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FREE GAY LOVE SEEN FROM THE OTHER SIDE Posted by: gayprojectforum - 05-18-2021, 01:45 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, I’m 34 years old and for the first time I fell in love with a guy. I've been with several guys and had sex with them but I wasn't really in love with them, but a little over a year ago I fell in love with a guy and it's a completely different thing. Before my first and real falling in love I used to think about what I could have from those guys, while now I think about what I can do for the guy I’m in love with, I’m not looking for a reciprocation from him also because that reciprocation already exists, and is also superabundant, without my asking, at least for the moment, however I'm really happy that there is someone like him. He’s not a saint, he has his faults, sometimes he treats me roughly but with love, at least I think so. He doesn’t make calculations on feelings, he isn’t hypocritical, I found him close to me every time I needed him, he took me seriously right away, three things about him won me over, intelligence, respect for others and immediacy.   He’s a handsome guy, but that is not the note that characterizes him, there are many beautiful guys. He had a difficult life and has a singular ability to penetrate the human soul, to read the feelings of his interlocutor. He doesn’t judge, he doesn’t condemn, he needs to understand, he’s capable of loving in an adult way which for me means in a non-possessive way, he has always left me completely free, he has never forced me, not even in the most light od adulatory way. He doesn’t try to put into practice a code of behavior learned from pornography, but pays attention to his boyfriend, or rather to the guy he is with at that moment and tries to understand him, to go in his direction.   He knows that I’m in love with him and he isn’t afraid or seems not to be afraid that my love for him could be a brake for him. He knows that he is loved for who he is and not for what he does or could do, that there are no conditions of any kind. He knows that I only expect spontaneity from him, without obligations of any kind, and that is why we love each other, it is our choice from moment to moment. The choice of being together as a couple is always reversible, that of loving and respecting each other is absolutely irreversible. He’s the type of man I like, and I’m not just talking about the physical, a guy like him is a model to follow, yet he’s a person who has his frailties, his insecurities. He is not a model of courage or fortitude or even of consistency, but he is a model of balance, in him I find everything I need, or almost: the compliance and the ability to stop me and say no, the common sense in decisions, the patience but up to a certain point, and above all the sweetness, the total absence of aggression, which is something that I appreciate very much.   He told me that he wasn't like that before, that he used to snap, that he reacted very badly but then he changed when we started being together because he saw that I never got angry with him, and then he says that now he is not aggressive because he feels pacified inside. We have never actually quarreled, we have never raised our voices. He wanted me and I didn't even understand why, he really wanted me, or rather me too, not just me, but neither of us ever thought of abandoning the other, at least that's what I think. There is an unwritten rule between us: neither of us asks the other about questions concerning his sex life beyond our relationship, this doesn't mean we don't talk about other relationships, if we can to call them so, that we have or have had, we talk about such things spontaneously if we like, but if we want to keep our private we can also keep it for ourselves and nothing will collapse. In reality we talk or rather we have talked a lot about such things and there have never been jealousies either on his part or on my part. I know that he has had and perhaps has other guys as well, he has never hidden it from me. The only problems (and they are not small problems) arise for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases but on his honesty on this point I would put my hand on the fire. When he had some doubts he told me and we didn't see each other until he took the test, currently he doesn't talk about other guys anymore, I don't know if there are still other guys in his life, but I would be inclined to think that there are none. He knows that I've only had no other guys than him for four years now, and he's okay with that.   I had never desired the presence of a guy as I desire his, perhaps it's for sex, I don’t deny it, but more than anything it’s also for that form of wordless complicity that grows up on the sexual ground, for that immediate and reciprocal understanding, for that knowing each other thoroughly and trust each other. When we meet, which, after all, still happens  a single day a week now, we dedicate a lot of time to sex and the bare minimum to sleep and eat. Generally we are unable to talk seriously in those situations, it is as if sex was an automatic thing and talking to each other was much less so, when we separate it is the worst moment, but not in the sense that we are sorry to separate, because we got used to it, but in the sense that we never fix an appointment for the next time and not because it’s something obvious, but precisely because it is not at all. An appointment is a constraint, a point of reference, let's say a limit to freedom, and we must mutually guarantee our freedom, today we are together, but it is not taken for granted that we will be together again next weekend.   If there is one thing I lack in my contact with him, it is precisely the fact of speaking without fear, I mean fear of breaking the rule of freedom. If I told him "I love you!" somehow I would give the impression of wanting to tie him to the fact that I love him, demanding something in return. I miss his daily presence, the conversation about banalities. We hardly ever talk to each other during the week and we only see each other on Saturday nights. I would also like to do trivial things with him, I would like to share everyday life, but I don’t miss it for objective and external reasons, I miss it because I’m afraid that trying to share all aspects of everyday life could shift the axis of our relationship a little from sex, which now is the very center of it, and I don't know if he really wants such a thing.   When I'm with him a reflection comes to my mind, the statements made in words have a general value, they are like theorems, on the contrary sex is a physical, concrete thing, it is the application of some of those theorems to a particular case, this means that exceptions matter more than rules. Sex doesn’t obey general rules, it’s absolutely subjective, it concerns our relationship with a single person and in a precise moment, it’s not repeatable, it’s not generalizable, it’s not predictable. The variables are so numerous and so little known that in the end one has to put aside all projections and predictions.   Many consider sex as a way to understand another person, but in reality when you truly experience sex with another person, you realize the complexity of sexuality and its substantially incomprehensible dimension. In the end, I don't even know what pushes me to live my sexuality with him, how can I understand what pushes him to be with me? With me and not with another guy, at least at that moment. And even if I can say that there is real sharing and reciprocal transport, spontaneity is anyway held back. It is never possible to truly understand your partner's desires and limitations. Hence the uncertainty, the tendency to slow down not to rush too much, the sense of limit, and this could be one of the reasons that makes our relationship stable anyway.   It is beautiful when we meet on Saturday, they are moments of enthusiasm, sexual harmony is there, but it is very difficult to go further, and then when we separate, the days of waiting begin every time, days that are of real solitude, in practice long pauses between two days of life, empty days, in which a thousand thoughts come to the surface, days in which I think that what I want is something else, that I would like to see him happy to be with me every day, I wish I could wake up and find him next to me, I would like to prepare breakfast for him, I would like - it seems a paradox - even to argue with him in a strong and aggressive way and then make peace, and instead there is the fear of making mistakes, of exceeding our own rules, and so nothing is said, because there is always the doubt: would or wouldn’t he be willing to build a different relationship, more affective, I don't say less sexual, but just more affective?   I feel the detachment between the moments of sexual participation in which he is totally involved and the much colder after-sex moments, in which we never joke and talk very little, almost as if we thought "both of us" that we have done something that basically we shouldn't have done. I have observed over the months that there have been changes in our sexual relations. At the beginning the limits were very tight: no pampering that tastes too much like affectivity, but only sex and nothing else, he didn't want me to run my hands through his hair or touch his beard, then slowly he overcame these things, now he allows me to caress him, but he doesn't do the same with me, if the caresses are explicitly sexual then he accepts them, but if they are simple gestures of affection, I have to be careful not to insist too much because it might bother him.   It's not that we don't love each other, but I think he's not used to affectionate gestures, that those things somehow frighten him, that he feels them as something aggressive, too free, not codified, that he feels them as an attempt to create an obligation, a close bond, capable of taking away or restricting his freedom. The small changes I've noticed in the way we have sex make me think that something is really changing, but I don't deny, Project, that I'm not at all sure things will move forward in this direction. He can't bear to be told that he is a handsome guy, he is almost annoyed by it, he considers these speeches a parody of the speeches a guy uses to seduce a girl. When he talks about us he never uses the word love but only the word sex. But one thing I wonder, but if he is really just looking for sex, why did he choose me? He could have found so many guys better than me, who wouldn’t have created problems of any kind and would have easily adapted to his way of seeing things. And it's not even a problem of exclusive choice, he knows very well that he’s free to go with another guy too, but if he doesn't, as I believe, even if he claims the freedom to be able to do it, in the end he must have a serious motivation.   He tells me that I stimulate him a lot sexually, but in my opinion it's something that doesn't really have any foundation. In sex it’s me the one who follows him and not the opposite. I thought he might really like me because I hardly ever say no to him, and try to understand him. When I see him sad or distant I feel really bad and I think he has noticed it. When we have sex, he’s completely involved. I had never seen guys so involved in sex. In those situations he totally trusts me and seems absolutely and deeply participatory, but after sex he looks like another person, he gets dark, becomes more aggressive in his ways, more ironic, but with a bitter ironic, not towards me but towards himself.   I have a fundamental doubt, now things are like this and I think that the problem lies in the distance and in the fact that we see each other one day a week, the solution, in theory, would be to try to change jobs and to be able to really live with him. For him it is undoubtedly more difficult than for me, then I could also try to change jobs and move to his city, but I would have to sell my house, for which I still have to pay several years of mortgage, and move to his house, but he proposed it to me only in a very vague and probably unconvinced way, and I don't know if it is really what he would like, but I wonder if this living together, instead of making things improve by sharing everyday life, it cannot actually undermine that relationship that now exists and that maybe is based right on the fact that we are 150 km away and that we are both free anyway. Honestly, I don't know how to make a decision, going on as has happened up to now is an unsatisfactory option, but the other option, that is to bet everything on coexistence, I fear it could even be destructive. What do you think about?   GAY RELATIONS AT A DISTANCE BETWEEN JELUSY AND LIGHTNESS Posted by: gayprojectforum - 05-13-2021, 12:57 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, today is Saturday, the day my boyfriend comes to me to spend the weekend with me. I’m 35 and he is 38, we are no longer boys, we have become men. Our story doesn’t present twists or radical turning points, it began in a way that I would never have imagined but after the beginning it has been somehow a story without a real story of facts, even if in my head I have been living a real and rather twisted psychological story. The beginnings, after all, are not very distant in time. At the time I was 29 and he was 32. I liked him, he was a beautiful guy, but objectively, physically, I'm not that great and I thought he was an unattainable goal for me. Concretely I didn't even try to build anything with him, I had the desire to try but nevertheless I never tried. We met through mutual friends, but it was an extremely superficial acquaintance, I didn't even know he was gay and I had no reason to think so. Every now and then I had some fantasy about him because objectively I liked him a lot, but a bit like you do with the beautiful actors you see in the newspapers, but strangely he did everything himself. I wondered what kind of gay radar worked in his case, because my gay radar never worked very well. He probably got my mobile number from some mutual friend, I mean he got it on his own initiative.   One Sunday morning he calls me. At first I didn’t even understand who he was, he tells me that he is Near my house and that if I have nothing better to do we could take a walk together. I don't make him say it twice, let's face it, I almost didn't believe it, for me it was as like if the Charming Prince had gone to see Cinderella. I can't hide the fact that it made me feel anxious, my heartbeat became more frequent, almost up to make me feel breathless. He told me he was happy to see me. Already all this set of apparently so trivial things, to me it had a very intriguing sense, but I was afraid of taking some false step and I didn’t want to upset him for any reason, generally I didn’t trust my gay radar, but in that case it began to send me strong and clear signals but, as I said, it was he who practically did everything.   He told me: "I'm gay, but I think you already understand it ..." I replied: "I'm gay too and if you hadn't understood it now you wouldn't be here, am I wrong?" He looked at me and began to laugh, then added: "Well, the first step is done, in my opinion you have a very remarkable sex appeal ..." I looked at him wide-eyed, as if to say: "Who, me? But can you see well?" He continued: “And then I think you like me. Do you remember the trip to the lake? Well, I have often noticed that you looked at me and that, when I turned towards you, you immediately looked away, or am I wrong? " At that point everything was clear: “No! You're not wrong ..."   