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GAY RELATIONSHIPS AND COHABITATION Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-20-2021, 12:52 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies In this last period I have often met gay guys in chat who have a partner but who have found themselves having to deal with at least partial disappointments, so I will try to outline and summarize the nodes of the problem.   First of all, the expression "having a partner" is extremely generic, ranging from stable cohabitation for several years now to the relationship that is still in its infancy and is still to be verified, up to the long-distance relationship in which there is no real contact except absolutely episodic and brief. Obviously in such a variety of situations the concept of “mythization” takes on very varied and scarcely homogeneous connotations.   The myth, in itself, embodies an archetype of behavior that is either received from the outside or created autonomously. The mythization of real people is the typical example of the self-constructed myth, identifying the person with the role he fills or one would like him to fill and projecting our personal archetypes of that role onto that person. Attributing even only hypothetically a role to a person is equivalent to recognize that person qualities and attributes that are often taken for granted, because the projective mechanisms lead us to see above all, if not exclusively, what we want to see.   A few decades ago, when there were no means of distance communication, people's knowledge was numerically much more limited but also much more direct than what is achieved today through social media. Today social networks don’t allow us to see and evaluate the behavior of others but only to know the image they intend to give us of themselves, that is, to know their self-representation. Obviously, the representations of oneself vary according to the aims one intends to pursue. In the search for the so-called soul mate, often, the self-image that we tend to provide our partner is built on the moment, exploiting the information we already know about him.   The fundamental information is photography, with which we instinctively assess whether the other is or is not an object of interest to us. If it is not, that is, if the photo doesn’t correspond to our archetypes, the tone of the conversation is low, the appreciations are limited, we don’t try to deepen the relationship but to make it slide towards banality and towards a short-term dissolution. If, on the other hand, the photo interests us, the tone of the language changes and we try to express a concrete interest, the discourse heats up, we immediately enter very personal arguments, we are careful to give a positive image of ourselves according to the interlocutor's yardstick. The first thing you appreciate is beauty, which is the objectively most impactful element at the first eye contact. Listening becomes extremely attentive, space is given to the interlocutor, trying to collect through his words useful elements to build a representation of ourselves as seductive as possible, even at the expense of truthfulness and completeness. All the similarities and analogies with the interlocutor are underlined and all possible points of divergence or distance are largely overlooked. An image of oneself is built and transmitted by specularity-complementarity (the two hands are not only similar but specular and complementary and are perfectly suited to work together).   Then comes the time of the retrospective image of oneself, of one's own history, and in particular of one's own affective history, and here too often the mechanisms of selection-omission of contents operate at an unconscious level, through which, in the archive of individual memory, some episodes are chosen as emblematic of one's own being and acting and others are omitted that would be in dissonance with the former. The language slips very easily towards expressions that indicate strong involvement and appreciation (the drift of love language). The whole process just outlined can be summed up in the word seduction. To seduce means to "take aside", "attract to oneself" a person.   If the relationship is born symmetrical, that is, the first impact evaluations are very similar on the two sides, one gets the impression of being in front of a beautiful love story or at least its onset and the projective mechanisms come into operation by building a progressive mythization of the partner on the basis of what we know of him, in the presumption that the image that the other has given us is authentic. But the mechanisms of selection of contents, which often operate unconsciously, invariably provide at least partial, if not distorted, representations of reality. In other words, verbal contact or even that in audio-video doesn’t show the reactions of the other in real situations but only what the other, in a more or less conscious way, wants us to see, or simply makes us see.   Obviously, the encounter in person, if episodic and brief, still maintains this same pattern and if anything tends to confirm the mythical vision of the other. Only a real coexistence in ordinary and long-lasting situations makes it possible to understand and evaluate the personality of the other with a breadth and depth of a certain thickness.   It should be emphasized that if the one who speaks about himself to a person in whom he is interested in any case provides a sweetened representation of himself, that is, he makes a selection of the contents to be presented, even the listener, in a more or less conscious way, makes a selection among the contents that are presented to him, attributing value to those that go in the direction he wants and neglecting or minimizing those that go in the opposite direction, in this way the image of the interlocutor undergoes a second deformation induced by the listener on the basis of his own archetypes and his own projections.   At the end of a period, however short, of meetings in chat alternated with short meetings in person, one gets the impression of having built a stable relationship and of knowing each other in depth, but in reality the mutual knowledge is minimal and the image of the other is heavily deformed. Myth makes up for reality, integrates it and strengthens it, as long as contact with reality doesn’t intervene to correct the situation.   The old saying: "marriage is the tomb of love" means that cohabitation actually makes many couple relationships collapse because they were built only on projections and myths far removed from reality.   The demythization that follows real coexistence can be of a very different type and degree. The higher the level of mythization in the pre-coexistence phase, the greater the level of disillusionment that follows from coexistence. The person who gives the best possible image of himself (self-mythization) is also the one who has the greatest a priori probability of generating profound disillusionment. The person who, on the other hand, doesn’t avoid speaking clearly about his own problematic aspects, is less likely to be successful in the seduction phase, but, in the long run, is much less exposed to the risk of creating disillusionment in the partner.   In the gay world, today, stable cohabitations are more the exception than the rule, civil unions are rare, partly because they involve a coming out that in some cases would create problems that are difficult if not impossible to solve, but above all because a coexistence of long term requires basic choices oriented towards stability and the ability to act over a long period in a manner consistent with those choices. Short stories and in any case without formal constraints can be born very easily and just as easily they can end, they are already born under the banner of the relative, the revisable, the non-definitive and essentially the disengaged, and are often based on fragile mythologies destined to shatter when one face a real coexistence. However, it must be said that the tendency towards disengaged or, as it is commonly said, free relationships, has its underlying reason in the difficulty of creating a deep interpersonal relationship, which would require the presence of forms of compatibility between the partners that are decidedly uncommon. In general, the first experiences of gay guys have as their goal the creation of a stable couple, but since in many cases this goal remains in fact unattainable or in any case unfulfilled, one ends up choosing the other choice, the more disengaged one, which is certainly more fragile but represents an objectively achievable goal even in conditions that are not ideal in themselves.   It should be emphasized that a disillusionment, however heavy it may be, doesn’t necessarily lead to the rupture of the relationship, because, if only for reasons of inertia, the possibly cracked relationship can be mended or better strengthened, even more than once, but obviously that relationship, marked by disillusionment, which is often reciprocal, risks being gradually emptied from within, if other mechanisms don’t intervene to consolidate it.   The idea that disillusionment is not in itself destructive of the couple's relationship is often accepted only as a fallback solution, but should rather be seen, sometimes at least, as a healthy return to reality, because disillusionment is such in relationship to the previous illusion, but seen from the perspective of the future, it can lead to a re-evaluation of the relationship which is not necessarily its degradation. In other words, it is a matter of taking note of the reality of the other, or at least of a less mythical and distorted image of him, which can profoundly and not always negatively modify the internal balance of the couple. Overcoming the couple crises, which often derive from disappointments, can even consolidate the relationship. In long-distance relationships, involvement is largely linked to the myth of the partner, the relationship is based on words and easily controllable situations. In cohabitation, the possibility of more or less deep misunderstandings with the partner is very concrete, one realizes that even sexual compatibility is conditioned by the fact that different individuals have different visions of sexuality and of being gay. Behaviors that are desirable for one of the two may not be desirable at all for the other, the example of coming out is enough here, but many other topics could be quoted here that are argument of frequent misunderstandings within the couple. In gay coexistence it is very easy to make mistakes even when the conditions for building a lasting couple exist. The relationships of stable coexistence without disappointments and without cracks don’t exist, a certain amount of conflict is physiological for the very existence of the couple. To realize a coexistence it is essential that the partners understand at the outset that there will be mistakes on both sides and that rigid positions risk destabilizing even the couple relationships that had all the theoretical presuppositions of solidity at their origin.   Disillusions, as mentioned, are often reciprocal, but it is not certain that they are obvious, or that they are on both sides. Disillusionment is often kept to oneself while waiting for it to be disproved and vanish and this indicates that the myth is in crisis but has not completely collapsed. In these cases, those who hide their disappointment tend to assume a characteristic claiming attitude, staying in the couple assumes for them the sense of waiting for the decisive proof, until the measure is filled and the account is presented to the partner by listing or better by reproaching him all together his shortcomings or presumed such, it is the moment of the so-called showdown, in these cases the answer can be cold (the worst answer), frustrated or even claiming, in the latter case, the partner to whom the bill has been presented presents the bill to the counterparty in turn, to put on the scales the expectations and faults of the two parties. Even in these cases, however, it is by no means certain that the couple's life goes irremediably to pieces, the situation turns to the worst when the two separate without having either resolved or lightened the conflict situation, that is, when the attitude is rigid.   Obviously cohabitations are unstable equilibria in which, especially in a very early phase, small corrective thrusts are sufficient to maintain the balance. It should be added that cohabitation, if on the one hand it can lead to the demythization of the partner, on the other hand it can make one partner discover the qualities of the other partner that are less evident at first sight. One of the qualities of a partner that emerge in long cohabitation is non-destructiveness, that is the ability to manage the destructive tendencies of the other, to cool tones and conflicts, to minimize the negative and to enhance the positive of a relationship.   Ultimately, the myth of the partner born in the seductive phase fully collides with reality only when it comes to a long-term coexistence. In this phase, the demythization of the partner takes place, which leads to a re-evaluation of the elements on which the couple is based. The outcome of this new evaluation is not destructive in itself, but can lead to a re-foundation of the couple's life on less projective and more realistic assumptions.   The "unconditional compliance" that is the tendency to always say yes to one's partner in order to save the relationship, deserves a separate consideration. The very concept of dynamic equilibrium implies that the thrusts must be balanced and that, if to the pressures exerted by one of the two always corresponds to a yielding of the other, the equilibrium cannot be maintained, the requests for adaptation will progressively extend to all areas of shared life and beyond, and that equality that represents the essential core of the gay couple will eventually be wiped out. In this way not only will life as a couple not be preserved but it will be reduced to a series of obligations or a series of psychological addictions. Here are some excerpts from the e-mails to illustrate what has been said.   SEDUCTION   “He calls me on video and immediately tells me: You are beautiful! But he is beautiful! He looks like an actor and he has a hot, sexy voice. When he saw my photos for the first time he was speechless and didn't believe it was me! He told me that he has never seen a handsome guy like me, that I have taste, that I dress well, that I know how to choose the haircut, that I listen to the right music, the same one he listens to, that we have the same tastes. He is a sunny guy but he has no friends. When we talk he tells me beautiful things, I tell him that I’m not as he sees me, that I have a lot of defects and that he is mythologizing me and he replies that he can't wait to meet me in person."   SEXUAL LANGUAGE   “There are some things I can't stand in his way of doing, first of all the language. We have sex with each other, but when he talks about it he uses certain vulgar terms that really get on my nerves, I wonder where he learned to speak like that. He tells me that I'm a hypocrite and that I want to save my face of good guy , and he can't stand that I want to save my privacy. He tells me that if I do sexual things I have to call them by their name, but I don't see those things as he sees them, assuming he really sees things differently, but when he talks about sexual things with me he uses his own language, so vulgar that I can't stand it at all, then, when he gets angry with me, my God, he speaks with a language worthy of the worst porn and when he does that I would throttle him."   FORCING   "One thing I can't stand about my boyfriend is the fact that he wants to force me to do things (sexual things) that I don't want to do and that he obviously did or perhaps still does with others. On some things I can also give in but on others I should really impose it on myself with violence and I just don't want to do so. When I say no to him in a very decisive way, at first he insists and even too much, and then he seems to go beyond, as if nothing had happened, but when we happen to quarrel he pulls these things all out and reproaches me them, he tells me: "You must always do as you say!" (which, by the way, is absolutely not true), then he tells me that I don't really love him because I don't always do what he wants, but I say: if we are together, I give in on one thing and you on another! Why he doesn't he realize that sometimes he just asks me absurd things, that I really can't stand?"   RECOVERY MANEUVERS   "The other day we had a fight over a very stupid issue, or rather the bickering started from there: to wear socks or not when we have sex, he only wears those socks for the foot, I wear normal short socks, but he wanted me to take them off and I didn't understand why, since he wore them, a string of complaints about my behavior started from such a stupid thing, basically he told me that I never said yes to him and that I had to argue about everything and then, once he started in fourth gear, he went on and never stopped, at a certain point he dressed as if he wanted to go away and I said to myself: What is he doing? Is he really leaving for such a thing? But he's out of his mind! So I told him I felt like a complete fool for looking for him and it would never happen again, then he changed his tone, undressed again and got back on the bed and then he said to me: Come here! I asked him if he would still say the stupid things he had just said to me and he replied that he had said too few and that he says such things for my own good, even if I don't understand it. Anyway, at least he has the dignity to go back!"   ARE WE A GAY COUPLE TOO? Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-17-2021, 07:21 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies People say that having a boyfriend is a beautiful thing, for years I have believed that this expression was absolutely exaggerated, I believed it because I had had some guys and had had my first experiences with them, they were good guys, I don't deny it, but when our stories ended up in nothing I was happy that they were over, I used to promise myself not to look for another guy, but then, you know how things use to go, inevitably another story started with less motivation and less illusions and story after story the myth of the love story tended to evaporate without a trace, in the end I was disillusioned, not frustrated but just disillusioned.  Then I met my current boyfriend. I was problematic, he was problematic, The dialogue was difficult, sometimes frustrating and he displaced me with the coherence of his reasoning and his underlying basic negativity, but also with the clarity of his thought. I had met him in chat and we had talked for months without ever having seen each other, then we realized that we lived in the same city and we met. I was immediately struck by his physical presence, I had never seen such a handsome guy and I thought that between us it would never work because he would never be interested in me, but I would have liked him I don't say that he was my boyfriend but at least a true friend, let's say it would have been enough for me, maybe not, but I think it would have been enough for me.  He was not a happy guy, he didn’t smile but used to make a slight sarcastic grin at my every attempt to make him see the world in a positive way, it was a spontaneous attitude and I think completely unconscious, a sort of automatic reaction of one who feels that he is being offered things that seem to him just fairy tales. In the first period we hadn’t seen each other in person but we used to talk a lot in chat, it happened several times that we spent the full night chatting till the dawn, he was often depressed to the point that he made me fear that he might make some rash gesture but when he mentioned such speeches he did it only by talking in general. The very long phone calls practically always began with a strongly depressed tone and ended in a slightly more serene way after hours of confrontation and even long silences.  At first neither he nor I thought we would ever become a couple, we just talked about frustrations, big problems of life and other things like that. He had his own love life with which I had nothing to do and in fact I didn't even want to have anything to do and I think he was completely disinterested in me in the sense of building a couple with me. We were just chat friends but maybe talking to me for hours made sense to him too. I kept my distance and didn't look for him because sometimes talking to him made me very anxious. Our relationship had nothing of what one would expect from a romance.  