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  GAYS AND COUPLE STABILITY
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-19-2018, 11:06 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies

In this post I intend to analyze the stability of the couple life of gay guys. The issue is complex and cannot be reduced to the social problems that gay couples have to face. We start with some ISTAT data. In Italy, in 2007 there were a total of 81.359 separations (+ 1.2% compared to 2006) and 50.669 divorces (+ 2.3% compared to 2006), equal respectively to 273.7 separations and 165.4 divorces for every 1.000 new marriages, this means that for every 1.000 new marriages celebrated 439.1 end with separation or divorce. The children involved are 100.252 in separations and 49.087 in divorces. These data are absolutely objective and show how the life of a couple, despite the exaltation of it that is made by many parts, is actually very fragile even for married hetero couples, that is, for couples who, in theory, at least because of the presence of the children, should have the maximum stability. 
 
In Spain, according to data published by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística and the Ministerio de Justicia (source in Spanish daily La Razón), in four years the law on the marriage of gays allowed the celebration of 13.116 homosexual unions, 8.898 marriages between gays and 4.218 marriages between lesbians. In all there were 159 divorces and 6 separations between homosexual persons. The divorce between homosexual persons in Spain is equal to 1.26% while among the heterosexuals it is around 66%, i.e. every three marriages two couples separate or divorce. The data are not comparable to each other for many reasons but over time and with the spread of gay marriage it is to be expected that the differences between gay and straight couples, in terms of divorce, tend to decrease. A fundamental concept must be emphasized: the so-called gay marriage presents, even after 4 years, extremely marginal percentage incidence because it is in fact an institution that can only be used by a minimum percentage of the homosexual population, i.e. by the publicly declared homosexuals, around 4 % of homosexuals, or approximately 0.32% of the general population. For gays not publicly declared, which make up about 96% of all homosexuals and about 7.7% of the general population, the introduction of same-sex marriage has not changed anything.
 
In interpreting statistical data, it must be borne in mind that a heterosexual guy is led by the family and the social environment to the idea of forming a couple and getting married. Parents encourage him in this sense. The fact of having a girl is considered as a license of adult life, that not only must not be hidden but that can be exhibited in all environments without any risk. At least theoretically, hetero sexuality is connected with the idea of having children and behaving "according to nature". If these factors don’t determine the heterosexuals at the wedding, certainly favor the path towards marriage, very often even when the premises for a marriage are in fact lacking. The results of this social pressure towards marriage are easily detected in legal systems rather elastic in terms of separations and divorces, as it happens in Spain, where two out of three marriages break up and the presence of children is not sufficient to prevent their dissolution.
 
One wonders how many heterosexual couples would exist if social conditions were adverse as it happens in the case of homosexual couples, that is, if there was not the incentive to put children in the world, if heterosexual unions were considered unacceptable on a social level and they had to be lived very often secretly. The life of a stable couple, between hetero people, would be an exception, as it is among gays.
 
The population of Spain amounts to approximately 46.5 million inhabitants. By admitting a percentage of homosexuals equal to 8% we reach the amout of 3.720.000 gay people, and the percentage of married homosexuals amounts to 0.70% of the homosexual population, a minimum percentage. This means that, beyond the fundamental legal recognition, in Spain, the condition of gays, on a social level, has not really changed except marginally with the introduction of homosexual marriage.
 
If from the world of gays publicly declared, who arrive to marry, you go to the world of undeclared gays the situation however, at first glance, doesn’t seem to change much. In this case, of course, we will not talk about married gays but about stable gay copies. However, the number of stable pairs appears to be rather low, even if the statistics are much more difficult in this case. Among undeclared gays it is widespread the ideal of the stable gay couple that represents the dream of the vast majority of undeclared gay boys, but anyway you can see few stable gay couples. I emphasize that I do not have said "there are few couples" but "you can see few couples".
 
Also the phenomenon "gay couple" is greatly affected by the non-visibility of undeclared gays that are about 96% of the total. Only the gays publicly declared can access the marriage and only they affect the official statistics, the rest is submerged.
 
Based on what emerges from the chat with the guys, I note that, after the introduction of the internet, the condition of undeclared gays has changed significantly. Until the early 1990s, for an undeclared guy, there was no possibility of meeting other undeclared guys. There were even at that time gay associations, but obviously they were frequented exclusively by publicly declared gays. For the others, the overwhelming majority, in fact, associationism was completely impracticable and isolation was the rule. Things have changed in recent years. For an undeclared gay, there is today the possibility of starting a dialogue with another gay not declared in conditions of total anonymity.
 
Adopting a common sense behavior it is however possible, with moderate risks, for an undeclared gay guy, to know other undeclared gay guys and it is also possible, and even not uncommon, that two gay guys not declared know each other in person, which it is the basic condition for the formation of a couple between undeclared gay guys.
 
From the privileged observatory of Project Gay several interesting facts can be observed:
1) Gay people not publicly declared put first in the ranking of the values of their life the possibility of living in couple with another guy. I asked myself if this is only by analogy with what happens in the hetero world. It is clear that for a gay couple there isn’t any incentive relate to children and social pressure, which is on the contrary strongly discouraging. Can, then, only the imitation of the hetero world lead gay guys to consider living as a couple as the first value of life? Frankly I think that for gay guys, and especially for those not declared, the realization of a life as a couple is not just a response to an emotional thrust towards another guy but also has the sense of a revenge on life, represented by the overcoming of a solitude often problematic if not distressing, much more radical for a gay guy, in particular not declared, than for a heterosexual one who does not live in a couple. Basically, for an undeclared gay, living in couple also means overcoming a situation of unease.
 
2) When creating a couple is possible but not easy and represents a liberation from a state of unease, the life of a couple, which is born against the social judgment, is nevertheless intrinsically strong, so strong as to overcome social obstacles, even by means of a non-visibility accepted as a normal condition. In these conditions the couple stability is high. If creating a gay couple was not only possible but  also very easy, the gay couple would intrinsically be born with the same basic fragility of the heterosexual couple, i.e. it would not be born as a realization of a single (or almost) possibility to create a couple, but as a result of a choice between the many possible choices and the idea of modify the choice already made would also appear in the gay field, as it increasingly appears in hetero field.
 
3) The number of gay couples among undeclared guys tends to progressively increase and especially among younger guys. There are more couples made up of guys between the ages of 20 and 30 than couples of guys between the ages of 30 and 40. Younger gay guys already start with the idea of a possible couple life, the thirty-year-olds are much more skeptical and forty-year-olds consider the life of a gay couple almost unrealizable. However, there are stable couples that have formed between guys well over 30 years, but they are guys who have lived long periods of sexual repression, who have not had previous sexual experiences and have preserved well beyond 30 years an affectivity and a sexuality typical of much more younger guys.
 
Adopting a common sense behavior it is however possible, with moderate risks, for an undeclared gay guy, to know other undeclared gay guys and it is also possible, and even not uncommon, that two gay guys not declared know each other in person, which it is the basic condition for the formation of a couple between undeclared gay guys.
 
From the privileged observatory of Project Gay several interesting facts can be observed:
1) Gay people not publicly declared put first in the ranking of the values of their life the possibility of living in couple with another guy. I asked myself if this is only by analogy with what happens in the hetero world. It is clear that for a gay couple there isn’t any incentive relate to children and social pressure, which is on the contrary strongly discouraging. Can, then, only the imitation of the hetero world lead gay guys to consider living as a couple as the first value of life? Frankly I think that for gay guys, and especially for those not declared, the realization of a life as a couple is not just a response to an emotional thrust towards another guy but also has the sense of a revenge on life, represented by the overcoming of a solitude often problematic if not distressing, much more radical for a gay guy, in particular not declared, than for a heterosexual one who does not live in a couple. Basically, for an undeclared gay, living in couple also means overcoming a situation of unease.
 
2) When creating a couple is possible but not easy and represents a liberation from a state of unease, the life of a couple, which is born against the social judgment, is nevertheless intrinsically strong, so strong as to overcome social obstacles, even by means of a non-visibility accepted as a normal condition. In these conditions the couple stability is high. If creating a gay couple was not only possible but  also very easy, the gay couple would intrinsically be born with the same basic fragility of the heterosexual couple, i.e. it would not be born as a realization of a single (or almost) possibility to create a couple, but as a result of a choice between the many possible choices and the idea of modify the choice already made would also appear in the gay field, as it increasingly appears in hetero field.
 
3) The number of gay couples among undeclared guys tends to progressively increase and especially among younger guys. There are more couples made up of guys between the ages of 20 and 30 than couples of guys between the ages of 30 and 40. Younger gay guys already start with the idea of a possible couple life, the thirty-year-olds are much more skeptical and forty-year-olds consider the life of a gay couple almost unrealizable. However, there are stable couples that have formed between guys well over 30 years, but they are guys who have lived long periods of sexual repression, who have not had previous sexual experiences and have preserved well beyond 30 years an affectivity and a sexuality typical of much more younger guys.
 
Anyone who wants to try a couple life aims at sexuality and the couple in themselves, largely disregarding the person of the other guy, completely neglecting the basis of the couple's life which is founded on the authentic and reciprocated love for another guy. Basically on this basis what is formed is not a couple but an image of a couple that lacks the strength of cohesion that a gay couple born on a relationship of love really has.
 
2) Gay couples built on weak foundations can last in spite of their fragility because the opportunity that determines their dissolution may not materialize. A fragile couple, without external shocks, resists but at the slightest impact it shatters. Often the fracture element is constituted by the presence of alternatives. If the reason that caused the fragility is this, to the dissolution of the couple follows, at least for one of the guys, the almost immediate constitution of a new couple, the so-called alternative couple. A few years ago, when gay couples among undeclared guys were very rare, they were also very stable, now they are much less rare and begin to present aspects of fragility, it is believed that with the increase in the number of couples made of not declared gay guys, their fragility will also increase. If for an undeclared guy it is more difficult to establish a couple relationship than it is for a publicly declared guy, the relationship between two undeclared guys is ultimately more stable precisely because the realization of an alternative appears much more improbable.
 
3) There are some situations in which the break, usually non-traumatic, of a relationship between undeclared gays is not followed by the establishment of a new couple relationship. Often non-traumatic breaks of this type occur among men no longer young, even well over 40 years, who have a relationship of cohabitation of several years behind them. In these cases it is not the will to create an alternative couple that leads to the dissolution of the first couple, but a slow and progressive desexualisation of the relationship that can also be due to external factors linked to work or other contingent situations. In these cases, the couple's relationship becomes a friendship that is gradually narrower and ends up dissolving within a few years. Guys come back this way to status of single.
 
4) Sexuality is one of the fundamental elements  of the life of the couple, and couple sexual compatibility is only one element, even if very important and delicate and often critical, which contributes to the stability of the couple, but it should be emphasized that life as a couple should not be considered as an individual objective but, in fact, as a couple goal and should not be understood as a completion of the self but as a creation of a "we". A concept that must always be kept in mind when observing the phenomenon of the fragility of the couple, and of course also of the gay couple, deserves a specific reflection, it is the relative dimension of the truth. In essence, beyond the purely formal dimensions, such as cohabitation, which is an objective fact, all that truly animates the life of a couple remains in the domain of the subjective, because the subjectivity of the evaluations of the same fact affects so radically its interpretation that the data itself, in its objective consistency, is completely distorted to the point of losing meaning.
 
