhealthy for me, it causes pain, and I cannot seem to break it on my own. Moreover, I feel there are many cultural aspects and social biases that are making the situation worse, or harder, for me. At the end of the day, I’m still perceived as a woman who goes for younger men. And unfortunately this still is stigmatized more than other situations/relationships with age differences: homosexual relationships with big age differences are almost taken for granted; heterosexual relationships in which the man is older might be frowned upon or laughed off but are still considered “natural” or “somehow okay” or “unavoidable”; but no other situation seems to me to be so stigmatized as the “cougar”, the “predatory woman who goes for younger men”. And although I don’t look my age at all, although my friends who are a decade younger often think I’m their same age, although I have the attitude and body and energy of someone much younger, I still do have the experience of my age — and that inevitably comes out once I get closer to people. And it makes me uncomfortable. Somehow, I feel the weight of it. 

People have jokingly said to me, “You like ‘em young!?!”, or soothingly or encouragingly said that I’m “rewriting the rules”. 

I’m okay with rewriting the rules and won’t adapt or surrender to the stereotypes or molds society imposes on us — whether it’s conforming to age, gender, sexual orientation, relationship style, or any other “box”. But I need more support while doing it. I’m feeling the burden of my instinctive attraction to younger men. And I’m also feeling very concerned about how my being non-binary and coming out more and more as trans-masculine and even presenting more masculine might affect romantic/intimate relationships and complicate the scenario even more for me. 

I guess it’s time for me to seek professional help to carry this burden or to loosen it and lose it — to unravel this knot and be free, or at least lighter.