The beginnings were difficult, often very difficult, he never got angry with me, but he tended to point out that he was not interested in me, that he was not my boyfriend and when he did he seemed to be talking about a paradoxical hypothesis and almost grotesque and this sometimes bothered me but, after the clarification, however, he returned to very serious speeches, I think he had a good opinion of me from the beginning, perhaps he saw me as a possible friend to test, but not in order to consider me like a boyfriend but just to be able to consider me a true friend.  He was depressed but deep down he recognized me a certain goodwill towards him. His reasoning was lucidly depressing but he was not aggressive either towards me or towards other people, if anything, he tended to feel guilty and depressed, his self-esteem was very low and I couldn't understand why, because, apart from his physical beauty, his intelligence seemed to me absolutely unique, I don't mean only that he was very intelligent but also that he had an intelligence that was absolutely his own, rigorously logical, he seemed to me that he hadn't at present a true emotional intelligence and I was inclined tu suspect he hadn't had it either in the past. The very idea of affectivity seemed to him completely irrational, a way of undermining his own logical coherence.  The first few times he came to see me and had to take a very long road, several kilometers, because at the time he didn't have a car and was riding a bicycle, then I started to go and wait for him near his house, but not under his house, because he wanted me to keep my distance from his home. Sometimes I had the very concrete temptation to slip away and not get involved further, because our relationship was yes interesting but also stressful and frustrating, because my presence seemed to produce no result, but he never allowed me to leave, rejected me with his sharp logical reasoning and his reductive clarifications, he made me uncomfortable in the face of my hypocrisies but he kept looking for me, we talked less frequently but when it happened we talked for hours, he began to discover something about me and my previous life and also began to have his say on these things and without reticence, he reproached me for my logical inconsistencies, for not doing what I really wanted, for my being restrained, my thinking too much without acting, my continually trying to devalue sexuality which, instead, was a fundamental thing for him, the only a fundamental thing, given that for him the emotional life was nothing but a chimera without meaning.  Then, slowly, but very slowly, something began to change. He intrigued me very much also and perhaps above all for his leaving but never definitively. He threw a bucket of cold, or rather frozen, water at me, but then every now and then he smiled at me to tell me that even though I had so many faults he still considered me a true friend. We never used affectionate expressions or expressions that could make us think even remotely of a relationship between us, indeed, between us by definition there was nothing, because he wouldn't have accepted that there was something, but slowly, beyond words, I began to feel that he was studying me, that he was trying to figure out if he could trust me. He showed up more often at my home, asked me pressing and almost embarrassing questions about my sex life, my relationships with my friends, my previous stories, he cornered me, demanded clear-cut or at least radically honest answers, but I didn't have many clear-cut answers to give him.  He expected me to have a sex life at least at the level of his and he was puzzled when I told him it was much more standard and more mundane. He hardly believed it and repeated the same questions to me even two or three times. Let me be clear, he had had his stories, of which he told me almost nothing and for this very reason in our relationship there had been long pauses, during which I began to think that he had disappeared, that he had finally found a guy who really suited him, but then, even in the early stages of our relationship, after a few weeks, he would call me back and it was like the break had never existed. I owe him a lot, I love him, I respect him as a man, I feel gratified that he takes me seriously, but then we were at the beginning and I couldn't imagine what he could want from me and above all what could make him feel bad, because sometimes he was really bad.  Sometimes he called me at night and asked me to go near his house and he went down and stayed in my car in silence, he knew I would never say no, my presence made him feel more calm, at certain times he was agitated, anguished, the word desperate is perhaps the most suitable, he saw himself as hopeless. His love stories, or rather as he used to say his sex stories, didn't pull him out of his melancholy. I was beginning to understand that our "non-relationship" had its own meaning and consistency. I tried to ingest myself into his life as little as possible, but he was beginning to insert himself into mine in an ever deeper way, and sometimes I was afraid of this, then sex came when I least expected it.  He had a boyfriend but he also felt attracted to me, it hadn't been like that from the beginning, everything was born very gradually and quietly, even if in the end I had begun to suspect how things really were. He made me understand that he needed me also from that point of view, he realized that, when he started talking about these things, I tended to run away and change the subject and then he was really explicit. When it first happened it was all incredibly easy and abysmally different from what I had imagined, I thought I would never get involved in such situations but he was patient, cautious, extremely attentive to my reactions, I would say lovely. I don't know if this can be called affection. It had never happened to me to experience sex in such a beautiful and above all spontaneous way, and to see him so peaceful and fulfilled.  At the time I was very conditioned by the fact that he had a boyfriend, being with him I felt like I was doing something that would have put the other guy in crisis, but he seemed to pay no attention to these things. After a few weeks he told me that his boyfriend was gone, since then I have had fewer problems while staying with him and a period has begun in which our relationship has taken on a distinctly sexual connotation.  The thing itself didn't make me feel uneasy at all, quite the opposite! But there were two things that didn't allow me to better live the situation: firstly the fact that he was calm and in a good mood while we were having sex but, afterwards, his mood usually changed and darkened sharply and I couldn't get him back in a good mood, in fact the more I tried, the more he felt upset and angry with me, he was not aggressive but highly nervous, as if he had done something that perhaps he didn't really want to do or rather he didn't have to do. I couldn't tell him that I loved him because that would have made him mad, or at least I thought so at the time and our meetings practically always ended in bad moods and, secondly, having given our relationship a strong sexual connotation had somehow lowered the level of our dialogue, that is, our friendship had become more superficial, we talked much less and our meetings were reduced to being only sexual encounters and also very ritualized and repetitive. During our meetings he didn't even want to be caressed, the idea of kissing each other would have put him in crisis because for him the kiss tasted too much of an emotional relationship, while he considered sex an obvious and problem-free thing.  Once he asked me if I was happy with the evening and I replied that I was happy because he was there, but he didn't want to hear such things and insisted on telling me that I was a hypocrite and that I pretended not to understand that he was talking about what we had done together because he had insisted a little too much to induce me to do something that didn't come naturally to me, according to him he had done very well to insist because he had made me discover something new and also very interesting in his opinion. I hadn't told him no, basically I didn't feel very involved in certain things but I was happy not to have said no to him because I thought that if I did, he would have been worse.  Sometimes he knew a new guy and maybe he even fell in love with him, then he disappeared for a while, because he tried to be faithful to the new guy, then after a month or so, he reappeared and it was obvious that he was alone again. There was a time when he wanted me to experience "his" sexuality and was very insistent on this point. In the end I didn't say no to him this time too, but after that time he didn't insist anymore, because previously he had insisted a little too much, forcing his hand a little, just to see if in the end I would give in, not for the thing itself, once he got the proof that I wouldn't have said no anyway, the requests stopped, the relationship became less sexual and more affective, there was also sex, but there was no longer the sexual frenzy, and above all we started talking again seriously.  He was always depressed but in a more calm way, he told me things about his life that I would never have imagined and which must be very difficult to talk about, it was then, that is, when I realized that he totally trusted me, that I fell in love with him in a profound way and I spent months of relative happiness, I say relative because I kept seeing him depressed. We spent a lot of time together, we knew each other well and objectively we loved each other.  Once, three years ago, he texted me for the first time with the word ILY! (I love you). I think it was one of the best moments of my life. We had both graduated and worked in very different industries but we still lived each in his parents' home. He had his stories but I didn't interfere, and he hardly ever talked about them. When we saw each other there was always a bit of sex and unfortunately in the end there were also melancholies, but we had a real dialogue, there were things about me that he didn't understand, that he interpreted in his own way, but it would have been useless to try to give him explications, because explications are made up of words and his way of understanding me was at another level, that is, at a sexual level, a level that I had always tried to put aside.  I wanted to ask him why after sex "with me" he was sad, then I asked him the question but omitting the "with me", he didn't know what to answer, he just said to me: "It's not that I don't want to answer you, I just don't know, it's an automatic thing that I can't control." What was he looking for from me? At first I really thought it was just sex, but that feels more like a means than an end to me. Today, when he's not with me, objectively I miss him, I don't know if he misses me in the same way, maybe not in the same way, but I think he also misses me a little.  When I haven't heard from him for more than two weeks I begin to be afraid that our relationship has come to an end, but so far my fears have always been denied and indeed it is precisely the duration of our relationship that encourages me to think that in any case I will see him again and in a short time. In fact, among his merits there is his being direct and transparent, he is so used to taking blows in life that he almost takes them for granted, he is not vindictive, he doesn't keep his feelings secrets to revenge in the future, he doesn't defend himself by attacking, you cannot expect a bond from him like the oyster on the rock, but you know that he is there and that he will never disappear in thin air, he needs his total freedom but he doesn't forget you, if you make a mistake with him, he minimizes the mistake, he doesn't blame you anyway, he doesn't take advantage of any advantageous positions, he doesn't see the relationship with you as a game of chess to win and not even as an opportunity to get some more gratification, indeed, if you try to flatter him he slows you down because he feels somehow made fun of, he expects from you a behavior like his, that is spontaneous, without duties and without real expectations.  I think I'm in love with him, or at least a little in love. I have known many guys in my life, but he is my model of man, both physically and mentally, he is the man I have always dreamed of. He's not afraid of me, he respects me, I think he loves me in his own way too, even if he would never accept this terminology. I desire his presence, when he is there I have no qualms of any kind and neither has he, he is the only man with whom I have never felt embarrassed and by whom I have never felt judged.  Sometimes, he doesn't fully understand me, because he too has his preconceptions, but then overcomes them and is willing to change his mind on the rare occasions when it makes sense to do so, but they are really rare occasions. Why is only him left in my mind? I don't know but that's exactly what happened. I thought that sex with him could create problems, at first it sometimes happened, but today it doesn't happen anymore, if I opened myself to understand the meaning of sexuality lived in two, the merit is solely his, because he had patience, he had a lot patience and treated me with sweetness, like no one else had done.  Dear Project, I’m writing you this email because I haven't heard from him for four weeks now and this fact puts me in crisis, I miss him, I would like to know how he is, but I don't call him and I wait for him to do it. This time the pause was long, and I begin to fear that the pause could become definitive. Falling in love is not always a thing that leads to happiness, there is also a lot of suffering. I tell you honestly that I would be happy if he found another guy, but I wish he were happy at least. We are both 33 years old, luckily we have a job but we are still two drifters without an emotional reference point, sometimes I think that reference point is there, sometimes not and then I feel adrift and I miss him damnably .   Matthew88   If you think this email is also useful to others, do what you think best but, if you can, answer me in private.   GAY SEX AND GAY LOVE Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-31-2021, 03:33 PM - Forum: Gays and sex - Replies (1) Hi Project, I’m sending you a page of my diary, do with it what you want, it’s a love tribute for the guy who changed my life.   “You call me and tell me: I'm coming to you, I need to come to you. I look forward to seeing you, I don't know how I will find you. Last time it was difficult, you weren't calm at all, you had lost your traditional optimism. I carefully prepare our bed so that you can notice an extra gesture of attention towards you. You arrive home, you are upset, very tired, sweaty. You tell me you need to take a shower, while you are in the shower, I change the towel and then I go to wait for you in the bedroom. You arrive with wet hair, rub it vigorously with the towel, then dry your beard, finish drying your hair and beard with a sheet of cleaning-paper, then you put down your glasses and lie naked on the bed, I finish undressing and lie down beside you. You turn to me and hold me tight. I feel that you are totally involved, that having sex with me responds to a deep desire, to a need. You know that I’m happy to be with you, maybe I’m less involved than you because I have a different temperament but you know that I wouldn't like anyone better that you because you are the only guy I really want, maybe because you are the only one who really wants me. By now sex between us is completely devoid of rituals and doubts, you need to feel free, you need someone who wants you without attempting to change you, in sex as in life you are not selfish, you are not dominant, I’m your friend and your lover both things altogether, I never felt like your toy, you never demanded anything, you agreed to adapt to me and take me as I am, you never deceived me. Sometimes I see you shivering with your eyes closed and I'm happy to be able to offer you at least a few minutes of oblivion of reality. Then when you open your eyes, I try to understand what there is behind those eyes, sometimes you smile at me to make me understand that you are fine and that you are happy with me, other times in your eyes I see so much melancholy and then I hold you tighter, to make you forget the world. I’m often amazed at how our sexual rhythms perfectly agree, at the beginning there was some misunderstanding between us but nothing similar happens anymore, you know me thoroughly, you leave me totally free, I feel your attention, your care for me, that care that you will never admit but that shows in whatever you do. We don’t need words, we understand each other even in silence, there is mutual respect between us, it is automatic to ask ourselves in advance if the other agrees, it’s natural accepting the idea that we have to decide everything together, because the most important things must be done by mutual agreement. Our greatest gratification lies in the awareness that the other is there and is happy to be there, that he doesn’t feel uncomfortable but feels really free. You know that with me you can be yourself without filters and that you will be answered without filters. We not only share sexuality but also melancholy and even frustration. Our relationship is not a continuous exchange of affection because we don’t live together, our relationship is made up of separate but very intense moments and we both know that those moments will never be lost, our dialogue is made up of minimal things, of words and gestures of which only we know the meaning. Your unexpected phone call, even a few words that remember the last time we made love, it changes the tone of my whole day, it's a way to tell me: I felt at ease with you and I want to see you again soon! When I see your name appear on the screen of my mobile I start to get excited and I take it for granted that it happens to you too, and I desire to be with you and I know it will not happen too late, a day or maybe two and I will see you again, I will hug you and I will see you shiver in my arms. What I fear is the after-sex, when the love pause is over and the brain returns to the usual thoughts, when it seems that the problems are bigger than us and the melancholies return, but even this fear is slowly dissolving because sex has opened the doors of a more direct and immediate communication. I often wondered how we managed to choose each other and get together because apparently we are very different guys. As far as I'm concerned, your beauty, both physical and moral, has to do with it. When I look at you on the bed I feel lucky because I have besides me the only man I really wanted, who embodies my ideal of virility but also of sweetness. I thought it would never happen and I kept me at a distance, but you got me out of my fears because you wanted me and you had patience, you understood that I was on the verge of running away but you didn't let me. You spoke little but you were a constant presence, I didn’t understand what you could find in me, I thought that in your life I would be a marginal element but day after day I saw that it was not so. Our relationship is ours alone, no one has to ruin it, no one knows we're together. We have no secrets between us, no skeletons in the closet. You know and respect my weaknesses and I know and respect yours. You have beautiful eyes, especially when they smile, sometimes we talk through our gazes and I dream that your eyes can always smile, that your soul knows a deep serenity, the same you transmit to me when you hold me tight."   GAY LOVING TRIANGLE Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-23-2021, 02:01 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, I’m a gay guy recently thirty years old and all in all I feel young in body and spirit, I have had my experiences, I have been with some guys and I also had a more serious story, which then ended in nothing, that is, it died out for attrition and without trauma, but we never lived together or anything like that, which were just logistically impracticable and perhaps would have accelerated the collapse of our relationship. But all of this belongs to the past. I state that I didn’t know Gay Project because I didn’t go online, my gay life was very direct, the classic applications, which in practice for me have been a kind of addiction, especially in recent years. Now, in those APs the climate has improved, there are many very normal guys and in some way people can also have interesting encounters, if they doesn’t look for the moon.  However, for about a year I have been out of that world because there have been new and unexpected events that have absorbed me almost completely and have also risked putting my work in crisis, which fortunately I managed to save, and I started to go around the net  from about a year and it was exactly in that period that I found Gay project, I found it because I was looking for answers to the situation I was experiencing and that I didn't know how to unravel. I’m not publicly declared, I still live with my parents who know nothing about me and don’t even remotely imagine the truth.  