06-17-2018, 12:00 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-17-2018, 12:01 PM by gayprojectforum.)
I will try to analyze what we could call "gay mental narcissism". Not that the phenomenon of mental narcissism is exclusively gay, I would just say that the field of analysis will be limited to gays. Sometimes talking in a chat with gay guys, I happen to come across an attitude that consists in giving to one’s own behaviors always and only motivations of the highest altruistic profile, motivations, if you want, very noble but often not very credible.
As an obvious completion of this way of proceeding (gay mental narcissism) we note the total removal of sexual motivations that are considered less dignified than altruistic ones and are therefore automatically bypassed. I quote some typical example:
"I see him disappointed, I see he suffers and I would like to do something for him, I wish he was fine, I don’t even care that he falls in love with me, I swear that I don’t care, I do it for him, though I think if he opened up with me at the end he would feel satisfied and would be better off. I'm not jealous, I know that he's free and that he can do whatever he wants, but if he doesn’t talk with me, he doesn’t do it with anyone."
"Ok, he didn’t want me, I understood, I suffered as a beaten dog but I didn’t even tell him it, just to not make him feel bad, I also thought that if he felt influenced by me, letting him go would be my duty, I was very hesitant but then I decided and I told him: - If there cannot be anything between us then it is better that we don’t see each other anymore, it's better for you too." - But he reacted badly, he told me that I was blackmailing him and that I wanted to force him to say yes but it is not so, I did it only for him!"
"I fell in love with him, but when I fall in love it is not the physical attraction that matters, I see him so scared, that is, we talk a lot, I see that he needs me, look, I could find one hundred guys better than him, but he really needs me and I cannot leave him alone, it would be very bad!"
"I think nobody really understands me, I try to be sweet with everyone, to make me be loved, to always be cautious, not to be carried too much by my feelings not to offend those of others, but I have the impression that they don't give any importance to putting their feet on my feelings , they do it anyway!"
"When I fall in love, for me there are no half measures, but he too must be like that, and with friends it's just the same, I have very few friends, but for them I would be willing to give even my soul, but they calculate me no more than zero, for them I’m just one of many, sometimes when some of my friends are in a bad mood because maybe the girl has treated them badly I spend hours to console them, in those moments, yes, they look for me, but they rapidly forget me when they don’t need me. I trust them and in doing so I waste my time, because they don’t deserve it. I caught so many of those disappointments, so many of those slaps in the face that you can’t even imagine. But why am I telling you such things? It seams you can't understand that for me it things are different, I don’t spend so many hours with him on the phone looking for sex, I don’t care about those things! I do it for him, because I love him! It's a clean thing, sex has nothing to do with it!"
The exemplification could continue but these attitudes mask a certain underlying hypocrisy. I don’t mean at all that it is a deliberate and conscious hypocrisy, but it’s certainly hypocrisy, a hypocrisy that manifests itself in a spiritual narcissism for which "I’m good and THEY don’t understand me and treat me badly." Or rather by enlarging the speech: "I’m good, unselfish, generous, shy, discreet, sensitive, careful not to hurt anyone and THEY don’t understand me, THEY are gossipy, malignant, they treat me badly, they understand whistles for flasks [Italian expression for “confuse one thing with another” because In Italian “whistles for flasks” sounds “fischi per fiaschi” two words very similar], they attribute to me motivations to which I am completely extraneous etc. etc.".
There is no doubt that these attitudes are quite widespread among gay guys, they are disguises of the ego, idealizations of a self-image substantially narcissistic that aims to underline the dimension of the ego as a victim.
Often the guys who assume these attitudes feel victims of the guys who do not give them the expected answers in affective terms, they feel marginalized by friends on whom they projected very high expectations, they feel misunderstood and in good substance disappointed by life, but I think it is necessary to point out some things:
1) If a guy doesn’t give you the expected answers on the affective level, this doesn’t mean that he is disrespecting you or is treating you badly. What would you say if a guy you do not care about falls in love with you and tries to make you understand that your refusal is bad? Would you change your mind? In all likelihood, you would feel a feeling of discomfort.
2) If your friends don’t give you the expected answers in terms of love they are not doing anything wrong, you can, if you want, keep with them a less binding relationship (given the lack of reciprocity) but their freedom of behavior (their indifference) has nothing aggressive towards you.
3) Why do you try to sublimate the motivations of your behavior by eliminating the sexual motivations that are not negative things at all and constitute the deepest and most common motivations of affectionate behavior? Telling a guy, "I do it for you!" Is an attempt to feel generous on his skin.
4) Emotional blackmail, like "I leave you for your own good", has the taste of hypocrisy.
5) It is difficult to learn to talk about sex in a serious way, but somehow we get there and, good or bad, we get also to overcome the hypocrisies in this field, but it is very difficult to learn to talk about feelings without hypocrisy, without spiritual narcissism, without sublimations.
We have always been used to disguising ourselves as those we are not, this can be beneficial in a society where human relationships are based on formality, on hypocrisy, and in common social relations it is almost always like that, but in affective relationships, and especially in those based on sincerity and strong and direct affective exchanges, narcissism and sublimations create major drawbacks.
Now try mentally to put yourself in the position of a guy who receives a declaration of love and imagine you receive two e-mails, one from a guy who uses the speech n. 1 and then another from a guy who uses the speech n. 2 and tell me what reactions come to your mind.
1) "I wanted to tell you something, but you don’t have to understand me badly, I'm fine with you, that is when I talk with you, I feel comfortable, I'm really fine, sometimes I think you want to open a little with me, but in the end you don’t, I do everything to put you at ease but you run away, you don’t even look at me, nevertheless I'll tell you it the same, I love you, I don’t know what you’ll think, but I want to be there always for you, I think you can like it, I don’t know at what level, but I think it can please you.
But behind my declaration you do not have to see strange things, here sex has nothing to do, I love you on another level, it's a serious thing, it's a deep thing, I'm not playing. But I would like a serious answer from you, that is, I would like to understand how you see it because I want to understand if it seems strange to you, all right, let's go on, we don’t necessarily have to be friends. I think you would be fine with me, we talked a lot, well, you understood what I wanted to say, but now give me an answer."
2)" I wanted to tell you something, but you've already understood, I fell in love 100% with you, I think of you a thousand times a day, that is, I really want you with everything that comes after, yes, you got it right! Come on, now I said it!! Wow, now I said it! "
The texts of the two declarations of love are both authentic and have actually been sent to the recipients by e-mail. I know very well that sincerity is often not spontaneous. No one has sublimated and disguised his affectivity and sexuality more than I did in my youth.
My speech is not a moral judgment, what is a thousand miles away from my intentions, but it is only an invitation to reflect in order to avoid as much as possible the complications of victimization, spiritual narcissism and sublimation. How I would have been happy seeing such things accomplished in my youth!