GAY DISAFFECTION

Hello Project, I’m a 27-year-old Milanese apparently without problems: I graduated, I have a job I don’t love and don’t hate but that allows me to be independent, I come from a medium-level family, I’m an only child and my parents are dignified people, who know about me even from that point of view and have not caused me problems. So far there is nothing more normal (banal) than all this.

I had my experiences with the guys, but they ended quickly and with no regrets, except the last one which still lasts but only in a sense. My friends (friends?) don’t know about me, least of all at work, I have the problem if ever of keeping girls away, but not that of approaching guys because, very frankly, I feel emotionally very refractory.

I don’t dream of having a boyfriend, even when I was with a guy the involvement was very relative, we could do everything, obviously including sex, but there was anyhow neither the slightest emotional involvement. I mean that I have never fallen in love with a guy, I’m neither straight nor bisexual, I’m gay, I never had any doubts about this, long ago I thought that sooner or later I would find the right guy and I would fall in love with him but it never happened.

I’m certainly not addicted to sex (if anything to work) and I really don’t want to go looking for a guy. The last boyfriend I had, and in a way I still have, (I’ll call him Carlo) was my vaccination against the falling in love virus. I don’t hate Carlo or his way of seeing life, I just don’t understand him. Being close to him I was able to realize many things and first of all that I’m probably not made for couple life and certainly I’m not made for couple life with him.

He perceived already after the first few weeks that beyond appearances I was not really there, he wanted to convince himself and also to convince me otherwise, but I was not in love with him and I was not even interested in building something with him, whatever it was. He treated me with some disdain because he knew that staying close to me was like wasting his time. We continued to see each other for months and do what lovers should theoretically do, but we weren’t in love, we studied each other to know how far the story would go. We said goodbye practically every evening at 9 pm, it was the only clear thing between us, in a sense there was a mutual complicity about this, but nothing more.

He’s a handsome guy and that was the temptation for me, but then, beyond that, there was really nothing else, he had great ideas on his mind, perhaps because his family gave him all the money he wanted. He used to make me proposals that could be suitable for a gossip magazine, let’s forget about politics … let’s just spread a pitiful veil, I told him many times that he has to look for a guy of his world, but he thinks he can have a power of attraction on me precisely because he has money, but I told him that the only thing that attracts me about him is that he is a handsome guy, and that the rest doesn’t interest me at all. I don’t want to be bought by anyone, if he wants a walking dog he can buy it as he likes better, I want a man, not a moron.

Sometimes he provokes me because he wants to feel flattered, but he has the wrong address, sometimes I listen to him just to see if he stops or continues to shoot bullshit with no limit. Perhaps he would like me to stop him to start the usual tirade of values! Yes, you got it right, values!! But I don’t even answer him, and when he falls silent I change the subject, as if I hadn’t even heard him.

Sometimes he would call me on the phone while I was at work, I tried to tell him not to call during those hours, but he kept on, and then I put his number among the unwanted ones, because when I work I cannot be distracted.

Why don’t I care about the guys? I have the answer, I’m trying to build something that I care very much about.

Now I work at a good level, but as an employee, well, I want to try in an acceptable time to open my own small business. I’m accumulating skills, just on how to start with a small business, I’m trying to understand how to move between banks, authorizations, tax authorities, contracts and various things. In a few days I will start a master on this and I need it not to enrich my curriculum, but to have a practical competence. I work in very innovative sectors on a technical level but I completely lack managerial-legal preparation, but I’m also trying to grow in that sector.

When I start, I will start small, with a one-person company, then it will be what it will be. My first rule: never take a step longer that the leg! People who know what I have in mind, I mean really knowledgeable people in the industry, think my project is good but  will be something that will totally absorb me and they also told me that such a project can somehow become the substitute for the emotional life, but I don’t agree at all with such a statement.

I don’t know if I will ever have a love life, I don’t exclude anything, if it happens I will be the first to be happy with it, but I will certainly not start looking for a guy because I have no time to waste. I have no projects in this sector, I mean in the affective one, and didn’t even go crazy with the idea of the company, if it works I’ll be happy, if then I see that the game is not worth the candle, well, then I’ll go back to my current job. I have no problems with my current job now and I don’t think I will have difficulties afterwards.

I have not sublimated eros into work, I think that every now and then (if it happens) there may well be some adventure, but woe to believe it too much! I don’t believe in absolute and definitive commitments, choices for life and the like. I don’t like straight weddings, let alone gay ones!

If you want to be with me ok, it’s fine if it’s okay with me too, then when you get bored or I get bored, well then bye and I move on. It could even last a lifetime, but if that’s the case, it only becomes apparent over the years. You can start, then you see what happens. I never understood loves at first sight. In the meantime I have to cut off relations with my latest boyfriend (Carlo) and I don’t think it will be difficult, I think he’s tired of me for a while and honestly I only like him physically, which obviously isn’t enough. So “Hi Carlo!”, I move on! I don’t mean that I move on to another guy, but that I turn the page and put apart the guys chapter, put it on standby for a while, then what will be will be.

