12-02-2017, 12:04 PM
Hi Project,
I have read many articles on gay couples, from those of a scientific-sociological type to those of gossip, to those of couple sexology, in those articles we can find everything: sex, sexual fantasies, the possible accomplishments of those fantasies, social roles, tolerance and of course beauty and charm, etc. etc., but in my opinion we always lack the fundamental element, that is loving each other really. Loving will also be a matter of sex, I don’t deny it, but in my opinion it is much more.
I don’t know why with some people it happens and with other people it doesn’t happen at all, but loving each other means first of all to respect each other, to understand each other, also in one's own diversity. The other is not another myself, in him I don’t love myself but something different that I feel similar, sure, but not identical, I love his freedom even when it pushes him away from me, I love his being different from me and his loving me in spite of everything, a love that enhances me and makes me feel alive, appreciated, gratified.
Couple is good only when you really love each other, when you want the good of the other, when his happiness matters more than yours, but to love each other it is not necessary to be sexual partners.
I had a beautiful story with a guy I loved so much and who loved me so much, we're not together anymore, but we still love each other, because the respect, the affection, the understanding that existed between us have remained the same, sexual exclusivity has failed, and yet we continue to love each other, even if he has a new partner and then, who said that you can love only one person at a time? If my ex needed me, I would do anything for him, because I love him, and I'm sure his current partner would not be jealous and would be the first to push me in that direction, among other things we know each other and estimate.
The only thing that could have put in crisis the relationships between me and my ex-partner would have been the deception, telling one thing and doing another, but that's exactly what has never happened between us.
Legal obligations cannot create feelings. I never understood the guys who hate their ex-boyfriends, if they hate them "after" it means they didn’t love them "before". I always considered my ex a great person from all points of view, I totally trusted him. Now we are no longer a couple but I continue to consider him an excellent person, I have not changed my thought about him because we are no longer a couple. In my opinion, we all, and in particular we gays make ourselves fascinated from the traditional model of marriage, which contains objective absurdities.
I try to explain better: when a man and a woman get married, at least when they marry with a religious rite, they promise eternal love, meaning for love not only respect and dedication but even exclusive sexual involvement and in promising something of this kind they commit to guaranteeing something that is not in their power. I can promise respect and assistance in case of need, these are the things I can promise, as for the exclusive sexual involvement, which is not a choice but is something free and spontaneous, I can at most say that that involvement exists now, but since it is not a voluntary act, I cannot promise anything for the future.
But perhaps traditional marriage is independent of love, does not oblige me to love a person for life but only to abstain from sexual relations with other people, which means that it forces me to behave absolutely not spontaneously. Now, perhaps in the hetero field such behavior can make sense because there are the interests of the children to be safeguarded, admitted and not granted that it is better for the child to have a parent legally committed to sexual fidelity, which seems to me to be all absurd, or at least I consider it as an undue simplification because it aims to guarantee forcibly what is not coercible. But for a gay couple, with no children, the marriage model makes no sense, because the only thing that matters is love, which is different from sexual fidelity.
I am not a boy, I am 55 years old and my ex-partner is just a little younger. Two years ago I had a heart attack and I was in danger of ending up badly. I no longer had close relatives and I was entrusted in practice to voluntary associations. I had not said anything to my ex-partner so as not to create any obligations of any kind.
He came to know that I was in hospital from other people and he immediately came to see me at the hospital. It was summer and he was on vacation with his partner. They broke off their holidays and came to me right away, they both came, and they did the shifts so as not to leave me alone until I was discharged from the hospital, then they came to stay at my house, they just moved to my house, as long as I have been convalescing, that is, for about two months and returned to their home only when they saw that I could be self-sufficient and, even after, they came often to see me and still do.
I saw that my ex was happy and that his partner was a very serious man. I felt loved by them. I know that this is not the kind of love that generally people consider more important, yet for me, this kind of love was the only real push towards the exit from my problems, that is the only real push towards life. I add one thing: since then we spend the holidays together and I can only say that we are fine.
Thirty years ago I would never have imagined such a situation. Thirty years ago I had many models in my mind and I dreamed of things that seemed beautiful to me, but they were totally unreal and I was not able to value the things I actually had. Then, slowly , I began to realize and understand what it really means to love each other. I understood it, in practice only as an old man.
Think, Project, that when I decided to separate with my ex-partner, I thought we would not see each other anymore, because in my opinion, the alternatives were just two: or perfect love (the fable) or total indifference, if not even hatred. But it was not like that at all. I never felt betrayed or cheated, I never thought I had thrown away the years of my life, none of this, simply, I learned to understand how beautiful can be live a relationship that remains a relationship of love, of respect and mutual affection, even when sexual attraction fails.
I am not an advocate of free love in the sense of experiencing sexuality superficially with the first guy you can find and just after Bye-Bye! No, none of this, but love is free and, if it is true love, it doesn’t fail even when sexual attraction vanishes. I tried to tell my experience to young gay boys but they looked at me with suspicion, as if I were a pathological case, for them there are a lot of models and I think this is the reason that causes them so much dissatisfaction. If I deeply internalize the models of fairy tales and confuse them with reality, I will end up being always disappointed by reality.
Reality must be understood, we must learn to see its positive sides, which are many even if they are not so evident. It took me years to overcome the behavior patterns of the matrimonial type but I can say that now I feel much freer.
I must say, however, that I don’t believe that my experience is easily generalizable, because my ex-partner is really a special person; if I were in love with a superficial person, incapable of true feelings and conditioned to the point of having to react always and only in the standard way, probably in those schemes I would have become entangled too. I do not want to be a teacher, because I was extremely lucky, but I have to say that my out-of-scheme experience was not a failure and it was in practice the discovery of a new world, much less conditioned and much more authentic. If you think it's appropriate, publish this email, maybe for someone it could be useful.
Laurence