A year ago, at the beginning of the summer of 2020, I met a girl (not a guy) at work, whom I will call Cinzia, with whom I created a somewhat special friendship. In such a situation, what do you do? You think you have to be careful, that you don’t know what she can put in her head and therefore, even if you are a friend, you keep her a bit at a distance. She acts as a friend, nothing else, but as an affectionate friend, as a very present friend even if a little remote. I didn't know anything about her, then, when we got to know each other a little better, but always on a very superficial level, she started talking about Mauro, it was not very clear if Mauro was her boyfriend or just a friend because the talks about Mauro were vague, she never said "my boyfriend" or anything like that, in short, he could even be just a friend, so I couldn't get the idea that Cinzia had a crush on me out of my head. Every now and then she called me on the phone but in an apparently disengaged way.  I was afraid that sooner or later she would ask me to go out with her, but it didn't happen and I was pending and I didn't know how to behave, telling her “look I'm gay” was absolutely unthinkable and she had no element that could make her think that I was. After a couple of months of back and forth, she proposes to go out together and then it was possible only with the mask and the spacer, so, in fact, I didn't have much to fear, and so I accept. I don’t tell you in the afternoon what I began to think, that I had been stupid and that I had let myself be outwitted, that now I would no longer know how to get out of a situation in which I had thrown myself like an idiot, etc. etc..  The morning of the appointment she calls me and says: "Do you mind if Mauro comes too?" According to the classical script a straight guy should have been mad while I was so happy, I didn't know who Mauro was but at least I wouldn't have been forced to spend hours alone with Cinzia. The appointment was for nine. I’m in the place established ten minutes earlier and I see them on the other side of the square waiting for nine o'clock before approaching the established point, it is evident that they don’t see me and it is equally evident that Mauro is Cinzia's boyfriend because they play and pamper each other just like two lovers. I wait patiently for nine o'clock and they cross the square. As soon as Cinzia sees me from a distance she makes great gestures with her arms. We say goodbye from a distance, as is done in covid time, then she introduces me to Mauro, and here the troubles begin, because even if Mauro wears a mask you can see that he is a beautiful guy and when he says hello he flashes me a smile that puts me in crisis. Obviously I have to keep a controlled behavior, I ignore it and we start the walk in the city.  We walk shoulder to shoulder, me in the middle, an embarrassing position, because I have to turn to Cinzia who is expecting it, while I would like to turn away. Cinzia never ends to speak, Mauro is silent, I speak as little as possible and only about monuments and historical facts. If Mauro hadn't been there, I would have tried to cut it short and leave before lunchtime, but Mauro was there and so I proposed to eat something together, Cinzia didn't expect it but Mauro immediately said yes. Obviously only take-away pizza, and we took it to a large public park where there were two benches facing each other, they were on one bench and I on the other. Cinzia looked me straight in the eye while Mauro was apparently distracted and was doing neck movement exercises, but when I caught him looking at me (and he did it trying not to be noticed!) he immediately looked away.  This situation lasted more than an hour. To overcome the embarrassment, I began to tell all the jokes I knew, Cinzia laughed but was distracted, Mauro took advantage of the joke to be able to look me straight in the eye at least for a moment, there was also a laugh but also something else. At the end of the afternoon we said goodbye. Mauro asked me for my mobile number, Cinzia said: "Come on, I have it ..." but Mauro insisted and I gave him the number that he immediately tried, calling me. Cinzia didn’t give weight to this fact but I was positively impressed.  Cinzia worked with me and I saw her every day, Mauro I would only see him again with Cinzia and somehow I understood that his calling me immediately, to check the number was actually a soft way that he had devised to make sure that I too I had his mobile number and in fact I saved it in my diary. A few days later I received an absolutely unexpected and very welcome call from Mauro (by the way he has a beautiful voice), I didn't know how to interpret it because it was a seemingly generic phone call, but the conclusion left me thrilled: "Please, don't tell Cinzia that I called you, because, for her, her friends are only hers, and she would see it as a field invasion." This expression, decoded, means: "please, keep our contacts confidential!"  After a few days he calls me back, again generic phone call with a similar conclusion, and I answer him: "No need to say!" In the meantime my contacts, professional and not, with Cinzia go on normally, except for the fact that her boyfriend and I were in daily touch without her knowledge, and you can’t tell me that such a thing doesn’t set the brain in motion. Ten days pass and the inevitable happens. Cinzia asks me to go out with her but specifies that Mauro will not be there. I think that she has some fantasy about me and for a while I manage to postpone, in the meantime I notice Mauro, who obviously knew nothing about it, and who tells me: "Be careful because in my opinion, for her you are not just a friend ..." Even this speech is very strange and doesn’t follow the logic of a straight guy whose girlfriend may have fallen in love with me, he tells me that Cinzia is perhaps in love with me and that I have to be careful!  But be careful of what? Was he suggesting me I had not to put myself between them or not to correspond too much to Cinzia's requests because I would have been conditioned by them? I could not speak clearly neither to him nor to her. I go out with Cinzia, who tells me she loves Mauro, but doesn't say she is in love with him, and she looks at me with two languid eyes as if to invite me to make the first move, what I dislike at all and in fact I cut it short. A the end of the afternoon she was disappointed and I was worried.  In the evening Mauro calls me and asks me how it went, but obviously I can't tell him that his girlfriend somehow tried to seduce me and that’s why I try not to answer, and then he tells me: "I'll tell you how it went: she he tried something with you ... isn’t it?" I interrupt him and tell him that I feel embarrassed, but he continues: "I also know how it ended, tell me if I'm wrong, you cut it short ..." I told him: "Well, she's your girlfriend, not mine ..." At this point he didn't know what to answer but the whole conversation was very strange to be really the talk of two straight guys in an awkward situation. After a while Mauro continued: "Anyway, be careful!" I instinctively thought he was threatening me and I said: "Don't worry, you have nothing to fear!" and he replied: "I know, but be careful!"  He knew he had nothing to fear from me, but why? Because I, a loyal straight friend, don’t start undermining a friend's girlfriend or because I was perhaps not exactly the classic straight friend in his eyes. I was wondering if Mauro could have understood something about me, but all the elements he had at his disposal should have led him to conclude that I was 100% straight, save for a few stolen glances that perhaps he had noticed. Cinzia at work checked me continuously, if she saw that I was approaching some female colleague she would immediately move away, however after the embarrassed outcome of the last meeting there were no other meetings, I saw her as an animal in a cage and I didn’t know how to behave.  A certain friendship had formed with Mauro, but one of the typical ones between two straight guys who tell each other about their love passions or embarrassments. Mauro was nervous, tense, clearly his relationship with Cinzia conditioned him, it was evident that he couldn’t take it anymore, but it was equally evident that he didn’t have the courage to tell it Cinzia and that he was struggling to play the role of the lover. When he came to my house, Mauro was calmer. He took off his shoes as usually and lay down on my bed, we used to talk in scattered words, never a quite long speech from start to finish, rather detached sentences and very full of non-explicit meanings.  Cinzia didn't know that Mauro spent more time at my house than with her, but she feared me and conditioned me and the fact that we worked together was becoming unbearable for both of us.  One day, in the throes of a moment of real mental confusion, I resigned. My boss begged me to stay but I was adamant and kept my resignation, anyhow I agreed to leave my work after 30 days and not right away, precisely because the boss asked me for it as a personal favor. It was precisely this postponement of 30 days that then allowed me to withdraw my resignation to the great joy of my boss. Obviously I didn't say anything to Cinzia about the resignation, then at a certain point Cinzia disappeared, I asked the boss why and he told me she was on maternity leave, when I found it out I didn't know what to think, a son of Mauro?  This would have made all my suppositions collapse and then it was a long time since Cinzia and Mauro had not had a good relationship. The accounts didn't add up. I called her on the phone and I didn't know where to start but the conversation took a very unexpected  turn. She told me: "I know that I made you suffer as I made Mauro suffer too, but I was not in love with you, I was trying to get another guy out of my head, the father of the child, but for me the only possible love was him, I was with Mauro we joked together, I used him as an antidote to detach myself from the father of the child, I thought it could work but it didn't work, I think Mauro understood that there were things I couldn't tell him, he was a friend but I wasn’t in love with him and I never had the courage to speak out crearly, I'm sorry for everything that happened ... and with you it was more or less the same, but you stopped me immediately and you did well because I never stopped seeing the child's father, not even when I was with Mauro ..."  I said: "God forbid you don't have to follow your heart, but why did you want to get him out of your head?" She answered me: “I thought he wasn't interested and instead he was just worried and thought I didn't really love him and he felt really bad when I got together with Mauro. Poor Mauro, I shamefully took advantage of him and never told him the truth and I don't have the courage to tell it him even now. " I looked into her eyes and said: "I'll tell him, I think I still have his number ..." She just smiled and then said "Are you coming to the baptism?" I told her: "Sure!" And she said to me: "Who knows if Mauro will come too." I told her: "I really think he will come!" So our threesome story ended, in the sense that Cinzia put herself out of the game, at least she managed to achieve what she really wanted, but now comes the fun!  I call Mauro on the phone, I tell him the whole story, he is very happy, a little for Cinzia, a little for himself and a little for me. Doing the math I had come to the conclusion that Mauro could be gay, but it was more a conjecture than anything else, he had been with Cinzia for months and it didn't seem to me that Cinzia had ever suspected anything like this, he came to my house quite often, but there had been nothing that could authorize me to take a step further. Our relationship could very well have been a friendship between two straight guys. I never told him about my life before Cinzia and he too did exactly the same, so you understand that running with the imagination is not advisable.  He is handsome, he is the guy I have always dreamed of, but everything has been blocked for months now, it just doesn't seem to me that when he comes to me he has the slightest fantasy of doing anything other than lying on the bed, chat a bit of this and that and watch a bit of television. We never talk about private things, that is, we never talk about girls or guys; sex, at any level, has never been part of our conversations which, among other things, have nothing to do with eroticism.  He is beautiful, has a sexy voice, etc. etc., and then that's it, it all ends there, at least that's what I think, even if I'm not 100% sure. He didn’t look for another girl but not even for a guy, with me he never mentioned what kind of relationship he had with Cinzia, so I’m in total darkness. What should I do, Project? I just don't know. If you want, you can post the email in the forum, the names have changed and also some details, but the story in essence is authentic.   SUMMER GAY SEX Posted by: gayprojectforum - 08-04-2021, 11:21 AM - Forum: Gays and sex - No Replies Hi Project, I have read a few posts on the forum and I also have something to say. If you think this email is not too provocative, you can put it in Gays and Sex. We are in the height of summer, me and my him (now I no longer wonder if he is my boyfriend or anything like that, however, at least in terms of sex, things have been going on for years and all in all they work) we met right around 14.00 . We were dripping with sweat, and oh well, you can understand, this doesn’t cause me problems of any kind. We had some sex, so to speak, not stressing. I was out of breath more from the heat than for anything else, because it was really suffocating, he dripped sweat, but he didn't need to drink or even dry himself, I pretended nothing happened, but after about ten minutes I told him " Can we take a break?" He replied "Sure!" I meant a break to cool off and dry off, but obviously he didn't need it, I dried myself and then I lay down on the bed, on the cooler side, he stayed where he was, picked up the phone and started texting. I didn’t know what to do, I thought that maybe he wanted to see if there was a call or an important message and I expected that after a few minutes he would start to devote himself to me again, but the minutes passed and he didn't take his eyes off the phone, and in the end I told him "The phone embarrasses me a little" and he replied: "Oh, sorry ..." and we resumed having sex as before the break. For him, opening the phone while he is with me and staying on it for an hour is normal, he doesn’t realize that these behaviors arouse, to say the least, perplexity. He just doesn't notice such things. He has a conception of sex limited to technical sex, the rest doesn’t exist for him, he doesn’t consider it at all. Once, on a very hot day, I suggested we take a shower together, he turned up his nose and said "I don't like it, I prefer alone." I would have strangled him! Once I had proposed to him to stop at my house and sleep with me, but he didn't want to hear anything similar and he set off again late at night and traveled about sixty kilometers to go to sleep at his house, and it was two o'clock in the night! Sometimes I had the weakness to send him some text messages but he never answered me, those things simply don’t exist for him, they have no value. That he has a sex-only relationship with me, at the limit, is okay, that is, I can understand it, but with the other guys I thought he had an emotional relationship too, in short also made up of tenderness, because this seemed, but then in the end I think he doesn't have an emotional relationship with anyone at all. When I try to talk to him he runs away and does it almost systematically, or at least now he does it systematically, years ago there was a bit of dialogue, but then that too passed into the category of the superfluous. Over the years he has gradually closed like a mussel. It is always him the one who is looking for me and this might seem like a gesture of attention towards me, but it is not so, he doesn’t want to be sought. If I were looking for him, it could happen at the wrong time (and something similar really happened) and I could make him miss opportunities that are important to him. I know that he has other guys, but I don't know if the other guys know they are "in good company", but that one they should have understood. I have wondered many times if he would come to my house without the prospect of having sex, that is, if he would come just to talk or to go out together and the answer I think is clearly no. He doesn't want to go out with me, that is, he doesn't want to be seen around with me. I can understand this too, he is much more handsome than me and some of his guys are also really handsome, maybe he shows up with them, but not with me because he would lose score, but maybe I'm too bad-thinking. I've always wondered if he's really okay with me, on a sexual level it would seem so, but the rest just doesn't exist. I have no idea how he can consider me, but I don't think he considers me very well and on the other hand he doesn't even consider himself well, he devalues himself, he belittles himself, I think that sometimes he is afraid of affectivity, he doesn't like being complimented. I wondered what of good I find in him, because in fact anyway I find something good in him and not a little, otherwise I too would have gone away as others did. The decisive elements are two, first of all the fact that he is a handsome guy, tall, strong, quite the opposite of me and then that he is blunt to the point of brutality. He doesn’t cheat you, he tells you: “I’m like that! Take or leave!" A few years ago he fell in love with a guy who seemed very ugly to me, even uglier than me he felt bad because this guy didn't really consider him and he practically didn't give a damn. He would have done anything for that guy, he went after him like a little dog, he tried to tempt him and I would almost say to lure him with nice words, always showing himself humble and interested to the point of assuming a servile attitude, but he did not get any results and I think that such things or similar happened some other times. He is always inclined to extremes behaviors, he doesn't understand normal things at all, he sees them as bonds, I think that, even if he has had and continues to have sex with a lot of guys, he has never been happy with anyone, that is, he has never had a partner who really loved him. I tried to, maybe I love him, but halfway, because if the answer is not there, in the end the feelings cool down, the first time you pass over it and the second too, but then inevitably the illusions pass and yes you accept half a relationship, and even less than half, and slowly that too loses its meaning. Sometimes I dream of an emotional response from him but no! None of this. Sex yes, all you want, and true, that is, he doesn't act, but I wonder how it is possible to be with a guy, have sex with him without acting, and all this without loving that guy, sometimes I try to console myself by telling myself that real sex without love doesn’t exist, but then I seem to go hunting for fairy tales to soothe my frustration that sometimes makes itself felt. I wondered what my life would be like without him, sometimes I think I would be fine, that is, better than how I am with him, but other times I think I would miss him. I never ask him questions about his sex life, he does whatever comes into his head, but I think he's basically lonely. He has a good job that stresses him a lot and they offered him to go to Germany, because he speaks German well, he talked about this possibility with his guys and they started to distance themselves and put him aside, because if he has to go away, they prefer to look for another partner, none of those guys thought they might follow him, on the contrary it occurred to me. Sometimes I feel stupid, but other times I want our relationship to end like this: he goes away and I don't hear from him anymore, but every time I thought about it, he then came back anyway. He's not bad, he's not aggressive, he treats me well in his own way. For a few years he tried to change me, somehow he lectured me, he wanted me to understand that for him sexuality is also something else, that he also needs something else, then he realized that you cannot turn a horse into a dog and he ended up taking me as I am and he did it without recrimination. He asks me not to unload anxiety on him, not to talk to him about negative things, about illnesses or about people who are sick, he says that he already has too many anxieties and I think it is very true. He believes in psychology and psychologists, that is, he thinks that they can somehow change your life, that they can offer you a key to understand yourself and others. When the dialogue between us tends to zero he insists that I go to a psychologist, he sometimes went there and says that it was useful, but I wonder in what, because I see him exactly as he was before with the same complexes and the same anxieties as before and then it makes me angry that he talks about his things with a sex therapist (female and straight) and not with me! He says that the psychologist understands him ... and okay, he is free to believe whatever he wants! He has started doing some sport again and it shows, now he has a toned body which is a beauty but if I tell him such things he gets angry and begins to devalue himself. Sometimes I wondered how he described me to the psychologist, I would have liked to be a fly to attend that interview keeping myself unseen, but probably with the psychologist he has never talked about me, and anyhow I don't think I am a central topic, I am the everyday guy not in the sense of every day, because we see each other every 10-15 days and even more, but in the sense that I’m the constant and habitual presence that is taken for granted and that is part of the banal ordinary administration of his life, I’m not part of the treasure of the crown, I’m at most a silver tie clip, not even one of the gold ones, which cannot be shown off in public and is kept closed in a drawer. Maybe I'm unloading too much acidity on him and basically he doesn't deserve it. I wonder what a guy like him can find in me sexually, he can have the most beautiful guys and actually has them. But he never disappeared. I have never been put to oblivion, well, this is an important virtue of his, he doesn’t file you, sooner or later you feel him again and this, in my opinion, means that there is an emotional contact anyway.   