On Height Comparisons and Height Differences

People often ask me about the height difference before they meet me.

How tall I really am.

If it feels “extreme.”

If it becomes intimidating.

If I notice it all the time.

The truth is that height changes a room before a word is spoken.

Sometimes I see it immediately when someone arrives. That tiny pause in the doorway. The quick look upwards. The slight laugh. Almost disbelief. As if the body expected one thing and reality arrived larger, slower, stranger.

And then, after a while, something shifts.

The height stops being only visual.

It becomes physical. Emotional. Atmospheric.

A hand reaching slightly higher than expected.

A face pressed against my chest during a hug.

Someone standing behind me in an elevator, realizing their eyes are level with my shoulders.

The strange intimacy of sharing a bed where proportions suddenly feel unreal, almost dreamlike.

I think many people secretly long for experiences that alter perspective.

Not only emotionally, but literally.

To look up.

To feel small for a moment.

To feel protected.

Overpowered.

Calm.

Curious.

Desired.

Or simply fascinated.

I once spent an evening with a man who kept laughing every time we passed a mirror. Not mocking laughter. More like genuine amazement. He was around 165 cm. I was wearing heels. Every reflection looked absurd to him, almost cinematic. At one point he just stopped in the middle of the street in Berlin and said:

“You don’t even look real.”

I think that sentence stayed with me because it captured something important. Height comparisons often create a slightly surreal atmosphere. A feeling that proportions have shifted and normal social choreography no longer fully works.

Who bends down first.

Who leads physically.

Who occupies space.

Who disappears into the other person.

Sometimes it becomes playful.

Someone wanting to compare hand sizes across a dinner table.

Trying on my coat and disappearing inside it.

Standing back to back for photographs.

Laughing because my stride is too long and they almost have to jog beside me through an airport.

And sometimes it becomes unexpectedly tender.

A man once fell asleep with his head in my lap during a long outcall after we had talked for hours. Earlier that evening he had been very nervous about the height difference. Almost obsessed with it. But later, half asleep, he quietly said that it made him feel peaceful. Safe in some strange way. Like he could stop performing masculinity for a moment.

I think people imagine height mostly as dominance.

And yes, sometimes it is.

There can absolutely be something exciting about physical contrast. Especially in dynamics involving control, softness, restraint, strength, vulnerability or worship. The body becomes theatre. Symbol. Fantasy. A language of proportions.

But often it is less aggressive than people expect.

More intimate.

More surreal.

More human.

Just two bodies discovering each other’s scale.

There is also something strangely beautiful about how quickly humans adapt. After enough hours together, the impossible suddenly becomes ordinary. The body recalibrates. What first felt shocking becomes natural. Someone who initially stared upwards constantly suddenly forgets to notice at all.

Until you pass another mirror.

And reality becomes strange again.