We talked about what we do in life, work, friendships and then, very superficially, our gay relationships. He is very direct, something I was absolutely not used to. At one point he looked me straight in the eye and said: "Now I would like to have sex with you ..." I tried to beat around the bush and he said to me: "Ok, okay, not now, but when we meet again we do, ok? " I didn't know what to say, the idea attracted me a lot, but deep down I knew almost nothing about him. I asked him: "Don't you think you're running too fast?" His answer surprised me, he said: "I know you want to say yes, I can read it on your face, but you don't trust ... and you do well, but you will realize that you can trust me, maybe not next time, but soon you will say yes ... and then, if there is a need, I will wait, if I like a guy and I know that he wants to be with me, I certainly won't give up in order to go with someone else… so it's only a matter of time."   After these speeches one would expect the meeting to be practically over, but no, it didn't happen like that at all, we have been talking non stop all day and until late in the night, we had lunch and dinner with a piece of pizza. He has his own way of considering sex, he says that one must not be ashamed of one's desires, even of those, let's say, "more transgressive", this speech alarmed me and I said to myself: "Be careful, because this guy is like all the others and even worse!" and I began to be much more alert and listening rather than speaking.   He continued by saying that finding the right partner means feeling 100% accepted, and here I said to myself: “According to him, 100% accepted means in practice that I have to do whatever he wants… eh no! What a bad start!" He went on: "If someone loves you but doesn’t want you as a sexual partner, in fact he doesn’t love you completely, he is afraid of you, if on the sexual level there is a true harmony, then it can be built everything else too." He says that you can't start with affection hoping that sex will come too, if there is no strong sexual attraction, affection ends up being a something starting from the head. This is an expression that he uses frequently, he distinguishes two types of falling in love, the first one that comes from the head and the second one that comes from the ... (I can omit the word, you certainly understand what I mean!) and according to him the true falling in love, that is the fundamental one, is the second. At first the speech seemed strange to me, but in the end I think he’s not entirely wrong.   We said goodbye at three in the morning, ... and we kissed and not like two simple friends. The last sentence he said to me was: "I would have given you a squeeze there ... the temptation was very strong ..." He hadn’t yet finished the sentence that what he hadn’t done with me I did with him, something I would never have dreamed of with anyone else. Then he too did his part. Then he told me. "Next time I think it will be beautiful!" When I got home, well, I didn't sleep at all and you can imagine what I did. I was not at all upset, according to my traditional models I should have been on guard because in fact he had made some rather strange speeches, I would have had to reflect on what happened and on the potential risks, etc. etc., but I couldn't think of anything like that. I thought about those final squeezes and what the next time would be like, I had no taboos to overcome and I was amazed at this, I never imagined such a thing, yet it had happened, and it had happened to me.   I understood that in order to come to me, without even being sure that I was there, he had traveled 150 km by car and that he would have made another 150 km to return to his house in the middle of the night. If someone does things like that it means that he really cares about it. From the meanders of my brain, however, occasionally some doubts woke up to ruin the party, but those doubts seemed stupid and unfounded to me. On the other hand, I couldn't talk to anyone about what had happened, I had to keep everything to myself. It was the first time ever that I didn’t experience a falling in love coming from the head, but one coming from the … ! I began to wonder what I should do: call him back, talk to him again, or just wait for the next meeting. I kind of took it for granted that he wouldn't abandon the game, I waited for the next meeting which I expected would be the following Saturday.   I remember that I did the countdown for the whole week, I seemed like a sixteen-year-old at the first falling in love, but I was 29 and I felt very excited, really excited even sexually by the idea of seeing him again. On Saturday morning I had shaved with the utmost care, I had chosen a light lavender scent, I had fixed my sideburns and many other things like that. I looked at myself in the mirror and I even felt like a handsome guy, or almost! I tried to imagine what would happen shortly thereafter but my enthusiasm didn’t last long. Saturday morning passes and there is no news of him. Since there were those famous 150 km, I start to panic and then I decide and call him on the phone. He tells me that he is at work and that he will finish at 6.00 pm, then adds: “Prepare spaghetti with tomato sauce for me, I’ll be with you for dinner!“ I tell him to go by car without running, then we say goodbye. All doubts and questions were gone with a 3 minute phone call.   I made the best spaghetti I could, I was over the moon. When he arrived he had a flash in his eyes, as soon as I closed the door he literally jumped on me and I, to tell the truth, have risen to the occasion like him and better than him. It was overwhelming. He didn't act, he was really explosive, the other guys I had been with were absolutely not that spontaneous. He made me a proposal a little too transgressive for my standards and for me it was a moment of panic, I didn't know what to do, I didn't want to oppose him but I didn't want to follow him on a ground that had never been the object of my fantasies, then I decided and told him “no” and he just replied: "Ok!" I liked this answer very much. I expected that between us, because of that no, something could change, but it wasn't like that at all. He is not frustrated, he doesn’t need to prevail, he was more attentive to me than to himself, this is also something that almost never happened with other guys. He looked me in the eye, smiled at me, said stupid jokes and laughed like an idiot, dragging me into laughter too. The transgression argument never came to the surface again.   At one point I asked him: "Did you take the hiv test?" And he replied: "No ..." I didn't know what would follow that no, but he added: "you're right, we have to use our brain, we only have to do non-risky things, I think it will be beautiful all the same ..." I liked this answer very much, I was afraid he could tell me completely different things. And then if a very excited guy who has traveled 150 km to have sex with you tells you that he hasn’t taken the test it means that he tells you things as they are, and this is of enormous value. We did everything that can be done without penetration of any kind, not even oral, then we concluded each on their own. In the end we were really tired and we ended laying down together on the bed naked turned towards each other, every now and then we exchanged a caress, then we started to feel a bit cold and we went to eat the famous spaghetti, made with eggs like carbonara, but it looked more like an omelette, but he liked it very much anyway, at least so it seemed.   We washed the dishes together, it was now eleven and we went to bed together, something a bit complicated because I don't have a double bed but a room with two beds, but even if with some acrobatics we stayed hugging each other in the same bed. After one in the morning he said to me: "Do you mind if I go to sleep in the other bed?" I told him: "Of course you have to go there and in the morning we have to go immediately and buy a double bed and a suitable mattress, so next time we can stay in the same bed ..." He just replied: "Sure! Good night!" The next day we really went to buy a double bed, mattress and bed linen. However, Sunday was a bit sad because he had to leave in the middle of the afternoon. Before leaving he told me: "Were you happy?" I told him: "An unimaginable thing!" and he gave me a light kiss and went away, after about two hours he sent me a text message: "I'm home! You have been beyond all expectations!"   After such an overwhelming start, you will perhaps expect who knows what evolution, and I’m talking about real evolutions you can read in evenements. In reality there has been an evolution and I would rather say an involution, but for my part, and I think it is something inevitable or almost in long-distance relationships, I’m talking about the woodworm of doubt, an ugly beast that eats your brain from the inside. The following week I wait for him but he calls me on the phone and tells me that he is very tired, that he has to work in the afternoon until 6 pm and that he doesn't feel like taking a long trip in those conditions (headache). I tell him that there is no problem and that we will see each other the following Saturday, then in the evening it occurs to me to call him to ask him how he is, but he doesn’t answer the phone and the answering machine starts. And my doubts start with the answering machine: "Why doesn’t he answer? Where can he stay? Is he really bad? Isn't it by chance that he told me a lie to get rid of me because he had better things to do? What do I do? Do I call him back or do I pretend nothing has happened? In short, I enter a state of agitation. The previous week he had traveled 300 km to be with me for a day and a half and the following week he says he has a headache but if I call him he doesn't answer me ... Agitation, frustration, very strong curiosity to know the truth dominated my brain in those minutes . Then I said to myself: “You must never give credit to anyone! It all started like lightning and it will all end in a flash in the pan, if it's not over already."   Evidently he mustn't have looked at the phone, because he hasn't called me back, and he hasn't called me back all week. On Friday evening I expected to receive his call to warn me that he would not be coming and instead he shows up just before midnight. It was as overwhelming as the first time. I didn't tell him anything about the previous Saturday and he didn't talk about it, but he was totally casual, he joked, he played with me, as if nothing had happened, then at a certain point he saw me less reactive and asked me why. I told him about my doubts and he looked at me puzzled and said: “What doubts do you have? If I were not okay with you I would tell you it clearly. If you wouldn't have to work I would tell you to come and stay at my house, I really have nothing to hide.“ I asked him why there was the answering machine and he said he was sleeping and when he sleeps he disconnects the phone to avoid being woken up and added that because I'm so suspicious he won't do it anymore. I confess that I felt stupid, as to risks putting serious things in crisis due to meaningless doubts. I was worried that it would negatively evaluate my doubts. We didn't have sex on Friday night, but he pampered me and there was still a lot of physical contact because he wanted me to understand that he was okay.   The next morning we have been hugged tightly for a long time and it was a very good feeling. But another idea came to me and that was that the first time we had had a lot of sex, although not penetrative, while now we had done very little sex, a sign that something between us no longer worked. He saw that I was a bit dazed and tried to talk to me but the more he tried the more I thought he had put aside sex because he was disappointed in me or maybe because he was thinking of someone else. For a while I didn't say anything to him, but then I couldn't take it anymore and I spoke clearly. He replied: "Sex is a beautiful thing, but from my boyfriend I’m not expecting just sex, sex is essential, but you are not a doll, you are a man and I care about you from all points of view." Again I felt a fool and tried to apologize, but he said to me:" Shut up! Let's be quiet for a few minutes… ”I nodded yes. On Saturday we had sex (always safe) but it felt less engaging to me.   I told him: "Yesterday I said no to you about a particular thing, but if you want we can do it ..." He replied: "What matters is that you stay here, with all your doubts, but you stay here, everything else is completely secondary, we have to find a balance between us. You never have to adapt by principle or by necessity, there is nothing that is indispensable except the fact that we love each other despite the doubts. And then next Saturday we have to go for the test, so you can rest assured. " I wondered what happened to those more transgressive things to which he had referred at the beginning, it seemed to have all vanished into thin air.   Then we started a talk on jealousy. He says that jealousy is an ambiguous feeling, because on the one hand it is a sign of love, but on the other hand it is a sign of possessiveness which is a bit of a denial of love. By now, if I may say so, we have been together for almost 6 years but there is an objective problem that affects us a lot, and that is the distance. He lives 150 km from me, we meet once at my home and once at his, but it's stressful. We basically spend one night a week together but we don't live together. I always carry my doubts with me, and it happens precisely because we don't live together. I must say that we love each other and that my doubts have always been unfounded. Once he left the phone at my house and I started to go through it thoroughly (I had done it before and he didn't look bothered at all), in short, there was nothing in his cell phone that authorized me to think badly: no strange apps and no suspicious addresses, very few phone numbers and practically only people who I also know or whom he talked to me a lot about. Over the course of a whole week only one friend of his called, who was looking for him, I told him that he had left his cell phone at my house and that he should have called him on the landline, but the call was absolutely bureaucratic, this friend was just a co-worker, and then I remembered that he had told me about him and said he is married and has two children, so nothing dangerous from my point of view.   In short, Project, I would like him always with me, a little, I confess, also to control him better, but above all to actually live together. The stress of travel is considerable and when I know that he is on his way to come to me, I’m on edge because I’m always afraid that he may have some accident. Even now that we have known each other for six years, I’m afraid of not fully understanding his behavior, and above all his way of experiencing sex, I fear that he may be discontented, disappointed, I fear that I don’t correspond to his model of sexuality, even if he, in fact, never gave me any reason to think so, but I think it anyway and every weekend, when I mentally make the comparison with the previous weekend, I think that something has been lost. I don't want him to feel me cold, detached or uninterested, because it is exactly the opposite, even if my involvement is different from his.   I realize that when he’s in front of me I fear him a little, but it doesn’t depend on him but on me, it comes to my mind to tell him something but then I don't do it so as not to upset the balance. In recent months, he has started to eat a little too much and is gaining weight, I had thought about telling him to be careful with the diet, but then it seemed like a rebuke, something that could hurt him and so I decided to keep my thoughts for myself, while perhaps facing the problem could have been of any use. One aspect that worries me a little is the fact that he jokes less and less, I would not like to have infected him with my melancholy, he talks to me, but the speech is difficult, when he is in a moment of melancholy the silence takes over and communication ceases completely. I'm afraid he doesn't trust me, however, I repeat, I feel he loves me even in the gray moments, in those moments he is probably not happy with himself and would like something else that he cannot even define.   