Linking "someday" to the present

Today I agreed to something that makes me uneasy. I'm not sure why I agreed to it. Maybe I can claim temporary insanity over the excitement that I get to keep my job. Maybe it was because it was the second time in a week that I'd encountered this offer. Maybe I just feel like I'm getting old.

I agreed to let my friends at work be on the lookout for single young lesbians to introduce me to.

See, it all started with a conversation in which I said I wanted to adopt kids "someday". I explained that ideally, I'd have a partner for this. That led to a discussion of why I'm single, and I gave the easy answer that I don't any single lesbians around my age. Actually, I'm not sure that I know any single women around my age period. So my friend Kate offered to introduce me to a lesbian couple she knows in hopes that they might know of people who they could hook me up with, as well as to be on the lookout herself. And somehow I ended up accepting the offer.

I know this isn't likely to come to anything. It isn't like my straight work friends have lesbians swarming around them. In a way, it's the principle. It's a token step towards the possibility of dating. And as much as I'd like to have a partner in life, dating terrifies me.

For one thing, who would I date? My friends naturally assumed lesbians, because they assume I'm a lesbian, but lesbians usually prefer the company of other lesbians. Which begs the question, Am I a lesbian? One one hand, I'm a physically female person who has no particular plans on becoming not physically female, who is primarily attracted to women. On the other hand, I feel uncomfortable identifying as a woman and go by "he" whenever I can. For the sake of trying on labels and seeing if they fit, perhaps I am a transgender lesbian. A lesbian boi? Regardless, who dates female androgynes (a label I'm more comfortable with)? Lesbians seem like a better bet than straight women. However, I'm betting it would be off-putting, to say the least, to most lesbians to have the person they're dating referring to themself as he and refusing to be called a girlfriend.

There are issues beyond that. Like, I have no idea what to do beyond what I've seen on TV and in movies. I've never had a relationship. Since I have no experience, it seems natural that I'd be bad at it. There's also the fact that I have trouble letting people in. This whole thing really scares me.

If I'm serious in wanting to have a family someday, I guess it makes sense to try to meet people I might be compatible with. I've always had this notion that it would just happen someday, but I know that it doesn't work that way, especially for introverts.

Isn't there some way to fast forward through the scary awkward stuff and just be in a loving, trusting, lifelong relationship?