See, Project, I’m not asexual, no! I use a little pornography, even there with an unforced but absolutely spontaneous moderation, I go ahead with the fantasy and for the moment it is enough for me, also because when I was having sex with guys I was really obsessed with the idea of prevention, certainly having sex with a guy is different from seeing a video, but with a video the risk is absolutely zero, with a real guy you can never trust 100%, if you try to be scrupulous in prevention they take you for a moron and that’s why you let your guard down, but then you have a thousand scruples … is it worth to be with a guy who tomorrow will go away with another guy? I really think not.

But is there a serious reason to look for a boyfriend? If such a guy arrives and the first signs indicate that he could be the right one, then it suits me perfectly, but it is not mandatory to live in a couple, and then living in a couple is a bond that can only be accepted when there is a serious motivation. I think that loving a guy, or rather, the fact that two guys love each other is certainly possible, but it has to happen and it is still very unlikely. Even when it happens it never happens 100%, there is always a need for mutual adaptation, but, let’s say, if the adaptation is 10-20% then it is also acceptable but only if it is reciprocal, but adapt to whatever, well, I just can’t stand this.

Perhaps I’m rigid of mentality, but there is an expression that I do not like at all and it is when one says that he is “lost in love” that is he has practically lost his mind, I think that either this is just a very rhetorical saying but also very stupid and deceitful, or one is really out of mind. There is too much sugary romance about these things, which everyone in chatter shares but no one shares in practical life.

What’s the difference between a serious friendship and falling in love? Everyone says: sex! But my boyfriend, then, if and when he will be there, must first of all be my friend, which means that we should have substantially similar visions of life and ways of acting. Well this has never happened to me until now! Of course then there is sex, but then! Because if everything is based on sex, it takes very little to bring down the house of cards!

Project, you don’t know how many beautiful and moronic guys I met, people who should talk little because they would gain and instead have the urge to talk and so they waste that little bit of sex appeal that they got from mother nature. Someone let’s say at first sight passable I knew him, but then the first impression was easily overturned by the second and definitive one.

I would like to add one thing, just to clarify, I do not consider myself either Apollo or Einstein, I’m a very ordinary guy, nothing to do with so many beautiful people I see on the street, because we must give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. And I don’t even think that those who seem stupid to me are really stupid, maybe they will be successful in life a hundred times more than me just doing modeling! (The fox and the grapes!) I’m just saying they look stupid to me. Of course, at the end of the game, the fool who loses the game could be me, but I prefer to lose the game by playing my way rather than imitating the moves of others.

Excuse me for this rant, Project, but today I met people who gave me “advice”, something I can’t stand at all, and I had to let off steam a bit.

___________________

If you want, you can participate in the discussion of this post open on the Gay Project Forum:

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GAY SEX AND TIREDNESS

I’m writing to you because I feel strange and cannot speak to anyone. I’m a forty-year-old who has been living for 15 years with a partner who is a little younger than him (not even two years). Our coexistence was very beautiful, essentially the best thing in my life, and it went on for 15 years, but for almost a year now it has begun to create some difficulties for me. When we met we were both young and beautiful, maybe I was a little less beautiful than him, but he liked me right away and our story began because he was the one who wanted it to start. 

Fifteen years have passed, he is now a little less young and perhaps a little less attractive than 15 years ago but he has a look and a way of doing that are the image of health, in practice you could easily consider him ten years younger, I, on the other hand, had my serious health problems which I have overcome, but created and create still now a lot of problems. In practice, from the outside I still look like a nice and young guy but my health problems are always there. You might think I’m writing to you about his cheating with guys younger and much bolder than me, but we’ve been a strictly monogamous couple for at least ten years, and I see it from the fact that he has a lot of sexual activity with me, and the problem, incredibly, is just that. 

Keep in mind that I’m still in love with him and that I love him, I like him or rather I liked him a lot, not that I don’t like him anymore today, but he doesn’t realize that I can’t stay at his level, he tells me that I shy away from him, that I look for excuses with him, that I keep him at a distance, in reality it is that sometimes, for me, having sex with him is really stressful, not on a psychological level, but precisely in the sense of tiring on a physical level and he does not understand this. He, at 38, does 40 push-ups in a row, I can’t even lie down on the ground, but if I try to tell him such thingsI can’t do it, he doesn’t believe it and feels obliged to stimulate and provoke me, as if I were missing some sexual motivation. 

When I tell him I can’t do it he is very upset, he doesn’t treat me badly, he has never done it, but he thinks that I don’t do my best to follow him and to help him realize is wishes. He tells me that I’m 40 years old and that I cannot fail to rise to the occasion and he takes himself as an example of a healthy and sporty life, as if my physical decline was due to my lack of commitment to sports activities. I tell you that sometimes I begin to fear him, or better not to fear him, no, let’s say I begin to fear his reactions a little and feel conditioned. 

It would be so easy to understand how things are and maybe settle for what I can do without having to face too many problems, but this doesn’t happen, he still sees me as a handsome, young and above all performing guy just like him, but I’m not like that at all. We have been living together for 15 years, I don’t think he has in mind to send everything to hell, if we have gone on for 15 years there will also be a reason beyond sex. The fact is that I don’t want to see him react like a beaten dog. Sometimes I think he would need someone like him or a younger one, capable of staying at his level. Since he can afford to do whatever he can think of, given that his physique supports him in any case, he thinks it is the same for everyone.