The two partners of a couple can read the same fact in radically different and even opposite ways and on this basis they can feed tensions and conflicts. The couple dialogue, even if it is very useful to prevent and resolve possible differences, can in no case avoid subjective interpretations. Since what matters in the couple relationships, rather than the facts, are the interpretations, it remains that the diversity of the interpretations on the part of the two partners represents a factor of original and unavoidable fragility of the relationships of the couple. Basically, the couple, even in the best of cases, i.e. even when it is really interpreted as a "we", remains formed by two individuals with different characters, with different experiences and also with different objectives. The consequence of all this is the concrete possibility that the interpretations of the facts can become so divergent that they endanger the same life as a couple.
 
Listening separately to the two partners of a relationship that has gone into crisis, we realize that the behaviors that to one of the two appeared irrelevant or almost, were interpreted by the other as signs of betrayal, lack of love or selfishness. Most of the couple crises derive from a set of interpretations that gradually become more divergent over time. Often at the basis of these differences of interpretation there is an idea that constitutes for one or both partners an unspoken assumption given almost for granted of the couple relationship, this assumption can be summarized as follows: "Now he does not represent what I would like because he has some flaws (he has no will, he has the fixed idea of sex, he is rather indifferent to sex, he wants to include me in his world without giving up anything, is touchy, selfish, etc. etc.) but I will change him and I will make him exactly as I wish him to be." A similar premise is often the real cause of the failure of a couple relationship. Usually, such reasoning remain in the "unsaid" and can conflict, on the other side, with other unsaid assumptions, of a different sign.
 
There remains another fundamental question related to the fact that over time people change their points of view and their ways of reacting and that what seems possible and even opportune today could appear completely incongruous after a few years if not even months. Couples built quickly, giving too many things for granted, couples who have elements of original weakness (strong differences in social status, very different previous experiences, strong differences in age) are characterized by a high potential risk. At the individual level, common sense and prudence discourage the rush to build a couple and above all to sexualise a relationship born on an emotional level. The sexualisation of the relationship makes you lose sight of many elements that should be understood before making more engaging choices, and sexual contact, which may seem desired today and consciously desired by both, can easily, over time, be interpreted by one of the two in negative key. The couple life is not the heaven but it is a complex and often difficult reality usually very hard to build, which could, and one must be aware of it, bring more anxiety and worries than serenity and well-being, this is why living as a couple is a difficult choice whose outcome is never a priori predictable.

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  GAYS AND SOCIAL STATUS
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-18-2018, 12:22 PM - Forum: Gay discomfort - No Replies

Hello Project, it does not seem true to me to have found a vent, perhaps for someone it would be a banality but for me it is very important, I was just bursting, I could not take it anymore. Talking to you made me think a lot. I, at 29, I already threw in the towel. You say well that life has something in store for me, but the reality that I live is another. I saw the guys always and only from a distance, I spent the best of life to masturbate in front of the computer but not because I got out of my mind but because there was just nothing else! Because I've always been alone and will remain alone. What do you think? perhaps that I have not experienced a crazy attraction for some guys? I tried it and how strong! But it could not have any following. 

I know there are so many gay guys alone who feel worse than me! I know very well, we are devoured by fear, but in a country like the one where I live, what can I hope for the future? Project, let's be clear, I will never be able to leave here! But where do I go? I don’t have a job and I can do what I can. First they told me that I had to finish my studies, and I finished them, that I would surely find a job later, but I didn’t find anything, so what am I doing? I don’t live, I survive. Now a friend of mine who I think is gay, he went to live in Rome with another guy to share the expenses of the apartment, so they say, but I know that the reason is not that. That guy is rich and my friend has found him because he is not a starving man like me, because his family passes him the money to live in Rome, and if you have a house and a certain economic autonomy then you will also find a guy. 

Project! But you know how much they are assholes ... gays? I know it! They run after you if you have money, otherwise they spit in your face. Then you say that I have no courage! But dare of what? To make me spit in the face even by gays? And I've seen things like that! If I earn 500 euros a month it is runny fat. And I'm not even nice or passable, a girl talking about me with her friends said I'm crude and ordinary. And someone like me what has he to wait for? Here in the village not even the sons of Dad can afford to say that they are gay, you can figure out if I can afford it! 

And then my father and my mother? I have to stay here and what a life I have to do you don’t even dream of it. Here they say that there is a small group of gay guys, but they are those badly drug addicts who in all likelihood gay are not at all, but if you're drug addicted you must be gay too. Here it works like this. And then what do I do? Work zero! Zero economic possibilities! At the level of starvation! Then they tell me that I should be more careful "in the care of my person" (!). I don’t have a car, I have a computer that breaks a lot of times, I have a connection because I use illegally that of school that is beyond the wall of my house, because otherwise I couldn’t even have internet . And you tell me about the future and about hopes, but what are I to hope for?
 
And you tell me that I have to get rid of the "crazy ideas". Anyway, in a certain sense you are right, but those "crazy ideas", when you live like I live come inevitably to you! Have I to find a boyfriend? Project, don't make me preachings, I do not believe in miraculous things. They don’t even want me as a friend when they realize I don’t have a penny. I, at 29, I have to go and ask my mother for 10 euros, she would give  me them, but she doesn’t have them either! But what hope do you want to have one like me! Do you understand the sense of frustration I feel? Sometimes I step in front of the pizzerias and there are dozens of guys who have fun, but I cannot go there because I cannot afford it. It's okay not to mix affective matters with money matters, I know, but do you understand how I live? Now excuse me if I vented a little bit, I don’t have it with you, the things you say, you say them for a good purpose, but you probably cannot really realize. 

And then even chatting with you at the end I felt free, because I can never say such things. I don’t go to gay places nor meet gay people, but if I went there I would not be like the others. My problem is not to be gay, but to be gay without hope, without work, without a penny, without future, and it's not the same thing. Project, it is not a reproach, you are used to talking with many good guys but, luckily they have only one problem, to be gay. I wish I only had the problem of being gay! In practice I would have no problem! I have the problem of survival and end up hating gays who are not like me, those who think that the biggest problem in life is just being gay. Those guys look stupid to me! They are lucky but they don’t even realize it! They cry for fearful bullshit and feel like victims! But victims of what? When I was attending university I struggled to work ,often even the whole night, to get money to pay my taxes, and I worked hard. Well there were two gay guys dressed in the latest fashion, but something, look, very disgusting!
 
People who spat in your face the money they had and you had to have it very clear that you were just a starving man! But how can I feel close to people like that? At that time I had a straight friend, but a guy like me, he was not gay but he was someone whom I felt very close to and who loved me, fuck if he loved me! He was a true friend! What do I care if you're gay or straight! It is the quality of the person that matters! Project, damn it, I feel also stupid to do complain this way. It seems that I want to be pitied. Yesterday at the beginning you made me lose my patience. You said a lot of nonsense. Then you started to understand and you changed tone. Frankly I didn’t expect it. You have a dignity, which is something I really appreciate. But, put it in your head, gays are not better than others, for gays of high social level, what matters is not that you are gay or straight, but first of all that you too are of high social level, otherwise they don’t even take you into consideration.
 
Then, of course, the fact that you're gay is also important, but that's not the main thing. There is no gay solidarity, if you are not of their social level even gays kick you in the ass. I experienced it. Try to enter a gay club in the city, dressed as I'm dressed, perhaps they don’t put you out, but they make you feel a worm, one that is not up to par. And do you want these people to care about the fact that I’m gay too? But for them such problems don’t exist at all! Here, now I vented with you! At this point an asshole would not even answer me, but I know you will do it. I'll make myself heard tonight on msn. Come on, don’t get mad! I’m like that. 

Savior

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  GAY COUPLES AND MONEY
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-16-2018, 07:37 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies

Hello Project, I need to vent myself and maybe even of an advice. At the moment I'm a bit out of my mind because I broke up with my partner (life partner) and I don’t know what to do, we had, fortunately only rented, a shared apartment but the contract is registered only under my name. At the beginning we paid it dividing the expenses, but now I'll have to pay for it only of my own, and then the world has fallen on me, but I cannot stay with him anymore. We have not broken for problems of betrayals or for various jealousies but for money matters, you understand, Project, just money. 
 
I am 34 years old, he one less, we both work, he earns more than me, not much more than me, but more than me. Our families have never sailed in gold, neither his family nor mine. As a kid I was used to not throwing money and I know how much effort it takes to earn it. We live together in the same apartment for years, we share the expenses, I try to save money because I don’t want to find myself bad and even worse to ask my parents for money, for him instead to ask for money is not a problem, but has become a habit, but I don’t mean asking for money to do something concrete, like furnishing the kitchen, but to throw them away in the most incredible ways. For the last Christmas I had made some savings “with a maximum effort” and I had put aside 500 euros to make him a gift, since he is always chasing money. 

I gave him the 500 euros, he came out and spent all of them in less than an hour, he bought two shirts of 100 euros each and 300 euros of books, which of course are still in the bookshop package. I was very upset, then he went to ask his parents for money for Christmas. Recently "for two months in a row" he spent all his salary in 15 days and then came to me because he didn’t even have the money for the bus. Frankly, I cannot stand anymore such a situation. We have filled home with absurd things, bronze samovars, books written in who knows which language and expensive furnishings that are completely out of context. When I tried to reason with him about these things he remained very upset, he looked like a beaten dog but then he didn’t change attitude and at the first opportunity he was ready to throw away all his salary from the window. I really loved this guy and I tried for years to underestimate his ways of doing but sometimes I just cannot stand it anymore.
 
Last year we took a new car, I would have taken the cheaper basic model, not him, because a bigger engine has more recovery, because with the alloy wheels security is greater, etc. etc. and we ended up increasing the price by almost 30% adding options that are absolutely useless. Last week he began to say that the house is small and that he would rent a bigger apartment and it made me nervous: but who gives us the money to pay for a bigger house? He began to talk about asking for a loan but he said it "seriously", therefor I began "seriously" to worry and to think that in his brain certain mechanisms are jammed and that maybe he just tries to keep his feet on the ground without succeeding.
 
I tell you, I just felt moments of panic, I said to myself: how can I go on with a guy like this? It's better that I go my way because with him a real dialogue is not possible, just he doesn’t realize, I sent him back to his parents and I told him that I wanted to be alone "for a while", he then called me on the phone with the usual abandoned dog air and this has aroused in me a tide of scruples and I don’t know what to do, I would like to be with an adult who is able to control himself but he is not so, is a very good guy but in some things he doesn’t have a minimum of self-control, it's like a child who doesn’t understand the value of money.
 
What should I do Project? Have I to pretend nothing at least in words this time and then always pretend nothing? I love him but the idea of getting back together doesn’t excite me, it would still be a compromise choice. I could even pretend that it’s nothing, hoping that something will change but I already know that nothing would change. What do I have to do?
 
konigdernacht answers:

I can only laugh, rather than cry bitterly, reading this post! The situation is very particular and focuses on some issues of a couple's relationship:

1) home economy;
2) respect for money;
3) respect for the partner;
4) respect for the parents (of the partner of the writer).

That said, I would have two dispassionate advices:
 
a) if the two really love each other and if this money story is the only stain in the relationship, the two could continue to live together and the guy with his feet on the ground could register expenses and make the partner understand one of the basic principles of the home economy, namely that if TOT enters and TOT is spent, there is a budget balance; if TOT enters, and 2 TOT is spent, a debt accumulates; if 2 TOT enters, and TOT is spent, there is gain! It is certainly not high finance! Obviously, this registration serves to educate the partner and, once educated (in a short time hopefully), it should end up because registering all expenses is not really nice!
 
b) if the two love each other but the situation is truly unsustainable - I imagine that the guy with his feet on the ground has not a few anxieties and tachycardia about this absolutely unnerving situation - the road to follow can only be one: leave, remaining just friends, but following everyone his own road! On the other hand, one considers himself as a life partner, not as a nanny.
A wish you true happiness, dear writer.
 
