06-05-2021, 02:05 PM
Hi Project,
in recent months we have heard several times and I must acknowledge you a credit, you don’t give advice just to say something, if you don’t know what to say, you just listen and try to understand. You know my story at least roughly. My boyfriend, or rather the guy I consider my boyfriend, even if he doesn’t consider himself my boyfriend at all, he frequents (that is, he also has sex with) other guys and I knew this from the beginning, but anyhow, between ups and downs, and being very attentive to prevention, because it’s always necessary to keep prudent with health, a relationship has been created between us that, with all its defects, has been going on for years. Basically, I ended up accepting that he needs also others, for years this was the problem, then slowly this problem lost importance. He is like this: you must choose whether take him or let him go and I decided I didn't want to lose him and frankly I didn't regret it. The sexual understanding between us is total, I must say that it had never happened to me to experience such levels of involvement with anyone. Lately we haven't heard from each other for a long time, due to work and covid motivations, then we both managed to get the vaccine, two weeks later he comes to me, when I really didn't expect him (he always behaves this way, he doesn’t love dating). I see him hesitant, usually our contacts start from the immediate sex, but this time it seemed very different, to which I wonder what happened and since I don't know how to find an answer I try to keep a low profile and mutual embarrassment grows, basically he thinks that I keep myself detached for some reason, as if something has collapsed between us, then he sits down on the sofa, I sit in an armchair and not next to him, he claps his hand on the sofa cushion and says to me: "Come closer", I go and sit next to him and he tries a sexual approach, finds a positive response and from there we begin to have sex. I had the very distinct impression that having sex was of the utmost importance to him at the time. Between us on a sexual level there has never been the slightest embarrassment and so there hasn't been this time either. The participation was very intense, in the end he told me: I really needed it. I thought that sex had pulled him out of melancholy, but no! Afterwards he had a very serious face, he told me that he has big work problems, that he fears that his contract will not be renewed and that he may end up unemployed in the short term and that he doesn't know what to do to try to parry such a blow. Finding a stable job is difficult, and working with precarious contracts means never having a minimum of security for the future. He has sent his curriculum vitae to various companies, among other things he is a graduate technician who deals with “… omissis…”, so, at least in theory, he shouldn't have work problems. He has had interviews but they offer him contracts of a lower level than his current one. In short, this type of problem now affects him a lot. A few years ago, when he was still studying, he was always happy, he joked, laughed, he did all sorts of things but in a goliardic way, now it seems like another person, he doesn't laugh anymore, he tends to get depressed, he's afraid of the future. I don't think his problems are related to the emotional world because he, in one way or another, has achieved an emotional balance that, if you consider it from the outside it seems strange but I think that from his point of view it is substantially acceptable, or at least now he has accepted it as his normality. I tell you, Project, I’m a little older than him and luckily for me I have a stable job and a lot of questions have come to my head, because if he were to really lose his job, for him it would be a disaster, he should go back to living in the house of his parents, who all in all love him, but for him, losing his apartment and losing economic autonomy would be truly destructive. I would do anything for him, but I'm afraid he would take it badly. He would never come to stay at my house, it wouldn’t be like being with his parents but it would still be a very strong limitation of freedom for him, in practice he would feel forced into a coexistence that he never wanted and then there would be the fact that people would begin to ask themselves too many questions and he would feel labeled. I can tell you that I’m really worried. Among other things, he’s not naive and if he has the feeling that his contract will not be renewed, he certainly has his good reasons. He thinks that there will be a downsizing of staff and it will be a drastic downsizing and that they will proceed on the basis of length of service and therefore he will end up in the middle anyway. The idea that he could end up out of work upsets me. Sex can somehow be a temporary remedy for job loss depression, but just finding a permanent job would really solve the problem. I tried to tell him that with a qualification and with an experience like his the possibility of being unemployed is minimal, but he was very skeptical on the point and he said to me: you say this, but I see very different facts every day. I see him dark in the face and worried, when we are in bed together he gets distracted, it is as if his brain enters a happy pause