I hope he comes to understand that his model doesn’t fit everyone, because otherwise I would find myself living with a man who is not only dissatisfied, but convinced that he has been rejected by the man he loves. Sometimes he is jealous, which seems incredible to me, he asks me questions about our friends, he asks me if I have a secret cell phone, because he thinks that my tiredness comes perhaps from the fact that I go to have sex with someone while he is away, something that has never passed through the antechamber of my brain. 

I feel very discouraged by his attitudes and I don’t know what to do because when I try to explain to him how things are he silences me and gets angry as if I were trying to make him digest the idea that he no longer interests me, which is absolutely not true. Sometimes I tried to talk to him seriously and, on the spot, he listens to me and he seems to have understood, then the next time we are all over again at 12 and he starts again with the idea that I don’t try hard enough and that I say too many words and do very few facts. The fact that we are practically the same age for him means that we our bodies are essentially the same and that I can, or better could, automatically do what he can do. In short, he thinks that the will is enough to do everything, because in his case it is really enough, but in mine it is not enough at all. 

Among other things, he knows about my health problems and tends to minimize them or rather to insist that I, with my attitude, end up exaggerating the negative aspects and precluding me many things that are taken for granted for him. I don’t know if this problem is an objectively stupid problem, but it is certain that it ends up affecting above all our sexuality, I feel judged, he considers me a renouncer who thinks he is old when he is not at all, but it is not a question of age but of health and he doesn’t understand this. I’m fine with him and I don’t think I’d be better with anyone else and he knows it, sometimes, when we have a little quieter sex, I feel very at ease and it’s a really beautiful thing, but when he starts in the fourth he expects me to to follow him step by step and I get tired and he doesn’t understand it and scolds me, then he makes a rant, then he regrets it and tries to downsize. 

What can I do? Sometimes I’m really discouraged. I would just like to see him happy. Sometimes he comes home in a great mood, we start having sex and everything seems to be fine, if I try to tell him that I can hardly keep up with him, the spell collapses and the evening ends in sulking. These are not tragedies, I know, but they are certainly misunderstandings, in the end they don’t create a great discomfort but I begin to be afraid of having sex with him because the possibility that it starts well and ends badly is very real. Sometimes the outcome of all this is that I feel guilty and I think that the fact that I’m at least in some sense afraid of him prevents me from really making him understand how things are. 

Let me be clear, we love each other, of this I have no doubts, but sometimes I start to think that he may feel really uncomfortable. Sometimes I think with terror about what would happen if I were no longer in such physical condition as to be able to have sex with him, even if in a minor tone, and I think it would be hard for him to understand why. There is communication between us, we talk often and even seriously but on this specific point dialogue is difficult. For several years he has considered me a partner up to the occasion and cannot accept the idea that this is no longer the case. Perhaps this is a consequence of a really strong sexual relationship that lasted for several years. 

I think I will age much faster than him and that these problems may become less and less easy to manage. In the last days (three or four) he hasn’t taken the sexual initiative anymore, maybe not to get me in problems, I don’t think he did it to punish me because he never did things like that, but I too avoided to take the sexual initiative and we went to sleep without any sexual involvement and this, for us, it is not a normal thing. I would take the initiative, but I would like sex to be a calmer thing and more suitable for me, but I know that such a thing would disappoint him, however I cannot let other days pass and tomorrow I will take courage. Not that I’m sorry to move towards his direction, on the contrary, far from it … however it is a pity that for him cuddles are trivial or a little more! 

There’s one thing I can do when I’m in bed with him, I can speak less, because in certain moments words can be dangerous, this I think would be useful and it would also be easy to achieve. Sometimes, after a night of sex, I feel exhausted and the next day, when the alarm goes off, I struggle to get up. I’m sorry I’m not at his height but there is nothing I can do to change the situation, I would certainly like to be as he would like, that is, as I was until a few years ago, because this would put him in a good mood, anyhow such things will not put us in crisis. At some point I begin to think that I might as well force myself a little more to please him, but I’m afraid I don’t have the physical stamina to do it and perhaps this way I could slip another step down. 

I have been thinking for some years now that our youth is over, or at least mine, and that we are now middle-aged men, but he still sees himself as a boy, he has a boyish way of doing, that in a sense fascinates me, but in another also scares me. He tells me that I get obsessed with old age, he instead completely ignores the idea, and blessed is he who can do it! He also tells me that I act as a victim, maybe it is even a bit true, but I think only marginally. Maybe I’m really starting to feel old inside, apparently I’m not yet and he only looks at the appearance, it’s a shame he doesn’t notice the rest. 

I’m attaching my contact details [… omitted …] in case you would like to have a chat. Obviously with the email you can do whatever you want, that is, you can also put it in the forum, if you don’t see it too strange.

____________

If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum:

http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-gay-sex-and-tiredness

GAY RELATIONSHIPS AND COHABITATION

In this last period I have often met gay guys in chat who have a partner but who have found themselves having to deal with at least partial disappointments, so I will try to outline and summarize the nodes of the problem. 