Alyosha answers:

In my opinion the money has little to do with all the story or better the money management has in some way just something to do with the management of feelings. In southern matriarchal families it is quite usual that it’s the woman who collects the money of all the family members and then decides how to spend them. Unfortunately I realize that certain automatisms, right or wrong they are, in a gay couple don’t exist, because the roles are not so obvious, among other things I cannot even say if it is bad in itself. The point is that those who control the money that a person can spend control the movements of that person, affect their way of thinking and reasoning. And in a gay couple there are two different ways of doing, well beyond the mere problem of money. Right or wrong, his positions and his attitudes towards the world are radically different from yours, dear thrifty.
 
He lives more for today and with less thoughts on his mind. I state that about cohabitation I don’t understand anything, but in short, his money is only his and yours is only yours. Once you have split your expenses in half with his money, he can do whatever he wants, if he then asks you for money after having spent everything, don’t give him it. So I don’t understand why you should keep his money. If then when he has finished his money he asks his parents, it's not your problem. His relationship with his money is not your business, he manages it as he wants. In short, behind this money business, I see more an attempt to influence his way of thinking, doing and behaving, and I also see a certain frustration and a sense of betrayal that you feel if he doesn’t do what you think should be done.
Save money, be moderate in spending etc. etc. they are not values in themselves, they are not right in themselves, I mean, but they are right only for you. In short, it isn’t said at all that despite the fact that you and your boyfriend are two different persons you aren't able to stay together, but my dear writer, you should give up your attempt to change him and you shouldn't even let him change you. In short, I repeat, divide the expenses as you were two simple roommates and when he is in trouble don’t help him. Sooner or later he will get rid of his bad habit if he realizes that when he needs money he has to earn it by himself. But if there is more, in short ... you will reason on your own, I feel seriously too little expert to give advice on such long stories ...
 
Gianni replies:

Sorry if I intrude in the discussion, I read carefully the first post and the answers of Konig and Alyosha, given that it is not only a problem of gay couples, even heterosexual couples face financial obstacles day by day in order to move forward, there can be discussions, clarification of ideas, none of us is perfect, Someone can buy too many books, CDs, shoes, shirts, home furnishings for the bedroom or kitchen, whatever you want, but, and I say it with full knowledge of the facts, if you decide to be a couple, you do it after you know thoroughly the mate, because it is not possible, after attending each other for a long time, to discover things that were not seen before or you did not want to see, it is too easy to create a couple and then destroy it for reasons that can be overcome with a serious and responsible speech. When you are more than 30 years old, you should already know how expensive life is (in every sense). If the financial problem is an excuse to want to download the partner, then it is another matter ...
 
pavloss replies:

I am very perplexed. I don't think that the guy who writes wants to "download" his partner for reasons of money, I think, rather, that he loves him and fells very upset in front of the irresponsible behavior of the one close to him. The fact is that the problem he throws on the carpet is true and undoubtedly goes beyond money. When a person takes into account that he doesn’t exist only for himself but for another one with which he makes a family, all the possible problems, even if they may appear very difficult to overcome, are considerably dampened. The ability to adapt as a couple must not come from one side only. If it comes from only one part, sooner or later the equilibrium is lost and a "no return" process starts, as seems to be the case described by this guy. I have the impression that the spendthrift guy is rather closed in himself, willing to see only his reasons, is quite spoiled (asking frequently one's parents or family for money when you have a job and earn money it is not decent in my opinion!). If he is willing to get out of this vicious circle he can very well recover the couple relationship with his partner, otherwise he will compromise it forever (and it seems very real, this) but he will also lose his true balance in relation to life. 

The man who sees his partner unbalance this way, rightly dreads because he also feels himself dragged into a paradoxical situation that he would never want. I would simply put him in front of an aut-aut: "Either you change or I go my way". In fact, what kind of "love" is what forces the other to humiliation and indigence for a total inability to have a relationship with money? Here on the part of the spendthrift there is a hermetic closure on himself that is to absolutely avoid, if you want to live as a couple. Otherwise it is better that everyone stays on his own. I met a similar case in the heterosexual world. An uncle of a friend of mine, long ago, married a woman who wanted luxury and forced him to do crazy shopping, far beyond his financial capacity. At one point, the indebted man saw that his life partner was never happy: obtained 100 she wanted 1000, obtained 1000 she wanted 10,000 and so on. They ended up divorcing and, by law, because they had a son, he had to help her keep the son. The son, became an adult, for years went to his father asking for money, saying "Dad I’m used to living in luxury, I cannot do without it". Meanwhile, his father entered an acute depressive crisis of which his ex-wife and son were responsible. Recently he committed suicide. This shows how a deranged relationship can also lead to extreme situations.
 
konigdernacht answers:

pavloss wrote: “I don't think that the guy who writes wants to "download" his partner for reasons of money, I think, rather, that he loves him and fells very upset in front of the irresponsible behavior of the one close to him. ... When a person takes into account that he doesn’t exist only for himself but for another one with which he makes a family, all the possible problems, even if they may appear very difficult to overcome, are considerably dampened. ... what kind of "love" is what forces the other to humiliation and indigence for a total inability to have a relationship with money?”

I absolutely agree with you, pavloss: the two are a couple, a family, so the debts of one are also debts of the other, and this in my opinion escapes the reading of Alyosha, which sees the two as entities absolutely detached, each extension of himself. Not to mention that as long as there are parents of the spendthrift, all is well. Once disappeared, where does he go to ask for cash? He would end up charging himself and the couple of debts, creating many problems! If then there are assets to be seized for breaches or lack of finances by the spendthrift (and maybe pulling out parents), since the two reside in the same place, the creditors will go into the couple's house and take furniture and whatever belongs to THEM, not only to the spendthrift but to the couple!
 
project answers:

Pavlos and Konig say things that I also feel mine. I state that soon (as far as possible) I would like to organize a themed evening in chat entitled "what does it mean to have a guy" because I think that the concept of couple is still seen in a very vague, while, in the couples who go on, there are inevitably shared economic balances and shared responsibilities that guarantee the stability. Indeed, Gianni is right when he says that before creating couple you should know your partner very, very well, to evaluate not only the reliability in terms of emotional stability and fidelity of the couple, but also in terms of respecting the commitments undertaken and also of objectively adult behavior. In gay couples there are no legal obligations and there are no children and the couple, if it goes on, it’s only for its internal cohesion, such a couple certainly has emotional and sexual components and whatever you want, but also depends on the reliability of each of the partners. 

I will only give you an example. How do you see a couple in which one of them is systematically one hour late for appointments and never warns if he doesn’t come back or if he's late, etc. etc.? You can tell me that such thing are trivial but basically they are forms of disrespect and disaffection. A couple is a small company that has its own resilience and resistance, but has also its limits. Without reaching the extremes of which pavloss speaks, for a guy, seeing in the partner an irresponsible behavior, that despite the work doesn’t make him economically autonomous, it is really worrying, and seeing that  speeches are useless and that the partner thinks of everything but the couple and his mate, is truly discouraging. If an older guy behaves like a kid it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that he's immature, and feeling in couple with an immature guy is frankly depressing.
 
Editor replies:

Alyosha wrote: “I state that about cohabitation I don’t understand anything, but in short, his money is only his and yours is only yours.”
Well, living as a couple, being a couple, doesn’t mean being 1 + 1, that is, two small singularities, but exactly a couple, a family in short, in which you have to keep under control your defects for the good of the whole family.
 
Barbara answers:

When a couple is together for so many years, money management becomes an important issue. Money establishes lifestyle, values, priorities, even serenity, as the story of this guy demonstrates. The use of money tells us a lot about what we are. Now it is obvious that this story is anyway a point of view, but there are objective data that make us reflect. The excesses create real problems. Living with a person who borders on compulsive shopping or, at the opposite end, with a person with an unexpected stinginess is a fatigue that can be intolerable. In the first case you can get involved in debts that your partner is likely to contract, because cohabiting with another guy, it is difficult, as Alyosha would like, to stay out of the consequences. In the second case, referring for example to heterosexual couples, one also comes to speak of economic maltreatment when one of the two partners limits the other in expenses that are actually necessary. We should find a meeting point. But in some cases it is not easy to reach it, because the use of money refers to significant meanings and life choices. 

Could the author of the email renounce the serenity and dignity that derive from the savings? Perhaps in the same way the partner cannot give up many objects, which represent something fundamental for him. There are people who don’t go out if they do not wear a signed garment: this is a sad reality, but anyway very real. What are objects for many people? They are something that defines them, which guarantee them a status, which increase their self-esteem. I think this guy has tried to change things and that his putting himself apart can also be, from his point of view, an extreme attempt to make the person he loves sober.
 
Alyosha replies:

Thanks for the underlining, Editor. I hope that things are better for you, What have I to tell you? Next time you will tell us how your relationship is working, at least I was honest. The life of a couple is something that for me doesn’t exist at the moment, I would like it, as all of us, I think, but I don’t crucify myself for the fact that there is not and I try not to think about it! I can only say what I think in the abstract, because something I think (don’t worry, I have this flaw and many others) and for fairness I have to premise that they are only ideas and not real experiences. Inheriting the heterosexual model in my opinion it’s a mistake, being in two but not sharing the management of children is not a detail.
 
The heterosexual family remains focused on offspring, the gay one definitely not. Sharing spaces, times, emotions, ways of reasoning is one thing, merging one into the other, "complementing" is  another one. Among other things, it is not said that heterosexual couples working like this, go well. The idea that everyone should have his own things, however, seems fundamental to me, this is the premise for every possible sharing. If the division of goods is already done in heterosexual couples, I don’t see why the idea that everyone manages his money as he wants, once the common expenses are covered, cannot be a solution. I repeat there are no children to grow and this is not a detail. It doesn’t just mean not having the responsibility of a third party in the couple, but also have no one to whom we can leave our savings, so the fundamental question is: what do you keep making money for?
 
I'm not saying that spending everything is a right lifestyle, but I don’t think it's that wrong either. Not having children as a common project, requires a shared project of another nature, that is to have an idea of a solid common future. I repeat, in my opinion, it is not bad either, the children cover too many times the total absence of common background visions, so I repeat: the fact that many hetero couples simply go on like this, doesn’t mean that they go well. If a "filìa" is missing, first of all in the sense of thread that connects, even before that in the sense of bond and love, if a son is missing who could be somehow like a thread, as I see it, a gay couple in the long run does not have many possibilities, but I can be wrong, I have premised on purpose not to have great experiences in this regard. If, as usual, here there were no basic preconceptions, to push to stigmatize the "spendthrifts", we would immediately realize that the reasoning also works in reverse.
 
In short, everyone for what I read, would like to pull in his direction and this is not possible, the thread if too much pulled, breaks. The problem I see is definitely another: this guy is spoiled. When the money ends he asks his parents or his boyfriend, here is the mistake in my opinion. Everyone is free to do what he wants, but he must assume responsibility for his decisions. If every time he's in trouble someone will help him, this guy will never grow up. Hence the advice not to help him, the ideal would be that not even the family would help him, but on that you cannot do much. But on one thing I would like to be frank, if people are continually treated as irresponsible, there is nothing to complain if they become really irresponsible.
 