In recent years he has changed a lot. He pampers me a lot with words, with caresses, with taking care of me but he doesn’t allow me to do the same with him, or rather, he allows me to do so but he fends off, he is almost ashamed of his moments of weakness, he’s reluctant to do cuddle. When having sex the enthusiasm is there and it is strong, but afterwards the melancholy takes over. Basically I find him less direct and instinctive than before, I would say less happy. He is objectively not melancholy but when he’s with me some melancholy comes to the surface. I’m afraid of all these things. If I talked about it with him I would end up involving him in my paranoia, to put on him only unnecessary anxiety and worries, but if I went on as I always did, that is, keeping everything to myself, I would end up keeping him at a distance from my deepest world and this would clearly be unfair, because he goes out of his way to make me feel like a king and is 100% honest with me. What do you think about, Project?   CHRONICLE OF AN ANNOUNCED GAY DISASTER Posted by: gayprojectforum - 05-06-2021, 02:46 PM - Forum: Gays and religion - Replies (1) Hi Project, some time ago I thought of sending you an email about gay couples, because the topic interests me personally, but this email has a completely different origin. I’m 32 years old, I'm gay, I don't know if I have a partner or not, and I thought that my so to speak "problem" was a particularly serious problem, but that was until I realized that I can consider myself very lucky. I have a group of friends, whom my "partner" and I have been dating for years now. We always thought we were the only gays in the group. The others know it, or at least I think they understood it, no one has ever talked about it, neither us nor them, but they should have understood it, I think. Among the friends there are some very outgoing, both guys and girls, and some a little more reserved. I and my "companion" we are radically secular, I mean that we are not believers, the Church seems to us something completely foreign and even hostile. With this Pope, perhaps a little less, but it is still a world very far from our way of seeing things. In the group of friends there are also Catholics, let's say so "normal" that is without too much enthusiasm but who still recognize themselves in those environments, but there is also a guy, whom I will call Paul here (because he always mentions St. Paul!) With whom the speech, both on my part and on the part of my "partner" has always been very difficult. He had had a girlfriend for years, always known in a Catholic environment. I would like to make a premise: my "companion" and I don’t feel Catholics but we don’t hate anyone and don’t have radically secular and priest-eating presuppositions. We also met priests worthy of the utmost respect, I mean worthy of the utmost respect even from non-believers like us, because in the end what matters is not what you say but what you do. I say this to clarify that we don’t have a spirit of repulsion towards all Catholic circles, because saying Catholic can mean everything and the opposite of everything, as on the other hand also saying gay can mean everything and the opposite of everything. I go back to Paul. Ever since I met him, Paul has shown me a kind of detachment, let's say of splendid isolation. There was also talk, every now and then, but only about trivial issues, he, in the group, had his friends, the most radically Catholic ones, and since he had heard me say my opinion and didn’t like what I said, he kept me at a distance, but it was only he who behaved like that, with his "Catholic" friends I had an excellent relationship, we joked and talked about everything, with him no, the dialogue was minimal and limited to obvious things, he did not mix with those whose thoughts were more or less different from his opinions. Then my partner joined the group and Paul had a minimum relationship with him, because my partner is much more prudent than me, and having understood immediately who Paul was, he was careful not to say what he thought. My partner considered Paul a somehow closed guy, a little fixated on religion, but all in all a "pretty nice" guy. With our group of friends we didn't say we were a gay couple, I think most of the friends didn't care about it, so we didn't talk about it, but we had with each other a behavior a bit too loose to be just a couple of friends. Paul always came with his girlfriend but he did things that I didn't understand and that bothered me, he scolded his girl in public for things that seemed completely meaningless to me, he silenced her by making her look stupid, I asked myself why the girl tolerated all this, if I had done with my partner the tenth part of what Paul did with his girl, my partner would have made me fly out of the window. One day we begin to talk about life as a couple, "normal" Catholic friends said things that were all in all acceptable or almost even for me and my partner, but those things at a certain point triggered Paul who left in a hurry against a girl who dared to argue that premarital experiences are fundamental and can avoid "bad marriages". Paul jumped at the very expression “wrong marriages” and began to quote Saint Paul. At which my partner and I exchanged a look of understanding, as if to say: "But this really comes from the Moon!" Then the girl told him that one must not passively suffer the attitudes of parents and at this point Paul got really warm saying that "honor your father and mother" is a commandment and that we must never forget it, etc. etc.. A girl said to him: "if my mother wants to meddle with my business and wants to tell me what guy I have to put up with, I can't sit and listen to her ruining my life, she has had her life, mine is mine!" Then Paul slipped on the gay topic and said really absurd things, that straight couples must be "serious" because they have to collaborate in God's plan by putting children into the world and they cannot do "like gays" who only think about "having fun". This expression really got on my nerves, I exchanged a knowing look with my partner and then I said to Paul: “Do you realize what a nonsense you are saying? But do you have gay friends? " He looked at me and said, "I've never had gay friends!" and I said to him: “No! It's not true! You have a gay friend and it's me!" My partner intervened and said:" You have two gay friends, the other is me!" Project, you won't believe it, but Paul thought we had agreed to make fun of him and he didn't believe in the slightest that we were gay… for him, gays are just another zoological species. Then, carried away by his incredulity, the others also considered our declaring ourselves as a way of making fun of Paul. All this happened about two years ago. For a few months now, things have changed a bit, Paul considers my partner and me to be two jokers friends, but 100% straight, otherwise he would never have accepted our friendship, but we had the opportunity to talk to him even a little more seriously. Project, my partner and I are really thinking that Paul may be gay. He always goes around with the girl behind him, or rather in tow, but I see our straight friends what behavior they have with their girls, well Paul's behavior is totally different: never a caress, a cuddle, but never even a nice word for the girl, who evidently doesn't count for anything in Paul's world, or rather counts as something that brings him back to a heterosexual model, with whom, however, it is evident that he has nothing to do. My straight friends, both guys and girls also talk about sex, they don't talk too much about it but it happens and they talk about it as the most obvious thing in the world, Paul never talks about it, he avoids the topic in a systematic way. The others talk about homosexuality as well. In Paul's speeches the words: gay or homosexual never appear, not even by mistake and the call to religion is only seen in terms of restraint and limitation, never in terms of liberation or enthusiasm. I talked about it with my "partner" and we came to the conclusion that we could "maybe" tell him about us, assuming something that wasn't granted at all, that is that he was able to understand that our statement was not a joke. We also tried, but every time he noticed that something like this was about to happen he disappeared immediately. My partner and I don’t go to church, but a couple of our friends who go to the parish instead told us about a sermon given by one of the priests who said that “marriage is the remedy for concupiscence” but did not refer the speech to straight people, as usually, but he generalized it by saying that “marriage is also the remedy for homosexuality”, an expression that manifests the most radical ignorance in matters of sexuality. The couple of our friends who were present had the impression that the speech was not generic but that it was meant for Paul who was there in the front row and didn’t move an inch until the end. My two straight friends probably thought what my partner and I had suspected, but in a similar situation what do you do? Do you face Paul directly? Or do you tell the girl to be careful and figure out whether or not it’s worth going further? My partner and I talked about Paul with this couple of friends and they told us that the priest who had said those things was considered a "somewhat strange" and problematic character even by the parish priest who had tried to limit his sphere of action. Everyone in the parish avoided him, except Paul, who was enthusiastic about him. What evidence did we have? Virtually no hard evidence, but the four of us had the same feeling. We concluded that taking Paul head on was not feasible and that we could only bring the discussion to these topics to see Paul's reactions, and we did, but there was no reaction at all. The straight couple of friends started from the need for absolute honesty in marriage, saying that each of the spouses must know everything about the other and that deceiving the spouse means using him/her and ruining his/her life, but Paul was a rubber wall, he didn’t even listen. We noticed another thing, for quite some time, every now and then Paul made some shots at gays even in our presence because at the beginning he thought that we were actually straight, then the phrases about gays disappeared completely and the topic was 100% censored. The straight couple tells me that Paul says the same things that the somewhat strange priest says and that the idea of marriage as an "ideal of chastity" is starting to become one of Paul's workhorses. One day my partner and I talked seriously about it and decided to take action, but before putting our project into practice, the straight couple of our friends told us that "during mass" the priest a little strange announced the date of the marriage of Paul with his girlfriend. At which, after having meditated for a long time, thinking that by now Paul was no longer recoverable, we decided to desist, and we said to ourselves: “Can we prevent an announced disaster? … Unfortunately not! Everyone is free, even to make mistakes and do damage.“ We also told ourselves that basically we didn't have any proof or admission from Paul, but seeing his face after the marriage banns, the answer was more than obvious. A guy who's about to get married should be beaming but he wasn't like that at all. Paul somehow knew he was going to trap himself and was going to throw the girl too into the same trap. Paul told us that he intended to limit the ceremony only to close family members, evidently he knew well that for his friends, and in particular for four of his friends, going to the wedding would be embarrassing and therefore he avoided any embarrassing situation a priori. The wedding was officiated outside the parish by the somewhat strange priest. Of course, our assessments can be completely wrong ... we will simply never know, because " What God has joined together, no person is to separate!" Although sometimes this phrase is a real blasphemy. After the wedding we didn't get any news about more about Paul and his wife. They have disappeared into thin air.   A TRUE FREE GAY LOVE Posted by: gayprojectforum - 05-02-2021, 10:38 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, I have read the forum far and wide and I also want to bring my contribution on gay couples. Frankly, after so many years, I can say that I have completely put this concept aside. I speak of many years because I’m moving towards 50, I have exceeded 45 and I’m now at the age in which people begin to take stock of their own life. As a boy, 30 years ago, I was very reserved, very shy, complexed by sex and very attached to a gay mythology, pass me the term. I have fallen in love many times, I would say too many times, and just as many times I have been forced to downsize everything, because my hypothetical boyfriend was straight (it happened several times), he was a collector for whom I was just one of many, or simply because the guy on duty had no intention of building a real relationship with me, more or less like: "Sex yes, as much as you want, but then get out of my way!" I’m not giving you a catalog of those obsessed with sex of a certain type and only with that, of those Catholics who first have sex with you and then blame you for everything and accuse you of having led them on the wrong path, because "they are not gay and want to have a family etc. etc.", I also spare you those of the worst category, that of jealous possessives, who spy on you, who demand from you an unquestioning obedience and of those possessive affective who want to make you a satellite of their galaxy by dint of emotional or sexual blackmail, taking for granted that they have the right to choose your friends, to decide which movies you have to see, to plan your holidays, etc. etc.. And then there is the category of the chronic undecided, of those who can say no more than “but and perhaps”, or even worst yes but with reserve, and no but with reserve, which is even more absurd, I call these people those of: “Mom! Mark touches me! ... Get busy, Mark, touch me! Mom is looking the other way!" In the end, when I was 40, I got bored of that strange zoo and said enough! If I ever find a normal guy and something really acceptable really comes out, okay, otherwise it's better to stay alone than badly accompanied!" I have unsubscribed from certain sites and I have deleted certain apps. There is no need to tell you which ones. I limited myself to use some porn and I was content with that, because, let's face it, I have always been a hypochondriac and I have never put myself at risk, that is, when I had sex with a guy I was very careful not to pass the guard limits and when I said no my no was indisputable, and many guys just didn't accept this, for them I was a strange, obsessed, etc. etc.. After putting aside the idea of finding a partner, I did something else, I worked, I started a small private business, very small but that gives me satisfaction and absorbs most of my time.   