First of all, the expression “having a partner” is extremely generic, ranging from stable cohabitation for several years now to the relationship that is still in its infancy and is still to be verified, up to the long-distance relationship in which there is no real contact except absolutely episodic and brief. Obviously in such a variety of situations the concept of “mythization” takes on very varied and scarcely homogeneous connotations. 

The myth, in itself, embodies an archetype of behavior that is either received from the outside or created autonomously. The mythization of real people is the typical example of the self-constructed myth, identifying the person with the role he fills or one would like him to fill and projecting our personal archetypes of that role onto that person. Attributing even only hypothetically a role to a person is equivalent to recognize that person qualities and attributes that are often taken for granted, because the projective mechanisms lead us to see above all, if not exclusively, what we want to see. 

A few decades ago, when there were no means of distance communication, people’s knowledge was numerically much more limited but also much more direct than what is achieved today through social media. Today social networks don’t allow us to see and evaluate the behavior of others but only to know the image they intend to give us of themselves, that is, to know their self-representation. Obviously, the representations of oneself vary according to the aims one intends to pursue. In the search for the so-called soul mate, often, the self-image that we tend to provide our partner is built on the moment, exploiting the information we already know about him. 

The fundamental information is photography, with which we instinctively assess whether the other is or is not an object of interest to us. If it is not, that is, if the photo doesn’t correspond to our archetypes, the tone of the conversation is low, the appreciations are limited, we don’t try to deepen the relationship but to make it slide towards banality and towards a short-term dissolution. If, on the other hand, the photo interests us, the tone of the language changes and we try to express a concrete interest, the discourse heats up, we immediately enter very personal arguments, we are careful to give a positive image of ourselves according to the interlocutor’s yardstick. The first thing you appreciate is beauty, which is the objectively most impactful element at the first eye contact. Listening becomes extremely attentive, space is given to the interlocutor, trying to collect through his words useful elements to build a representation of ourselves as seductive as possible, even at the expense of truthfulness and completeness. All the similarities and analogies with the interlocutor are underlined and all possible points of divergence or distance are largely overlooked. An image of oneself is built and transmitted by specularity-complementarity (the two hands are not only similar but specular and complementary and are perfectly suited to work together). 

Then comes the time of the retrospective image of oneself, of one’s own history, and in particular of one’s own affective history, and here too often the mechanisms of selection-omission of contents operate at an unconscious level, through which, in the archive of individual memory, some episodes are chosen as emblematic of one’s own being and acting and others are omitted that would be in dissonance with the former. The language slips very easily towards expressions that indicate strong involvement and appreciation (the drift of love language). The whole process just outlined can be summed up in the word seduction. To seduce means to “take aside”, “attract to oneself” a person. 

If the relationship is born symmetrical, that is, the first impact evaluations are very similar on the two sides, one gets the impression of being in front of a beautiful love story or at least its onset and the projective mechanisms come into operation by building a progressive mythization of the partner on the basis of what we know of him, in the presumption that the image that the other has given us is authentic. But the mechanisms of selection of contents, which often operate unconsciously, invariably provide at least partial, if not distorted, representations of reality. In other words, verbal contact or even that in audio-video doesn’t show the reactions of the other in real situations but only what the other, in a more or less conscious way, wants us to see, or simply makes us see. 

Obviously, the encounter in person, if episodic and brief, still maintains this same pattern and if anything tends to confirm the mythical vision of the other. Only a real coexistence in ordinary and long-lasting situations makes it possible to understand and evaluate the personality of the other with a breadth and depth of a certain thickness. 

It should be emphasized that if the one who speaks about himself to a person in whom he is interested in any case provides a sweetened representation of himself, that is, he makes a selection of the contents to be presented, even the listener, in a more or less conscious way, makes a selection among the contents that are presented to him, attributing value to those that go in the direction he wants and neglecting or minimizing those that go in the opposite direction, in this way the image of the interlocutor undergoes a second deformation induced by the listener on the basis of his own archetypes and his own projections. 

At the end of a period, however short, of meetings in chat alternated with short meetings in person, one gets the impression of having built a stable relationship and of knowing each other in depth, but in reality the mutual knowledge is minimal and the image of the other is heavily deformed. Myth makes up for reality, integrates it and strengthens it, as long as contact with reality doesn’t intervene to correct the situation. 

The old saying: “marriage is the tomb of love” means that cohabitation actually makes many couple relationships collapse because they were built only on projections and myths far removed from reality. 

The demythization that follows real coexistence can be of a very different type and degree. The higher the level of mythization in the pre-coexistence phase, the greater the level of disillusionment that follows from coexistence. The person who gives the best possible image of himself (self-mythization) is also the one who has the greatest a priori probability of generating profound disillusionment. The person who, on the other hand, doesn’t avoid speaking clearly about his own problematic aspects, is less likely to be successful in the seduction phase, but, in the long run, is much less exposed to the risk of creating disillusionment in the partner. 