And the idea that my boyfriend has to deal with my money, would make me irresponsible and would be in essence the exact equivalent of what my parents do when they give me the money. If this is the situation I can only share the choice made by the guy who wrote, that is let him go, I simply didn’t want to reduce him to an economic issue. I read Barbara's comment now and it's what I mean: on the surface we see the management of money, underneath there's a world. In Italy there is not even the recognition of gay couples, if a guy asks for a loan for a house he puts it on his paycheck crying alone the legal consequences if any. One could very well find an agreement whereby the other pays half of the mortgage payments exactly as he now pays half of the rent. I know that if the differences in the vision of things are too many, you cannot continue to be together and that's exactly what I'm trying to say. 

But if I had to make the decision to leave my partner it would not be only for an economic question because, sorry if I repeat all the time, under the economic issues there are other things, perhaps more important. Everything we do in modern society needs money and if someone claims to come to manage for me the money that I make on my own, in reality he claims to manage my person, I just wanted to emphasize this. Having said that, I remove the trouble, I leave the field to the experts of the couple. Experts not in a polemical sense, but in the sense of having had experiences, which I personally don’t think I have. Forgive me Editor if I allow myself, but the sum has been taught to me in primary school, the next time tell me something that I don’t know already. Good continuation.
 
Barbara answers: 

It is very interesting what you say about the fact that it is not said that gay couples should follow the same rules as the other couples. He reminded me that there are also heterosexual couples in whom the use of money is separate. It would be interesting to understand which solution is better. In a heterosexual couple, a good percentage of women contribute by working at home, but it is true that many women feel a discomfort in feeling "maintained" by their husbands. The fact remains that it is difficult, especially in a "lean time" like this, to apply the rule of separation of money, if for example one of the two loses the job. Here the situation is different. The guy's companion makes consciously (I don’t know how much ...) choices that go beyond his own economic possibilities. And rightly, as Alyosha points out, to see that your partner puts you regularly in front of the fait accompli, assuming that you have to cover his budget holes, asks you a few questions about the relationship: does this partner respect me? Do he respect my freedom, my values, my efforts? Does this partner want an equal relationship or does he want to turn me into an acquiescent parent? a relationship like this corresponds to my needs?
 
Alyosha replies:

Barbara wrote: Does this companion want an equal relationship or does he want to turn me into an acquiescent parent? I thought exactly this. In reality I dared even more in my reasoning, because I fear that the person who wrote the post can take slowly the role of parent but he has probably in mind a different parenting. When a relationship begins behind each of the two partners there is always the fabric of our fundamental relationships. In my opinion it would be decisive if, in the meantime, the guy who wrote would took off this role of a quasi-parent. One partner evidently gives it to the other and the other takes it. Surely from this point of view to loosen a little bit the stress it can useful to entrust each one his own money once the common expenses have been covered. 

As usual I can be wrong, but that: "I sent him back to his parents" a little made me think of the idea of a package to send back to the sender and helped me to reinforce the idea that this guy is considered not only an irresponsible, but almost like an inert object to displace from one place to another. Even the idea of maneuvering his money for him is very reminiscent of the idea of moving it, as if it were inanimate. Behind the reactions of the parsimonious guy there is also the attitude for which his ideas are all right and the other is a kid. What's absurd about wanting a mortgage to buy a more beautiful home? Ok, maybe materially it will not be feasible, but it's not an absurd thought. And what's absurd about the idea of wanting a car with a big displacement? So you understand that the type that writes is not fascinated by cars, unlike his partner. Why are the more relaxed behaviors all considered weird? And in spending all the money on the books? What's there really wrong?!?!?! 

They are not "strange" ideas as they are represented, but only other visions of the world. As I see it, one can and must seek agreement, but only if the other is placed at our same level (and therefore is not helped when he makes mistakes, in the sense that has emerged) and if his vision of the world, however different from ours it may be, has in our eyes equal dignity compared to ours. If there is not this condition of substantial parity, but one is more "high" for some reason than the other, higher up with his moral code, with his judging gaze, no agreements are possible, because agreement by definition presupposes that we are all on the same level. If there is a difference in the relationship, there are more or less peaceful forms of bargaining on things to do, but it still remains the idea that one of the two guys has the responsibility to do for both while the other should simply take in loan in his behaving  the code of values of the first. 

There remain only different forms of control over people, however frustrating for those who exercise this control, because given the situation described, it seems clear to me that the other doesn’t prove a performer so reliable of the will of the first (even if the first keeps saying that his mate understood the lesson). It is also clear that the parents of the spendthrift still retain a power, which they will exploit if necessary. For parents, treating a guy as a capricious child who must be satisfied is a sure way to keep him connected to them and not make him develop mature relationships and according to what I read in the conclusions it is a method that works great! However, the division of expenses I thought of it as an initial phase, I repeat, as I see it, letting both partners have their spaces of autonomy is the indispensable step for every possible sharing. Slowly, as agreements on things are found, the number of expenses faced together would grow in a spontaneous and progressive way. But it is only a hypothesis, I cannot say how much in fact it can be concretized.
 
konigdernacht answers:

You, Alyosha, wrote: “As usual I can be wrong, but that: "I sent him back to his parents" a little made me think of the idea of a package to send back to the sender and helped me to reinforce the idea that this guy is considered not only an irresponsible, but almost like an inert object to displace from one place to another.” Come on, Alyosha, we are not doing the exegesis of a passage by an author, the writer has simply used an ironic hyperbole to say that his prodigal boyfriend went back home to his parents, or that he asked him to come home to his parents for the moment. About the fact that his boyfriend is an irresponsible, I don’t think there is any doubt at all: it is absolutely evident! But you also say:

“And what's absurd about the idea of wanting a car with a big displacement? So you understand that the type that writes is not fascinated by cars, unlike his partner. Why are the more relaxed behaviors all considered weird? And in spending all the money on the books? What's really wrong?!?!?!” There's really nothing wrong ... in the fantasy world or if you're a “maintained”. We can reason clearly in the abstract, but in my opinion a fact that often escapes your discussion is that of practicality: that is, one can spend all his money in books, ok! But then what do you eat? The pages of the book? How do you pay your bills? Certainly not with the sheets of the book! So if one cannot distinguish his primary needs (eat and pay bills first), from secondary and unnecessary (if you buy a utility car instead of a big car, it's always a car that you buy), he should really do an accelerated course of life!
  
FreedomTower answers:

I quote pavloss: "Either you change or I go my way", the effort must be of both of them not of just one, otherwise the relationship  becomes a repressing one’s own frustration, there are things that are only discovered during cohabitation and it is precisely for this that the cohabitation in a relationship is the litmus test, because one experiences being together and living side by side day by day and one can  see all the moods and attitudes of the partner throughout the day every day. Returning to the beginning of my post, I think you have to give him an ultimatum, after all it’s for years that you tolerate this continuous wasting money, if he really loves you, he will try to change, in the end, you're not asking him to limit himself in who knows what but just to save something because even if it's not your money it's also for his good that he has to change, because even if he doesn’t ask you for money, he will continue to ask his parents (who spoil him so, even if I don’t know anything about the situation) and also to ask friends, maybe untrustworthy and dishonest friends ... 
 
Alyosha responds:

My speech wanted to go somewhere else, what to tell you? Keep on thinking it's just a matter of money and practicality, for what I gain from it, I don’t care at all. A minimum effort to go a little bit beyond the surface of things could be done sometimes, maybe it’s useful or maybe it's perfectly useless. My text is not an exegesis, but the impression I received from the complex of things I read. And I repeat, I have very much the idea that behind the claim to manage the money of the other there is a desire to condition his movements. The idea of sending him back like a parcel post confirms the impression I had of it. In a country submerged in debt I would not be surprised if someone bought a car in debt with a safe income. It is the other who sees his boyfriend's ideas as weird and doesn't give him any basic legitimacy, that instead they should recognize each other! 

Now I stop in fact, not being able to interact with the direct interested, this discussion seems to me basically a school case, because all the arguments and all the possibilities are in principle possible. In general, however, if it should make sense to ask for advice, it is good to help to reflect on what one is doing, not just to say that it is right or wrong. Right and wrong, in my opinion, don’t even exist, therefore it sounds very strange to argue that in a relationship one of the partners is completely right and the other is completely wrong, I couldn’t even conceive a similar thing.
 
salvettino answers:

Hello everyone, I joined recently and I find it very interesting an exchange of views, such as the one allowed by this blog. Meanwhile, I would like to respond to this message, I have to premise that I’m 28 years old and I too, years ago, had a story that came to an end because of the money that my boyfriend was continuing spending. I point out that I bought a house while he has a flat in his mother's cottage. I paid and still pay a mortgage, while the rest of the expenses we would have to theoretically divide. But it was never like that, because I saw that he was always without money already in the middle of the month and then he asked me for money on loan, so what would I have had to do? In addition to my first job, every night I went to work in a take away pizzeria to earn only a few pennies. When I had a little bigger expenses, I could never count on him because he never had any money. 

So, do you still say that money has nothing to do with it? In my opinion, money certainly have something to do with the end of my relationship: why did I have to go and do a second job in order to be financially quiet and he, instead, was at home playing in front of the PC? He was missing money more than me. Perhaps the fault was only mine because at first I didn’t remark the thing, but unfortunately, when you persevere, you end up with an inevitable rupture of the relationship. I cannot say that I still don’t like him very much, but going back and put me together with him another time together would be useless. In fact, now I'm only working based only on my first job, if I had to change my mind about restoring the relationship, maybe I would ruin my existence, I would be condemned to a second job forever to maintain him. But who makes me do it? And furthermore, I also ask you: who makes you do it? At some point in life, people is no more able to change, if they have been accustomed since children in a certain way, they will always remain the same. At 40, we cannot change anymore.
 
redelmondo answers:

I report my experience: I started working a few months after we met, he started working roughly 5 years later. I immediately opened an account in my name. After some time we decided to open a joint account and I gave him an ATM and a credit card. It was normal for me that he could use all the money we had if he needed it, and I didn’t go to check expenses. I didn’t "lend" him money. I usually lend money but just for work in the bank but but I gave money to my love only in custody and administration. Now we both contribute to our finances, we have the same attitude with respect to money. An attitude antithetical to that of my mother, who burns whole her money (it is she who pays practically all the household expenses - the two of us contribute just to maintenance) but she throws away from the window thousands of euros a year in stupid things. 

Now I remember my poor father crying, while he was dealing with bank statements, now I'm an adult and I understand him, seeing how upsetting me is that my mother is unable to keep money when she has some in her hand. My love and I are really afraid to find the house mortgaged because my mother had to buy a new handbag or a  woman dress. if you have not understood yet, I live with my love and my mother happily under one roof. In the case of the guy with a boyfriend prodigal, on my opinion he should make the matter very clear. since the recklessness of his boyfriend's expenses is very difficult for him to bear, he should impose an ultimatum: fixed a sum of tolerable monthly expenditure, he should make his friend to allow him  save the rest, to put it on a savings account, in a glass jar above the fridge, under to the mattress, or wherever you like. 

