A few days after my emotional meltdown at his housewarming party last Saturday, my French climbing buddy invited me over for a quiet dinner at his place last night and I had a lovely evening with him, his girlfriend and two of their three housemates.
After eating dinner and sitting around the fire chatting all together in the backyard, the girlfriend and housemates went to sleep while my French buddy had to do the dishes, and he & I weren’t really as tired as everyone else, yet, so I kept him company as he cleaned up and we had some time for a deeper, or more personal, conversation.
I’m learning a new type of relationship with him and although I still tend to feel uncertain in it, i.e. I always have the nagging doubt that he might not “really be my friend”, my gut tells me it is a true friendship that is growing between us and I like it.
There is sincere affection — from my own past experiences, I tend to always doubt true interest or affection from the other person(s) involved in a close relationship. He’s very direct, almost abrupt or curt often. If I didn’t know that this can be common among many Europeans (it’s actually something I like about many Europeans vs. Americans), I might be offended or taken aback by his super straightforward and brisk attitude. But fortunately I know better so I can appreciate him & his attitude for what they really are.
He’s the “tough love” kind of person; he’ll give you things straight, with no sweetening or embellishments. But he’s honest, and this means the world to me: I know I can trust him, trust what he says, trust what he does.
He takes me as I am and shares my journey, both the professional aspects and the personal/gender parts, with genuine interest and enthusiasm. He won’t delve deep or allow much space for emotions, but I can see he understands them and feels them himself and even shares them. I also know that part of his attitude has probably been very influenced/conditioned by the way he was brought up and has to function in society as a white cis-man.
Overall, there’s something very “man-to-man”-style in our friendship and I like it. It’s totally devoid of any form of sexual/sensual/erotic attraction, and that also feels comfortable and safe to me.
All this is new to me, and although it’s taking some learning & adapting on my part and it isn’t the only type of relationship I want or need, I’m enjoying this. I’m also realizing that it’s part of this new phase of my journey that got most of its momentum from my move here to Colorado, especially the gender-identity part: discovering, redefining, and expressing my gender-identity more openly and authentically is affecting all of my relationships and in general shifting the way I enter or start new relationships quite radically; it’s still new and sometimes even scary to me (because it’s so unknown) but it feels so much more authentic and healthy…
The Little Prince and the Fox 