In the gay world, today, stable cohabitations are more the exception than the rule, civil unions are rare, partly because they involve a coming out that in some cases would create problems that are difficult if not impossible to solve, but above all because a coexistence of long term requires basic choices oriented towards stability and the ability to act over a long period in a manner consistent with those choices. Short stories and in any case without formal constraints can be born very easily and just as easily they can end, they are already born under the banner of the relative, the revisable, the non-definitive and essentially the disengaged, and are often based on fragile mythologies destined to shatter when one face a real coexistence. However, it must be said that the tendency towards disengaged or, as it is commonly said, free relationships, has its underlying reason in the difficulty of creating a deep interpersonal relationship, which would require the presence of forms of compatibility between the partners that are decidedly uncommon. In general, the first experiences of gay guys have as their goal the creation of a stable couple, but since in many cases this goal remains in fact unattainable or in any case unfulfilled, one ends up choosing the other choice, the more disengaged one, which is certainly more fragile but represents an objectively achievable goal even in conditions that are not ideal in themselves. 

It should be emphasized that a disillusionment, however heavy it may be, doesn’t necessarily lead to the rupture of the relationship, because, if only for reasons of inertia, the possibly cracked relationship can be mended or better strengthened, even more than once, but obviously that relationship, marked by disillusionment, which is often reciprocal, risks being gradually emptied from within, if other mechanisms don’t intervene to consolidate it. 

The idea that disillusionment is not in itself destructive of the couple’s relationship is often accepted only as a fallback solution, but should rather be seen, sometimes at least, as a healthy return to reality, because disillusionment is such in relationship to the previous illusion, but seen from the perspective of the future, it can lead to a re-evaluation of the relationship which is not necessarily its degradation. In other words, it is a matter of taking note of the reality of the other, or at least of a less mythical and distorted image of him, which can profoundly and not always negatively modify the internal balance of the couple.

Overcoming the couple crises, which often derive from disappointments, can even consolidate the relationship. In long-distance relationships, involvement is largely linked to the myth of the partner, the relationship is based on words and easily controllable situations. In cohabitation, the possibility of more or less deep misunderstandings with the partner is very concrete, one realizes that even sexual compatibility is conditioned by the fact that different individuals have different visions of sexuality and of being gay. Behaviors that are desirable for one of the two may not be desirable at all for the other, the example of coming out is enough here, but many other topics could be quoted here that are argument of frequent misunderstandings within the couple. In gay coexistence it is very easy to make mistakes even when the conditions for building a lasting couple exist. The relationships of stable coexistence without disappointments and without cracks don’t exist, a certain amount of conflict is physiological for the very existence of the couple. To realize a coexistence it is essential that the partners understand at the outset that there will be mistakes on both sides and that rigid positions risk destabilizing even the couple relationships that had all the theoretical presuppositions of solidity at their origin. 

Disillusions, as mentioned, are often reciprocal, but it is not certain that they are obvious, or that they are on both sides. Disillusionment is often kept to oneself while waiting for it to be disproved and vanish and this indicates that the myth is in crisis but has not completely collapsed. In these cases, those who hide their disappointment tend to assume a characteristic claiming attitude, staying in the couple assumes for them the sense of waiting for the decisive proof, until the measure is filled and the account is presented to the partner by listing or better by reproaching him all together his shortcomings or presumed such, it is the moment of the so-called showdown, in these cases the answer can be cold (the worst answer), frustrated or even claiming, in the latter case, the partner to whom the bill has been presented presents the bill to the counterparty in turn, to put on the scales the expectations and faults of the two parties. Even in these cases, however, it is by no means certain that the couple’s life goes irremediably to pieces, the situation turns to the worst when the two separate without having either resolved or lightened the conflict situation, that is, when the attitude is rigid. 

Obviously cohabitations are unstable equilibria in which, especially in a very early phase, small corrective thrusts are sufficient to maintain the balance. It should be added that cohabitation, if on the one hand it can lead to the demythization of the partner, on the other hand it can make one partner discover the qualities of the other partner that are less evident at first sight. One of the qualities of a partner that emerge in long cohabitation is non-destructiveness, that is the ability to manage the destructive tendencies of the other, to cool tones and conflicts, to minimize the negative and to enhance the positive of a relationship. 

Ultimately, the myth of the partner born in the seductive phase fully collides with reality only when it comes to a long-term coexistence. In this phase, the demythization of the partner takes place, which leads to a re-evaluation of the elements on which the couple is based. The outcome of this new evaluation is not destructive in itself, but can lead to a re-foundation of the couple’s life on less projective and more realistic assumptions. 

The “unconditional compliance” that is the tendency to always say yes to one’s partner in order to save the relationship, deserves a separate consideration. The very concept of dynamic equilibrium implies that the thrusts must be balanced and that, if to the pressures exerted by one of the two always corresponds to a yielding of the other, the equilibrium cannot be maintained, the requests for adaptation will progressively extend to all areas of shared life and beyond, and that equality that represents the essential core of the gay couple will eventually be wiped out. In this way not only will life as a couple not be preserved but it will be reduced to a series of obligations or a series of psychological addictions.

Here are some excerpts from the e-mails to illustrate what has been said. 

SEDUCTION 

“He calls me on video and immediately tells me: You are beautiful! But he is beautiful! He looks like an actor and he has a hot, sexy voice. When he saw my photos for the first time he was speechless and didn’t believe it was me! He told me that he has never seen a handsome guy like me, that I have taste, that I dress well, that I know how to choose the haircut, that I listen to the right music, the same one he listens to, that we have the same tastes. He is a sunny guy but he has no friends. When we talk he tells me beautiful things, I tell him that I’m not as he sees me, that I have a lot of defects and that he is mythologizing me and he replies that he can’t wait to meet me in person.” 