The boyfriend is not able to manage himself, so he has to be managed if he doesn’t want to be single again. Now if this is an impassable wall, not wanting to accept the condition can become the yardstick of the love tried, not so much for the money itself, but for the lack of capacity for sacrifice. Sometimes he seems to behave like would a child. I notice that in gay couples one of the two partners behaves often like to a capricious child, so it is right to pose as a kindergarten teacher. No kidding. As for the money that he is given away by his parents, nothing wrong, let's see it as an anticipation of inheritance
 
Telemachus replies: 

Interesting this thread, I had escaped it. I wonder if the guy of the email has tested the hypothesis that his boyfriend may have some pathological type of obsessive-compulsive disorder, which causes him to arise the urge to buy large quantities of things even perfectly useless or even completely outside of his economic scope. And in fact there are also "accumulators", i.e. people who feel the need to fill the house of the most unimaginable and disproportionate amount of junk (whether expensive or not). When the gap starts to become so excessive, unfortunately, saying simply that "he’s a flawed person" may no longer be able to explain the situation. After all, by analogy, a compulsive addiction disorder, perhaps more disastrous but not dissimilar, is that of gamblers, who fail to realize what they are doing and are unable to stop.
 
Alyosha answers: 

Telemachus, in fact the pathology exists, the "shopping addiction", more widespread among women, and difficult to identify among men, for a whole series of social conventions to which you refer. Buying a car with a disproportionate cost, as well as spending dizzying amounts to cultivate a hobby is something that has a certain social recognition and above all it’s not normally considered "shopping". A friend of mine studied such problems for the thesis. In general, the nomenclature has never impressed me much, but it is only my personal point of view.
 
salvettino answers:

Hello, now I have solved the problem convincing me that I will stay alone, without a boyfriend. In fact, I stay with the payments for the car I bought thanks to a loan in my name and I'm still paying. I am waiting in vain for the slow return of the sums I have lent him. Especially now that he's jobless I don’t even know what I have to do. Here's what it means to trust. I think my eyes were just closed to persuade me to do something like that. Mah!
 
Lokiluk answers: 

I find myself in the same situation as the writer ... but with the opposite role. I'm a little younger than my partner and I like going out with friends, I like beautiful things ... My partner is very thrifty, he has defined an annual budget within which the expenses of our couple must be limited. I recognize that being told that we cannot afford the restaurant or the cinema every weekend is frustrating and that feeling we are not rich is very unnerving (I know, I have no absurd claims, sometimes just a few "I'd like", but never a "I must have It"). But I also know that he is right. At first I was offended by his reproaches. Then I realized that being part of a couple, I didn’t have to think about myself, but about us. My partner, it must be said, is not an inveterate prohibitionist, a fervent supporter of Zwinglian rigorism. He also likes to spend money sometimes. But when money is scarce and work is uncertain, I admit it's fair to take some responsibility. If the writer's boyfriend is able to understand what it means speaking about a “we”, then perhaps there is hope of fixing things. Anyway, however ... the thing seems to me a bit pathological.

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  GAY COUPLE AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONDITIONING
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-15-2018, 11:48 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies

This post is dedicated to a reflection on the conditioning, in the relationship between two gay guys, deriving from different backgrounds and different social conditions. Generally, when a gay guy falls in love with a guy, whose he doesn't know the sexual orientation, the question that immediately arises is "is he gay or not?" If on the one hand it is true that it is a fundamental question which automatically conditions all the rest, it is also true that this is not the only question. Often, once a gay guy has ascertained that the guy he is in love with is gay too, after the first moments of enthusiasm the first perplexities arise, but not deriving from a lack of mutual sexual attraction but from the objective difficulty in building a deep relationship because of very distant starting points. Building a relationship between two gay guys is not something essentially sexual, it is necessary to build a relationship between two people that is made of mutual trust, affection and respect. Two variables intervene at this point, which in general are often neglected in the initial phase: 
 
1) The difference in education
2) The difference in social condition
 
In order to build a relationship of serious love, a condition of equality is indispensable and forms the basis for the subsequent building together. The greater the differences in education and social condition are, the more difficult it is to start something really shared on an equal footing. In any case it is possible to do so but on the basis of a renunciation of one's role and habits on the part of one of the two guys, made in order to avoid to condition the other, but these sacrifices often hide mental reservations that sooner or later come to the surface with all their disruptive power.
 
Let's start from the differences in education between guys who live more or less the same social condition. Among them the differences are manifested in the habits of life, in greater or lesser freedom in behavior and in discourses, in the greater or less inhibition in facing sexuality. It is a question of conditioning but the awareness of one's homosexuality almost always leads to overcoming educational constraints or to devalue them from within, in the name of the possibility of living an emotional life as a couple. A classic example: the guys who have had a religious education. These guys, when they overcome the problem of religious conditioning, either go beyond radically or remain in that environment in a formal way, and in this choice the education has a fundamental meaning. Differences in the social level are a real and powerful barrier that can arise between two gay guys and can prevent them from living a real life as a couple.
 
Below are some of the typical symptoms of social distress through very indicative phrases:

1) When I go out with his friends I don’t feel at ease, it's another world
2) He with my friends is not at ease, I don’t know what takes him, he seems clumsy
3) My friends don’t like him, he talks about things from another planet
4) He has a concept of fun that I don’t understand, for him it's a ritual, according to me he just acts a role.
 
Social unease manifests first in external things and then gradually into the others:
 
a) What was the need for sunglasses of 300 euros?
b) We don’t see each other for a month because he has to go on holiday with his parents, but I think he prefers so
c) But what do I care to see the photos he did in New York!
d) When I propose to go to take a pizza somewhere that I like, he always distorts the mouth
e) At his home? With his mother talking with her sibilant “s”? Let’s forget it!
f) He tells me that I have the southern accent
g) He talks too much about things that don’t interest me
h) He tells me that he would be willing to do anything for me, but he went on vacation with his family
i) Is an engineer, ok, but why does he have to repeat it a thousand times?
j) He tells me that I should get back to school but he’s not telling it for my sake, it's because he's ashamed of me
 
Very often in the conversation there are misunderstandings related to the fact that the two communication codes are different. Just an example: a guy can say anything about his parents but he will not tolerate the negative opinion of of his partner on his parents.
The first guy speaks badly of his father: "My father has always done his thing, he says that it is obvious because he is the one who pays. I cannot stand him, since he knows I'm gay he's really hateful."
The second guy adds his critique: "Actually, even Monday he behaved just like an asshole"
The first guy starts to defend his father: "But if didn’t do so people would put him under their feet!"
 
The true sign of social unease manifests through  the absence of the design of a common life, through the underlining that the relationship will go on "as long as it lasts", "as long as we want", but also and over all through the absence of total mutual sincerity, as if the other guy were a person with which we share, and only partially, only sexuality. This is the so-called false couple, that is, the couple who shares only a few moments in life and keeps all the rest separate. Often the false couple on the sexual level works well, its weakness emerges only in long times when in moments of eclipse of the sexual interest it is understood that there is not a real community of life.
 
A characteristic of false couples is the declared idea of maintaining an “open and free” relationship, an idea behind which there is an affective emptiness and a substantial willingness not to be bound.
 
Often, during the discussions, the boys who find themselves in a false couple tend to maintain their positions and not to give in, the discussion becomes harsh and in principle and it is not rare that they arrive at even bitter quarrels because there is no mutual esteem that is the basic element of a couple's life.
 
The rupture of the false couple is in the great majority of cases definitive and not remediable, while in true couples who share deep levels of affection the crisis is overcome and is in fact an element far from negative for the growth of common life.
 
Lads of high social level are generally unwilling to sacrifice their social position or put it in brackets in the name of homosexuality. There are significant exceptions but, despite everything, what matters most is not how A feels the problem but how B believes that A feels it and often misunderstandings are inevitable.
 
The real problem is to be two at a substantial level, to have the same perspectives, to behave like an "we" putting aside the individualistic dimension.
 
Particular attention must be paid to the problem, typical of the couple, of constructing a common sexual world by also putting aside one's own needs in relation to the other. Shared sexuality means common sexual fantasies, it means living a sexuality built together, discovered together, in conditions of absolute parity.
 
I happened to see guys who have been living together for years for whom sexuality is in the most evident way an emotional exchange that is aimed at showing the other guy that you want to share his life with him in the deepest sense. It must be said, however, that those guys had realized a real project of common life and that the difficulties linked to misunderstandings by families and by the social environment had only put their relationship to the test and substantially stabilized it.
 
The sexuality experienced in these terms is really a way of loving that has realized a true community of couple. Getting to these results is not easy and when there are problems of very different education or very different social level overcoming the difficulties requires very strong feelings and very determined choices.

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  A NON-STANDARD GAY COUPLE
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-14-2018, 07:14 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies

Hello Project, this morning I'm happy! It doesn’t happen often, but today I'm happy and this is because I made love with my puppy! A love that could seem made out more of cuddles than sex, so to say, because my puppy is a bit particular with his behavior and you have to be careful not to force him, but he knows it and tries to adapt, but it was beautiful anyway. I didn’t really expect it, in fact the last time I had heard him on the phone, he had looked a little cold and then almost three weeks had passed.
 
When I feel him cold, when I feel that he cuts short, I feel uncomfortable and then I distance myself, the first days I'm glad not to hear him, because I think I would have nothing to say but then I start to miss him and then I start thinking about him a thousand times a day, it is a sort of abstinence syndrome, but not from sex, but from his presence, a presence that is able to make me feel good. I know that he has his life, that he sees other guys, whom I also know, that he makes love with them, but this doesn’t upset me, I think it is also right because the relationship he can have with me, after all, cannot be truly capable of satisfying all his needs.
 
in recent days he came to my mind on many occasions: places where we had been together, a way of smiling, a joke, in short, I really needed him. This morning I go to have breakfast at the bar and I see him in front of the front door of my house. He asks me if I'm busy, I answer him with a toothy smile, we go home and he wants to be cuddled, I hug him tight and I can see he's happy, he says, "Do you still want me?" I answer than I loved only one guy all my life long and then he looks at me puzzled and tells me: "Only me? Never with anyone else? Has nobody ever tried with you?" I say to him: "Only you! Never anyone else!" It almost seems like he doesn't believe it, but I really fell in love just once in my life. With him I lived the most beautiful experiences of my life, for almost three years, then, in a sense it was over, but I think that in reality it never ended, he has had other guys, but he kept anyway a relationship with me and very seriously, he never archived me.
 
Every now and then he came to me, more than to have sex because after all it's a bit different, just to be together in intimacy, we cuddled: dinner together, then endlessly cuddling, he curled up tight to me like a cat, I hugged him tightly, there was also a bit of sex, of that not dangerous, and it was just fine like that. I'm still in love with him. His way of looking for affection melts me inside, I don’t think I would ever be able to stay with another guy, also because, despite the different behaviors, his sexuality feels very similar to mine. If in the street I see a guy I like, it's because he has some detail that reminds me of him. He is the best for me and then, what has always struck me is that he doesn’t forget me, he doesn’t archive me and when he is with me he is happy to stay there and I see it. I would like to live with him but I would suffocate him and he needs freedom. Deep down he knows that I love him and that this will not change, it's something certain, so he feels desired and when we're together he is 100% himself, he doesn’t play a role. Today we were embraced for more than an hour and he fell asleep in my arms. I felt like I was in heaven, I stroked his hair and he would open his eyes every now and then, smile at me a little and then hugged me again. 
 