BUILDING A GAY COUPLE IN THE 60S OF THE LAST CENTURY (second part) Posted by: gayprojectforum - 07-28-2021, 03:23 PM - Forum: True gay stories - No Replies Link to the first part:  FIRST PART SECOND PART Thanks for your email, we are more or less the same age, but I attended a state high school, that was also a closed environment but there was a very different air and there were no institutionalized attempts at ideological education, even in my school there was an insinuating penetration of Catholic organizations, but the fact that the school was not part of a boarding school but was a state school where one only stays for morning class hours, still allowed forms of relative pluralism. One could also get caught up in a state school in brainwashing organizations like the ones you talk about, but he also had the option of getting out of them if he wanted to, and then a consideration must be added, the boarding school you speak of had two characteristics, one was being Catholic and the other was being an elite social environment, therefore very selective, and it's a terrible match. Your story reminded me, for certain atmospheres, of Roger Peyrefitte's novel "Les amitiés particulières", but Peyrefitte's novel was published in 1943 and refers to times well before the 1960s, the epilogues of Peyrefitte's book are tragic because the pervasiveness and violence of what it portrays were objectively extreme. The story you tell is from the 60s and the climate had already changed. I must add that reading your e-mail I was afraid of finding a conclusion similar to that of Peyrefitte's novel but luckily it was not so. After the end of the war the world has objectively changed, at least in Europe, and the happy ending of your story is a clear sign of it. Thanks again for your contribution. I add another consideration: it is truly terrible to see how the Gospel can be exploited and the history of the church shows infinite examples of it, some far more terrible than those you refer to. _________   Dear Project, first of all, thank you for your reply. I respond to Lao's remark, who asks me for a more detailed report of my story after 1967. ____________   I graduated in 1967, before the Sullo reform, to let you understand the one that introduced the exam with only two written and two oral tests, then I took the exams as they were foreseen by the Gentile reform, with all the written tests, with the oral about all subjects and with the repair session (in September) for those who had not obtained the pass in all subjects in the first session, the exam at the time was truly a nightmare. At the time, about 30% of the students failed the high school graduation. In this sense, having attended high school in a border school like the one where I studied was not a small guarantee, because it was a school that was respected and feared by the examination boards themselves.  Both Joseph and I seriously took the risk, if not of being rejected, at least of being postponed to September session, what then happened to about 50% of the students and we got away with it, I think, essentially because the commissioner of Italian, who was certainly not of Catholic inspiration, questioned Joseph about the 11th canto of Paradise, that of St. Francis , and questioned me even about Carducci. Joseph understood that the professor of the commission was open-minded and talked about Boniface VIII, ecclesiastical corruption and the repression of pauperism movements, all problems that we had studied on our own in the Treccani encyclopedia, which was free to consult in the library of the school because it was believed that no one would read it. I, on the other hand, let myself be carried away by enthusiasm by speaking of the hymn to Satan, while the internal commissioner, father [omitted] looked at me with eyes of fire as if I were the incarnate devil.  The commissioner of Italian told me that he appreciated my essay on Carlo Cattaneo. I went to find Cattaneo's passage that I commented on in my graduation paper, I am copying here a part of it, which is what excited me: "Today we want science in literature, not in the didactic sense but in the sense of vast, profound erudition, in the sense of the solidarity of nations, in the humanitarian sense, in the sense of freedom." I, who was used to reading only Manzoni, found myself perfectly at easy in a vision of the world that was much more mine, that word "freedom" exalted me.  Joseph also did his essay on Cattaneo but devoted himself to commenting on another passage by Cattaneo: "Literature, which in our days has given itself entirely to the service of civilization, can no longer be, as in ancient times, cultivated in isolation; we laugh now at hermit scholars, we shrug our shoulders disdainfully on their selfish meditations from which transpires such profound ignorance of the world and things, so limited erudition, often limited to the circuit of their own city or at most of their own nation, and which shows to be inspired by idols long overthrown, by rhetorical or purely classical scholastic traditions." What Cattaneo said was precisely the demolition of the culture that had been proposed to us, but I should say imposed, as a model.  Joseph and I were the only two candidates to carry out the essay on Cattaneo and I think it was precisely this that saved us from being postponed to September session if not precisely from rejection. To the enormous scorn of our internal commissioner, father [omitted], we both took 8/10 in the written and 8/10 in the oral of Italian and we also earned the esteem of the external commissioner of Mathematics. The experience of the exams gave me for the first time the precise feeling of how much I had lost not attending a public high school. In the other subjects we took just 6/10, the minimum, because we knew little or nothing about science subjects and the commissioners of Latin and Greek and of History and Philosophy were fascinated by the tradition and the name of my school. When the commission left, the commissioner of Italian shook our hand and did it just with the two of us. After the exams, we still had the enormous problem of making our parents digest that we would have made our choices about the university faculty exclusively on the basis of our criteria. My father took it for granted that I would follow his "advice" slavishly, Joseph's parents would have left him greater freedom of choice, but in any case with regard to a very limited range of choices and in any case they would have assumed that Joseph attended university in Milan, but we had other projects in mind, we wanted to leave Milan as soon as possible to have our real autonomy and we had already made our choices, we wanted to enroll in Engineering and in Rome, not in Milan, but getting our parents to accept such a project and, moreover, diverting their attention from the fact that a similar choice, made by two guys, could hide reasons that had nothing to do with studies, was an undertaking worthy of Agamemnon.  We had to find a way to get there and we had to find it soon. Our parents began to offer us well-selected female companies, that is, of the appropriate social and economic level. Coming from an all-male boarding school it was assumed that we did not have female friends but it was also taken for granted that we were eager to have it, which was a thousand miles away from reality. Joseph's family had identified a "suitable" girl for him and this idea was beginning to put Joseph in a bad mood, but the girl, who had also completed her high school path, wanted to enroll at the National dance academy in Rome, this fact on the one hand facilitated Joseph's situation in Milan and on the other hand could have interfered with our plans to go to Rome, but there was the fact that the hypothetical relationship between that girl and Joseph was only in the fantasies of Joseph's parents, because in all probability the girl had completely different projects in mind.  Since time was short, we first decided to act separately, to avoid our parents think of a premeditated project built in two. We would have started by shooting very high, that is, by proposing something that was not acceptable to our parents from any point of view. One evening while my parents were watching television I told them what plans I had for the future: I wanted to work to be financially independent and I had already sent 10 job applications to Rome. I had made copies to show my parents, but obviously I hadn't sent the application forms. My parents were stunned and asked me why such a decision, but I said that at the university there were also evening courses for student-workers, which was not true then, even if my parents didn't know it, but became true a few years later, and I said I would work and study.  In reality it was more complicated than it may seem today, because then you came of age at 21 and I would still have been dependent on my parents for another three years, even if I had worked. They asked me what faculty I wanted to attend and I said I wanted to do engineering, obviously they tried to advise me against in every way but I was decided in my choices. Some of their friends' children had done engineering and it didn't seem so scandalous to them, but that I had to work "like a starving man" they just didn't accept it. It was the first time I saw my parents worried, not about me, but about the social disgrace that could result from having a child who works like "a starving man."  By now the die was cast! After a couple of days of indecision I said that they had called me to work in Rome as an evening conductor in a cinema. My father looked at me in disgust, as if I had gone out of my mind and they had called me to be the keeper of a brothel, but he said nothing, I was terrified that my parents would decide not to intervene. I compared a train ticket to Rome and put it on the bedside table, the next day my mother came to try to make me come to my senses, but I started to pack my suitcase hoping that their resistance would yield. In the evening my father came to Canossa and asked me to pay me a house near the university because otherwise, as a worker-student I would never have graduated. I accepted and said that I had to go to Rome anyway to immediately communicate to those in the cinema that I would not go and that they had to look for someone else and furthermore I also had to look for a small apartment.  The next morning at 5.30 I leave the house and go to the station with a briefcase. I agree with my parents that I will be away from home for three full days and will sleep in a hotel for two nights. Joseph goes up to Rogoredo and we make the whole trip together. He did not need to resort to tricks of any kind with his parents. His father told him that he had to do what he believed best and that they would support him financially anyway. At the time, as far as I knew, my parents and Joseph's did not know each other at all, my parents knew Joseph but not his parents, so we could have taken two very close apartments, but the thing had to be evaluated concretely in Rome. It was a long and tiring journey but it was “our journey”, finally we were free! The train was very crowded but we were sailing towards our freedom. We arrive in Rome Termini in the afternoon and it is terribly hot, just to die.  We immediately go to the hotel and we take "two single rooms", in order to have two single receipts, we deposit the luggage and we rest for a while, then we look for the way to go to the university area, but it is close to the station and you can go there very well on foot. We go for a ride and buy a Rome newspaper with classified ads. Today in the newspapers these things are no longer there, because they are all on the internet, but then there were whole pages of advertisements of all kinds and obviously also of houses for rent. We spend the evening selecting ads with the map of Rome at hand and we find two that could be fine. The next morning we go to the university to take the Rule of studies from the engineering faculty, we go to see where the lessons are held and then we go to see the two apartments, the first is unpresentable and the landlord does not convince us at all, he wants to do everything “aumma aumma”, that is, without a contract in order to elude taxation, etc. etc..  The second would be a possible solution, it costs more but has two rooms and it seems a serious thing, it could very well be taken jointly by both of us, it would be fine for us but we do not know how to make our parents accept such a thing because it would be suspicious and would sound strange. We leave it pending, we spend the afternoon looking for other newspapers with rental advertisements, in the afternoon we see three more. We find a solution that seems possible to us: two very small apartments quite close to each other and that both had a telephone, which is fundamental, because at the time it was not at all obvious that there was a telephone in a student apartment.  The apartments, however, were a little further away from where the lessons were held than the ones we had seen the day before. On the morning of the third day we go to see and the solution seems acceptable all in all. We pay an advance to secure the apartments, or rather, two separate advances, and we have the receipts made. The hosts seem used to renting apartments to students.  We take the train back to Milan. Joseph gets off at Rogoredo, and changes trains so as not to arrive with mine, this could have been done without but it seemed necessary to use the utmost caution. At home I explained to my parents what I had done and strangely they didn't make too many fuss, because the very fact of paying for the apartment seemed to them a form of participation more than enough in my life. Classes started on November 5th. We entered the house on November 1st. In the very early days I had some problems with the landlord who had often seen Joseph leave my house and was afraid that Joseph was in fact a sub-tenant, when he saw that Joseph had officially taken up residence in another house, also in Rome, and that I paid the rent regularly, the landlord didn't make a fuss anymore and in fact Joseph came to live in my house, which was a little closer to the university. The very first days of November we got the necessary books for the exams and we began to leaf through them and there the first unexpected trauma arrived. We read but we understood almost nothing. We realized that our level of knowledge of scientific disciplines was almost nil and, I must admit, we panicked.  In the meantime, the lessons had begun and after few days had begun to be incomprehensible. In class there was a lot of people and many behaved like morons, said nonsense to make others laugh, threw the cartoccetti (small bullets made from pieces of paper folded several times) with the rubber band, while the professors continued unperturbed to write slates of formulas gradually more and more incomprehensible. We went to class every day but lost ground every day. We realized that if we hadn't studied overnight we wouldn't have carved a spider out of a hole. We had reduced the time we had to take away from studying to a minimum, we went to class all morning, ate a sandwich and immediately went back to studying and exercising. We arrived late in the evening with tears of despair. We did not return to Milan during the Christmas holidays and stayed in Rome to study desperately and it was precisely then that we began to recover some of the lost ground.  When we began to understand something about the Geometry of the straight line and the plane in space, my brain opened up, I began to understand the general logic of analytic Geometry. Analysis was treated in a very abstract and theoretical way, but passing from the limits to the derivatives we began to understand something even at an intuitive level. Physics and Chemistry seemed more understandable in theory but it still seemed very difficult to solve problems.  A separate and almost insurmountable problem was the so-called Civil design. Our colleagues who came from other types of studies did wonderful things without any effort, we struggled with even the most elementary things and our drawings were absolute filth. Axonometry and perspective at the beginning were for me beyond the limits of what is possible. I felt really incapable. After Christmas the classrooms were empty, there were a quarter of the students compared to the first days of November. Who had happened there by mistake understood that it was not air for him and changed faculty.  We went to hear an exam session and we were terrified, very few passed and many repeated the exam more than once. In February we seemed to begin to understand and follow the subjects, but the exams were almost all on subjects that we did not know at all and that we had not yet dealt with: from quadrics to Thermodynamics, from Stereochemistry to Combinatorics. We were really in crisis, we studied like crazy but saw no light at the end of the tunnel. At the beginning of March we were finally able to follow the lessons very roughly or better only intuitively, studying like crazy until late at night. The exercises started to came more or less to the right solution and we began to understand the beauty of science subjects in which something is either right or wrong and the procedures have indisputable rational motivations. We didn't even go back to Milan for Easter, we just thought about studying.  At that time, sex between us was just the medicine of despair and basically the least of our thoughts, also because we were still together 24 hours a day and shared practically all aspects of life. The relationship with the other students was reduced to a minimum because in practice it was an "Every man for himself!" The professors were mythical characters you saw from afar except for the heart attack moment of exams. Virtually all the exams had written and oral and the vast majority of the skimming was done in writing tests. You could bring the books you wanted to the writing test, and the slide rule, a thing that today is a museum object but then was practically the only possible means of calculation, because portable electronic calculators did not exist at all and in any case the slide rule was the only concrete alternative to the tables of logarithms.  Today there are programmable calculators and there are monstrous ones, then there was none of this and a very big part of the difficulties of Physics or Chemistry problems was represented by numerical calculation. Someone carried with them the tables of logarithms with seven decimal places to make more precise calculations, but in reality in that way the risk of calculation errors increased dramatically. Professors corrected exercises in two phases: first they looked at the numerical result, if that was correct, at least approximately, they looked at the procedure and a calculation error led to calculate the score of that exercise as zero. Getting the calculations wrong was deadly. We had gone to look for and put together the texts of the written tests of Analysis, Physics and Chemistry and we had taken notes of the recurring questions in the oral also of Geometry.  