At 42 I met a guy who was 12 years younger than me, he was a guy different from the others, prudent in speaking and with a way of doing that I liked, never aggressive, he was also a handsome guy, as well as intelligent, but all this observing and reasoning for me meant no more than that there are still beautiful and smart guys, but nothing at all more than that. I thought that that guy belonged to a world far from mine, in practice I didn’t even think that between us there could be more than an exchange of four words of courtesy, I was convinced that he was straight, in short, for me he was and I thought he would remain a perfect unknown. I met him for the first time in my accountant's waiting room and we talked a little about a lot of general issues, but just to pass the time and, after that episode, we didn't see each other again for a couple of months and practically I had completely forgotten about him, then towards the middle of December, on a day when I had a lot of problems on my mind, I met him by chance on the train, while I was going to Milan for problems related to my little enterprise, he was in the corridor of my wagon, and we started talking. After a few minutes he came to my compartment, it was morning and there were very few people, there were just the two of us in the compartment and the time to spend on the train would be at least of another three hours. I completely forgot about my problems and spent those three hours like I was surrounded by a pink cloud, the compartment seemed to me an enchanted environment, but also substantially unreal. We were both headed to Milan, he lived in Milan and worked there, but he often came to Rome, where his parents lived. I have never been a conqueror, with the guys I have always been very awkward but with him I felt at ease, let's face it, I was not embarrassed because I simply thought that I would never see him again, I had no plans about him, not even at the level of minimal imagination. I had to stay three days in Milan and I hadn't booked the hotel, because I would have found a hotel anyway and he told me: “But if you have to stay three days in Milan, stay at my house, it's small but comfortable, in the heart of the city." At the station we separated because he had work commitments and I too would not be released before 19.00. We made an appointment for 7.30 pm under his house, obviously we exchanged mobile numbers. At 7.30 pm I am in [omitted] street and he already stays there with a plastic bag in his hand, he tells me: "I got something for dinner ..." The house was tiny, only one room, but everything was in perfect order, We enter the kitchenette and he goes to the stove, prepares two plates of spaghetti and puts chicken and potatoes from the rotisserie in the oven, in the meantime we talk, but always about very general things. The atmosphere is familiar, for a moment I had the feeling that with that guy as a mate I would have felt at ease, but such an idea seemed a thousand miles away from reality. After dinner, he washes the dishes in a flash and then tells me that he is very tired and that he would like to go to sleep. In the room there are two beds, he points to mine, we get ready for the night and go to bed, but despite the tiredness we start talking and go on until late at night. It was the first day I talked to that guy, I felt at ease and the situation didn't seem strange at all to me. I swear to you, Project, I was convinced that he was straight and I carefully avoided any reference even vaguely gay. He had a beautiful voice, damn sexy, but in my opinion he was straight ... and the whole discussion remained on very general issues, in practice we never went into private questions. He never talked about girls as I never talked about them, but at the moment I couldn't give the slightest weight to such a fact. He had a few books in the house but they seemed to me the classic straight books, let's say, there were no photographs or paintings, none of this. In the morning the alarm goes off at seven o'clock. He immediately gets up and goes to the bathroom, I hear the water running from the shower but it doesn't make me hot or cold, then he leaves the bathroom and goes into the kitchen. I go into the bathroom, he opened the window and it's freezing cold, but it's all clean, before going out he dried the whole shower and changed the towel. I shower quickly and then I dry everything, as he had done, when I leave the bathroom I find breakfast ready. He tells me that he would be out ten minutes later so as not to be late for work and that if I wanted I could stay at home, he gives me a set of keys and just tells me that when I go out I have to close the door. He would be back around 7.15 pm, then he waves his hand to me and leaves. I was alone in his house, I had the keys to the house, I could have poked around a bit, even if there was very little to poke. I choose a different way, I make the beds, both his and mine, his retains a sensitive trace of his perfume. I wash the breakfast cups, fix what little there was to fix in the kitchen and then go out for my meetings of work. At 6.00 pm I send him a text message: "Don't take anything for dinner, I'll take care of it." I go to the rotisserie and buy something, adding also a bottle of Tuscan wine, then I go back to his house, put the water on a low heat and set the table. A few minutes before 7.00 pm he arrives and seems very happy to find everything settled, a spontaneous smile comes to me, but he doesn't talk about the house fixed and the dinner ready, instead he asks me with a questioning face where I am with my work schedule in Milan, the question sounds strange to me, I interpret it as if he wanted to tell me that if I did what I had to do, I could as well come back to Rome immediately, I stop smiling and with a serious and quite rude attitude I answer that in practice I have done everything I had to do to do and that I could come back to Rome even in the same evening because I would just have to change the ticket. He seems not listen to me and goes on his way as if I hadn't said anything: "I don't work tomorrow morning, if you want I'll show you some beautiful things in Milan." I wasn't expecting that answer and he must have seen looking at my face that my good mood was back in its place. Evidently we still didn’t trust each other, we were looking for confirmations and misunderstandings were still possible. I make the story short, my second day in Milan was very nice, I seemed to have always known that guy, we had lunch out, we came back in the evening and we talked until late before falling asleep. The third day was short and we only met early in the morning, he had to work until 7pm and I had my train at 11.30 am. I gave him back the house keys and we said goodbye with a handshake. Shortly before the departure time he sent me a text message thanking me for the beautiful days he had spent with me. I told him that I was expecting him in Rome as soon as possible and that if I returned to Milan I would let him know. I took the train, I tried to rearrange the memories of those hours spent together, and there it occurred to me that this could be a model of life as a couple, but in reality I knew very well that it was just fantasy. Anyway, I assumed he was straight, and I thought he too had taken me for straight. After about 10 days he calls me back, tells me that he will come to Rome the next day and asks me if I can host him, he explains that he had to go to his parents but that he anticipated his departure by one day to spend that day with me, his parents knew that he would arrive the next day and therefore from the next day he would stay at their house, but he wanted to spend one day with me. The next morning at 11.00 I go to pick him up at the station and take him to my house. Needless to say, I had cleaned up and fixed everything and made all the gay clues go away. Shortly before noon we are home, I had prepared a room for him, but he tells me that he had come from Milan to talk to me and that this would not have been possible this way. That’s why we move his bed to my room, then we have lunch, he notices that everything is prepared with the utmost care, he tells me that my house is much bigger than his and also much older, in fact I live in an old area of Rome and in a building that I think dates back to 1700, a building of only two floors, with ribbed vaults made of bricks, it was a family home when those houses were poor people's homes, then, over time, they became houses for tourists, if opportunely restructured, my apartment needs to be restructured but there is no money to afford a such an expensive project. In the afternoon we go for a tour of the city and above all of the places where tourists don't go, in the evening he doesn't want to eat out, we go home, prepare a quick dinner and then we go to talk in the the living room. He tells me his story but in a very concise and incomplete way, deliberately trivializing, as if it were a set of obvious things, and I’m listening to him with the utmost attention. I can see that he is at ease, at least relatively or, better, I can see that he is not afraid of me, but he is exploring the terrain, he doesn’t tell me anything particularly significant, but it is in that situation that I start to think that the relationship I have with that guy could be something more complicated than it appeared to me at the beginning, I listen to him but I start asking myself questions, I realize that we have never talked about women and somehow I start to expect that the speech will end with some important statement, but at some point he tells me that he is tired and that the next morning he will have to get up early and so we go to sleep without having said anything at all. I don't understand why he made me bring his bed to my room but in the end I prefer not to ask myself too many questions. The next morning we have breakfast together, then he greets me with a handshake and leaves. I quickly delete any alternative hypothesis from my brain and say to myself: “But what the hell of nonsense have I been thinking about? Gays see gays everywhere! And I'm no exception." Three weeks later I happen to have to go to Milan again, I call him and tell him, he seems happy, he tells me that he will not be able to come to the station and that we will meet directly at 19.30 pm near his house. The phone call is very short, I feel that he is busy. I think I have to repay him and I buy him a scarf, an object, as a way of saying thank you. On the journey to Milan I begin to ask myself many questions and even to feed some expectations, I thought that finally we would be able to "perhaps" speak clearly because the whole story had very little of ordinary. At 19.30 pm we meet in his house, and as the previous time he took something from the rotisserie for dinner. At home I immediately notice that he is upset, that he is not in a good mood, I try to ask him some questions but he dodges any questions and talks about something else. A call arrives on his cell phone, he looks to find out who the call came from but doesn’t answer and turns off the cell phone. I think it is a courtesy to me, but he tells me that he has had too much trouble today and hopes to relax at least at home. He behaves strangely, he's not like the first time, he's kind but also unfriendly, to the point where I tell him: "If you need to be alone, no problem, there is a hotel here 200 meters away ... ." He looks at me and says: "No ... you have nothing to do with my problems, they are work problems only ..." But I don’t have the impression that they are just work problems. However, he cuts the speach short. We finish dinner and he tells me that he is very tired and wants to go to sleep. We don’t stay talking like the first time, I feel almost as an unwelcome guest, perhaps not really so, however he remains closed in his world, that is, in his bad mood. The next day we say goodbye rather coldly. I have to leave for Rome before noon. This time I don’t receive any text messages before departure. On the train I repeat myself many times that I mustn’t let my imagination run wild and that I will do well to stay in my world. I promise myself not to call him when I have other opportunities to go to Milan and on this, at least at that moment, I have no doubts. I arrive in Rome and he calls me on the phone to apologize, it is something that I don’t expect at all, I’m positively impressed and I come to the conclusion that after all everyone can have some dark moments and that his problems come probably precisely from work matters. We haven't heard from each other for almost a month. I thought he had forgotten about me and in a sense I was also happy, because that way I too could have put a stone on it. Then, quite unexpectedly, he calls me one morning before 7.00, tells me he will be in Rome the next day and asks me if he can stay with me. Obviously I tell him yes, but inside I'm not at all enthusiastic about it. Anyway I tell him yes. I’m tempted to make him weigh the way he had treated me in Milan the previous time, then I tell myself that such a thought is really mean and childish and I force myself to organize everything exactly as the previous time. I go to pick him up at the station, he is visibly happy to see me and I’m also happy to see him again, I ask him if he should go to his parents the next day but he tells me that he has taken three days off and that he has come for me, this raises inside me many questions to which I don’t know and daren’t answer. In practice he would have stayed in Rome for three days, something that I absolutely didn’t expect, he realizes my perplexity and tells me: "If I create problems of any kind for you, just say it, I'll leave immediately ..." I look at him and tell him: "Be quiet! Now I’ll arrange my schedule, please don't make that face!" I picked up the phone and in a quarter of an hour I organized my three days off. This is the advantage of those who are small entrepreneurs like me, indeed I should say very small! When I close the phone he wants to restart with the fact that he can go away immediately, but I tell him peremptorily: "If you came here you will have a serious reason ..." He looks at me and says: "Give me time ..." He stretches out on the sofa in the living room and I feel that he is about to tell me something important. He says to me: "You understand, isn’t it?" I actually didn’t understand what, according to him, I should have understood and I absolutely didn’t want to say nonsense, but I could not be pretending to be stupid because I would have embarrassed him, and I replied: "Well, more or less, I think yes… ”I thought (I hoped) that he could tell me that he had fallen in love with me, that I was important to him, but it was nothing like that. He tells me: “My boyfriend dumped me ... I was fine with him, but I was deluded and yesterday he dumped me. When you last came to Milan I was already out of my mind because he treated me with indifference, but now he really sent me to the hell ... " In a few minutes I had gone from the role of the one who expects a declaration of love to the role of the one who has to do as a comforter, however, in a sense, I felt reassured by his statement, even if it may seem paradoxical. I try to let him speak and to intervene as little as possible. He feels cheated by his ex. He gives vent to his bad mood at least a little but then it is clear that he expects some serious answer from me. I do as he did, I completely avoid preambles and tell him: “When a story ends it always seems like a failure but it can be a liberation. It is better to know how things really are than to go on in the dark. You have only lost an illusion. " He looks at me disconsolately and tells me: "I know, but I was hurt and a lot." I decide to get out of the ambiguity and to do, me too, my coming out and I tell him: "Something practically identical happened to me too, he left because he was looking for something that I was not able to give him" After this mutual coming out I fully entered my role as a comforter. I told him: "Come on, help me to cook something better!" He looked at me smiling and said: "Ok!" I was wondering what he expected from me, what the limits of my role must have been and I was very confused about this. The only possible way seemed to me to act with the utmost prudence, or rather with the utmost respect for him. We still had two days to spend together and I didn't know