Now he's gone and maybe I will not hear him for two or three weeks but I know he's there and then sooner or later, he will contact me. I feel in love and I think it's important for him too. He trusts me, he knows he is safe with me and on the other hand I trust him too. Sometimes he scrambled me but they were things that didn’t last long and then everything passed. I'm so happy, he's the guy I want, only him! And he is there, in his way, but he is there and he has never cheated me. In short, Project, today I'm happy! I don’t know if this way of living is more or less classic among gays, but that's what happens and it's beautiful! If you want, publish the email.
Carlo
 
I add a second email from Carlo, that arrived in the evening.
 
Today I have been thinking about my boyfriend for hours, I know that he is not my boyfriend and that he will probably never be the boyfriend of anyone, because a guy like him cannot be caged even out of love. I never understood what love was, the real one, the one that makes you suffer, until I met him and entered a totally new dimension and the novelty consisted in the fact that our love was mutual, but mutual in the true sense of the word, as I had never happened before and it never happened to me later, it was true love but it was not exclusive and even on this we understood each other very quickly and without any problems. 
 
We are not a family, we will never be a family, to be a family it is a common opinion that an essentially exclusive relationship with another person is needed, but we have never felt this need, and then it is not true that the exclusivity of the relationship is necessary to provide mutual assistance if needed. I would do anything for my puppy and I think he would do the same for me too. Sometimes it has already happened. I call him puppy and he calls me exactly the same way . . . no roles at all! Our strength is reciprocity. He knows that when he looks for me he makes me happy and I know he loves me, that in his world I have a place that is somehow important. I don’t care if it's the first place, I know it's not, I'm interested in the fact that I have my place inside his heart and he will continue to be there over the years and so far it has been like that.
 
My boyfriend fascinates me because he is not only a handsome guy but he represents the incarnation of my ideal guy and then because he understands me without needing me to speak and respects me. On the other hand, I recognize his great dignity, his great basic honesty, his true morality. Not what people mean by morality but morality understood as the ability to not subordinate emotional relationships to anything else. The emotional relationships for him are in the first place and must be managed without compromises.
 
We like to speak clearly, always, even when the discourse becomes unpleasant, but even in the less pleasant discourses respect was never lacking, his reproaches were not reproaches made out of hate but out of love. So many times he put me in front of my hypocrisies, unmasked before my eyes so many of my little falsehoods, so many my inabilities to be sincere to the end. So many times I must have made him really angry, he must have considered me a mediocre one, ready for any compromise, and basically he told me it explicitly, but he told me it just to make me think, to take away the classic slice of ham from of my eyes. Above all, he has never made me miss his presence, sometimes I don’t see him for weeks and if we greeted each other affectionately I'm calm and I know that I will hear him sooner or later and that it is only a matter of time, but if we have greeted badly, then he gets soon in touch with me or sends me a smiley face by sms, and he does it to free my head from the idea that something between us has gone into crisis.
 
I discovered sexuality with him. I used to think that I would at most be able to want a guy and that maybe that guy would not have said no, but anyway I saw myself in the role of the lover and the other as someone who in the end doesn’t say no. I didn’t really consider the idea of being able to be sexually desired by another guy and instead it is precisely what happened with him. That we loved each other I had understood it for quite some time, but he wanted me at least as much as I wanted him. It was exactly this that amazed me, and it was a real and very strong sexual desire that not only didn’t undermine our emotional relationship but made it much more complete and profound. For me it was not obvious to put together the categories of sex and of love and it was my puppy who taught me how to do it. Let it be clear that I call him puppy because he makes me a huge tenderness (as I think it's for him too) but I know very well that he is a man, an adult who makes his choices and that several times has put me in crisis by opening my eyes on many aspects of reality that I had not very clear.
 
I really like his way of living sex: it is not hypocritical, it is extremely direct and sometimes I see that he is just pushed by an irresistible enthusiasm but always with sweetness, with a smile, with self-irony. When we embrace, he abandons himself completely in my arms and yet he has enormous strength when he takes me in his arms. The best thing is to stay hugged naked, the feeling of intimacy and mutual trust is very strong and heady. In his way of having sex there is never anything schematic and prefabricated, he is totally spontaneous and then he is very attentive to my reactions, tries to make me feel as happy as possible, sometimes, when we are a bit tired, I follow him less, and he says to me: "Come on, come here!" and he smiles at me, squinting and I melt completely.
 
So many times in our evenings of pampering we stop to talk and I’m delighted to listen to him. He reasons in a very different way from mine, but, in my opinion, in a more linear, more direct and even more profound way. Sometimes he has days of profound melancholy and we remain embraced to caress each other in silence and slowly he becomes calm and for me it is as if I saw the sun rise. We are not a couple, I believe that for us a model of matrimonial type would not work at all, we have no bonds of any kind beyond the fact that we love each other. Between us there is a loyalty, which is that of continuing to love each other, even if each of us has his way. Would I like to live with him? Of course, but it is something that would not work and that would risk undermining the substance of our relationship, which has its time and its ways to be realized and which cannot be reduced to schemes of any kind. I spent many hours thinking about my puppy and I feel happy, I know that he is there and will not go away, I had never experienced such a beautiful and above all such a true thing!

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  NON-POSSESSIVE GAY COUPLE
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-13-2018, 07:41 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies

- Virgil: hello Project! 
- Project: Hello !! Nice to hear you! How are you now that you're home?
- Virgil: eh eh, the appearance is of tranquility
- Project: Wow !!! So it must be. . . But why appearance?
- Virgil: staying here makes me a rather strange effect
- Project: well, you stay at home, with your traditional friends, with people you should know better, or at least you attended for a longer time
- Virgil: yes, but the feeling is not to know them , in reality . . . it's like a farce. . . it's really weird
- Project: oh oh, I can understand, in fact that's your virtual world
- Virgil: what do you mean?
- Project: that even at home and perhaps especially at home you cannot feel free as you would like, maybe you're more free when you're away
- Virgil: I talk about those I've known for a long time. . . the feeling is that of not having (almost) ever had real conversations with them
-Project: Mh ...
- Virgil: yes, indeed. . . that's what I told you the other night. . . that with the few that I knew outside I actually had conversations really more free than those I had with the guys I had considered friends from the beginning
- Project: I understand it well, I'm old but my real world is just PG
- Virgil: even if about friends of outside I'm afraid of not being able to count on them at the moment of need . . . but maybe I'm wrong
- Project: even out there are guys ok!
- Virgil: I wanted to ask you something more about the couple freedom and possessiveness, if you have 5 minutes. . . you told me that it's not feasible to ask for 100% of a person, a couple relationship this way could not work. . . and that often relations with third parties based on exchanges of looks or even words can be deeper than those in which there is sex
- Project: they are different things, certainly if there is a TRUE sexual and also emotional involvement, we are at another level but it is not so common, often people try to live in couple just to try and or to experience
- Virgil: of course. . . I totally agree . . . what I wanted to ask you is about a possible relationship with true emotional and sexual involvement. . . premise: in the context of such a relationship, afternoons spent chatting with other people with whom another true emotional relationship has been established should be totally normal, I mean in the context of the speech about the impossibility of asking for 100% of a person. . . question: what if these relationships with other people (both true relationships, these and that with the first person) were to be configured as a betrayal according to the common conception (i.e. they entailed pampering and, in the extreme case, sex)? Do they become wrong relationships? And if so, what does the sex element entail in making a true relationship with a third person more wrong than the true relationship with the first?
- Project: everything is in people's brains, there are guys who "if it is not really a betrayal" don’t get upset but must first understand that their relationship is not in crisis, it is not easy for them to understand it, but if there is a true emotional relationship and it is understood that the needs of the other are not superficial, it is also possible that the thing is not considered a betrayal and doesn’t undermine anything. The possessiveness is dangerous but it is the common way of seeing
- Virgil: I agree with you, but if it is the common way of seeing, it doesn’t mean that it is the best one. . .
- Project: I don’t think it's the best one, I mean that if you really love a guy and you realize, talking to him explicitly, that he loves a third guy, possibly even with sexual involvement, if you understand that this fact doesn’t destroy your relationship, in the end you don’t stay bad and accept it. This way of looking at things is not the common way of seeing but is founded on a very deep affective relationship, more important than prejudices
- Virgil: Ok, I try to go on, what do you think of the case in which the two relationships, both true and sincere, naturally evolve towards the dissolution of the former and the strengthening of that with the hypothetical third person? Should the true relationship with the third person have been avoided? Should it have to be undertaken only after interrupting the one with the first person? (all traditional conclusions that I don’t share but that put me to the test as they represent the commonly accepted view) and, to bring the discussion to its extreme, is it possible that these true relationships can coexist?
- Project: the fact that the second relationship can become more important than the first is possible but is not automatically destructive of the former, about the coexistence of the two relationships, I think they can coexist, I have seen situations like these that lasted long, but over time then social and cultural pressure easily leads to a break of balance
- Virgil: How nice to read it from you! It a little calms me. . .
- Project: why?
- Virgil: because you have my own vision and to think that I'm the only one who thinks so it makes me feel wrong, a bit as it is, and even more previously it was, thinking of being the only one who feels affection for the guys!
- Project: affectivity has no rules and is instinctive, true betrayal consists in hiding and not saying how things really are. But if a guy who loves you tells you that he loves also another guy, what do you do? Do you drive him away because you have no more the exclusive? On the contrary you make sure that he can realize his wishes at the higher level and you don’t abandon him, if you really love him, to avoid him live as a negative thing the feelings he feels for the other guy
- Virgil: since I feel a deep esteem towards you reading you somehow makes me feel in good company
- Project: slowly this way of seeing things is spreading and it will be more and more shared, especially in the gay field
- Virgil: Really! That attitude towards affection for another guy is what I feel too!
- Project: if you love a guy, you want him to feel good not only with you but that he is well according to his way of feeling
- Virgil: I would almost say Holy Words !! Or maybe not, not words of the saints of the near future. . .
- Project: the love is not a contract, there are no conditions, there are no obligations
- Virgil: why you don’t publish this chat? (changing my name obviously) I think it can be a useful food for thought! (and also for possible moral battles)
- Project: ok, and I’ll also put it in the manual
- Virgil: I would love to know how the guys take it but I think they will not take it well
- Project: it undermines the traditional ways of reasoning, those inherited from the concept of marriage. Possessiveness is a very ingrained thing, but let's see what happens!
- Virgil: ok, Project, thanks and see you next time, I'm going to sleep that it's very late. A hug and goodnight!
- Project: Night and see you soon!

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  GAYS AND FAMILY
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-13-2018, 11:23 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies

What relationships? In my opinion, things that make sense and nothing trivial ... so, now, just to say, maybe you think: you have the boyfriend ... and you don’t miss anything! ... but life is not just that with the boyfriend ... there are also other things. Now chatting so abstract about these things is strange but in the life of each of us many things are valuable and also important, maybe such things don’t appear, they seem stupid things but really exist. 

The people who are important to you, all have different roles and roles that don’t overlap, I have the boyfriend ... and this is important, I know ... but I need also different things ... for example there are many types of cuddles, some of them only your boyfriend can do, all right, but not others, but for example, I don’t know, an encouragement, or the fact that two guys stay to talk together even starting from different points of view, the fact that maybe he knows about you and doesn’t judge you, that accepts you as you are. 