The courses ended in early June and in June we had no real chance of passing any of the scheduled exams. We did not return to Milan even in the summer because we had to pass the exams, or at least three exams by September, otherwise our whole project would have failed miserably and we would have had to go home to face general commiseration. We went to follow all the exams of the summer session, of all the subjects we should have done. We took notes, then we went home and studied the topics trying to understand what the professors wanted and there I realized that I understood absolutely nothing of many topics that I thought I knew. Quadrics and Thermodynamics remained a real mystery, I had learned many definitions to parrot but their meaning escaped me.  Following the exams, however, we began to understand the meaning of state functions and quasi-static processes and when we understood the physical-mathematical meaning of the Carnot cycle, a world opened up to us. We decided to focus everything on three exams: Geometry, Analysis and Physics and to leave for November or even February, if necessary, Chemistry and Civil design. At the beginning of July we became able to do the exercises and to  find the right results in most cases, and we had learned to use the slide rule speedy and safely, in mid-July we had finished the first review of the theoretical subjects and we began to deal with the written exams. We used to do the tests together, in the set time of two hours, as if we were at the exam, then we corrected each other by looking at the solutions published after the written tests and we assigned each other a score with the criteria adopted by the professors.  I remember that at the first tutorial on a real Geometry test, I took 11/30 and Juseph 12/30, it seemed a very poor result, but only two months before we would have been at zero. Things were a little better with Analysis (22/30 and 21/30) and Physics (19/30 and 18/30) because the books and exercise collections we used were much better done. At the end of July we had brought the Geometry results to around 20 and those of Physics and Analysis to around 23. In the following 40 days, which preceded the exams, we proceeded studying non-stop from morning to night right out of necessity avoiding even the least waste of time. We arrived on the eve of the exams with average results always above 20, which may seem little but it already means knowing the subjects passably.  We decided to try, if we had taken less than 24 we would have rejected the assigned grade and we would have presented ourselves to the next session. The day of the Analysis exam came, the anxiety was very strong, we entered. The candidates were distributed in a huge classroom. The texts of the tests were different (A, B, C, D) and were assigned by drawing lots, Joseph and I had different tests. At the end of the two hours we went out with some unsolved doubts and with the bad copies of the tests, we went home and we corrected each other the tests following the procedure step by step, I expected to have taken 22 and he expected 21, we had both made mistakes of trivial algebraic calculation despite the right procedure. We looked at each other disconsolately.  Two days later the results of the test came out, only eight guys had been admitted to the oral tests, only one with 30, two with 27, Joseph had obtained 24 and I an unexpected 26, the others were all under 20, it didn't seem true to me. We had a week before the oral. We began questioning each other day and night, obsessively repeating proofs and theorems. We both passed the exam with 27 and there was only one guy who came out with 30. The happiness was total.  That evening we allowed ourselves to make love, but from the next day the obsession with Geometry began again which however lasted only a week. We both got 23 at the written test, a score that should have led us not to present ourselves at the oral, but since the highest mark in the written test was 26 we thought we would present all the same and we both came out with 25, a result that did not seem like a great thing, but anyhow we had passed the examination. Physics that also had a written test "with numerical calculation" that terrified us was still pending, the exam was scheduled for mid-October and there was a minimum of time. We decided to focus on the most difficult topics: Thermodynamics and waves.  Our levels in written problems had risen to around 26 and this encouraged us. We went to the written test and we both went out with a 22, but our 22 came after a single 25 and a single 23, we decided to play it all out and go to the oral exam. They asked me "conservation of angular momentum and law of areas", "second principle of thermodynamics" and "interference". Joseph was required to solve some written exercises also in the oral. We both came out with 26, we were disappointed but we accepted the grade. In practice we started from scratch and we ended up with an average of 26, which could seem little only if seen from the outside, for us it was an achievement, it was the certification that we could go on.  We had more time to prepare for the Chemistry exam, Joseph came out with 27 and I with 28 and I felt like I was touching the sky with a finger.  We were left with the nightmare of Civil design, an exam that generally served others to raise the average grade, but for me it was exactly the opposite, there the test was basically just graphic and the oral was a discussion of the written. Joseph passed with 25, I had really made a table that was rubbish. The professor calls me and gestures to make me understand that the proof was indecent, and he writes a 23 on a piece of paper, but he does not write it on the booklet, that is, he does not write it as final grade, I start answering in bursts explaining all the errors I had done, after a few minutes he turns the sheet over and writes 24 and underlines it twice to which I nod yes. When I got out it didn't even seem real to me.  On November 5th, when lessons resumed, we had passed all the scheduled exams and were able to devote ourselves to the subjects of the second year. I liked the Rational Mechanics exam very much, much less Analysis two with multiple integrals, moments of inertia and differential equations, while I was fascinated by electromagnetism, but now things were progressing regularly, the average of the marks was going up. The final three-year period was already more specialized but up to a certain point. I was fascinated by Construction science, much less by Applied mechanics. Electrical engineering seemed to me a real discovery, so much so that I regretted having chosen civil engineering. With our colleagues in the three-year period, the climate was different, we were numerically few compared to the two-year period, there was some collaboration and they also tried to insert us in the group but we always kept ourselves out of groups of any kind.  The turning point of our course of study has been Numerical analysis exam "with programming elements" which at the time was considered only a further exam in mathematics because computer science was really reduced to a minimum. A new world opened up in front of us, we understood that Electronic calculation had nothing to do with the calculations made with the slide rule and that the rules of the game were changing. We talked to the professor who took us seriously, he gave us programs to develop in Fortan and Algol, then Pascal was not yet there and the thing had for us the charm of discovery.  Our calculation programs were evolved and the professor liked us and allowed us to access the calculation laboratory, something then practically impossible for a student. We were automatically pushed to a much higher level ofmathematical study of Numerical analysis. Numerical analysis was the first exam in which we got honors, which sent us into orbit. We maintained contact with the professor of Numerical analysis and when Pascal came out in 1970 we began to work on structural calculation programs, these are things that compared to what today's PCs do are of a disarming elementary, but at the time they were shocking news, above all because they avoided the problem of calculation errors.  We graduated with honors in November 1972 with two coordinated theses on: “Programs for calculating complex linearizable reticular structures”. Unfortunately, due to the postponements of the graduation session we were unable to take the State qualification exam in the second session of 1972 but in June 1973, at the age of 25,we had taken the qualification and were finally engineers. I must point out that our families knew nothing of our true story, they did not know that we had lived together for years and that we had graduated on the same day practically covering the same subjects. Now our parents expected us to return to Milan to find some prestigious work place, perhaps through some of their friends, but we had quite precise ideas, we wanted to open an "advanced" civil engineering studio based on the use of computers. Today this seems an absolute obvious, but 50 years ago it was not at all.  To do something minimally dignified we needed money, at least to get an apartment to use as the office of the studio and to be able to hire a couple of collaborators, essentially a very up-to-date computer scientist and an administrative secretary capable of handling tax matters. As far as the problems of patents were concerned, we would have tried to do it ourselves or at most to have recourse (as little as possible) to external consultants, but to start we needed a considerable amount of money. We did not let ourselves be led into the world of dreams and we established a principle: "never take a step longest than the leg!"  Our parents had offered to help us financially but they would have liked us to return to Milan, what we absolutely did not want to do, so we made a choice that was harshly criticized: we applied for substitute teaching to teach in technical high schools, and at that time it was very easy to have the substituting because there were few technical graduates. We taught for three years in technical high schools  and we put aside everything we could, however we were not even able to pay an advance to buy an apartment for the study and so we decided to rent one and try to become entrepreneurs of ourselves.  We took a three-room apartment in the middle of the suburbs but rather well placed and we decided to do a crazy shopping for us at the time, we bought an Olivetti P6060 computer which costed a huge amount of money, over 8,000 dollars, at the exchange rate of that time almost five million and a half lire, as teachers we earned less than 250,000 lire a month, which means that the computer costed, including taxes, about 25 months' salary. The computer was an office computer, but it was very heavy (over 40 kg) and a real mammoth, which, however, gave our office an absolutely unique and super-technological aspect.  As soon as the P6060 was activated we started to work on it and in the time of a month we developed the first software, the one for the office accounting, which was all stored on large 20x20 soft-disks, then we started working on the projecting of steel reticular structures and we had the possibility to make monstrously complex calculations (for that time) and without risk of errors, in practice we could print and deliver in one day the project of a complex structure that required at least 15 days for others and certainly our calculations  were more precise.  Unfortunately, there was no way to draw with a computer as is done now with CAD and therefore we still needed a mechanical designer able to execute the tables quickly and well. We turned to one of our best students (Martin) who came to work for us, we gave him a state-of-the-art drafting machine, an instrument that is now a museum object. The work began to arrive, we did not worry about following the real work in progress, we had only to project and calculate structures and we dedicated all our free time to software projecting. In a few years we were able to buy a bigger apartment for the studio, as well as Martin we also hired his girlfriend, who was called Martina (a combination more unique than rare).  Then we expanded further and hired one of the first professionally trained specialists in computer science, especially to choose computers that were at the forefront because in those years the evolution was very rapid. After a few years we stopped using self-produced software and began to master specialized commercial software and we have continued on this path until now. Over the years we have bought two houses for ourselves, in each of the houses there is a single room and a double room, as if they were houses intended to host traditional families. We never invited strangers to our house, those very rare times that our parents came to Rome, the double room, in theory that of the guests, was for them. Today our parents are no longer there and we have no siblings, we have to think only of ourselves and of old age that is advancing big steps, but as long as health assists us we are fine! Please Project, if you deem it appropriate, add this email to our previous one. Thank you!   BUILDING A GAY COUPLE IN THE 60S OF THE LAST CENTURY (first part) Posted by: gayprojectforum - 07-28-2021, 02:52 PM - Forum: True gay stories - No Replies In July 2021 I received a long email from an elderly gentleman (a little older than me) that contained his high school story between 14 and 19 years of age. The email also contains the first elements of the author's relationship with the boy who will become his partner for life. This email was published by me in Italian on the Progetto Gay forum. I also added my comment to the email in the Italian forum. A user (Lao) asked the author of the email to also tell what happened after the end of school, and the author of the first email sent a second one, also of considerable size as a response to Lao's request. Since these are important documents that also have historical relevance because they allow us to understand how gay life was in the 60s of the last century, I have taken steps to translate the texts in English to insert them on the sites of Gay Project in English. To make the content exactly understandable to English-speaking readers, some preliminary clarification is needed. 1) In Italy, high school usually begins at 14 and ends at 19 with the Maturity exam. 2) There are many types of high school, the "Liceo Classico" represents the school traditionally attended by the social and economic elite of the country, today the prestige of the Liceo Classico tends to remain more than anything else a legacy of the past and the organization of this school address has been made much more homogeneous with that of the other addresses. In the 60s of the last century, the 5 years of the Liceo Classico were divided into a first two years (4th and 5th Ginnasio, a denomination inherited from still nineteenth-century regulations) and a final three-year period, the Liceo proper. In Italian schools of any order and grade, grades were and are assigned in tenths. 3) In the university faculties the marks were and are assigned out of thirty. Let us now turn to the texts. ________   It was the year 1962 when, after finishing middle school, I was sent to high school in a prestigious religious institute not too much far from Milan. At the time I was 14, I had always lived in Milan and had attended the Middle School in Milan in another religious institute, of which today I only remember the large corridors with shiny floors, the teachers almost all priests and the very muffled climate, in to which nothing of the outside world penetrated. We were visually controlled from time of entry to time of exit. My parents knew the parents of the other children, because the school occasionally organized meetings even between parents on the occasion of religious holidays. In the eighth grade I began to reflect on the fact that on those occasions they received communion in the school chapel, besides us boys, who had to do it by force, several mothers, but almost no fathers, as if religion were something for women and children, but then I didn't ask myself too many questions about it. At that time I knew nothing about sex, except that it is used to make babies. I was very naive and believed everything the teachers told me, who, as well as almost all priests, were also all old. Gymnastics was a marginal subject, which was done, because it had to be done by force, in the gym and only with individual exercises to be carried out strictly in tracksuits, obviously excluding any group sport. To avoid any possible risk that the presence in the gym could be pleasant, the gym was not heated and it was freezing cold. On the day in which gymnastics lessons were taken, boys went to school directly in tracksuit. It goes without saying that changing rooms and showers were absolutely unthinkable there. My parents didn't take much care of me, I was entrusted to the nanny who cooked for me different things from what the grown-ups ate. My mother bought my clothes according to her taste and I could only say yes lady. Even logistically I was part of a separate world, I had a room just before that of the nanny and this shows how they considered me. My parents went on vacation on their own with their friends and I went to the sea in a small town in Liguria with my nanny. I must say that I got along well with my nanny, apart from the fact that she was the only person I could talk to, she was a good woman and she loved me, she had no children and was a widow and cuddled me within the limits of social detachment which in any case divided us. My parents, on the rare occasions when they talked to me, presented high school to me as something very serious and very difficult that I would have to face with the utmost seriousness because a failure (and then it happened) could definitively ruin my social role. The nanny, on the other hand, spoke to me of high school as a much freer place where there are guys who are starting to have their autonomy and to have their experiences, but at the time I didn't even understand what it could be referring to. The last week of September the nanny takes me to the new school, I go with her to the station, we take the train and it takes more than two hours to get there, then the journey by taxi begins. I looked around bewildered, then the taxi stops and I find myself in front of a sumptuous building that was intimidating just to look at it. The nanny tries to cheer me up. We go up the stately staircase and arrive at the offices, they make us wait about ten minutes, then a priest shows up. My nanny says my name, and then it's all very informal. The priest dismisses the nanny and takes me to the tailor's laboratory where the seamstress takes the measurements for my uniform, then takes me to a huge dormitory with a double row of beds and tells me that mine is number 18. He Shows me my closet to store my things and I notice that there is no key, then he tells me to put my things in the closet and gives me a printed booklet with the rules of the boarding school, he tells me that I can go to the recreation room "of the gymnasium" to read the rules and that at 13.00 I will have to go to the refectory for lunch. He recommends me to read the rules very carefully and he goes away. The dormitory was totally empty, there were no other boys and no priests. I stowed my things in the closet and then went down to the recreation room which I found via a floor plan of the building annexed to the book of the rules. There was no one there either. I sat in a chair and started reading, but then I was unable to decode the meanings of those messages. There was a great deal of insistence on the fact that it was a Catholic school and that as such it required students to adhere to the principles of Catholicism, which I knew as a 14-year-old boy might know them. There was the hierarchy of the school, in which everything was in the hands of the professors and the principal, obviously all priests, and there was the hierarchy of the college, in which everything was in the hands of the educators, the spiritual father and the rector, of course they too are all priests, but the rector was superior to the principal because the rector was also responsible for the "spiritual formation" of the students. All these things then seemed obvious to me. There was also a part that dealt with the punishments for poor scholastic commitment and unregulated moral conduct, which I then interpreted at the level of my 14 years. It was also said that each guy who had committed