SEXUAL LANGUAGE 

“There are some things I can’t stand in his way of doing, first of all the language. We have sex with each other, but when he talks about it he uses certain vulgar terms that really get on my nerves, I wonder where he learned to speak like that. He tells me that I’m a hypocrite and that I want to save my face of good guy , and he can’t stand that I want to save my privacy. He tells me that if I do sexual things I have to call them by their name, but I don’t see those things as he sees them, assuming he really sees things differently, but when he talks about sexual things with me he uses his own language, so vulgar that I can’t stand it at all, then, when he gets angry with me, my God, he speaks with a language worthy of the worst porn and when he does that I would throttle him.” 

FORCING 

“One thing I can’t stand about my boyfriend is the fact that he wants to force me to do things (sexual things) that I don’t want to do and that he obviously did or perhaps still does with others. On some things I can also give in but on others I should really impose it on myself with violence and I just don’t want to do so. When I say no to him in a very decisive way, at first he insists and even too much, and then he seems to go beyond, as if nothing had happened, but when we happen to quarrel he pulls these things all out and reproaches me them, he tells me: “You must always do as you say!” (which, by the way, is absolutely not true), then he tells me that I don’t really love him because I don’t always do what he wants, but I say: if we are together, I give in on one thing and you on another! Why he doesn’t he realize that sometimes he just asks me absurd things, that I really can’t stand?” 

RECOVERY MANEUVERS 

“The other day we had a fight over a very stupid issue, or rather the bickering started from there: to wear socks or not when we have sex, he only wears those socks for the foot, I wear normal short socks, but he wanted me to take them off and I didn’t understand why, since he wore them, a string of complaints about my behavior started from such a stupid thing, basically he told me that I never said yes to him and that I had to argue about everything and then, once he started in fourth gear, he went on and never stopped, at a certain point he dressed as if he wanted to go away and I said to myself: What is he doing? Is he really leaving for such a thing? But he’s out of his mind! So I told him I felt like a complete fool for looking for him and it would never happen again, then he changed his tone, undressed again and got back on the bed and then he said to me: Come here! I asked him if he would still say the stupid things he had just said to me and he replied that he had said too few and that he says such things for my own good, even if I don’t understand it. Anyway, at least he has the dignity to go back!”

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ARE WE A GAY COUPLE TOO?

People say that having a boyfriend is a beautiful thing, for years I have believed that this expression was absolutely exaggerated, I believed it because I had had some guys and had had my first experiences with them, they were good guys, I don’t deny it, but when our stories ended up in nothing I was happy that they were over, I used to promise myself not to look for another guy, but then, you know how things use to go, inevitably another story started with less motivation and less illusions and story after story the myth of the love story tended to evaporate without a trace, in the end I was disillusioned, not frustrated but just disillusioned. 

Then I met my current boyfriend. I was problematic, he was problematic, The dialogue was difficult, sometimes frustrating and he displaced me with the coherence of his reasoning and his underlying basic negativity, but also with the clarity of his thought. I had met him in chat and we had talked for months without ever having seen each other, then we realized that we lived in the same city and we met. I was immediately struck by his physical presence, I had never seen such a handsome guy and I thought that between us it would never work because he would never be interested in me, but I would have liked him I don’t say that he was my boyfriend but at least a true friend, let’s say it would have been enough for me, maybe not, but I think it would have been enough for me. 

He was not a happy guy, he didn’t smile but used to make a slight sarcastic grin at my every attempt to make him see the world in a positive way, it was a spontaneous attitude and I think completely unconscious, a sort of automatic reaction of one who feels that he is being offered things that seem to him just fairy tales. In the first period we hadn’t seen each other in person but we used to talk a lot in chat, it happened several times that we spent the full night chatting till the dawn, he was often depressed to the point that he made me fear that he might make some rash gesture but when he mentioned such speeches he did it only by talking in general. The very long phone calls practically always began with a strongly depressed tone and ended in a slightly more serene way after hours of confrontation and even long silences. 

At first neither he nor I thought we would ever become a couple, we just talked about frustrations, big problems of life and other things like that. He had his own love life with which I had nothing to do and in fact I didn’t even want to have anything to do and I think he was completely disinterested in me in the sense of building a couple with me. We were just chat friends but maybe talking to me for hours made sense to him too. I kept my distance and didn’t look for him because sometimes talking to him made me very anxious.

Our relationship had nothing of what one would expect from a romance. The beginnings were difficult, often very difficult, he never got angry with me, but he tended to point out that he was not interested in me, that he was not my boyfriend and when he did he seemed to be talking about a paradoxical hypothesis and almost grotesque and this sometimes bothered me but, after the clarification, however, he returned to very serious speeches, I think he had a good opinion of me from the beginning, perhaps he saw me as a possible friend to test, but not in order to consider me like a boyfriend but just to be able to consider me a true friend. 

