05-29-2021, 07:11 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-30-2021, 06:38 PM by gayprojectforum.)
Dear Project,
I can understand that relationship problems are fundamental for many gays, sometimes they have been fundamental for me as well, but I don't think that the underlying problems of gay guys are very different from those of all the other guys.
I have a boyfriend, so to call him, with whom a bond has been created, a twisted, complicated bond, etc. etc., but in the end there is something serious. I’m 36 years old and he is 32. We are not a couple, in the sense that he also needs more, I mean other guys, but there is anyhow a relationship between us. Between us there is sometimes a bit of (protected) sex that I like very much because there is also something else, otherwise it would seem superficial to me. We often talk on the phone, sometimes we only talk about sex, but it's more a way of playing than anything else, sometimes we talk very seriously, and then I feel really gratified, almost more than when we have sex, because he ends the serious speech with a "I love you!" and this is fundamental for me. I don't know why you fall in love with one guy rather than another. We seem very different, above all because he sometimes tends to go into crisis easily and sometimes he begins to preach nonsense and never stops, even if I must admit that he does it to correct me and never to accuse, I instead speak a lot of melancholy and of depression but these are things that I have never really tried and I start from the principle that you must never give up and that the positive, if you look closely, is always much more than the negative.
Sometimes he currys me very strongly, he tells me a lot of seemingly aggressive speeches, he tells me that I'm depressed, that I put him in a bad mood and other similar things and he says it because he wants to get me out of what he believes to be a state of prostration, which however, in my opinion, many times at least, is only appearance. Other times he calls me when he is down in the dumps, and he does it because he knows that I’m there for him and I will always be there, and so we talk for a long time and I in turn try to shake him and get him back in a bit of a good mood.
When he looks for me I feel alive, important, I feel I worth for something in his life, and this is a very beautiful feeling. I'm not his boyfriend, or at least he doesn't see me that way, but there is a relationship between us. And then sharing sexuality with a guy is important but when beyond this you get to share with that guy also the soul, the melancholy, the critical points, the weaknesses, then one gets the impression that the bond is much deeper. I am immensely pleased when he takes the initiative, when he calls me to talk to me, because he gives me access to his fears and melancholies, it is in those moments that I feel that he truly welcomes me into his world. I think I'm a bit like his real family. There is sex, yes, but it is mostly a pretext, maybe something more, but sex is still easy to find, but I think the reasons for our being together are really more complex.
He has never been very expansive, almost as if he were afraid of affectivity, but slowly he recognized me a role, which is not that of the lover but something of a middle ground between a friend and a brother. He doesn't act with me, he knows that I love him and he knows that my opinion of him is much better than his opinion of himself. When his self-esteem fails he calls me to replace his image of himself with my image of him. And he listens to me, he doesn't shut me up, he's not used to people giving him positive answers. I believe that he is among the humanly best people I have met. He considers himself neurotic, unstable, unreliable and according to the common way of looking at things he is a bit so, but what I see is quite the opposite. He never brags, he doesn't sell smoke, he minimizes his results, he's not a man of the theater. He seems neurotic when he gets anxious and is not calm, as for being unstable and unreliable, I don't understand why he judges himself this way, I think that only those who don't really know him can accuse him of this. Of course he is not one who can be reduced to schemes, he is not the type who adapts for convenience.
When he calls me I perceive that it is not just me the one who needs him, I feel that I can be close to him, that my presence is perceived like something positive and not like a ball and chain. Lately he is more patient with me, before he listened to me less and scolded me more, now he listens in silence when I try to make him understand that he is no less than anyone and that he must not let anyone put him in crisis. He doesn’t listen to me passively, that is, he doesn’t passively accept everything I tell him, he is very selective, if there is something he doesn’t share he reacts and sometimes even badly, but he likes to be encouraged, he likes to be reminded of the things he has done and that he would tend by himself to forget.
When he feels troubled in the competitive environments in which he works, he tends to throw in the towel and get discouraged easily, and it is precisely then that he seeks me, because he needs someone who truly believes in him, who makes him understand that he is not an uprooted but one who has his moral support points and his inner strength, far beyond appearances. For me too these aspects of the relationship with him are fundamental, also for me they are an opportunity to create almost familiar relationships. I try to make him understand that his presence helps me not to fall into the black hole of isolation, because if it is true that I have many friends, it is also true that he is the only guy to whom I would say I love you, and I say in fact. I would live with him, perhaps as a true coexistence, this thing will probably never happen, but on a sexual and spiritual level (a strange combination!) There is already coexistence.
Sometimes when he calls me because he's stressed and tired, I get hot and start talking in bursts, he doesn't stop me and then I start to think I'm exaggerating, he understands it and gives me some unexpected answers, to show me he wasn't distracted and that he was following word by word, when then the minutes pass, sometimes quite a lot, I notice from the tone of his voice that he’s calmer and I feel really happy. In certain periods of our long relationship, if you want to call it so, I had the impression that these moments of deep communication had vanished and I felt very distressed, because it seemed to me that I had lost the most important half of our relationship, then I realized that those moments were still there, even if they were rarer, and I no longer felt excluded from his life.
I don't think that his doubts and anxieties really derive from couple problems or from stories that he would like to start but that take different paths, because after all he has friends who are more to him than friends, even if in reality he sees that those friends change over time, some move away, with others the interference of work problems ends up distorting the relationship and new friends also arrive whom he welcomes in an increasingly disillusioned way. Then there is me too, for many years now. He really considers me as something different, yes, a bit like a family member who is there when needed and who basically, quietly, still has a role to play. I have seen him grow year after year and he has helped me grow and get rid of so many complexes that I carried around since adolescence.
The relationship I have with him has evolved over time, now it is a relationship between adults who each have their own world but who esteem and love each other. For many people sex is a constraint, for us it is not, it is simply a way of communicating, a way of saying that we still love each other, that we trust each other. Neither he nor I want a closer relationship, at least I think it is so, maybe things will change over the years, if it happened I think it would still be pleasing to both, not as a project to be pursued explicitly but as a simple fact.
What strikes me about our relationship is the stability, many years have passed, when we met we were just young boys, we had many reasons and opportunities to lose sight of each other, yet it never happened. What would I have done with my life if we hadn't met? I do not really know! He always tends to discourage my expectations about him because he thinks that deep down I can dream of living with him a real life as a couple that he probably would like to live with other people, but in fact, then, this does not happen, other people more or less quickly they leave his horizon and the problems of work are also joined by melancholy, abandonment syndrome and feelings of inadequacy.
Being with him I understand how difficult his world has been and how hard it will be for him for a long time, and therefore how important it can be to find support in someone like me who loves him without conditions, or at least tries to love him this way. I must not delude myself to become the center of his world, for him I can be the antidote to the worst melancholy, I can be a kind of mood restorer, capable of giving him courage and desire to go on, but I know that I have to let him free, even if I miss his presence.
He may have many guys, of course, but it is not easy for him to find someone who truly and permanently loves him. I hope it will happen to him, only his memory would remain for me, but I think it would be okay anyway. Giving up on an impossible thing is not even a renunciation but deep down I think our relationship would not be lost even if he found a perfect match in the guy of his dreams. I understand that my attitude may seem that of a sixteen year facing his first crush, if not that of a loser, but I don't feel like a loser. I have found my stability and I think he is finding his. Unfortunately, on many really important things in his life, such as those related to work, I cannot do anything, perhaps at the moment I am writing he is with another guy, indeed it is likely, but this does not take him away from me, such a thing never happened. I don’t want to end with a rhetorical slip, I simply conclude here.