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A Change of heart - Claire Sylvia

….I wondered: Is it conceivable that this new heart might affect me sexually? Probably not, but who knew for sure?

My new heart did seem to be affecting my Personality. I noticed that I no longer felt lonely, even when I was by myself. On weekdays, when I was separated from Amara [her daughter] and my friends, I didn't miss them much. Sometimes I had the feeling that somebody else was in there with me, that in some intangible way, my sense of "I" had become a kind of "we." Although I couldn't always detect this extra Presence, at times it almost felt as if a second soul were sharing my body. I wondered about these feelings, but I still wasn't ready to take them seriously. Because they didn't fit into any category I was aware of, I dismissed them.

But this new male energy did seem to be affecting me. Until the transplant, I had spent most of my adult life either in a relationship with a man or hoping to be in one. But for years after the operation, while I still felt attracted to men, I didn't feel that same need to have a boyfriend. I was freer and more independent than before, as if I had taken on a more masculine outlook.

Most men – at least the ones I've known - just don't crave the closeness of an intimate connection the way women do. They may enjoy being in a relationship, but they don't feel incomplete without one. For the first time in my life, I didn't either.

It took years after the transplant before I was finally in an extended relationship with a man. I was still meeting men and enjoying their company, but generally, as we grew closer, something in me seemed to be pushing these men away. I occasionally wondered if my male heart might be jealous, as if this Presence I was feeling was reluctant to share me with anyone else.

My personality was changing, too, and becoming more masculine. I was more aggressive and more assertive than I used to be, and more confident as well. I felt I knew things that men knew, things I hadn't known as a woman and that seemed to have come to me from some other place. It was a subtle feeling, as though I'd been entrusted with some secret knowledge that I didn't completely understand.

Even my walk became more masculine. "Mom," said Amara, "why are you walking like that? You're kind of lumbering, like a football player."......... 

………………People ask me whether my sexual preferences have changed since the transplant. While this hasn't happened in any overt way, I am often drawn to women whom I, as a woman, don't feel are especially attractive. The women whose looks I liked before the transplant tended to be tall, slender, and dark, but after the transplant I also found myself looking at women who are shorter, rounder and blonder – as if some male energy within me were responding to them

[And much later she finds out from Tim’s family why…]

 ………… I was curious about Tim's girlfriend, assuming he had one. I now know that while there was no one girlfriend, Tim did have a big crush on a girl who didn't happen to share his feelings. When she started going out with another boy -  a close friend of Tim's, in fact Tim was distraught.

For years I wondered about this girl. Was it possible that she looked like the type of woman I had suddenly and inexplicably started noticing and staring at after the transplant? Apparently she did. Although I have never met her, I now know that the object of Tim's affections was short and curvy, with curly blond hair.