a fault would have to accuse himself in front of the superiors who would have assessed it on a case-by-case basis and, if a sanction had been applied, that would be noted in the behavioral notes that would be sent monthly to the family. The regulation was very detailed but at the same time very generic, everything, in practice, was left to the interpretation of the superiors. Terrified by the idea of being late for lunch, at 12.45 I was in front of the "refectory of the Gymnasium". There were two refectories, one for the Gymnasium and one for the Lyceum, to keep guys of different ages separate, and in that of the Gymnasium there was no one. The door was locked. At 12.55 a waitress opened the door and I entered. The hall was huge, I sat at the first table I saw but the waitress told me that that was the table of the superiors and then I went to put myself in the last place, but she told me that I had to put myself at number 18 (the same as my bed) and so I did, because in front of each seat there was a number. The atmosphere was very solemn. On the tables there was a white tablecloth, all the plates and cutlery were marked with the insignia of the institute and so did the napkin, which was numbered. Mine, obviously, was the number 18. The waitress had stopped and was silent and I didn't understand why. I looked at her puzzled and she said to me: "The prayer!", Then seeing that I did not understand, she told me that before lunch the most important person present had to recite the prayer for everyone and since I was there alone I had to say it myself and had to add the intention. I didn't know what to say and she suggested: "Sign of the cross", then she put the words right in my mouth: "Lord, we thank you for this food, let it strengthen us on the path of faith and your service." (this was the standard formula, for normal days), then she told me to add the intention and I said: “We pray for this school year that is about to begin”. Then lunch was finally served. The cuisine was of a good standard, the work of professional chefs. An abundant well-seasoned first course, a second course of meat with vegetables and fruit. The waitress advised me that at 1.30pm I had to leave anyway because she had to close the refectory. At 1.30pm I didn't know where to go. The institute was practically empty. I went back to the recreation room of the Gymnasium and began to read some magazines that were on the tables, obviously all Catholic and missionary magazines. In the afternoon, around 3.30 pm another boy arrived. We introduced ourselves, he was as scared as me and I think even more than me. First of all we tried to understand how we should behave at dinner time then we talked about what we expected from the school. At 7pm we went to the refectory for dinner, I went to where I sat at lunchtime and my college mate sat next to me, but the waitress told him that he was number 26 and that his seat was at the other table, I recited the prayer and the intention and so we dined in two, sitting at two separate tables in a huge room where there was only us. After dinner we went back to the recreation room because we didn't know where to go. A priest passed there and told us that we must never stand without doing anything and that we could go to the chapel to pray and we obviously went there, frankly I didn't understand what to do, but we obeyed as if everything was absolutely obvious . At 8.45 pm the chapel closed and we were sent to our dormitory, where our educator (a priest, of course) gave us a nightgown of the appropriate size, made by the tailor, obviously with the insignia of the institute and a metallic container  with the essentials for a minimum of personal hygiene: soap, toothpaste and toothbrush. He told us that the next day we would have 10 minutes to shower, between 6.10 and 6.20, before going to the chapel for religious education. He told us that we had to be in bed at 9pm and that he would come by to check before turning off the light. At 21.00 we were in bed, the educator came by and turned off the light but I didn't understand where, because there were no switches, then he said "holy night" not "goodnight" and left. I was used to going to sleep at midnight and I didn't like at all having to stay in bed from 9pm, but those were the rules. The next day at six o'clock a bell rang, which was the signal for getting up. We went into the bathroom, where there were 10 boxes with toilet and sink and 10 shower boxes. The boxes had a lockable door but the door did not reach the ground, I realized only after that the doors were made like this to check that in each box there was only one boy, but at the beginning I didn't pay attention to these things. At 6.30 we were in the chapel for religious education, in all there were eight boys, all from the Gymnasium, 14-15 years old. The benches in the chapel were numbered like the seats at the table. The chapel was not the large church of the institute, but a chapel used only by a group of classes, in my case the Gymnasium classes (about 80 boys) in which one of the educators said mass in turn. I learned that there was not an educator per class but that in the Gymnasium there were two educators who rotated on the two classes, so that they exchanged classes every month, at the time I did not understand the meaning of all this and I only understood several years later. Mass begins, then, at the moment of the homily, religious instruction begins, centered on the idea of "fleeing bad company" in which, however, it was taken for granted what bad company was and it was insisted that "to love a mate" means "to worry about him" and for this reason when a mate "does not behave well" it is your specific moral duty to report it to superiors. In practice, it is a moral duty to be a spy. Many of my new fellow students arrived that day. We were about forty in my class. They came in dribs and drabs. There was not even a chance to remember their names because they were too many. I looked around to see if there was any guy more beautiful than the others and it was thus that I saw Joseph G., a guy who seemed older than his age and who by now had very little childishness. I did not understand then why he had such a powerful and magnetic fascination with me, because I had never heard of homosexuality and I did not even know what masturbation was. Joseph was the n. 32, his bed was very far from mine, in the mess hall he sat at another table, I could have talked to him only in the recreation room, but at the time I felt like an unborn child and compared to Joseph I felt a state of awe like in front of an adult. I continued to speak with n. 26, whom I had met the day before, with numbers 17 and 19, sitting next to me in the mess hall, I felt I had nothing in common and everything was limited to a quick and formal hello. The following day's religious instruction was on "fraternal correction" that is, in practice once again on the duty to spy. I saw Joseph only from a distance but the more I looked at him the more I liked him. The following day religious instruction was about two distinct things: "fleeing temptation" and "attending the sacraments". We were told and repeated that a Christian boy communicates himself every day and has a spiritual father who can guide him in the search for holiness. Not attending the sacraments daily was viewed very badly as a kind of mark of Satan, a form of Luciferian rebellion. Many guys were starting to turn up their noses in front of these speeches which seemed right and obvious to me, quite simply because I had nothing special to confess. When I went to confession, without a confessional, with one of the educators, I was insistently asked: "Don't you have to accuse yourself of anything else?" and at my "no" the confessor was somehow perplexed. Like it or not, all the boys ended up accepting the imposition of confession. The first day of school began with a mass officiated by a bishop and the rector, whom I saw for the first time and from afar. We, for the first time, were dressed in the uniform of the institute and polished up to the incredible. Our places in the church were all assigned a priori. The bishop's homily was very short, then the rector spoke but I was distracted because in the big church Joseph had happened right between me and the celebrant, a kind of "man of the screen". Joseph was serious during mass and behaved like any other obedient collegiate. After mass we went to the classrooms and the lessons began. Before each hour of class the professor would pray and invoke a saint and we had to answer: “Ora pro nobis”. We were loaded with homework from day one: both Latin (which we knew a little from middle school) and Greek, an absolute novelty. The first day we should have learned to read the pater noster in Greek, something that at the time seemed to me very important and monstrously difficult. I didn't know how the school day would be organized, I thought that everyone could study on their own but it wasn't like that. At 1.30 pm lunch, then recreation until 2.30 pm and then again in the classrooms in the morning until 6.00 pm, when we went to the chapel for religious instruction. I could only see Joseph from afar and the possibility of exchanging a few words with him was reduced to half an hour of recreation between 14 and 14.30. There were many guys in the classroom, most of us were dominated by the professors and educators who assisted us (in practice they also taught in the afternoon). Joseph was the only one who had a personality of his own, he was respectful and obedient, because it could not be done otherwise but sometimes he added some considerations that generally professors and educators did not like at all. They repeated to us that answering a question means keeping within the limits of the demand. Joseph was not only handsome, but he was also intelligent, I don't mean studious but really intelligent, he was also 14 years old but he was extraordinarily smart. From the first day of school we had been told that the best students would be given special awards, basically badges to pin on their jackets, such as military campaigns. The best student of each class in the trimestral scrutiny could wear a golden star, the second a silver star, those who had never been punished could wear a blue ribbon in their buttonhole. These things were highly coveted. I certainly could not think of being the first of the class and not even the second but I was proud of my blue ribbon. Joseph also had his blue ribbon because he had never been punished, but one day he took off the ribbon even though we, his class mates, knew very well that he had the right to wear it. Nobody, except us, noticed that the ribbon had been removed, if the educators had noticed it, they would have taken it as a gesture of rebellion, but no one noticed. The time of the Christmas holidays came and I went home, I was very happy to see my nanny again, I can't say the same for my father and my mother who were now like strangers to me. The return to school after the Christmas holidays was a very important moment for me. On the train from Milan I met Joseph who was traveling alone and was not even 15 years old, I was with my nanny, who however left me the compartment free so I could talk to Joseph. Joseph treated me like an adult and I felt comfortable and I can't deny that I liked his very respectful way of treating my nanny right from the start. A contact with Joseph had been created and I would have done everything not to lose him. At the end of the fourth year of the Gymnasium  we were both promoted with marks just a little more than the minimum and this did not sadden me at all because I saw Joseph's absolutely indifferent way of reacting. During the holidays between the fourth and fifth class of the Gymnasium I got to know Joseph more closely and I also went to his house and I realized that he was much freer than me, that he also had a bit of serious dialogue with his parents and then, also if I didn't understand it then, I fell in love with him. We were always together, at least as far as possible, with the excuse of the holiday homework that still had to be done and were many. On October 1st we were back in school, but I now had a special friend. Religious education took a particular turn and practically became an indoctrination on family and marriage according to the Catholic Church. We spoke very often of Our Lady as a mother and as a model of woman, and I did not understand why we should insist so much on these things. The virginity of the most pure Mater had to be taken as an example, for me all these speeches made no sense, but for my mates they were not at all indifferent. I did not understand the emphasis that the priests put on the subject of girls but then slowly I realized the embarrassment with which many guys approached that subject, which to me was neither hot nor cold and I noticed that Joseph laughed at it making fun of the other mates, he didn't react like the other guys. But for me Joseph was an absolutely platonic love and so he remained until the end of the Gymnasium. We passed the Gymnasium license exams for the broken cap but we passed them and then we spent the summer together. My parents had known Joseph and trusted him, and that was how I went on vacation with Joseph's family. I liked his parents but spending the whole summer with Joseph was like being in heaven for me. We went to the Island of Elba to a house belonging to Joseph's family. The house was small and I was in the room with Joseph. One evening his parents stayed at a friend's house and I was left alone with Joseph. It was the first time I saw a tremendous embarrassment on Joseph's face, similar to what our companions had when they talked about girls. He wasn't the bad company for me but I was the bad company for him. I didn't know how to behave but I followed my instinct, took his hand and squeezed it. He didn't know what to do and I said to him: “What are you afraid of? We are not doing anything wrong." It started like this, we had both just turned 16. Afterwards, Joseph was terrified and it was my turn to make him understand that he hadn't done anything wrong, however he was really upset and kept away from me as if he had done something terrible against me and so I caressed his face and ran a hand through his hair and he flashed me a beautiful smile. The next day he asked me if I was upset but I told him that I was very happy and that I loved him. When the time to go back to school approached, he asked me how we would go about confession and we concluded that we would have to feign ideological reasons (loss of faith) if we wanted to avoid desecrating the sacraments and we agreed that we would do so, and then we could have talked about girls and it would have been almost normal. October 1st  of the following year, now sixteen, Joseph and I entered the Lyceum. We expected that something could change, but absolutely nothing changed, now in the refectory (the Lyceum refectory) there were almost 120 guys and the large refectory (the one of the Lyceum) looked almost like a cathedral. Occasionally the rector and the spiritual father were also seen for lunch. The order was of a military type, we did not sit at the table before the prayer which, even in the Lyceum, was accompanied every day by different intentions. The rector welcomed us and prayed for our commitment to studies and Christian life. During the masses in the chapel with the other high school students I noticed that not everyone received communion and this made me think why, because neither I nor Joseph did, but the others let themselves be convinced by the educators and the next time they went to confession and communicated, I and Joseph, on the other hand, did not allow ourselves to be convinced. It was obvious from the very first days that our way of doing things had been noticed and was not welcome at all. I was called by the spiritual father, whom I had only seen in the dining room, and I suspected that the reason was precisely the fact that I did not approach the sacraments. He was a relatively young priest, between 40 and 45 years old, he had the manner of a career priest who aimed to become rector in the time of a few years. I had asked the older mates if they had ever talked to the spiritual father and they told me that they didn't really know him but that he only dealt with the "big problems". I went to the interview expecting what would happen. The spiritual father told me that he often spoke to the boys who asked him for advice: first lie! Then he started taking things very far, he asked me how I was with the professors, but on this point the answer was obvious, then he asked me about my classmates, if there was anyone with whom I was better off and I named a couple of those who seemed born to be an altar boy for life and obviously I didn't even mention Joseph, then the inquisitorial examination began: "How is your Christian life?" and I told him that I wanted so much to have a Christian life but that I had lost my faith and I was beginning to feel distant from those things. He put on his stole, assuming that I wanted to confess but I replied that the idea of approaching the sacraments in a non-spontaneous way would have seemed to me a lack of respect for those who truly believe. The spiritual father was very perplexed and dismissed me, adding that he would pray for me. By now I knew I was a special supervised, and I couldn't stand that condition, if it had been for me, I would have left immediately, at the cost of facing my parents in a bad way, because they would have taken it very badly, and I would have gone to a public high school which I thought would be a completely different world, but I could not abandon Joseph. We could have both been expelled, but it was impossible to understand the consequences. We had to go on with an absurd play to escape what we felt was a form of total violence. There would be another three years of actual torture but we were ready to face them. No contact with Joseph was possible, not even the slightest one, exchanging notes would have exposed us to dangerous situations. I learned later that Joseph had used a different strategy from mine and this had misled the investigations of the spiritual father. He had stolen the drawing of a naked woman made by another guy and had deliberately hidden it between the pages of his own Latin vocabulary, the sheet was irregular and was leaning against the binding in only two places, but he, then, had found that same sheet put in a different way, a sign that someone had browsed through his dictionary and, having found the sheet, had not taken it but had left it there. Since the lockers for school books and notebooks were in the classroom where lessons were taught, the likelihood that the nosy individual was a schoolmate was practically nil. I had noticed that the spiritual father, when he met Joseph, said to him: "Say three Hail Mary to Our Lady ..." I learned only lather that Joseph had ended up giving in to the pressure of the spiritual father, who imagined him as Adam tempted by Eve, and had told the priest exactly what he expected.  