Now, in my life I have missed so many things since I was a kid, at a family level, I say, I would have wanted cuddles, I wanted them desperately and instead for me there have never been. When I did something, as soon as I had done it, it was necessarily judged a stupid thing ... well ... allow me it, I like being told that I'm worth something. We speak, yes, we talk a lot, especially when my boyfriend is not there ... and for me it makes sense, it's not just something to waste time ... that is, if someone is listening and talking to you for hours ... well, it means something ... but sometimes we get to the loggerheads too, I also say some wickedness against Alec... yes, on the things he does ... in short, no malice, I don’t come to that, but I speak very clear and he too gets angry with me ... always, you know, in a very calm, but decided ... he preaches to me ... but no one has ever done the preach to me that way. 
 
At my house they have never worried about or they only stated judgements and made me feel bad, I always looked for the affection of my parents ... I told you so ... and sometimes desperately and l never got it. My family was not really a family, I was the black sheep ... you know, a gay guy ... in short, the family's honor was at risk and they made me feel it in every way ... 

In short, I would have liked so much living in a real family ... because for a gay guy the family is fundamental, if it doesn’t support you so much or it even hinders you, your family can destroy you inside ... because freedom is good but real life is not only that ... being alone make you feel really bad ... With Alec, you know, there is a bit of a "family love" ... I don’t know how to explain myself, I'm glad when I find his messages, that is not that I don’t survive if I don’t find them, but if they is there, I am pleased and I go often to see if there is a message of his.
 
For example ... about my boyfriend, he only says positive things. I told Mark so many times: "One day or another I'll introduce him to you ..." Mark was wary, he didn’t really want to know him but I insisted and at the end I convinced him,
 
I didn’t know what would happen and a bit I was anxious, then we saw all three of us ... I thought we would talk, but no ... we just said hello, then he said that the afternoon was beautiful and that I and Mark had to spend it together, not together with him, together just me and Mark ... Mark liked him, he said that Alec was inclined to smiling and that he was a positive person ... at least so he saw each other for the first time ...
 
In some periods I don’t hear him for several days, even for ten days, but I know that he has not forgotten me, when you feel so it is as if you had talked with him the day before ... that is really a thing family type ... no ... something like it should be a family thing because my family was not like that at all. … a bit he is a substitute for a family environment and then there is one thing that strikes me a lot, which in the end we reason more or less in the same way, if something for me has an important meaning he understands it, i.e. about many things he reasons a bit like me ... it is not a trivial fact, it is not a comparison between deaf or between different worlds ... we are of the same world and I’m very interested in knowing what he thinks of me ... 

I don’t see him as a competitor of Mark and he too doesn’t see himself this way, he has nothing to do with such roles ... ah, another thing, he never really gets angry ... at least with me ... maybe we don’t agree on everything ... but we discuss and don’t destroy anything and a bit I feel important and I think he feels the same. It seems strange eh? Marco is not jealous of him at all and often asks me: "What did he tell you?" And I tell him what we talked about. 

Now I have not heard from him for a week and I miss him a little, but tonight I'm looking for him, he almost never calls me but it's not out of disinterest, I know that. It's a friend yes, yes, a true friend, maybe something more, a kind of brother and I know he thinks of me ... but no, look, not stupidly or for some reason ... just because we love each other, even if another way. 

I feel better now because he  is there ... if he were not there I would miss him, he resizes me, in the sense that makes me see things for what they are, a little I'm sorry when he shoot against my dreams, but maybe I need even that, but I like it very much when it breaks down my worries and tells me that everything is fine and that I have no serious reasons to worry, so far he has always been right, more or less, and he has really a certain reassuring effect on me, he sees things from afar, he has other perspectives, this is evident, but for me at the end of the day it is important the same, that is he can give me things that other people cannot give me. I know it's hard to believe but it's so ... and he says that I'm important to him and I know it's true ... and Mark knows that too ... but there has never been any problem. .. are different planes, parallel planes that don’t touch, a little I have my family reconstituted this way ...

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  GAY AFFECTIVITY AND DIVERGENT THINKING
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-12-2018, 08:27 PM - Forum: Gay discomfort - No Replies

It is not rare to meet gay guys in the chat who are experiencing situations of discomfort arising from the difficulty of creating a deep personal relationship with another gay for the persistence of prejudices linked to the traditional vision of emotional life. 
 
The topic deserves a lot of attention because often the misunderstandings, the tendency to dramatize and the exasperation of the tones, deriving from the prejudicial assumption of positions considered uncritically intangible and, even worse, the tendency to invasive interventions not respectful of the person of the other, contribute concretely to increase the problematic dimension of certain facts, which could instead be easily understood by putting preconceptions aside. The standard psychological analysis of the meanings of behaviors, i.e. the analysis conducted on the basis of standard models, should be reduced to the advantage of a more genuine and human understanding, that is less tied to prejudices and models, more respectful of the other and at the same time deeper of being gay and of emotional relationships that can be created in this area.
 
If on the one hand the emotional dimension is fundamental and distinguishes us from the machines, for the other the emotionality, according to the standard vision, should be controlled to avoid giving rise to anxious phenomena that create discomfort and uselessly complicate life. It is difficult for everyone to maintain a true balance between rationality and affectivity but for gay guys it is not uncommon to get to the extremes of reasoning and to see things either in total white or in total black without any intermediate nuance.
 
Expressions such as "love doesn’t exist, there is only selfishness", or: "everyone tells me to love me but they are just looking for something for themselves, because they are all selfish", are complementary to expressions like: "I will never be able to fall in love with anyone because I’m radically selfish and I think only of myself ". In all these phrases a radical extremism dominates: either all or nothing, and since the existence of affects is considered only a fable, the apparently rational vision consists in taking note of universal selfishness as a rule of life.
 
At the base of all these reasoning there are very likely emotional disappointments or emotional needs that are not easy to satisfy with ordinary interpersonal relationships, not even with ordinary love relationships, because cohabitation in a couple has rules, requires forms of adaptation to the reality of the other, which is never the faithful mirror, moment by moment, of our desires, but the adaptation, for a guy who reasons in radical terms, who excludes any kind of compromise in principle, is a very difficult reality to accept. It should be added that for some guys the tendency to an abstract analysis of facts is dominant and proceeds relentlessly towards the demolition of the meaning of affective relationships, which are seen in abstract terms as forms of weakness and dependence on the other, things  to which one must get used to resist.
 
Beyond these radical arguments, in these guys there is however a deep affective need, which manifests in behaviors that are in sharp contradiction with the logical certainties so strongly affirmed, but this need is fought as a form of weakness and slavery. Depending on the prevalence of the strongly repressed affective dimension or of the abstract rational one, there are strong swings in the mood that give those who experience them the sense of their unreliability and therefore of ineptitude to the couple life.
 
Often sexuality takes the place of affectivity and becomes almost a form of affirmation of one's own freedom to act outside affective involvements. It should be clarified that situations such as the one described typically occur in moments of crisis in the emotional life, when a stable bond, lasting for years, is lost, the mechanism that leads to the end of the couple bond, that is the perception of the dissatisfaction, is lived almost with feelings of guilt but also with strong hesitations: on one side the guy want to close the couple relationship because it represents a constraint and a limitation of one's own freedom and on the other side he perceives, even if in an oscillating way, the importance of that relationship that, theoretically, he wants to close and it is precisely on these oscillations that thought concentrates and suffering becomes more acute.
 
I omit the fact that emotional states so disturbed can create difficulties in studies, in relationships with friends and family and can start a series of chain reactions that can significantly worsen things. What can be done in practice? Frankly I asked it myself several times and I didn’t find 100% convincing answers. Given the coincidence of these emotional states with the moments of the couple crisis (the emotional states can be the cause but also the effect of the couple crisis), it would be spontaneous to think that the beginning of new emotional relationships can be able to catalyze a return to a less extreme affectivity. But it remains that the new relationships, which could start on the sexual level, could hardly take on an emotional dimension, given the strong resistance to affectivity.
 
I add that when sexuality becomes a way to make up for an affectivity that is hard to accept, sexuality is charged with valences that for the new partner are extremely difficult to understand and this doesn’t facilitate the new couple relationships. For a guy who tends to replace the affectivity, too often frustrated, with a sexuality at least abstractly non-affective, taking the initiative towards a new partner limiting himself to sexuality and avoiding true emotional involvements means being assertive, and leaving the other at the fist appearing of the possibility that the relationship also assumes an affective value becomes a vindication of autonomy and affective independence, even if anyway that it is a question of only theoretical  autonomy and independence which, in fact, doesn’t alleviate the pain of detachment.
 
Here then the value of simplicity returns to emerge. Those close to guys who live in these situations, that are not rare at all, cannot attempt to reason, because in strictly logical terms the abstract reasoning "aut-aut" has all the appearance of absolute plainness, such as: “absolute determinism is a physical datum, so we are rigidly programmed!” To rebut this statement in abstractly logical terms makes no sense but the weakness of this statement lies in the fact that it is abstractly logical, if determinism was or rather was perceived as absolute, the products of the human mind would lose all moral value.
 
So, putting aside the logical tools, which on the other hand are just those who in these guys tend to devalue the emotional life, the only thing that really makes sense remains just a “weak” affective presence, that is a presence that doesn’t question the absolute freedom of the other, that doesn’t oblige him to any choice or to any coherence. It should be clarified that these guys, who at least in certain phases, present real problems of social maladjustment, are however carriers of an autonomous and divergent thought that is often absolutely original and coherent, in other words, maladjustment derives from the fact that emotional relationships and affectivity of these guys doesn’t conform to the standards, this on one side causes suffering but for the other, when a serious human contact is established, it allows to discover completely new and unprecedented horizons of affective life, not reducible to the common denominators that generally govern affectivity. In other words, the suffering of these guys coincides with the effort to create their own autonomous and original system of thought, much less conditioned by standards and preconceptions.
 
It is a very difficult work of self-preservation, which impinges upon preconceptions and standard models of behavior and which tends to avoid caging the guy in those standards. Talking with these guys destabilizes the interlocutor because it puts him in front of a truly autonomous affectivity and rational thought.
 
Maintaining these levels of autonomy is difficult because socialization, which tends to stabilize affectivity, also tends to standardize it and to bring it back to accepted behavior models. The effort to give birth to a thought and affectivity really independent without superstructures produces suffering and a sense of isolation, but allows, when it allows it, unique forms of exchange and dialogue. There is an attitude that generally infuriates these guys and it is that of the paternalism of those who think they have understood everything and have the right recipe for all situations. Paternalism means substantial misunderstanding and underestimation and even a pathological evaluation of the efforts that these guys put in place to remain themselves and not end up being standardized, losing their individuality which is an absolute value.
 
With these guys, dialogue can only exist on an equal footing, that is, only if the interlocutor honestly accepts to confront himself trying to open himself to things that at first he doesn’t understand at all. Simplicity, that is the ability to get involved without reserve, is then the first characteristic to create a profitable dialogue. Who has in mind to solve the problems of the other without understanding his effort, the suffering and the research work that is in the mind of the other, will deny the other the contribution of a constructive confrontation and to himself a very important possibility of human growth.

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  A NORMAL GAY
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-12-2018, 03:49 PM - Forum: Gay orientation - No Replies

Hello Project.
 
I was intrigued by your forum that seems to play a different music from the usual music that I find in the chats and on the dating sites. I’m over 45 and I have had my experiences. Fortunately I didn’t compromise my health, but it is not a coincidence because I have been always very careful. I cannot even say whether I'm declared or not, I know a lot of people but not all of them know about me, for example at work I think that nobody knows and the same in my family, because I live on my own.
 
