Funny story. True story. I've never said this publicly before, only a few and very select friends know this story, but the Escapist seems like a wonderful and ideal community, so what the hell.
Back in the early days of the internet when cameras used film and the only social networking we did was in chat rooms, I met a guy online. The relationship started as friends chatting on IM (we were 10), but as time went on, it developed into a romance. A relationship ensued, I fell head over heels in love, and by the time I was in my senior year of high school he proposed. Instead of going to college, I'd move to where he lived and we'd live happily ever after. One day before graduation (and a week before my 18th birthday, which was finally-meet and run-away-together day), I got an e-mail which said, quite plainly, he was actually a she. What's more, the family and friends I thought I'd talked to online didn't know I existed, the apartment we were going to live in didn't exist, and so a week later I was homeless. You know that hopeless first love? It felt like half my body had been ripped away. The person I'd loved lied to me and left me homeless, eating scraps of food leftover at food courts. What's worse is that over the course of several months, I learned not even the attributes of the man I thought I loved were alive in her: she said she created the man I fell in love with as what her ideal world and her ideal self would be like. I loved a lie, something that never was. Of course, this was too much of a shock to the system, so I did try to stumble around and make a relationship with her, but it didn't work.
Could I overlook gender? Well, yes, I could and did. Gender is a small component and a relationship is more than just if bits and bobs fit together. The last thing I look for in a mate is in their physical attributes. One of the most significant findings in Kinsey's studies is the self-named Kinsey Scale. Sexuality can be described and related, but what's more is it can fluctuate over time. Then again, physical and sexual attraction cannot be forced, so for some loving their best mate just couldn't happen if the attraction wasn't there.
We'll the fact that I'm only attracted to females and there's the point that I never met anyone half'interested in the things I'm into would probably be the most threatning, so probably not.