what to do. We cooked, had lunch, washed the dishes together, then it occurred to me to ask him if his parents knew about him. He replied that his parents are good people and that they always worked hard for him but he did everything to finish his studies as soon as possible and to go to work in another city, because he wanted to have some autonomy and eventually managed to get it. He has no brothers or sisters and also for this reason the relationship with his parents was very close and almost suffocating. He has maintained a good relationship with his parents even if he cannot speak clearly with them, he goes to visit them more or less once every two months but for the rest of the time he stays in Milan and keeps in touch with them only via skype. He told me: "My family is a normal family for better and for worse." After the talk about the family I didn't know what to say and how to go on and the mutual embarrassment felt very strong. He too no longer knew what to say and how to behave, now we knew that we were two gays who liked to talk together, it was evident that both him and me had thought that we could have taken a step further, but the fear to ruin everything was so strong that it was paralyzing. I propose that we go out in the afternoon to take a tour downtown. He replies that he didn’t come to Rome to be a tourist but to be with me, a very ambiguous expression in itself, but behind which, in those particular circumstances, anything can be implied. We begin to talk about our gay experiences, but it was evident that the talk was only to fill the time, and it was equally evident that there was not much to tell. Some stories, yes, really non very few, but basically nothing serious. I asked him what he wanted from his life and he said he didn't know. He got up seemingly to come and sit next to me, but he didn't, he turned around and went to sit in his armchair again. Then he asked me: "Why do you think I came here today?" I replied: "Because you were very upset about that guy and you wanted to talk a little." But he stopped me and said, "Just for that?" I told him: "I hope not ..." then he came and sat next to me, took my right hand and shook it hard almost up to  hurt me, then he leaned his face against it, I passed my hand through his hair, and he said to me: "Let me stay like this for five minutes and that's enough ..." I remained silent to caress his hair, then he leaned on my shoulder and didn't say a word for very long minutes. I felt his warmth, his physical presence, but also his discomfort, his uncertainty. At one point he stood up, looked troubled, dark in the face, some bad thought must have crossed his mind. I asked him: “What is it? Something wrong?" He only replied: "Nothing ...", then he newly shook my hand hard. I think he too clearly perceived all my uncertainty, then his phone rang, they were looking for him for work problems and he spoke on the phone for a long time, opened his super-tech laptop and got in touch with his office. I left him alone, in the meantime I made coffee and brought it to him with some biscuits, he answered me with a smile and I went to prepare some dinner until the end of the phone call. When he finished he apologized and I said to him: "But for charity! No need to apologize if you have to work!" Then, one of his unexpected questions came to me like an arrow, or better like a flash, a question I didn't expect at all, he asked me: "Why didn't you try to go further when we were on the couch?" I felt caught off guard and simply replied: "Because I never wish you could feel forced in any way." He looked at me and said: "I thought exactly the same thing about you ..." And we hugged each other very tightly. Feeling the physicality of a guy who wants you is a very strong feeling, they are not words but it is his body. The embrace was very intense, desired, profound, it was already a way of being no more alone. I thought that after it was all downhill road but it was not so. He was hugging me but he wasn't really happy. I told him: “I see you upset…” He broke away from me and said to me: “I have to tell you… I'm thinking of another guy, and I wish he was here now. Somehow I expected a speech like this and I told him: "Well in a situation like this very few people would have the strength to make a speech like this, I appreciate it very much, because it is an honest speech." I saw myself being brought back into the role of the comforter again, but it didn't seem to me like a secondary thing at all. After all, a relationship of total clarity had developed in a very short time, which is something more unique than rare. But that clarity had not put anything in crisis, on the contrary, it had strengthened a bond that was now taken for granted by both sides. We cooked together and the harmony was perfect. We looked like an affiliated surgical team. After dinner he told me that he was feeling very tired, even though it was not yet ten o'clock. He goes to the bathroom and then gets on the bed, calls me, wants me to put the armchair next to the bed and to sit in my armchair, he says: "If you want ..." I smile and tell him: "Of course I want!" and I sit next to him. He has two wonderful eyes, the kind that steal your soul. I stroke his hair for a few minutes and he falls asleep. He evidently felt safe and did not feel conditioned in the least. I go to sleep too. In a very short time our relationship had become very important, I was happy that he was there and he had come from Milan for me. I thought It wouldn't easy to get asleep because of the crowding of thoughts but things went differently and I slept very well. I got up in the morning at 7.00 and made breakfast, then I went to wake him up, he stretched like a cat and gave me a beautiful smile. I told him: "Breakfast is ready!" He got up and came to the table in his pajamas. At a certain point he said to me: "Aren't you mad at what I told you last night?" I motioned him to shut up and eat and he nodded yes. I tell him: "Today I'll take you to the Pigorini Museum at EUR and I think you'll like it a lot!" I briefly explain to him what it is and he seems very interested. The visit to the museum gave me a clear idea of the cultural depth of that guy. He is an engineer but he knew a lot of things about prehistory, Neanderthal man, geological periodizations and a thousand other things. Ours was not a running walk through the museum, but a decidedly careful and very selective visit, especially oriented towards the prehistoric sector and less towards the ethnographic one. We got home when it was almost three in the afternoon, but we had taken something to eat from the rotisserie and lunch took a short time. Just after lunch, a moment of mutual embarrassment took over, it was necessary to break the ice. I didn't want to do any damage and neither did he, but then he took the initiative and I followed him immediately. I hadn't had a lot of sexual experiences in the true sense of the word but I too had minimum of experience (and he too), but, as far as I'm concerned, being with him was just a totally different thing, it was all spontaneous, of course, there wasn’t the slightest embarrassment, in short, with him I was "fine" I felt serene, understood, accepted, important and I saw him at ease. But there was a moment that deeply troubled me. When we finished he had wet eyes but I didn't dare ask him why. The next day the thing was repeated, even if in a minor tone, I tried to explore the ground, he smiled at me, stroked my face and did not speak but his sad eyes spoke for him. On the afternoon of the third day we said goodbye very warmly but he was serious, thoughtful and I could say sad. I sent him a text message to say thank you and he replied with a phrase that made me tremble: “I don't know if I did well. Forgive me." I calculated the time it would take to get to Milan and called him. He told me he had just arrived home. I told him I was worried about those phrases and he said to me: "I must not deceive you, because you could feel terrible ... "I told him that I’m not deluded at all but that I love him, that he was 100% honest with me and that he should not feel bound in any way, because his freedom, for me, it is sacred. He added: "But when I told you that I wasn't thinking about you but about my ex, well I think it was like a stab for you ..." I told him: "No, it's clear that you keep thinking about that guy and that you might also think of other guys, but it's not that I can love you less for this, I love you for who you are and for how you treated me, nothing like this had ever happened to me ... "He replied:" Well , but you have to keep in mind that I can't guarantee you anything, because I'm a very fickle guy… ”I told him he doesn't have to guarantee me anything, God forbid! At the end of the phone call he told me he didn't know if he would call me in the future and I replied: "If you don't do it, I'll do it for you, you just have to answer ..." And he said to me: "You can count on that!" and the phone call ended like this. He didn't show up for a week so I called him. He was happy. He told me that he had seen his ex-boyfriend again and that they were trying to get back together. But the tone didn’t seem to me that of a guy in love, he insisted a lot on verbs like try, strive to and so on but in fact the enthusiasm was not there. I had to be careful not to intrude on his important stories, but I had many doubts as to whether those were really important stories. However, I felt out of the game and I retired in good order, I didn't call him for a week and then he called me, he seemed more serene, he had no problems to talk to me, he just assumed that his getting back together with his ex-boyfriend wasn't going to shatter our relationship. For me the situation was embarrassing because I thought it was such for him and for him it was embarrassing because he thought it was such for me. We were talking for a couple of hours, the presence of his ex-boyfriend was not felt at all. We also joked and said nonsense, then the conversation returned to a serious tone and he told me that he felt observed by me when we had finished making love and he felt like crying and he told me he felt like crying because he wanted to make love like that with his ex-boyfriend and he felt like he was deceiving me and added "like now I'm deceiving my ex, because I don't feel in love with him anymore" I asked him: "So why did you get back with him? " And he replied: "He insisted a lot and I wasn't able to say no to him, and now he has deluded himself another time and I'm cheating him." I asked him: "But what do you want?" and he told me he would like his ex to be like me, which made me very proud but also held me back a lot. He continued to be with his boyfriend with the hope of being able to change him at least a little from the inside. The contact with me was never interrupted, but he didn’t come to Rome until the following Christmas, in practice for 10 months, and I didn’t go to Milan, or rather, I went there for work, but I went to the hotel without telling him anything, so as not to intrude on his sentimental projects. On December 11th he calls me and tells me: “Tomorrow I'll come to you…“ I understand what that sentence means, I try to ask him what happened, but he answers me. "Don't ask questions, see you tomorrow, I'll arrive on the 11.00 train."   I go to pick him up at the station, I'd like to take him out for lunch but he's holding me back: “No! Let's go home!" Once inside, he hugs me very tightly and says: "I missed you so much!" The rest you can imagine. Almost 4 years have passed since then. He is trying to move to Rome but it is not easy. One weekend I go to him and one he comes to me. Living together with him, even if partially, I can say that it seems to me that I am living a fairy tale and at the same time a situation of total normality. We are not a cohabiting couple, somehow we are cohabiting but we are not a couple, we simply love each other, there are no bonds between us, as long as everything works by itself, ok, otherwise we will continue to love each other in a different way. I stop here. If you want, put this email on the sites, I made him read it and when he finished reading he told me I shouldn't mythologize and gave me a kiss on the forehead.   GAY COUPLE WITH LOVE AND WITHOUT OBLIGATIONS Posted by: gayprojectforum - 04-20-2021, 02:25 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, I read the last post (NOT JUST GAY SEX http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-...st-gay-sex) and I can say that I found it very interesting. I have tried for years to build a gay couple let's say classic way, but I have only registered failures, some immediate, and they were the least devastating, and others after “years”, and the consequences were really heavy, at least in terms of self-esteem. At first I was extremely selective and I said no to many guys for reasons that seemed sensible to me, but which turned out to be very stupid but very difficult prejudices to dispel. I'm over 40 now, a few more than 40, and for a while I have changed my mentality, not only do I no longer make selections from the beginning, but I no longer look for guys, that is, I no longer make the first move, if I can interest someone, well, otherwise I can anyway live alone, I have my friends and my world and I live well anyway.   In practice, for some years now I have been trying to explore the terrain only with those who really care about me, or at least who seem to really care, so the field narrows a lot. Before I was very complex about sex, a bit fixed that sex should be something reserved only for a strong, special relationship, let's say total, then I began to accept the idea that sex is basically also a means to create human contacts that, in the end, can also have different implications, I mean also affective ones. It is not easy to understand immediately what will came next, it takes time, patience and I ended up accumulating some experience in this department.   Before, if a guy stressed too much the value of sex, I pushed him away, I almost ostracized him, now I wonder where he will go, that is, if it will all end there or there will be something else, but I don’t stop him. Sex between adults more or less my age, at least with those with whom I have felt really comfortable (actually maybe only two, to be wide, but I should rather say only one), seems to me a very different thing from as I saw it twenty years ago. Then there were a thousand expectations, a thousand projections, I saw sex as the culmination of the relationship with a guy, the non plus ultra, then there were a thousand dreams, now it is no longer like this, sex seems to me an ordinary aspect of life, all in all exceptional only because in fact it is not very frequent, but certainly not shocking.   I have had a partner for three years, we don't live together and we don't have anything like this planned, he has had a much more intense sex life than mine but all in all rather disappointing. We met by chance in the gym, nothing spicy, all very mundane, or apparently very mundane. Our gym is large, with multiple rooms, but has a small parking lot and cars need to be parked tightly. One day, when I had to leave, I couldn't maneuver because there was a badly parked car. I went to the instructors and they said they would call the owner of that car right away. Two minutes later Massimo shows up (I'll call him that), immediately moves the car and I leave the parking lot, we say goodbye only with a nod, not even a word.   