At my age I got tired of the gay world. A little it is for the fact that when you're not young you realize that things are changing but not so much because the younger guys steal you the scene but because you reaches saturation. The gay world as I knew him is made of chats, clubs, evenings and you can imagine of what else. At the beginning a lot of curiosity, you meet a gay guy, get to have sex with a guy, then you realize that the guy sooner or later will go his way and that there is nothing stable, that you are alone one of a long series and you're not the one that matters to anyone's life.
 
Then another guy arrives and more or less the script repeats, then another and so on, these are stories that last a few months, when it's all right, and then end and you realize that in these things at the end there is very little spontaneous behavior and that everything is in some way preordained. A friend with whom I complained about these things told me: "but it is normal that it is so", that word "normal" applied to the life of a gay man, sounds to me very strange. I don’t want a normal life in which a routine is repeated for which it is normal to know a guy and have sex with him the same evening but it is just as normal that it ends up in a few weeks.
 
I thought that basically it is considered normal even that someone takes HIV and unfortunately I have seen them. I was really shocked but I realized that my friends assumed that these things should happen, for them it was normal. So many times I felt stupid when I wanted to try to understand something more without taking everything for granted. For me, being gay had to be transgressive, even risky, but it certainly didn’t have to involve classification into other boxes of normality. If I'm looking for a guy and I hope it's for more than for a few weeks, I feel not normal, because it's normal that things should not last long and it's stupid to expect the opposite. It's terrible to think how much gays get caught up in the usual routine, gay life becomes a play in which the roles are already written.
 
One day, I remember it well, in a club where I used to go often I was introduced to a guy who was considered there as the best the most handsome, we talked a bit then finally he made me the usual proposal and I said no, he looked at me as if I were a moron who was throwing away a rare pearl. Project, do you imagine the stories they did when I required that they always used condoms? Well, they took me for stupid without any remedy and when someone insisted and I said no, they grimaced as to say that I was completely out of my brain. I have often felt very heavily influenced by so many rituals and clichés that I did not understand, as if the manual of young gay marmots existed. I will not tell you about the question of sexual preferences for this or that practice, all ritualized as if sexuality were that, all divided by categories: bear, sado, etc. etc. … There was some guys, we can say normal, but they didn’t last long there, in a short time they turned into standard gays of this or that category, or disappeared at all and didn’t show anymore.
 
Personally I think I have attended the most stereotypical gay environments, there were certainly different environments and, let's say, more free, but I have seen above all conformism, or rather homologation and then fatalistic abandonment to life as it comes.
 
On your forum I see different things, I suspected that there were, but reading I could understand that they are in places where I have never gone and that I naively considered less free than those I attended. I think that today I wouldn’t be able to live a non-stereotyped life or maybe yes but I think I would limit myself to a few friendships to talk a bit. I realize that I am too old to change the road and frankly I wouldn’t even try, but I’m pleased to know that what I have tried to consider as normal gay is, in practice, a very niche reality.
 
I would like a gay life on the model of the person not on the model of the stereotype. Project, what was it for to have had so many guys if they all left? It's not their fault, they did exactly what I did, they integrated into what they thought was the gay world and they assimilated a way of being, because being what you are it's bloody hard.
 
Project, in the environments I attended I didn’t find bad people but only people, so many people, who desperately tried to fill the solitude with a little sex. In many of the guys I've had, I've really mirrored myself, when one doesn’t find love, when one doesn’t find respect, feels no loved by anyone, he looks for something that fills the void and begins an endless race to chase a dream of love embracing a guy he will lose after a few days.
 
I felt so many times the despair of the guys with whom I have been and sometimes I even tried to go further but I ended up not being understood anymore, they looked at me as if I wanted to invade their lives while they were there just for a moment. I felt very often the lack of communication and the desperation of many guys, who in the end were experiencing what I was experiencing. How much better would be even a simple friendship that lasts, that accompanies us for a longer stretch of road. I don’t want to be a normal gay anymore, I just want to be myself.

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  GAYS AND GAY NORMALITY
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-12-2018, 01:30 AM - Forum: Gay orientation - No Replies

This post aims to clarify the effects of the preconceived schematisms on way of living of the gays and their perceiving sexuality. Speaking in chat with gay guys of all ages I often meet situations that are quite typical of discomfort that can be grouped into two distinct categories. On one side the uneasiness of uncertainty is noted and for the other the discomfort of certainty. I try to explain it better, with the expression "uneasiness of uncertainty” I intend to refer to situations in which a guy does not find convincing answers to questions he considers fundamental, such as “Am I gay?” Or “Am I really in love with that guy? “, With the expression ”uneasiness of certainty “I mean what manifests itself through absolute statements like:” I feel anaffective, I never fall in love with anyone“ or ”I think I’m addicted to sex, I think I’m a maniac“. 
Each of these forms of discomfort has its synthomatic elements, in the uneasiness of uncertainty are recurring expressions such as “I don’t know”, “I don’t understand”, in the uneasiness of of certainty are the classic adverbs “always” and “never”.
 
Where do these forms of discomfort come from? Often the origin can be found in the idea that it is necessary to conform to an abstract model of normality that obviously involves also schematizations and categories (labels) that end up being considered parameters of normality. Even in the gay world there is a need for normality, the so-called gay normality: it is normal for a gay guy to have a sexual activity as a couple partner, so if a guy does not have a couple sex life, he is not normal. I observe that the "normal / non-normal" cathegory passes from the behavior to the person. It is considered normal that a gay guy has “normal” levels of attraction to sex, if a guy feels attracted to sex less or more than what is considered normal, that guy is not normal. Masturbation is considered normal during adolescence and not normal in adulthood, so a 25-year-old guy who masturbates may feel un-normal. The list of presumed normalities could extend to sexual practices, monogamy and a lot of other things. Then there are other categories of presumed normality that have been introduced through concepts that have received some media success and that have become consolidated as an accredited interpretative model, it is the case of the “internalized homophobia” that seems to be the normal motivation of the non-acceptance of gay identity; or of the “absent father” who seems to be the normal determining cause of homosexuality. All these pseudo criteria of normality and pseudo points of reference are often accepted uncritically and, like all the criteria of presumed normality, create marginalization or self-marginalization.
 
Obviously, the criterion for verifying the normality of one’s own behavior, for a gay guy, is not based on a direct comparison with a large number of other more or less young guys, as happens between straight guys but, if ever, on  comparisons with a restricted or very small number of gay friends if not even with what is found on the internet. The myths of normality are paradoxically more common among gays than among straight people, Basically because in the hetero field the comparisons can be extended to a much wider audience of peers. The discomfort deriving from the comparison of one’s own behaviors with the presumed normality risks to induce guys to consider as pathological some behaviors that are not pathological at all. In the past the sense of non-normality referred essentially to the fact of not being straight, the problems connected to the acceptance of the gay identity have diminished compared to a few decades ago, but other ways have been created to feel non-normal, this time it is about modalities within the gay dimension.
 
A gay guy can feel like a gay who doesn’t fall in love with guys considered predominantly handsome by other gay guys, he can feel too much or too little interested in sex, he can be attracted to sexual practices that don’t seem to be the most popular for the gays, he may have his behavior patterns, too free or too little free compared to the more accredited models, but in any case that guy will feel a form of discomfort that will make him feel not normal, beyond any rationl evaluation.
 
The homologation can get to involve also the way of dressing, the language, the cut of hair and similar things, as if there was a gay language or a gay fashion and being gay outside of these things was in fact a situation not normal. The feeling of exceptionality of their condition is typical of gay guys and accentuates the feeling of loneliness, of marginality even compared to other gays and also accentuates the tendency to feel victim precisely because exception with respect to the rules of a presumed gay normality. I often happen in chat to see resigned, almost fatalistic, attitudes of some guys about their alleged impossibility to integrate even among gays and often it is the condition of supposed non-normality that puts these guys in difficulty, then, during the interview they face all the issues that cause marginalization and understand that in reality there is no condition of non-normality except in relation to a hypothetical normality that is often very far from reality (often true metropolitan legends) and that, when it has an objective foundation, represents, at most, a trend line but in no way a rule valid for everyone. I often happen to hear these words: “So you think there is nothing absurd?” and to see the amazement of not feeling treated as a non-normal gay.
 
The perception of discomfort is often associated with the self-pathologisation of gays which leads to the strengthening of the socially widespread idea of a pathological or pathogenic dimension of being gay. I would like to point out that the qualification of homosexual discomfort in terms of pathology rather than discomfort of homologation has a subtle dimension so that the gays themselves unconsciously tend to assimilate it, indulging in attitudes of self-pity.
 
What criteria can be used to avoid the effect of the false models of normality? “Always saying how things really are” is a moral duty but doesn’t solve the problem because with the spread and plurality of the media and in particular through the Internet, the flow of information is in fact uncontrollable. The only means that can be effective is the dialogue and the serious confrontation with an audience as wide as possible not only of peers but of gays of all ages on issues related to sexuality and how to live gay identity.
 
All this is not only possible, but where it has been achieved, it has had a remarkable response in terms of convinced participation. Not referring to models of presumed gay normality doesn’t mean that for gays the various behaviors are indifferent or equivalent, there are behaviors that although not having anything anomalous, are, nonetheless, uncommon, are niche behaviors and, if we want, can easily become the object of criticism and misunderstanding by those who don’t share them or simply don’t know them. In the context of a couple relationship, where a two-way correspondence is supposed between the two partners, some behaviors, even if not anomalous, are dysfunctional, that is, they don’t are useful and sometimes create problems to the establishment and maintenance of the couple relationship.
 
At least theoretically, the maximum probability of being functional to the couple’s relationship must be recognized to the most widespread attitudes that can obviously be more easily shared with the other partner. It is essential to keep in mind that falling in love with a homosexual partner is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the creation of a couple  relationship, this means that, if the other is not gay, a relationship is impossible, but for the realization of a true couple relationship it is not enough that the two partners share the same sexual orientation but it is necessary that they share also some fundamental opinions about some aspects of life well beyond sexuality, i.e. that they have a profound affinity of couple.
 
Homosexuality does not have an exclusively sexual dimension but interacts with several aspects of the personality, for example in determining the greater or lesser level of privacy of the couple life, the relationship with the families of origin or with the circles of friendships of origin of each of the two partners. In these fields it makes no sense to ask what is normal and what is not because it is about a cultural elements largely inherited from the original environment.
 
The representation of the gay world that each gay has formed and that, through presumed canons of normality can help to guide his behavior, is deeply conditioned by the quality and quantity of information available. The quality of information is linked to two fundamental conditions, namely the information must be not instrumental for other purposes and must be first hand, that is, must be provided by subjects who speak of themselves in the first person and are not therefore subject to external censorship.
 
The weight of the models and even stereotypes related to the gay reality is clearly perceived talking to boys affected by OCD with homosexual content, or obsessive compulsive disorder characterized by the intrusive idea of being gay. This is a typical disorder of 100% straight guys whose life is disturbed by the insistent and invasive presence of the fear of being gay. These guys, who are not gay, focus their fear of homosexuality on what they believe to be typically gay but after an appropriately detailed interview, to an eye accustomed to see the gay reality, it is evident that all what these guys consider proof of being gay, in reality, has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality but derives solely from the stereotypical image of homosexuality conveyed on a social level.
 
It is certainly less easy to evaluate the weight of the presumed normality models within the gay world in determining states of individual distress of gay guys, but it is evident that the lack of these normality models would allow a process of acceptance of gay identity much simpler and a faster social integration of gay guys with other gay guys. In a nutshell, we can say that accrediting behavior patterns as normal only increases discrimination and the state of discomfort.

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