Eventually Joseph was forced to make fun of the sacraments and suffered a lot because of this. I tried to tell him many times that only “free” decisions that harm others are true faults, but he was not secular enough to accept this point of view. The real moments of contact with Joseph were in the holidays. During the Christmas and Easter holidays we could go out together and they were exciting and overwhelming days, sometimes we got to touch each other or masturbate together. At that time there was no AIDS and for two boys of our age, venereal diseases were a completely unknown and unthinkable reality. Neither my parents nor Joseph's have ever suspected anything, evidently the Catholic school had been a good training ground, had given us a good education and had taught us how to "protect ourselves from the dangers that surrounded us". In the summer holidays between first and second year of the Lyceum, all our doubts were dispelled, we were 17, but we knew what we wanted, by now we were thinking with our heads. Joseph got along well with his parents but he didn't even dream of talking openly with them about sexuality, I practically had only a formal relationship with my parents, they were fine with it and I understood day after day that only with Joseph I could live my life and that reconciling what I felt for Joseph with other things would have been impossible. Both he and I had been very lucky because, without internet and without mobile phones and with the fear of coming out that there was at that time, the probability of finding another serious gay guy was almost zero. The last year, by now, we were no longer afraid of anything or anyone. We had to study because at that time the baccalaureate exam was terrible but we also had fun, after Christmas holidays we introduced Boccaccio's short stories in full edition "to deepen our studies!" And the book was confiscated from us but we didn't get a disciplinary report so as not to raise dust. But the most beautiful thing was when we put two copies of Marx's Capital in the locker of our two mates "who were always spying". There it was really seen that from one day to the next the hunt for the rotten apple began, or it would be better to say the witch hunt, but the priests did not come to understand who had introduced those books and the matter was covered up. Taken with difficulty (very laboriously) the baccalaureate we had to face the problem of the choice of the faculty, a choice that our parents considered fundamental, while for us the only fundamental choice was to stay together. My father would have wanted me to be a doctor, Joseph's father would have wanted him to be a lawyer, like him, in the end we both decided to study engineering and it was a free and very timely choice. Now we are both old, over 70, health is a bit uncertain but still holds up passably. We have a well-established engineering company where no one knows about us. We were both only children. Our parents have always been in the dark about everything. We live in two single houses in an area not really central of the city, we have opened a door in the fence that divides us, obviously we have been living together for a many years, basically since we were both parentless 14 years ago. We have in common a caregiver (a lady doing everything), a bit of a kind of nanny for old people. I think she understood how things are but she’s very prudent and not at all nosy and we never got into trouble. We have a dog, "pof", which is basically our dog and mate, not just his or mine. Now we are free, 60 years ago we would never have imagined such a future. I am grateful to the Catholic school because, paradoxical as it may seem, it has led us to think using our brains only. Believe me, Project, in our time and in our conditions it was very difficult. If you think it appropriate you can put this mail in the forum.  LINK TO THE SECOND PART   DREAMS AD REALITY ABOUT MY BOYFRIEND Posted by: gayprojectforum - 07-19-2021, 02:00 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, I’m writing to you just because I feel stressed I can't help but let off steam a bit and it is not the first email I send you. I'm tired, Project, not because of loneliness, or rather of relative loneliness. I accept it, I'm really tired of being faced with real problems in their banal brutality. Sometimes I think I will never have a real dialogue with the one I insist on considering my boyfriend, who is a good guy after all, but he is not my boyfriend except in my fantasy and the absence of dialogue doesn’t depend on the fact that he goes out with other guys too, which doesn't cause me big problems. The absence of dialogue derives from the difficulty of accepting our weak sides, both his and mine, and from our tendency to hide under the carpet the so-called trivial problems, that is, those brutally economic and work problems.  We meet very little, but we anyhow we meet and I think all in all we also love each other. We talk freely about sex, he talks to me about his other guys, that is, he makes me understand that they are important to him but on these problems, which should be the thorniest problems, there have never been real misunderstandings. Between us there is mutual respect, there are no recriminations, we both take for granted that in case of need we would certainly be there for each other, but in those "need cases" we don’t include economic and work problems. We both work, I have a lower level job than his but stable, he has an important job that allows him to earn well but is always at risk of ending up with a handful of flies. Not only has he never boasted about his work but has always considered it the result of a stroke of luck destined to end in a short time due to his inability to manage it. In reality, so far he has handled the situation very efficiently, but the work, which gives him a lot, probably requires an effort and a series of sacrifices that, over time, he is less and less willing to accept.  I have deduced all this in the course of this last year from a series of half words, allusions and grimaces on the occasion of sensitive speeches. There are no secrets between us, we have confessed to each other things that we have not told anyone else and nothing has changed between us. He tells me that I’m a free man because I’m not a slave to anyone and I think that the discourse avoids reaching the conclusion that he is instead enslaved to work.  He has never been stingy and has never boasted of his economic possibilities that derive right and only from his work. He doesn't throw money out the window and basically never talks about it. He is stressed, very stressed, he always runs around with his laptop, when he comes to me for some sex, he stays for an hour at most and then he leaves. At first I thought he was leaving so early to go to some other guy, but he doesn't, he goes to his house to work until he falls asleep. He came to me once and fell asleep after sex, then suddenly woke up after half an hour and ran to his house to work. One day he got angry with me and behaved a bit aggressively, which almost never happens to him, I saw that he wasn’t at ease, I stroked his face and he started to cry and after five minutes he went away. He can't stand precariousness but that has always been his condition of life.  Some of his exes did not tolerate his ways and turned him away thinking they were dealing with a pathological case. He knows he has to make important decisions for his future but he postpones everything day by day and goes on by inertia. He is afraid of the future. He thinks that in a few years he will end up being a bum on the street, he feels constantly inadequate, especially at work, but the effects of anxiety are also seen very strong in the fact that he tends to brutalize feelings, feelings that exist anyhow but would take away too much time, that time that he knows he has to dedicate only to work and that it is a time that no longer belongs to him.  He has always been a bit strange, intolerant of any kind of constraint, impulsive, basically depressed and ready to blame himself for things that didn’t depend on him at all. He has a characteristic that I appreciate very much and he has never considered positive, namely the tendency not to disappear, not to sever relationships with people, except in truly extreme cases. If I look for him, sometimes he responds in a very brisk and almost annoyed way, but after a few days he is the one who shows up as if nothing had happened.  Sometimes when we are in bed together I don't know how to behave, I don't understand what exactly he wants from me. If it's hot, like these days, he wants me to leave the window open, but then he lets himself go and speak aloud in a way too much free and sexualized, and he can't stand me telling him to be quiet because I'm afraid that other tenants in the building can hear us, and he says to me: "Then I'll get dressed and I'll go away!" And he's not joking. Obviously I have to run for cover and he calms down. He tells me that I’m hiding, that I have no courage. He’s not declared as a gay at work, but his friends and in practice many other people know everything about him (and about us too). This, for example, could create problems between us, but we never talk about this. If you like, it’s a second level problem, also because talking about it seriously would require a lot of time that he cannot take away from work.  On a sexual level, there have never been problems between us, we have now found our balance for years, and then he is quite prudent (not always though) that's why we limit ourselves to protected or zero risk things, which he did not like at all before, but then he ended up accepting and now are our unwritten rule. With him, however, sex is not and has never been a problem, what puts me in crisis is the absence of a true dialogue on the things that put him in difficulty, as if he thought that he must solve by himself such problems because talking about such things with me would basically just be a waste of time. In fact, in a way it is, but when I see him nervous, anxious or depressed, I feel really bad.  If I think of him, I think of him with tenderness, in fact he too, from his point of view, has forgiven me a lot of things. He's not vindictive, it's not really in his nature, sometimes he's gruff, unfriendly, I would say rough and I try to be respectful and not to invade his privacy. Sometimes, lately, he uses alcohol and smoking a little too frequently and this worries me, because it had never happened before, he himself tells me these things, but then he doesn’t let himself go beyond the limits of common sense. In one thing, however, he began to lose control and that is his nutrition: he eats too much and tends to gain weight and it shows, and this fact affects him both with the guys he knows and in his work environment, where physicality matters a lot. When I tell him to limit his diet he listens to me, if I talk to him about playing sports (which he used to do before) he doesn't even listen to me, because sport would take time.  A few days ago I met an ex of his who told me about him, this guy didn't know who I was and told me about him without hesitation. He didn't say bad about him, but in my opinion he didn't understand anything about him, he just listed his defects, which I knew very well, but he couldn't see the merits. He saw him as authoritarian, dominant, boss, which he is absolutely not. I've seen him cry many times. His ex-boyfriend tried to control him and all the misunderstandings probably came from there. He has reproached me many times for being hypocritical and not having courage but deep down he was right and I have told him many times that he has an irritating way of doing things and he has recognized it. We have both flaws, but we don't try to be perfect or to appear what we are not.  Perhaps the strongest note of our relationship is sincerity. He tells me: "I’m like this", if it suits you, we can go on, otherwise you can leave your own way. With him there is no distinction between appearance and reality, everything is clear and explicit, he doesn’t act, neither do I. He is blunt on the verge of brutality but doesn’t take offense if you tell him what you think of him looking straight in his eyes. He doesn't answer you in a polemical way, he shuts up, but he remembers what you say to him, that is, he thinks about it, tries to derive something good from your speech and doesn't tend to feel like a victim at all.  I love him as he is, I can have many dreams about him, but I know that dreams will remain dreams, in any case I know that he is there, that maybe a little time will pass but I will see him again and that I can help make him stay a little better. I have a place in his life. We are no longer very young, we have both lived our experiences and we both could have taken other paths, let's put it this way, more normal, yet we are still here and certainly there must be a reason.   A GAY COUPLE AT THE TURNING POINT Posted by: gayprojectforum - 06-14-2021, 11:07 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Today is a turning point. I made love with my boyfriend, but this is not the turning point, we have made love many times even before, the turning point lies in the fact that we have not only made love but we have also talked very seriously about the future, about his future, which in a sense is also mine. I say he is my boyfriend, but in reality he is not a boy but a man who always amazes me and is the most important person in my life. We are not a couple in the classic sense of the word, but in our way we love each other, he has a life of his own, which I respect, even with other people but we have known each other thoroughly for years now and we know we can count on each other. The more time passes the more he allows me to enter his life. Today I can say that there has been an evolution in our relationship. At the beginning but even in the first years I was not sure that things would take this path, I hoped and thought it but there was no security, then slowly things became more and more complex. Both he and I we have been offered interesting but also very uncertain work opportunities  and we had to face very stressful situations because of concern about work and health and we both grew up. Probably these things made us rediscover the meaning of being in two, of not being alone in the face of difficulties. Before we were very centered on ourselves and on our psychological problems, then we were absorbed by work and health problems and we learned not to be demolished by difficulties. In certain periods I have really suffered, because he tried to keep me out of his worries so as not to burden me with part of his problems and prevented me from venting to him, so as not to be overwhelmed by my problems himself. Basically it was a sensible attitude, because neither I could solve his problems nor he could solve mine. When we met it was all about sex and only that, as if everything else had been removed, and that made me uncomfortable. Then slowly things changed, we both entered adult life, with all its complications and gradually we tried to find a balance, both between us and with respect to the needs and problems of work. I was wondering what feelings and what fears he carried inside and slowly he began to open up also from that point of view, he had more patience with me, he no longer got angry and no longer kept me at a distance. Sex between us has also changed meaning, it has become something less standard, less technical, we have found our balance without forcing of any kind, I see him at ease, before, during and after, something that months ago didn't happen at all. I think we have now found a balance as adult men, which is quite another thing, the psychological problems have almost completely vanished. We both have health problems that are not small and problems related to the precariousness of work and we must make choices that could affect our lives. He could go to work abroad for a few years but I see that he doesn't like the idea of a total emotional uprooting in the name of work, he has to make important choices and unfortunately he has to make them in the dark. He told me that a friend of his moved abroad and his girlfriend followed him and I don't think he told me it by chance, in my opinion it was a kind of half invitation to do the same. I have been saving money for three years to set aside a sum that allows me to follow him abroad. My job is less qualified than his and I would have no big problems following him because I think I would also find work abroad without too much difficulty. I’m not his whole emotional life but I think I’m at least a relatively important element of stability. I really dream of a life with him, I don't know how possible it is, but I wouldn’t like to be with anyone else, I have never even had the fantasy of putting myself with another man, because he, in his own way, of course, is always there for me. I don't even know if I would prefer a classic coexistence. I’m not upset by the idea that he can also be well with other people, the relationship we have now has lasted for years and is becoming more and more serious. In fact, there is really a deep contact between us at all levels. At first I thought that time would wear out our relationship but exactly the opposite happened, I had a lot more doubts before than now. Now I have definitively put aside the idea that our story can end and over time our relationship has consolidated. I realize that he too sees that things have changed and have changed for the better. Now, if I see him worried, we'll talk about it, it's true that in the end I don't know what to tell him anyway, that is, I don't know how to give him concrete advice because I don't know his working world. I still have some fear to tell him directly that I would be willing to follow him everywhere. I was close to him when he was really in terrible conditions and he trusted me and I saw him climb the slope step by step and every step he took was also my happiness and this both in health and in work. For me, the fact that he succeeds in making his dreams come true is more important than the fact that I succeed, because I consider him a part of me. And if my life makes sense, it's because he has never disappeared, he has never been aggressive with me. Maybe he would have wanted me to be different from how I am, less anxious and more operational, but then he took me as I am and when I was in a crisis with him, he prevented me from going my own way, put his pride aside and got me made it clear that he loved me like no one ever did. He is not the man of compliments and nice words, he speaks little, he is very disenchanted, he would never tell me that he has faith in me, he has come to tell me that he loves me but only as a reply to my identical affirmation towards him, I cannot hope that he will take an initiative of this kind, he uses his cell phone very little and doesn’t use text messages at all, if he wants to be present he comes in person and never warns before. When we are together I see him very involved. Years ago I thought that sooner or later he would get tired of me, but nothing similar ever happened. My trust in him has increased a lot over the years, now I think he is able to make his choices in a very conscious way and I think that my presence, in those things, is only a marginal argument, I serve, if ever, to give him courage to encourage him to try. When he is too lonely he tends to get depressed and feel like a man who is not worth much. When he is with me he tends to curb my enthusiasm and to emphasize that the problems are many and the certainties very few, but he listens to me. He knows that I think he is a serious and honest man, and in recent months when we have been together we have been really good and above all we have spent more time together, we have talked a lot and very seriously. Before when he came to me I felt a little embarrassed, now it doesn't happen anymore, it seems to me a normal and consolidated reality of my life and I see him perfectly at ease. For me it is a huge satisfaction, it is not a real coexistence but it is the best possible coexistence. I often think I was lucky, I think I could never have found something better, I really think so and he knows it, maybe this is the very basis of our relationship, we started with sex and at first it seemed like we would only limit ourselves to that. Then little by little we got used to the presence of each other, between us we always diminished the meaning of our relationship in words, we kept the level of expectations low but we realized every time that the substance went well beyond the stated limits. Of course he has always felt free, he would never have accepted any bond, but in the end I felt him always present, more or less neurotic, more or less anxious, but he was there. I knew that every eight or ten days I would see him again even though we never made an appointment for the next time. I knew that he could make a mistake in approaching me, that the evening could end with a dark moment of his, and it happened, but I knew that eight or ten days later I would see him again, that the storm would pass without a trace or rather taking away a lot of melancholy. When I was young and thought about what it could mean to have a boyfriend, I imagined something completely different, much less complicated but also much more trivial. The fact that he didn’t let me go, that is, he didn’t allow me to destroy everything for more or less stupid claims of principle, that he never abandoned me to my fate, as everyone I had known before him did, was of enormous value to me. I felt stronger because I was close to a real man, who had made his choices, one who wouldn’t have left me to myself. You know that he is there, he has been there for years and will continue to be there. Speaking with my friends I realize that they don’t understand me, that they consider me a weak incurably romantic, a kind of Pierrot in love with the Moon, they don’t understand that he really is there, it is his physical presence with very few words that succeeds to make me happy. I can't make him happy in the same way, but when he is with me he feels protected, he knows he is loved, you can see it in his eyes and I don't need anything else.   