In the following days we exchanged some nod of greeting from a distance but in practice I was about to forget about that episode. One evening he calls me on the phone, I don’t recognize his voice, because we had never spoken, he tells me that he is the one who had blocked my car in the parking lot and invites me to a party (he would have turned 37 [two years younger than me] in a few days), I thank him but I tell him that I will not go there, because I don't know any of his friends and I don't even know him. I understand from the tone of his voice that he was upset, but the phone call ends there. I wondered why he had invited me, because in fact there was no valid reason to do so, and I also wondered who had given him my number, because I had not given it to him, evidently he had asked my instructor and, just as evidently, he knew my name. The thing, in itself it was already at least unusual, but at that time I didn't pay any attention to it.   When we meet again in the gym we exchange a few words, he doesn't even mention the phone call, but somehow the ice is broken and there is a minimum of conversation. He tells me that I’m in shape (and in fact I have always played sports), then he asks me for advice on training and here I involuntarily give him another freeze, I tell him that he can ask the coaches for such things because they know them much better than me. He only answers me with an okay, he smiles and greets me, but without the face of a beaten dog. On his birthday I call him to wish him good wishes, he is visibly happy, but I don't take it too long, because for me it's just a gesture of courtesy. The following week, on leaving the gym, he asks me if I would like to take a pizza with him, I "have nothing better to do" and I say yes. We go to Pizzeria, then I take him back to his house, because we had gone with my car and in greeting me he shakes my hand for a few seconds too long, looks at me right in the eyes and says: "Thank you!" I answer him: "See you soon, then!"   I was beginning to notice him. The handshake had been warm, strong, the smile was beautiful, spontaneous, nothing forced or constructed. I began to wonder who Massimo was, but faithful to my intention to play only in return, I avoided asking too many questions and I thought: "If they are roses they will bloom!"   The next few days I began to look at him more carefully and notice that he was really a handsome guy. Guys who run after me I have had many, and in the vast majority of cases I didn't really like them, I always found in them some note out of tune, either on a physical or character level. The next week I was expecting him to invite me again for a pizza together but nothing similar happened. I was disappointed, I had taken badly what seemed to me at least a rudeness, I was expecting the invitation, in the end I said to myself: “But how is it possible that you continue to behave like a teenager at the first experience? He doesn't care about you! "   But in the gym every now and then there was a contact of glances, and they were very special moments, very emotionally charged. I have never met him in the locker room or under the showers and I thought that the fact was not accidental, that is, that he avoided me on purpose, or rather that he deliberately avoided being with me in moments like those. The following Thursday he invites me again to have a pizza with him and I'm really happy with it. This time we go with his car, he tells me that he is a computer scientist in an import-export company, I tell him that I’m an engineer who deals with road construction and we talk a little about technical things, then we leave in the car, I think he will take me straight to my house, but it doesn't happen that way, he pulls over to one side along the road and asks me: “Is everything clear to you? Did you understand? ... "I answer him: "I think I understand ..." he asks me: "Are you worried?" I answer him: "Not at all ..." There the first physical contacts arrived, but very superficial and hesitant, also because the situation didn’t allow anything different.   It was all very short, more like a way of saying: "Ok, we can try ...", then he started the engine again and took me home, but we were talking in the car for a couple of hours before to say goodbye, and I understood something more about him, and he about me. He's a handsome guy, and I like him, but he must have had a difficult life in his family, because he sees family, his family, as a trap. At the time, however, I didn't understand much, I understood that there were problems but I didn't understand which ones. The contacts in the gym remained minimal, while on our own, in private, we had found our balance centered on sex, what I would never have imagined for my part, it was a bit the opposite of what I had always done. but it seemed to me the most obvious and natural choice. He told me from the beginning that we had to feel free, that there should be no pacts between us, neither said nor unspoken, we stay together while it lasts, as long as it is spontaneous, then it will be what it will be. He said that loving each other doesn't have to be a trap, the same word he used for his family.   I believe that he has never had the opportunity to be himself, that is, to feel free, with anyone. When he is with me I see him at ease, by now he considers the fact of being with me as an obvious thing, which no longer causes him negative reactions, which in the early days there were sometimes and I never understood why, just as if at the same time he wanted to be there and not be there. Our relationships are not routine but are now an established fact, not a bond or worse an obligation, but simply a fact.   We both live alone, but neither of us has evet thought that we could live together, or at least that we could try such a thing in the short term. Our freedom is stronger than any bond, and this doesn’t mean that there is no bond between us, but that that bond is free, it seems a contradiction, but it is not, it is not a rule or a contractual duty but what we feel instinctively every day. The fact that I go to his house to have sex or that he comes to my house is now a fact, but slowly we have gone from just having sex to doing a thousand other things, listening to music, cooking together, cleaning the house together, go shopping. We have only given ourselves a rule that was not there before but then slowly we felt the need of: when we are together we turn off our mobile phones, because that evening together must belong just to us. Sometimes he stays to sleep at my house or I at his house, but it is not a foregone conclusion or in any way expected.   There was only one situation in which I felt terribly embarrassed and that was when he told me that the day before he had talked for a long time with someone who works with him and that perhaps he was falling in love with him. This fact knocked me out, at least at that moment. He noticed it and didn't try to say that it was an insignificant story, far from it, he claimed his freedom, he just told me that I knew it could happen, and in reality it was so. After that day I didn't hear from him for almost a month, then he showed up again, as if nothing had happened, he just said to me: "Are you there tonight?" I said yes to him and he greeted me saying: "So see you tonight." In the evening he said to me: "I had believed in him but maybe he wasn't the right person, it may well be that I will review him, I don't know, it may be, but now let's think about us… ”And so our story restarted exactly where it had been interrupted, because in the end it had never stopped. The only thing he said to me was: "Anyway I'm clean, I took the test."   In Massimo's way of experiencing sex, I was always amazed by the total absence of acting and worries about my reactions, he was always extremely direct, he expressed his desires without complexes. At first he was very insistent, but then little by little this way of doing things vanished, I think he understood me better and that he also began to appreciate my way of experiencing sexuality. At first the differences between us were bigger, but then I too began to understand his sexuality better. Now, with him I feel safe, I have the distinct impression that it is a very serious thing. The fact that he can claim his freedom doesn’t discourage me, and then it would not be betrayal anyway, he has never done things secretly and I think he has a good opinion of me and that he also feels safe when he is with me. He is a man who doesn’t make fun of you, who speaks little, this is his great merit, the things he says are thought out, he doesn’t let himself be carried away by the moods of the moment, he always maintains a rational attitude, he is a reliable adult on whom you can to count.   What is Massimo for me? Eh ... I really don't know how to define him, but what need is there to give definitions? Our logic, I say both mine and his, which are very similar, completely disregards traditional categories. It took us a long time to learn to think for ourselves, we made a lot of mistakes but in the end we succeeded. We don’t care that others understand and approve of us, our way of seeing sex and life in general doesn’t want to be a model for anyone, it is just our model, simply because it works for us and I want to add that what others consider like instability, compromise and in practice a forced adaptation, for us it is just an expression of love, of mutual understanding. Many have told us that we are strange, that we say weird things that can't work, but they work for us.   When I’m in bed with him and I lean on him and I feel his warmth I don't ask myself first if it will be forever, if I have the exclusive or something like that, I just feel that he is there and this gives me so much strength, and it really helps to live. We also made mistakes, there were misunderstandings, but they didn’t last long and it was clear from the start that they wouldn’t be destructive. He never got angry about the nonsense I told him, when it was needed he scolded me very firmly but he did it with love and I felt that love. When you have a man close to you who loves you and that feeling is mutual, you don't ask yourself questions because you already have the answers.   NOT JUST GAY SEX Posted by: gayprojectforum - 04-16-2021, 11:18 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, the Forum is unfortunately abandoned and it’s a pity. For me it was a very important experience, but several years have already passed. It would be nice if there was a recovery, but I see it very difficult. It is up to you to decide whether or not to publish this email, which is the result of my latest experiences. I've learned the hard way that trusting so-called good guys is sometimes risky, and then, good guys in what sense? Guys who speak cleanly, that is, speak little about sex and save appearances because they have learned the art of hypocrisy from their families? In short, I have learned not to trust good guys and this tendency to put easy trust aside has gradually widened and I have begun to avoid trusting anyone, as you can well understand, least of all, the guys who don't even have the appearance of the good guys and the result was that I practically created a total void around me. I have not been disappointed but I think I was a disillusionment for the guys I met, or at least for some of them. I think I have destroyed the more or less unrealistic dreams of some guys more naive than me, but perhaps in time they would have destroyed me. With one of them, however, things went differently. He is a handsome guy, but relatively, he is no longer very young and on the other hand neither am I, because I’m 32 years old, we had known each other for several years. When he was 18 he was beautiful and I confess he fascinated me, but then he slowly lost the charm of early youth, he is still a handsome guy and he is not indifferent to me even now but it is not the physical attraction, or perhaps it is not above all the physical attraction that has led me not to lose sight of him. I'll call him Sergio here. Sergio has two peculiar characteristics that are absolutely unique, he is intelligent in a way that amazes me, I would say in a non-standard way or better in a way all his own, he has an autonomous mind, he does not depend on the judgment of others and he is radically honest, he doesn’t look at the formality and he tells you even brutally what he thinks. He went through very bad periods of depression shortly after turning twenty and then slowly came out of it and was able to conquer his spaces exclusively by studying and working very seriously. Several years ago we tried to get together, the idea, at that times, attracted me a lot. We have been in a very complicated relationship for a few years, but it was a relationship that was only half satisfying to me. I could have all the sex I wanted but I had the clear feeling that affectivity made absolutely no sense to him. He had told me his whole life, even the most problematic aspects, he trusted me, he had taken me seriously from the beginning and there was still a bond between us that went beyond sex, I call it the bond of clarity, the bond of reciprocally accepting each other for who you are. I am not at all what people consider a beautiful guy, I am barely average and if he had wanted to find a guy better than me he would have found a hundred thousand such guys. He had other guys but he never put me aside and he never cheated me, he told me he was fine with me only for sex, probably not to delude me, even if things weren't exactly like that. We have always understood each other and, this may seem incredible, we have never argued. Our relationship was extremely elastic but did not break off, we never had an overwhelming relationship, like those that radically modify your life, we talked little, no rhetoric of feelings neither of sex, so much melancholy, and even deep despair, but between us there was no risk of misunderstanding because we always spoke very clearly even if we spoke little. Sometimes we saw each other at intervals of two months or more and practically every time we met we ended up in bed together. Believe me, Project, it was never something stupid, it was also a way of communicating. I've seen him cry many times when the guys he believed in ended up leaving him without explanation. I often told him no, but he never felt demolished because of this, because he knew I loved him. I have always wondered why Sergio had chosen me, why he had trusted me. I think the reason was because I always considered him a very good person. I respect him deeply as a man and, furthermore, I think that if a guy chooses to experience sex with another guy, but not as a ritual or as anything devoid of any value but exactly as a way of truly being himself, it means that he instinctively finds in the partner something compatible and trusts him.  