#askdan

I took a few days to ponder this, because you're not the only person to ask me for relationship and dating advice. I don't feel I have a lot of advice (especially around dating), but I hope what I do have to say is helpful.

I met my wife while we were both were deep in the closet and attending a private fundamentalist christian college (we're talking does not accept financial aid so the govt can't tell us what to do levels of fundamentalist). My family were Trump nutjobs and I was so stuck in survival mode I wasn't a real person. I was miserable and miserable to be around. I barely attended classes, was in severe chronic pain constantly (ended up having surgery for endometriosis my second year), and was actively suicidal.

But I found other weird people there and joined an anime/gaming club. Ended up making a lot of friends through shared interests. Maybe I slept 14 hours straight and didn't go to class that day, but I did get up and go to those club meetings. It wasn't enough to pull me out of suicidal ideation on its own, but it gave me short term "reasons to live and get up for the day" and that was huge at the time. It also gave me things to talk about and connect with others on.

I did not meet my wife in that group, but those friends helped me get out of some bad mental situations and start changing my outlook on life. I started signing up for volunteer opportunities at a local cat shelter, and took an officer position in the club. We did a yearly charity drive where we gamed for 24 hours straight (surprisingly successful! We donated ~3k per year to cancer research and treatment) and it was around this time that I was on the lookout for any potential Gamers™ that weren't in the club already. This was how I found my wife.

Now crucially the other thing I loved was math, so I actually attended most of my math classes. My soon to be wife sat one seat away, with a mutual acquaintance between us. I had never spoken to her, I didn't even know her name, but the person in between noticed we were both drawing Hollow Knight characters in the margins of our notes. He mentioned it, and I was ready.

I had found a Gamer to drag to our charity event and squeeze donations out of. And so still not even knowing her name, I simply cornered her as soon as class finished and said "YOU SHOULD COME TO GAME NIGHT" and that made such an impression on her that she did.

Now once again, we were both deep in the closet on a campus that worshiped Ronald Reagan and I wanted to be dead in a ditch, but she showed up to the event and sat with me. We just enjoyed our mutual interests together, and I loved her. I loved how she talked and how she shamelessly enjoyed things. She was dealing with so many of her own problems too, and we were both miserable, but there was something in that shared "I hate this life" that let us say "fuck it" for the rest of our time on campus. We would walk at 4am to the local Sheetz for food and conversation, we skipped classes together, volunteered together. She never joined the club itself, but she did start hanging out with my friends in it.

I was already in a relationship at the time that was... bad, probably abusive for both me and my boyfriend at the time. I saw how this person treated me without trying to get into my pants and said "huh, maybe I should raise my standards". I broke up with my ex, and asked her out.

I had known her for less than 6 months at this time, and then I was in a bad car accident. Like full speed head on collision, totaled my professor's car (his wife was teaching me to drive, see nutjob parents above), and landed me and the professor's wife in the hospital. We miraculously survived, but my soon to be wife had abandoned everything she was doing to hop into the car with that professor and sit in the ER waiting room wondering if I was alive.

I had spent so long wanting to die, faced the possibility of it, and decided that I wanted to live with her. That level of fuck it mentality? We both dropped out, I took only what I had in my dorm room, went no contact with my family, and hopped in a car with her family to live with them. We got married that summer, after less than a year of knowing each other.

We celebrate our 6th anniversary this year. We came both came out as transgender to each other in our 2nd year of marriage. I had suspected for a while, but wanted her to feel safe and comfortable exploring her gender and options, and I was also going through a lot of therapy myself to untangle what was trauma and what ended up being dysphoria. We started medically transitioning together soon after.

So! That's the story of meeting my wife. We've both come a very long ways from where we started. My advice might seem cliche, but finding friends with mutual interests, spending time with people regularly, finding a club or group or volunteer work, this is how you meet people and make friends. And sometimes the people and friends you meet are ones you'll fall in love with, sometimes not, and sometimes they don't have everything figured out. Sometimes they haven't realized they're transgender yet, sometimes they're not in a safe place to do so. The point is to value the relationships regardless, instead of focusing on finding "the one".

My wife stood out to me because she was kind, and she wanted to get better, be better, and she was willing to jump with me and take those risks. In many ways, love is a verb and an action. I wake up every morning and choose to love my wife.

I've never used a dating app, I kind of skipped the whole "dating" thing in general. I wasn't looking for a partner at the time, but by focusing my energy on building and maintaining friendships and hobbies, by not being afraid to just walk up and talk to people, to take social risks and be genuine, that is how I found both my partner, and my closest friends that I still talk to this day.

TLDR: I encourage not specifically looking for a partner, and instead looking for and investing in genuine friendships and community around you.