He was depressed but deep down he recognized me a certain goodwill towards him. His reasoning was lucidly depressing but he was not aggressive either towards me or towards other people, if anything, he tended to feel guilty and depressed, his self-esteem was very low and I couldn’t understand why, because, apart from his physical beauty, his intelligence seemed to me absolutely unique, I don’t mean only that he was very intelligent but also that he had an intelligence that was absolutely his own, rigorously logical, he seemed to me that he hadn’t at present a true emotional intelligence and I was inclined tu suspect he hadn’t had it either in the past. The very idea of affectivity seemed to him completely irrational, a way of undermining his own logical coherence. 

The first few times he came to see me and had to take a very long road, several kilometers, because at the time he didn’t have a car and was riding a bicycle, then I started to go and wait for him near his house, but not under his house, because he wanted me to keep my distance from his home. Sometimes I had the very concrete temptation to slip away and not get involved further, because our relationship was yes interesting but also stressful and frustrating, because my presence seemed to produce no result, but he never allowed me to leave, rejected me with his sharp logical reasoning and his reductive clarifications, he made me uncomfortable in the face of my hypocrisies but he kept looking for me, we talked less frequently but when it happened we talked for hours, he began to discover something about me and my previous life and also began to have his say on these things and without reticence, he reproached me for my logical inconsistencies, for not doing what I really wanted, for my being restrained, my thinking too much without acting, my continually trying to devalue sexuality which, instead, was a fundamental thing for him, the only a fundamental thing, given that for him the emotional life was nothing but a chimera without meaning. 

Then, slowly, but very slowly, something began to change. He intrigued me very much also and perhaps above all for his leaving but never definitively. He threw a bucket of cold, or rather frozen, water at me, but then every now and then he smiled at me to tell me that even though I had so many faults he still considered me a true friend. We never used affectionate expressions or expressions that could make us think even remotely of a relationship between us, indeed, between us by definition there was nothing, because he wouldn’t have accepted that there was something, but slowly, beyond words, I began to feel that he was studying me, that he was trying to figure out if he could trust me. He showed up more often at my home, asked me pressing and almost embarrassing questions about my sex life, my relationships with my friends, my previous stories, he cornered me, demanded clear-cut or at least radically honest answers, but I didn’t have many clear-cut answers to give him. 

He expected me to have a sex life at least at the level of his and he was puzzled when I told him it was much more standard and more mundane. He hardly believed it and repeated the same questions to me even two or three times. Let me be clear, he had had his stories, of which he told me almost nothing and for this very reason in our relationship there had been long pauses, during which I began to think that he had disappeared, that he had finally found a guy who really suited him, but then, even in the early stages of our relationship, after a few weeks, he would call me back and it was like the break had never existed. I owe him a lot, I love him, I respect him as a man, I feel gratified that he takes me seriously, but then we were at the beginning and I couldn’t imagine what he could want from me and above all what could make him feel bad, because sometimes he was really bad. 

Sometimes he called me at night and asked me to go near his house and he went down and stayed in my car in silence, he knew I would never say no, my presence made him feel more calm, at certain times he was agitated, anguished, the word desperate is perhaps the most suitable, he saw himself as hopeless. His love stories, or rather as he used to say his sex stories, didn’t pull him out of his melancholy. I was beginning to understand that our “non-relationship” had its own meaning and consistency. I tried to ingest myself into his life as little as possible, but he was beginning to insert himself into mine in an ever deeper way, and sometimes I was afraid of this, then sex came when I least expected it. 

He had a boyfriend but he also felt attracted to me, it hadn’t been like that from the beginning, everything was born very gradually and quietly, even if in the end I had begun to suspect how things really were. He made me understand that he needed me also from that point of view, he realized that, when he started talking about these things, I tended to run away and change the subject and then he was really explicit. When it first happened it was all incredibly easy and abysmally different from what I had imagined, I thought I would never get involved in such situations but he was patient, cautious, extremely attentive to my reactions, I would say lovely. I don’t know if this can be called affection. It had never happened to me to experience sex in such a beautiful and above all spontaneous way, and to see him so peaceful and fulfilled. 

At the time I was very conditioned by the fact that he had a boyfriend, being with him I felt like I was doing something that would have put the other guy in crisis, but he seemed to pay no attention to these things. After a few weeks he told me that his boyfriend was gone, since then I have had fewer problems while staying with him and a period has begun in which our relationship has taken on a distinctly sexual connotation. 

The thing itself didn’t make me feel uneasy at all, quite the opposite! But there were two things that didn’t allow me to better live the situation: firstly the fact that he was calm and in a good mood while we were having sex but, afterwards, his mood usually changed and darkened sharply and I couldn’t get him back in a good mood, in fact the more I tried, the more he felt upset and angry with me, he was not aggressive but highly nervous, as if he had done something that perhaps he didn’t really want to do or rather he didn’t have to do. I couldn’t tell him that I loved him because that would have made him mad, or at least I thought so at the time and our meetings practically always ended in bad moods and, secondly, having given our relationship a strong sexual connotation had somehow lowered the level of our dialogue, that is, our friendship had become more superficial, we talked much less and our meetings were reduced to being only sexual encounters and also very ritualized and repetitive. During our meetings he didn’t even want to be caressed, the idea of kissing each other would have put him in crisis because for him the kiss tasted too much of an emotional relationship, while he considered sex an obvious and problem-free thing. 