Sex was a means to get to know each other better, to test each other, to get to understand each other in a deeper way. We have two very different ways of experiencing sex, he is much hotter and more passionate than me, while I, even though I'm practically his age, I have longer times and sometimes I also have sexual problems. With me he is afraid of exaggerating while I’m afraid  of disappointing him but in the end it is not the performance that counts but sharing one's sexuality with a person you trust, knowing that you can be yourself to the end. This is the right expression: we trust each other. Honestly I never felt judged by him but I felt a lot of times respected and understood. Over the years, mutual trust has increased, I have learned to be less restrained in sex and he has also begun to give an emotional meaning to sexuality, somehow we have come to meet halfway. It doesn't make sense to say he's my boyfriend, he doesn't belong to anyone, but we love each other, now I have no more doubts about this, we both need reassurances and we find them in each other. Sometimes I told him no and sometimes he told no to me, but our saying no wasn't at all something like a refusal of the person of the other. We both knew that such things wouldn't destroy anything and that our relationship wouldn't break anyway. He is generous, never selfish, he does not dramatize situations but tries to lighten them, tries not to worry me and not to burden negatively on me. Not only he never blames others, but he also tends to feel responsible for things that are not up to him. He knows that for him I will always be there and that I will continue to be there anyway and I know that I will not lose him. Today, if I think about the  models of gay couple I had in mind years ago, I understand how absurd they were. I love Sergio and I know he loves me. If he also needs to be with someone else why do I have to say no to him? I know I won't lose him anyway. I would feel jealous if someone took him away from me, but many years have passed and we are still here, and this is a sign that it was a serious relationship. As for the problem of sexually transmitted diseases, he is informed and knows what he is doing and that is the reason why he has sometimes said no to me, because even if he is prudent, if he has even a little doubt, before coming to me he wants to take the test. This, in my opinion, is seriousness in the profound sense of the term. Sometimes we play like kids, but when we talk about serious things I trust him more than myself and I have the pleasure of having an intelligent man close to me who loves me and this is a great feeling that I have only experienced with him. About other guys I can say that sometimes I feared them, but I never was afraid of him, I knew that I could never expect anything bad from him, neither for malice nor stupidity. The more the years go by, the closer our paths get. He needs his freedom, and it is right that he has it. When we meet, it's nice to have confirmation that nothing has changed and that the pleasure of meeting is mutual. There is a phrase he now likes to hear: "I'm fine with you!" In other times this sentence would have alarmed him, as if it were an attempt to put limits, to restrain, to limit his freedom, to tell him: "I love you ... but you must be as I say ...". Now he knows that I’m not under the illusion of creating a "classical couple" with him and he is no longer afraid of those words and therefore takes them in the simplest and most direct sense. At first he would have accepted anything sexually but he would not have accepted a caress for the same reason that used to make it hard to him to hear the expression “I'm fine with you!", but now this is no longer the case, there is sex, of course, but there are also some moments of tenderness, if I caress his face or beard he is happy, he understands that it is "only" a gesture of tenderness and that there are no other motivations of any kind, that I’m not falling in love with him in the sense that I could expect something from him in return. I see a change in our relationship, which is probably due to the fact that we are no longer two kids and that we begin to value according to its real value our being there for each other. I consider him an essential point of reference in many things, precisely because he has points of view that are also very far from mine, but he is balanced and of extreme common sense. If he tells me something, it means that it is the result of his experience, not a simple hearsay. He does not talk nonsense, if he has to tell me something that he believes to be far from my way of thinking, he premises that that is only his way of seeing at that moment. I really like it when he teases me and makes my caricature, because afterwards he bursts into an amused smile and acts like a kid. He doesn't pose, doesn't act, and he would have the opportunity and the possibility to behave this way, but he doesn’t. When he is calm he gives me serenity, I know I can trust him. If I hadn't known Gay Project Forum I would never have understood the meaning of the relationship with Sergio, I would have remained addicted to the classic concept of couple "marriage style" and in the name of that concept I would have refused a relationship like the one I have with Sergio, which instead from many years is somehow the center of my life. I know that he is there and that he loves me and I know that I will not lose him. Lately I've been tempted to push our relationship towards a more classic couple model but, if I think about it, such an idea seems to me really unhealthy, he needs freedom like air, he has to go his own way, whatever it is. Our relationship will not fail anyway. In the early days there was one thing I could not stand about him and that is the tendency to not plan anything and to always and only act extemporaneously, he told me that he didn’t want to create rules or habits. I have always been very inclined to plan and organize my days and I felt upset by never being able to design anything that involved him. When he was about to leave, while greeting me he never told me when we would meet again and then he called me or came to see me in the most incredible moments of the day and night. Before, I didn't understand these attitudes. He said to me: "I come to you when I feel the need and these are things that cannot be planned!" Now this way of thinking has become familiar to me and I’m beginning to like it. I asked myself what it means to love each other and I would like to understand it without being dazzled by myths and fables of various kinds. I think I have wasted too much time running after butterflies and devaluing what existed and I had in front of my eyes practically every day. The stories of the cover guy in love with you and you with him, let's tell it: is just nonsense, if you are looking for something like this, you can search for it your whole life and you will not find a single guy that really suits you. The couple as a perfect symbiosis or as the idea of the perfect fusion of spirits is the typical cheap romance. I have never found charming princes. Sergio is not my charming prince and he is not even my boyfriend, in the classic sense of the term, he has his faults but also his merits, I must not forget neither faults nor merits and then what could I propose to him? Eternal love? But that would be ridiculous. We love each other but we remain two different people, who have points in common but do not live the same life anyway, we are two and we will remain two. What should I expect from him: absolute fidelity? And in the name of what? Why should I limit his freedom when I don't know if I would be able to guarantee him the same fidelity? I can only ask him one thing and that is to be honest with me and tell me what he really thinks, because I would not stand to be deceived, or maybe I would stand that too, I don't know, maybe in some circumstances I would not stand it but in others I would. Should I expect his constant presence? But even here I ask myself: in the name of what? I can ask him, if anything, not to pretend, not even to avoid making me feel bad. Why should we be a couple? We do not know what we are but we are fine even so, or at least, when we see each other, which happens quite rarely, we are happy to meet ... should I think that this is little? But it is not little at all, if it is true! Loving each other doesn’t mean always staying close, but having the pleasure to see each other again when you see each other again. Sergio is not my living myth, we love each other but in a very simple, very spontaneous way, without commitments and without conditions. We will not have children to raise, we love each other instinctively, because it is something that comes by itself. I often think about him, I know that our relationship will last, but I can't make any other predictions. It makes no sense to try to foresee the future or to condition it. A transient affection is no less important than a relationship that is sustained by duty or by necessity. The transience doesn’t detract anything from the seriousness of the feelings, if those feelings are true. Sergio and I know each other well and we trust each other, sometimes I miss his presence but I don't have to pester him, he has to follow his times and rhythms, maybe time will pass but then we will hug again and I'm sure it will be a real hug felt the same way by both of us.   DOCTOR AND PATIENT BOTH GAY Posted by: gayprojectforum - 03-16-2021, 01:42 PM - Forum: True gay stories - No Replies Dear Project, I’m a man who is very recently 60 years old and I would like to tell you my story because I think it could help someone prevent melancholy. I always knew I was gay but at the same time I always knew that "for me" being gay would have been one more reason for loneliness. I’m an only child and my parents have been dead for several years, I have spent practically all my life alone working and dreaming of a love that, the more the years passed, the more it receded in an evanescent fog. My work has kept me company and has prevented me from sliding into depression, it is a job that I like and that allows me to keep in touch with many young people, even if over the years the contact with young people, who in any case it's formal, it can also be depressing. I have built up some financial security and will still have to work for a few years before I retire. I have never seen retirement as a liberation or a mirage, because I always thought that afterwards I would be even worse. Three years ago I had some serious health problems and I was hospitalized for a long time. At that time there was no covid, but my illness was not one of the least important. The hospital, which could write the last chapter of my life, was instead the turning point that allowed me to change things. A doctor from the ward, then just over forty years old, came to see me immediately after hospitalization. I remember that I was very impressed, he was smiling, he tried to communicate positive feelings and at the same time he did not place himself in the formal professional role of the doctor. I remember that from the first moment I liked him and I tried to make him understand it. He sat next to me and tried to enrich the medical record as much as possible, he asked me questions and took many notes. He told me they would do an MRI scan to better define the diagnosis. He didn't tell me platitudes or generic formulas of encouragement. A few days later my situation got worse. The other doctors had slipped away and I no longer saw them, which frightened me a little, because I thought my situation might appear hopeless to them. He (I'll call him Peter) no, he even showed up three or four times a day. My situation was very uncertain for a long time, but he never disappeared. One day, after more than 40 days of hospitalization, he comes to me and calls me by name and says: "Paul, will you allow me to call you by name?" I reply: “Sure! For me it is a pleasure." And then he continues: “I wanted to tell you that things are going better, that we have changed therapy and things have significantly improved and that, in my opinion, the critical phases should not reoccur. It will take a few more weeks but you can probably go home before Christmas. " Then he took my hand and squeezed it very tightly, a gesture that is not usual for a doctor but is spontaneous for a friend. I did not know what to think, I felt dazed, very upset, partly because I did not expect the prospects of the disease to improve and partly because of the presence of Peter. The following December 16 I left the hospital. Peter asked me if someone would come to pick me up but I told him I had no one and he replied: "Then I'll take you home, because you can't go around alone." I waited for 22.00, that is the end of his work shift and he took me home and did it with great care so as not to make me catch cold. Obviously he stayed in my house, he ventilated the house without letting it cool too much, he made my bed, helped me get into bed and stayed to sleep on the sofa. I tried to insist that he return to his house but he told me that he lived alone, and there a little light came on in my brain and I began to consider things from another perspective. At least for the first week I would not have been able to do the chores myself and he took care of it, but then I started to regain my strength and after a few more days I was now able to do it alone, but a situation had been created so pleasant and not at all forced or false, that I just told him that if he stayed with me I would be happy. My house is also big for two, he would have had two rooms to himself, a bedroom and a study. He said to me: "For a while it is good that I stay here, then let's see how things go." It was not clear whether he was referring to the illness or to our relationships, but the second hypothesis seemed more probable to me. He assisted me on a medical level as if I were in the hospital, he scheduled me a series of checkups, he was a bit like my guardian angel. In the evening, when he wasn't on duty, he cooked and while he cooked we talked and the atmosphere was really relaxed. Our story began like this, without love at first sight, without anything overwhelming. As a young man you get a thousand ideas about what a gay story could be, but would never come to think of what happened instead. I don't know if these things are called love, friendship or some other way but we were fine together. He had his job at the hospital and his schedules were unpredictable several times. When he thought he was going to be very late he would call me so as not to worry me. I prepared dinner for him and waited for him without time limits, sometimes he came home very tired, but as soon as he entered the house he smiled at me, he always did, even when he couldn't stand up, I sat next to him and passed him the plates with things to eat. I saw him go up and down on the roller coaster of enthusiasm and the worst frustration following the progress of some of his patients. For him it wasn't a job, he participated in the life of those people, he committed himself with all his strength and I admired him for this. You cannot love a person who you don’t esteem and for me he was an example to follow, an example of morality, of unreserved commitment. We never told each other we were gay, there was never the need. Many times, he spent hours at home studying. There are doctors who consider their mission only as a source of income, he was a scientist, but not for the sake of science, but because by updating and engaging professionally he could do something good for others. I've never seen him laugh, smile yes, indeed it was his typical way of communicating. I've never heard him gossip or criticize any of his colleagues. One day he comes home late and sits down at the table and says to me: “Stay here. Do I have to talk to you about something." I told him: "Are there any problems?" He replied: "Nothing that can't be solved." Then he told me that an 87-year-old lady would be discharged from the hospital after a very long stay first in the AHR (Assisted Health Residence) and then in the hospital and she had no home to go to because she had been evicted, also because she was completely unable to legally defend herself. Then he said to me: "Can we have her stay here until another solution is found?" I looked at him and smiled at him, nodding yes, then I added: "... even if you won't find another solution." He hugged me tightly. The next day he arrived with the lady in a wheelchair. I had prepared the room. The lady began to cry, shook our hands and never let go of them. She was a very thin old woman but with sparkling pale blue eyes. We did everything to make her feel at ease, she was embarrassed at first, then when we all three sat down at the table, she started crying again and Peter took her hand and kissed it. and he said to her: “Don't worry, Lina, you'll be fine here. My friend is a proper man, the house is his and he said you can stay here as long as you want. But now try to eat a little while you are thin skinny, because you have dried out in all the time you spent in the hospital. " After lunch Lina went to the room to rest for a while and I stayed with Peter, who stroked my cheek with the back of his hand and told me: "I understood who you were from the beginning and I was not wrong .