in which he feels safe, but it doesn’t last long because the malaise is profound and the dialogue between us on these things is risky and all uphill. It may seem absurd that with a guy with whom you have a very strong sexual understanding you cannot talk about work, yet it is so, because he has his certainties on a sexual level, and nobody takes it out of my head that when he came to my house at the sudden, he did it, consciously or unconsciously, to test me, that is, precisely to verify if those certainties were truly certainties, when instead it comes to work, precariousness and instability work under trace and can put him in crisis. I wonder why he came to me and didn't go to some of the guys he dates. In fact, I have the answer, he knew I would never tell him no. Frankly, seeing him so dejected hurts me, because he is a very good person, we have had and still have misunderstandings but I think there is a profound mutual respect. Sometimes I think that when you share sexual intimacy at these levels, you actually share something spiritual too, because you have to totally trust your partner to be totally yourself in front of him, and this happens between us and I don't know how much the same thing can happen to him with other people. We don’t have sex for fun, it is a profound need, it is the desire to obtain yet another confirmation that we love each other, that despite all the misunderstandings and all the problems we are there for each other, that we are a kind of safe haven for each other. Now in my room and on my bed there is still a trace of his perfume and to think that by being with me he managed to detach himself from his worries at least for a while makes me proud, at least for a while he felt the feeling that life isn’t all a crap that can collapse on you at any moment. At one point he also spoke of his house, that is, the apartment where he lives alone, and he spoke of it with tenderness as of the place where he can truly rest, where he can feel really good and this made me think that he is really terrified of losing that house and having to return with his parents. Since he left, my brain has been in turmoil, I wonder how I should deal with him when we get out of the field of sex. Have I to try to talk to him seriously? But I would stress him worse because the thought of losing his job is enough to lose that little bit of serenity he had found. Avoid the topic so as not to stress him? Well, I think that it is objectively stressful for him to be with me because when the moments of strong sexual involvement are over, we end up talking about something else and the closer we get to those other topics the more his impatience grows and also his tendency to change the subject and run away, up to say abruptly hello and go away. I see so much melancholy in his eyes, once there was melancholy because his emotional life wasn’t satisfactory now at least within certain limits it is and that melancholy gives way to another melancholy, that of not fulfilling oneself in work and in the conquest a stable autonomy. When I see him out of sorts I wonder why it has to happen to him and not to me and I feel like someone the one who has won the job lottery and who is now not afraid of losing his job and I don't know how to behave, because these are damn serious problems, they are not psychological problems but economic problems that can affect life in a very heavy way. I'm afraid he'll may see me as the lucky guy who has job security and only makes good speeches to someone who doesn't have that security. I fear these things could dig a kind of abyss between us that divides stability from precariousness. I, personally, have not experienced periods of unemployment but I can imagine how destructive it can be. I think I will avoid talking to him about these topics, which are basically the ones that now anguish him the most. He still has a few months before the contract expires and will try to do everything possible but, from what little he says, he is looking bad and the prospects are not at all rosy. I also see from another thing that he’s going through a difficult period. When we had sex yesterday (this is the expression he uses) he was not totally focused on sex, he felt in a protected situation, he felt safe, sometimes there were moments of pause and he lay with his eyes closed, almost to enjoy those few minutes of tranquility. They were minutes of silence but also of profound communication, you could see that in those moments the worries were far away. He behaved totally free and at least partly different from usual. I knew that I didn't have to interrupt those moments of silence, that I didn't have to speak, that I had to lie down beside him and that I had to shake his hand. It has always amazed me that we understand each other about these things even without talking. Sometimes going to bed with a guy is really a kind of refuge from the pains of life, a return to a dimension of immediacy, of warmth, of sharing without reservations, in which one is 100% accepted for who he is. You see, Project, when I ask myself why I stay with him despite everything, in the end I find the answer: he speaks little but we love each other, we are also afraid to say it because we are afraid that this happiness is fragile but nevertheless the years pass and we are still here.