Once he asked me if I was happy with the evening and I replied that I was happy because he was there, but he didn’t want to hear such things and insisted on telling me that I was a hypocrite and that I pretended not to understand that he was talking about what we had done together because he had insisted a little too much to induce me to do something that didn’t come naturally to me, according to him he had done very well to insist because he had made me discover something new and also very interesting in his opinion. I hadn’t told him no, basically I didn’t feel very involved in certain things but I was happy not to have said no to him because I thought that if I did, he would have been worse. 

Sometimes he knew a new guy and maybe he even fell in love with him, then he disappeared for a while, because he tried to be faithful to the new guy, then after a month or so, he reappeared and it was obvious that he was alone again. There was a time when he wanted me to experience “his” sexuality and was very insistent on this point. In the end I didn’t say no to him this time too, but after that time he didn’t insist anymore, because previously he had insisted a little too much, forcing his hand a little, just to see if in the end I would give in, not for the thing itself, once he got the proof that I wouldn’t have said no anyway, the requests stopped, the relationship became less sexual and more affective, there was also sex, but there was no longer the sexual frenzy, and above all we started talking again seriously. 

He was always depressed but in a more calm way, he told me things about his life that I would never have imagined and which must be very difficult to talk about, it was then, that is, when I realized that he totally trusted me, that I fell in love with him in a profound way and I spent months of relative happiness, I say relative because I kept seeing him depressed. We spent a lot of time together, we knew each other well and objectively we loved each other. 

Once, three years ago, he texted me for the first time with the word ILY! (I love you). I think it was one of the best moments of my life. We had both graduated and worked in very different industries but we still lived each in his parents’ home. He had his stories but I didn’t interfere, and he hardly ever talked about them. When we saw each other there was always a bit of sex and unfortunately in the end there were also melancholies, but we had a real dialogue, there were things about me that he didn’t understand, that he interpreted in his own way, but it would have been useless to try to give him explications, because explications are made up of words and his way of understanding me was at another level, that is, at a sexual level, a level that I had always tried to put aside. 

I wanted to ask him why after sex “with me” he was sad, then I asked him the question but omitting the “with me”, he didn’t know what to answer, he just said to me: “It’s not that I don’t want to answer you, I just don’t know, it’s an automatic thing that I can’t control.” What was he looking for from me? At first I really thought it was just sex, but that feels more like a means than an end to me. Today, when he’s not with me, objectively I miss him, I don’t know if he misses me in the same way, maybe not in the same way, but I think he also misses me a little. 

When I haven’t heard from him for more than two weeks I begin to be afraid that our relationship has come to an end, but so far my fears have always been denied and indeed it is precisely the duration of our relationship that encourages me to think that in any case I will see him again and in a short time. In fact, among his merits there is his being direct and transparent, he is so used to taking blows in life that he almost takes them for granted, he is not vindictive, he doesn’t keep his feelings secrets to revenge in the future, he doesn’t defend himself by attacking, you cannot expect a bond from him like the oyster on the rock, but you know that he is there and that he will never disappear in thin air, he needs his total freedom but he doesn’t forget you, if you make a mistake with him, he minimizes the mistake, he doesn’t blame you anyway, he doesn’t take advantage of any advantageous positions, he doesn’t see the relationship with you as a game of chess to win and not even as an opportunity to get some more gratification, indeed, if you try to flatter him he slows you down because he feels somehow made fun of, he expects from you a behavior like his, that is spontaneous, without duties and without real expectations. 

I think I’m in love with him, or at least a little in love. I have known many guys in my life, but he is my model of man, both physically and mentally, he is the man I have always dreamed of. He’s not afraid of me, he respects me, I think he loves me in his own way too, even if he would never accept this terminology. I desire his presence, when he is there I have no qualms of any kind and neither has he, he is the only man with whom I have never felt embarrassed and by whom I have never felt judged. 

Sometimes, he doesn’t fully understand me, because he too has his preconceptions, but then overcomes them and is willing to change his mind on the rare occasions when it makes sense to do so, but they are really rare occasions. Why is only him left in my mind? I don’t know but that’s exactly what happened. I thought that sex with him could create problems, at first it sometimes happened, but today it doesn’t happen anymore, if I opened myself to understand the meaning of sexuality lived in two, the merit is solely his, because he had patience, he had a lot patience and treated me with sweetness, like no one else had done. 

Dear Project, I’m writing you this email because I haven’t heard from him for four weeks now and this fact puts me in crisis, I miss him, I would like to know how he is, but I don’t call him and I wait for him to do it. This time the pause was long, and I begin to fear that the pause could become definitive. Falling in love is not always a thing that leads to happiness, there is also a lot of suffering. I tell you honestly that I would be happy if he found another guy, but I wish he were happy at least. We are both 33 years old, luckily we have a job but we are still two drifters without an emotional reference point, sometimes I think that reference point is there, sometimes not and then I feel adrift and I miss him damnably. 

Matthew88 

If you think this email is also useful to others, do what you think best but, if you can, answer me in private.

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If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-are-we-a-gay-couple-too