GAY RELATIONSHIPS AND FORCING Posted by: gayprojectforum - 06-13-2021, 07:11 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies This post aims to present some thoughts on forcing in gay relationships. By limiting the discussion to internal forcing of the relationship, I will therefore disregard the intervention of third parties. AFFECTIVE AND SOCIAL FORCING “Nobody comes virgin” at the time of trying to build a relationship. By this I’m not referring only or specifically to sexual relations, but to the fact that each one carries with him the legacy of the previous experience, with its load of myths, frustrations and unfulfilled dreams and therefore with a greater or lesser predisposition to create an emotional relationship. Entering into a relationship means in any case starting a path whose conclusion, a priori, is unpredictable. Many young people try to acquire elements to strengthen their decision by seeking information on their possible partner or seeking reassurance from their possible partner himself, but the predictability and therefore the programmability of an emotional relationship remains anyhow, as a rule, minimal. An emotional relationship is not a game of chess that is played "against" one's partner in order to win him over and which can be won or lost depending on whether the right or wrong moves are made. An emotional relationship aims to overcome individualism in order to gain a unity of purpose that allows us to face a phase of life "together". It is not possible to enter a relationship "conditionally", setting conditions already means not accepting the other for what he is, putting him "a priori" some stakes and limits to be respected. Entering into a relationship means accepting the idea that you have to start building in two and starting from scratch, that is, that every form of individualism, every attempt to prevail and to be right must be put aside to start a journey in two. Entering a relationship with too high expectations means setting yourself up for failure. The ideas of total involvement, of 100% satisfaction, of "all or nothing", are the main enemies of emotional relationships, which can very well be serious and important and at the same time partial and limited, non-exclusive and non-totalizing. This does not mean that we cannot aspire to improve the relationship over time, but that the improvement will have to be built in two and may require a long process and in any case will not have a guaranteed outcome. Entering into a relationship means putting aside any judgmental attitude, something that is easy only in words and goes far beyond not pronouncing judgments. In order not to pronounce judgments it is enough to keep the tongue in check, in order not to judge one needs an attitude of substantial humility, a very rare virtue. Not judging involves a profound respect for the other and the recognition of a common nature beyond any diversity. In this sense, not judging involves putting aside the concept of guilt. When a relationship doesn't start or ends it's no one's fault. False, aggressive and abusive attitudes are forms of lack of control that we perceive when they are manifested externally and that we consider guilty in themselves, if considered in the narrow context of the relationship, but such attitudes always find a motivation in the experience of the other who reacts to similar false, aggressive and abusive attitudes towards him. Those who really want to enter into an emotional relationship must understand that they must not forgive anything, but must only accept, because forgiving means first of all judging, that is, feeling in a role that radically violates the equality that is the condition of any true emotional relationship. Entering into a relationship means accepting that the other can retains his privacy. Asking 100% sincerity means running back into that 100% that is the enemy of emotional relationships. The tendency to know at all costs the past of our possible partner actually hides a judgmental attitude that is a sign of emotional dryness and often also a form of insecurity deriving from lack of trust in our partner. Perfect sincerity is not an a priori requirement of affective relationships or even specifically of couple life, but it is an achievement and presupposes a deep trust in the other, which is never a priori taken for granted but is built day by day. Falling in love does not mean looking for something for oneself, but unconditionally trying to do something positive for the other, hoping that at least partial reciprocity will result. Possessive loves are not loves but forms of narcissism that tend not to understanding but to control the other.   Trust in the other does not consist in believing that the other will be faithful, will cultivate an exclusive relationship, will not have other sympathies or other loves, but in believing that the other will do what "according to him" must be done in every situation, that is, that the other, in conditions of moral freedom, can choose what he thinks is the best.   Attitudes resulting in an "aut aut", "or you accept my conditions or everything is over between us", are completely incompatible with an emotional relationship even at minimal levels. In a "true" emotional relationship, misunderstandings are an integral part of the relationship, when they are overcome the relationship is consolidated, when they are radicalized the relationship becomes a competition between rivals who want to prevail anyway.   Cultivating a serious emotional relationship requires time and availability, which means that to cultivate an emotional relationship "it may" be necessary to sacrifice other things. An emotional relationship involves a choice because time is in any case limited. Those who do not want to make choices but only want to add an emotional relationship to their many daily commitments are like those who want to cultivate a huge garden full of plants and, in summer, cannot water them all, with the result that some inevitably dry up.   In an emotional relationship there are no due behaviors, it is not necessary to manage the economic resources together, it is not necessary to have all the friends in common and everyone can very well keep their own, it is not necessary to know or be accepted by the family of their partner. Requesting such things means that you do not aim to cultivate a relationship with that guy, but to cultivate it "in a visible way" or "as long as the economic resources are managed together" or with other more or less restrictive conditions. An emotional relationship is a relationship between two people whose meaning should not be conditioned by external factors of any kind. In an emotional relationship between two gays, one publicly declared and one not, objective difficulties can be created because, in this case, behaviors prior to the couple relationship, such as the generalized coming out of the declared guy, effectively prevent the undeclared partner from maintain his privacy and this represents an objective and not surmountable forcing, because it pre-exists the relationship.   There is also another kind, much lighter, of forcing, which very often one does not even realizes and it is the forcing towards behaviors with a greater emotional content, for example inducing one's partner to exchange gifts, even inexpensive ones or text messages with emotional content. It's one thing to text your partner lovingly and it's a very different thing to expect him to do the same. It should never be forgotten that affectivity is learned above all in a family environment and that behaviors that look normal to some may appear absolutely strange to others, simply because they have never seen them applied in practice. Affection is also learned in the life of a couple. Generally, couple partners who love each other, even if they start from very distant positions, slowly converge towards a common equilibrium point, and with the passing of months and years they end up assuming very similar mental attitudes and ways of reacting, but all this obviously takes time and can only be achieved in a serious and genuinely gratifying emotional environment. An emotional relationship, at any level, exists only to the extent that it is reciprocal. The absence of reciprocity is not a sign of a pathology of the relationship but of its non-existence.   An emotional relationship cannot be one-sided. It is not easy to distinguish between a weak affective response and a non-existent response, because reciprocity is not manifested through words, on the contrary, the absence of reciprocity is often hidden behind words and even behind behaviors that seem to indicate true involvement and an important affective response .   Often our desires generate fantastic projections that overlap with real situations and modify the perception of facts favoring their interpretation according to our desires, in this way we see what we want to see, we lose contact with reality and we get to not seeing what would be evident in the absence of projective mechanisms. In this way we end up carrying on even for years relationships whose existence is entirely internal to our brain and has nothing to do with reality. FORCING IN THE SEXUAL FIELD   It is too often taken for granted that between two gay guys, in the context of an emotional relationship, sexuality does not present any problem and comes by itself as the most spontaneous and natural thing, but experience does not confirm these assumptions. If on the one hand it is true that in the gay world occasional relationships are a common thing (beware of sexually transmitted diseases!) It is equally true that "in the context of a serious emotional relationship" the conquest of a spontaneous and uninhibited sexuality is anything but obvious.   Sexual experiences inevitably tend to validate certain patterns of behavior, which end up becoming habitual and are in fact the code of behavior followed automatically when you are not in conditions of deep emotional involvement: "I have always done this and therefore also this time I do this." Sex lived on an occasional basis with different partners, who you'll never meet again, favors this simple pattern of behavior, a bit like it happened in sex with prostitutes. On the other hand, when one finds oneself involved in a serious emotional relationship, totally different categories of thought take over, because in this case there is also the fear of compromising the emotional relationship and one is much more cautious in behavior. In practice, the "problem" of sex arises, of when to do it, of how much to do it, of proceeding step by step or forging ahead, of what to do, all this because there is the concern that that sexual involvement, which is anyhow fundamental, may appear excessive or on the contrary too fragile to our partner. Somehow there is a fear of being judged. In such situations it is common to find a true block of communication, in the sense that the topic is taken for granted or considered as not explicitly addressable and the embarrassment increases, and this risks undermining the whole relationship.   Within a couple, it never hurts to talk explicitly about sex as well. Not only is it not a taboo subject, but it is a way to overcome embarrassment and open a less filtered communication. It must be borne in mind that in sexual matters the variability of fantasies and points of view is extreme and so is the variability of previous experiences and subjective interpretations of those experiences.   In no thing as in sexuality is it appropriate to refrain from judging and considering one's own behavior or all of one's fantasies as the absolute yardstick for measuring the behavior of others. Listening and speaking honestly creates an atmosphere of confidence and mutual trust. Reciprocity is a necessary requirement of this type of dialogue, which must be a dialogue between equals, if this does not happen the level of dialogue inevitably collapses and one or both of the partners feel judged. It must be borne in mind that while talking about sexuality in general is certainly easy, talking about our sexuality with our partner with whom there is an emotional relationship is often very difficult, at least in serious terms. The risk of trivializing the conversation moving it away from becoming a tool for building a couple relationship is very real. Building a relationship both on an emotional and sexual level is not easy, it takes time, you need to get to know each other thoroughly. Haste is one of the main reasons for failure. Being in a hurry can mean not being able to understand the needs and times of the other and often it is precisely because of the haste that one is induced to "forcing" in sexual matters. These are not constraints, which would be real forms of violence, but techniques aimed at bringing the relationship "almost to the breaking point". Forcing the partner, considered from the point of view of those who put them into being, are not experienced as forcing, but as forms of insistence, of interest in the other and at the limit of love, that is, as ways to bring the other to express quickly the maximum of his potential. But this assessment is totally one-sided. The realization of couple's sexual harmony certainly does not consist in the fact that one of the partners yields to the insistence of the other but in the fact that a balance is reached between the two. Forcing consists in asking the other to make the maximum effort to adapt, believing that we are exempt from doing what would be up to us.   When the result of a forcing leads to the fact that one of the two partners gives completely space to the other, the one who has obtained what he wanted feels gratified and satisfied and does not realize that the relationship is clearly weakened because his partner he feels neglected and, albeit good-naturedly, forced to yield. A fundamental case of forcing occurs when, breaking a tradition of "protected" intercourses, one of the two partners demands that the other accepts having sex without protection by "blindly trusting" his partner. This is an extremely delicate issue because here it is not a question of making an effort of psychological adjustment but of concretely exposing a guy to a risk that can be very serious. This type of forcing, it must be said very clearly, is not tolerable in any way and can put the weak element of the couple in situations of extreme difficulty, here we are talking about true emotional blackmail of the worst kind, a kind of test of strength, which in addition to exposing people to serious health risks is a real form of abuse that must be opposed putting apart any doubt or swing. In a true love relationship, the other must never be put at risk, for any reason.   Given the above, true "forcing" that is the forcing that can also be rejected and that, if rejected, doesn't involve the end of the relationship but only its redefinition, can also be tolerated if they are episodic and reciprocal, because they can become a kind of characteristic of the relationship. In these cases, it is a question of relative forcing that ends up no longer stressful and that is usually interrupted well before the breaking point of the relationship is reached. Those who experience or rather undergo real forcing inevitably change their point of view towards their partners and end up harboring feelings of revenge and often do not manifest them until these feelings become explosive and the element that appeared weak ends up presenting the bill to his partner. who absolutely does not expect it.   True forcing is always a pathological aspect of emotional life. It should be emphasized, however, that often, those who suffer because of these behaviors don’t wonder about their origin but limit themselves to judging them negatively. In this sense, the so-called weak element of the couple indulges in judgments that can be misleading. Highly imperative individuals often do not even realize that their behavior can have consequences. In the pact of mutual clarity within the couple it is implicit that the partner who realizes the weaknesses of the other (even hidden behind the appearance of strong gestures) must speak with him, helping him to overcome his problems in the perspective of a clear dialogue. By this I mean that in the face of forcing, in general, the best way to go is neither that of condemning it without reserve nor that of passively adapting, dialogue is always the main way and must be attempted in any case, because it often leads to positive results. Taking indisputable and rigid positions can only lead to further deterioration of the relationship.   It should be emphasized that forcing can be at the limit acceptable and not counterproductive when it aims at overcoming the conditions of embarrassment, but unfortunately there are frequent forcing that, knowingly or not, are aiming to modify or remodel the sexuality of the other by inducing (forcing) him out of complacency to accept sexual practices that are not pleasing to him. On this point we must be very clear: any attempt to forcibly change the preferences, attitudes, fantasies or sexual behaviors of another individual constitutes a form of violence and is inevitably doomed to failure. Thinking of modifying a person's sexuality by inducing behaviors that are not spontaneous for that person means behaving like those who intend to transform gays into straight people through reparative therapies. The techniques used to put into practice the forcing deserve a separate mention, such techniques are obviously related to the degree of forcing and to the attitudes assumed by the partners in the couple.   1) Playful insistence, alternating with a smile, amusing jokes and gestures of physical confidence such as disheveling your partner's hair, giving him a light push, wink at him or simply look him straight in the face with a smile. Obviously this mode accompanies the slight forcing that at the limit is not even forcing and implies that you can very well resist the forcing assuming for granted that there will be no consequence.   2) Forcing proposed within a "serious" moment. This modality in itself arouses anxiety and forces the other to an explicit response, aims to reach a quasi-juridical agreement, placing the relationship on a formal level made up of pacts and obligations, which are obviously incompatible with a purely affective dimension.   3) Forcing proposed as an ultimatum. This modality already has the requisites of violence, it is accompanied by a high tone of voice and by facial attitudes that aim to be as explicit as possible and to underline that any non-acceptance of forcing will not remain without consequences. These bosses' attitudes are intolerable and trying to save a couple's life anyway means in these cases explicitly accepting a relationship of dependence whose limits are a priori unpredictable.   Forcing "for retaliation" deserves particular attention, that is, reacting to a wrong that has been suffered or that you believe to have suffered by responding blow for blow. In this case, the legal category of "provocation" is invoked to justify an aggressive behavior that has a substantially vindictive purpose, that is, it aims to settle the score by applying the old rule of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". Retaliation may be partially justifiable if it is short and is not substantially punitive. Otherwise it is a strong sign of crisis in the relationship.   The forcing in the sexual sphere that is perceived by far as the most violent consists in placing drastic constraints on the freedom of the other who intends to interrupt the relationship. This type of forcing, which is an overt violence, could be defined as "possessive violence". When one of the two partners perceives the relationship as unbearable and decides to interrupt it, the other hinders him in every way in the realization of his purpose, with more or less veiled threats of retaliation boasting on his partner a true right of possession, it is a question of a radical exploitation of one of the two partners by the other. These behaviors are highly anxious for the weak partner and keep him in a situation of strong and prolonged stress over time, substantially depriving him of his freedom. These behaviors can lead to real crimes that can be punishable by law. The examples, in the hetero field, are unfortunately on the agenda and can go as far as femicide. In the gay field, episodes of that brutality are very rare but possessive violence and forcing still are nowadays not very rare phenomena.   The most aggressive and devastating forms of forcing take place in the context of cohabitation in conditions of substantial economic asymmetry, because in these cases the forcing is amplified by the substantial impossibility of one of the two partners to interrupt the cohabitation even when he feels its weight as  an unbearable load. Coexistence in situations of economic asymmetry may seem like a way to solve pressing economic problems but it risks, in the long run, turning into a trap from which it is very difficult to escape.   The only way to avoid oppressive forcing is to have an economic independence that allows "in any case" to avoid forced coexistence. Pages (55): « Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 ... 55 Next » Jump to page: