12-04-2020, 02:54 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-04-2020, 02:54 PM by gayprojectforum.)
Hi Project,
I'm here and I too am sending you my short email, I’m now over 50 and I have come to the conclusion that I will be alone for the rest of my life, I accepted it well, I don’t feel frustrated or depressed about this, I have had my stories, even beautiful, but now they belong to the past. I lived with a guy for 5 years before the age of 40, it was a good experience, which slowly wore out and got lost, but, let's say, even the exit from this relationship has had its dignity, he told me honestly which way things were going and he left without slamming the door and all in all we have maintained a good relationship for years, we used to speak on the phone every now and then because he had gone with his new partner to another city, but every time they came to Milan they came to see me and this used to make me very happy. He's now over 55 and, over time, our relationship tends inevitably to fade.
I know that this is how things work and I don't have a worry about it, but sure, if I think about the years we spent together and how our relationship is now, well, it almost seems to me that the past was just a dream or a transitory phase swept away by time, in the sense that you do a lot to live together, then you succeed but when you live in two you understand that in any case nothing has changed and that in the end the problems can be more increased than decreased by the fact of living together and one way or another you come to separate without rancor and all in all continuing in some way to love each other, but then time passes and takes everything away, in the end even the memory begins to fade because the ages of life change.
I also have had a couple of other stories, let's say minor, I mean too much short because lasted a few months and no more, even those guys were decent guys, but with them it all ended much earlier. For six years now I have not only had no affairs with anyone but I don't even want to have any. I see the idea of building a relationship after 50 as practically impossible, or perhaps it would take a very important emotional bond, which however is precisely what is systematically missing. I met many guys (so to speak, because they were all at least forty years old) on the internet, someone was really quite pathological but there were also decent ones, with a couple of them I built a kind of friendship from a distance, but something very superficial and essentially useless. I also stopped reading gay love stories and watching gay themed movies, apart from the fact that there were very few of them on the net, they seemed far away from my world, and looked like the world of dreams or sometimes true nightmares, and in practice I never found anything that described a life similar to mine.
Some of the guys I’m in touch with tell me that at 50 one still has a long way to go and that I have to work hard, but telling that I have to work hard, they mean that I have to work "but not with them" and therefore the speech tastes a lot of preaching, done just to say something. With younger guys, perhaps an approach would be easier (who knows) But I see them very far away, I was not like them even when I was twenty, you can imagine now! Sometimes I think that deep down I have never gotten into trouble and I have never had bad experiences, I will still have to work almost twenty years to retire but luckily I have some economic security and I have my own quiet life.
I have asked myself many times if, right now, I would really put my quiet life at risk, in the name of living as a couple, and frankly I think there will be no opportunity for life as a couple and therefore there will be very little to decide. It's not even a renunciation, I really don't have that kind of temptation anymore. I have had my experiences and now I'm fine by myself. Which is also a common fate for many hetero guys without children, who separate more or less at my age and stop looking for alternatives. Feelings are not a spiritual thing but a very physical thing and as the body ages the feelings grow older and become weaker and less demanding.
I have friendships, more or less serious, but still pleasant and to pass some time those too are fine, and I also have female friendships, with women around 50-55, who don’t see me as a possible companion, they are friends, but friends who don't know about me and who think that deep down I have a secret lover (obviously a woman), because for them it is impossible to conceive a man without a woman. However, apart from these aspects, which fortunately are never talked about, they are a quiet company.
Two of my straight friends know about me and nothing has changed with them, they are married and have grown up children, but they maintain very serious relationships with me, obviously we don't talk about sex, but we talk about a lot of things and I'm fine with them, I feel at ease. My gay friends are four, a couple, whom I adore, and two singles with whom I have relationships that are sometimes a bit problematic because with them there is some ambiguity and also a quite competitive spirit. They are all established people in the world of work and are not declared, not even those who live in couple, but there have never been problems between us, we keep each other at a distance, there is respect but more as non-belligerence than as true confidence.
I also have my relatives, my brother knows nothing about me and doesn’t suspect anything, but he has been living abroad for 30 years and we feel more or less formally a couple of times a year, I also have two male nephews aged 24 and 26, but I think I haven't seen them more than 4 or 5 times in all. My sister-in-law is a good woman, those very rare times we met she tried to make me feel at home, but obviously it was too difficult. This is my whole life.
I have to add something about my work which, all in all, gives me some satisfaction and I would also say that it absorbs me a lot. Eventually, by chance, I have been able to do a rewarding job. I have the opportunity to work with other people and there are beautiful forms of collaboration which, however, are strictly professional. Every now and then some sympathy arises, but to say friendship would be unrealistic.
In my life there is nothing exceptional, romantic or passionate, it is not a novel, it is a now stable routine that ensures me at least some tranquility. I know this is a trivial email, one that does not attract crowds of readers, but I send it to you anyway, please feel free to make with it what you like better.
Joseph G.