“I asked Peter about Lina's pension situation and he told me to ask her directly and that in the suitcase she was carrying there were also all her papers and things. In the late afternoon Lina woke up, she was a bit disoriented, but when she saw us she reconnected everything, we had tea with some biscuits and then I asked her about her pension and other things. I have worked for many years at INPS (national social security institute) and I understand administrative matters. I told Peter that Lina did not have the "accompaniment" and would have the right to get it, at least in my opinion, and that looking closely she would also have the right to something else. Peter said: "Sure!" In short, the following eight days were used for Peter to collect all the medical documentation to take to INPS and for me to make contact with the patronage to do all the paperwork. After a few days, actually very few days, the INPS call for a check-up visit arrived for Lina and we accompanied her. She was very anxious. Peter held her hand and said to her: "Lina, don't worry, everything is fine." I waited in the anteroom and Peter entered with Lina and they stayed inside for almost an hour. When they left, Lina was very anxious, Peter apparently not, to keep Lina quiet. At home, things returned to normal and Pietro told me separately that he was not sure that Lina would be considered 100% disable and that in any case we had to wait for the official reply. But fortunately, after two weeks, the answer arrived and dispelled the last fears. Basically, in addition to the "accompaniment", Lina would also have obtained other economic benefits, small things of course, but in practice his monthly income would more than double. Peter told Lina that we had to go to the post office to request a postal credit card, to receive payments from INPS. Two days later we went there and Lina made gat the card. When the first payment arrived, the first thing she said was that she wanted to give a half of the sum certain missionary nuns who have their own house near where she lived, a few days later we accompanied Lina to the nuns who did not want the donation because they knew that Lina had very little money, but she and we too insisted and in the end the nuns accepted. When we got home, I gave Lina a caress and said: “You are really a good woman! You are like a mother." And she started to cry. Over time Lina told us her story which was a terrible story, she was a Julian refugee and she had known misery even as a child. The parents had lost everything they had and only managed to get out of black misery in the 1960s. She had left her studies and had not married and ended up working as a servant with a rich family in Milan and thus she had been able to survive, but no one had ever explained to her that she would have been entitled to have the contributions paid to get a pension. The contributions were never paid, but she didn't even know what they were and so year after year she reached retirement age without a pension. The social worker had made her have a "minimum pension" and by tightening her belt she managed to pay a minimum rent and have a very small house. Then she got sick and everything fell into the abyss. Sometimes the nuns went home to assist her, but after hospitalization she was left completely alone. Peter measured her blood pressure and blood sugar every day because she had a little diabetes and every week he did the ECG with a portable device. We tried to take Lina to a shop to buy some clothes, but she didn't want to spend money and she said that there were people who needed money more than her and she didn't want to come and so we went to buy something that seemed to us fit and we brought her a box with two warm dressing gowns, two pairs of slippers to keep her feet warm, some underwear and then a dress to go out and a heavy coat with a long scarf. When she saw all that stuff she almost got angry because she said that she didn't want to be a lady, that money shouldn't be spent on useless things but on good works, then she saw that we had been a bit sick and opened her arms to be hugged and tell us that she was happy anyway. Lina had a unique feature of her own, she never complained, she found everything excellent, she only told us good things. In short, Project, it had become a life of three, a very strange and even paradoxical situation, but we were really fine. One day Peter takes me aside and tells me that Lina's situation is rapidly deteriorating and that according to him it wouldn't last long. He was going to tell her. I had some doubts but in the end I also thought it was right. Peter clearly told her how things were and she replied: “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, but I have a lot of faith and I know that He is waiting for me. Don't be sad." She wanted to go to church to confess and take communion, then we went home and she got a pen and paper to write that all her possessions had to go to the missionary nuns and then she sat quietly as if it were a day like everyone else. We went on like this for another 10 days, then Peter had her hospitalized at least as a support to the pain and after a week Lina left holding our hands and reciting a Hail Mary. A very strong cry came to me. Peter hugged me and he too burst into tears. Well, Project, this happened a little over two years ago, when the covid did not yet exist. Now it exists and Peter has returned to live at his home, but not because something has failed us but because, working in the hospital, and precisely in a covid ward, he is afraid of putting me in conditions of serious risk. We talk every day, but I miss his presence very much, now we are a telematic couple but we love each other as before, and if possible more than before. I've never slept with Peter, perhaps it may happen sooner or later, but it's the least of my thoughts. My worries now are all related to him taking covid and being really sick. He is not in the highest risk age groups and has also been vaccinated, which reassures me a lot. Sometimes I see him very tired, just undone by physical fatigue and anxiety. When he is not quiet we talk on the phone and he tells me that just hearing my voice can dispel all his melancholy. Is this the story of a gay relationship? I really think so. We have a world in common, sometimes we talk about it and I think that this gay identity matters a lot both to him and to me, in practice for a few years we had a project of life in common and we still have it. I don't know why certain things happen, I just know that they change your life when you least expect it.    IMPOSSIBLE GAY RELATIONSHIPS Posted by: gayprojectforum - 02-13-2021, 03:23 AM - Forum: Gay orientation - No Replies Hello Project, I discovered your forum in December and I thought I'd write to you, indeed I wrote you an email, which I quote here below. ____________   Draft email of 14 January 2021   Hi Project Nice forum, very rich, I have read several posts, some I understand but others not! Especially those of the older guys, that several times put only melancholy on me. Maybe it's because I'm 19, but 35-40-year-olds seem really lost people who no longer believe in the future. I hope I don't end up with them. I mean that I feel sorry for them, but in my opinion, it is not at all certain that things have to end up being alone or being moderately satisfied with any relationship. I have no experience to talk about these things. I hope to be able to build something beautiful with the guy I'm in love with and I know it won't be easy, he's 21 and he's started a relationship with a 50's, which is just absurd. If you want an older guy you can find one up to 30 years old, but a 50 year old could be your father. Here I'll call Vito The guy I fell in love with. I talked to Vito and I tried to make him understand that he has to change his way, that this is the wrong way, but he doesn't listen to me, or rather he listens to me but then it's as if he hadn't listened to me, by now he's fixated on the idea that he's fine with that man. I don't understand what he can find there? Because the 50-year-old has absolutely nothing exceptional. Sometimes I thought that Vito was even doing it for money and I also told him and he looked at me with astonished eyes and laughed, so I think that money has nothing to do with it, but that's even more absurd. When I asked Vito to go out with me, he told me I shouldn't think about him, that he already had a partner and he was fine. I told him: “But who? That one? " and he said, “Yes. I am not asking you to understand but not to think about things that cannot exist. " And here I didn't manage to held back anymore and I said to him: "With me no and with him yes?" And he replied: "I told you, you can't understand." But what is there to understand? It doesn't make sense, it's enough, even a blind man would see it. I have to help Vito open his eyes and understand that he can have much better. I cannot deny that I would like to be in that gentleman's place and therefore my speech is interested, but, also objectively, making a choice like the one Vito made is really pathological. Besides, I can't stand the idea that he thinks there are things I can't understand. You see, I understand that the 50-year-old goes after Vito, but not the other way around, but Vito seems immovable and has behaviors that I really don't understand, he pushes me away, dodges me, doesn't answer the phone. I text him and he doesn't answer me, it's like he's afraid of me. But I don't understand what he can be afraid of. I waited for him secretly under his house and finally I caught him and he didn't have time to run away and we took a long walk together. I pestered him with questions but he didn't answer me. I thought that he was afraid of the 50 year old and didn't have the courage to say no to him and I told him, he smiled at me and said: "You don't understand anything!" I told him: "Then why do you keep staying with him?" And he replied: "Because I love him!" And here I answered him laughing: “To whom? To that one?" And he told me. "Yup." But is such a thing possible? But what world does Vito live in? ________   So far the email I wanted to send you but I haven't sent you, and now I'll explain why. On February 1st, after very strong insistence, I managed to make Vito capitulate, in the sense that he agreed to go out with me, because I wanted to understand why he was pushing me away. We went out and talked and I was shocked because, if I have to believe what he says, he is truly in love with the 50 year old gentleman, that is, in love also in the sense that he is sexually attracted to him and he told me it very seriously. I was upset because I thought Vito had been plagiarized or maybe he had some mental disorder that led him to think like this, then it occurred to me to look on your forum how to interpret Vito's words and my arms fell on the ground because I discovered that in the manual "being gay" there is a whole chapter on these things and you say the same things Vito says and you wrote those things several years ago, so Vito is not out of his mind and what he says "may" be true. Tell me that's not true, Project! Because if it's true the world collapses on me. Vito would rather be with that than with me? Do you realize? But how is it possible that for me such a game must be lost from the beginning? Maybe he has many psychological problems, maybe he was traumatized when he was a young boy and these are the consequences. How do you say these things are normal? They wouldn't even cross my mind. Talking to Vito and then reading that chapter of the manual shocked me. I agree with you on everything, but on this I just can't. What am I supposed to do? Should I get Vito out of my head? Then maybe he changes his mind and finds another young boy who isn't me ... I don't want to lose him, even if I just can't understand him. But is Vito gay like me? Even if we think poles apart about these things? Talking directly face to face he didn’t give me the impression of a pathological case. Maybe we can also be friends, I think he would accept it as well, but I should just keep him as a friend, and it would be hard, because for me, however, he is not just a friend. Project, I’m writing to you because I cannot talk to anyone about this story, if I talk about it with you, at least you don't know him and you don't know me and things remain a lot in general. But what should I do? Is there a remedy? What leaves me thrilled is that he is really in love or at least it seems. Should I leave him alone in his life? Maybe because he's really fine like this? How is it possible? I don't want to leave the game. It can't end like this, it's absurd! I read several other stories like Vito's on the forum and I felt sorry for it, I say it honestly, so it's not even that rare. What can I say to this guy to make him think? I can't get him out of my head. Now Vito has gotten a little used to the fact that I call him three or four times a day and try to keep him talking as long as possible, a kind of therapy, but after five minutes he cuts it short. He does it politely but I think he's starting to get tired of me. I tried to ask him to go out together again but he said no in such a clear way that it annoyed me. He has friends, he also has gay friends of the same age, but he doesn't want me among his friends, and maybe because I wouldn't be just a friend. I don't know whether to say that I feel more sorry or more angry. Sometimes I even start thinking that it will really be a losing game. And then I write to you to know what to do, but you have written it a thousand times that for me the chances are zero! If the email can be of use to some other guy who is perhaps getting into a story like mine, put it on the forum, at least it could help him to suffer less. It's a bad cold shower, Project, sometimes I feel so stupid to still believe in the witch.   EX GAY COUPLE: WHAT HAPPENS AFTER Posted by: gayprojectforum - 01-26-2021, 04:02 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, I read the Being Gay manual and it was an extremely interesting read, there is a serious scientific approach to issues related to gay life, but I don't want to talk to you about things that are too important, I would like to ask you instead for concrete advice on how I have to behave with my ex-boyfriend who has stopped having relations with me for almost a month. The speech will seem strange to you but it is real, perhaps it is seen a little too much from my point of view, but I will tell you exactly what I think. I’m a rather calm 34-year-old who, quite simply, had never been too busy looking for a mate, in a sense I had assumed that I would never find one and I had adapted to this idea without too many problems. I know it's hard to believe but that's exactly how it is. Then I met James (not his real name) a guy two years younger than me, who fell in love with me, or at least I thought he was in love with me. I somehow loved him but I don't know if I fell in love with him, because these expressions are peremptory and all-encompassing but at the same time extremely vague if not downright empty.  We got to have sex together, for me it was the first time, for him certainly not. We got there slowly but spontaneously, I was more reluctant, but with him there was no embarrassment. We were good together sexually even though he was a little too pressing according to my lifestyle, but I felt good because there was not only sex between us, we used to talk a lot, understanding each other was something spontaneous between us and in the end I came up to think that in fact we weren't all that different from each other. There was no mutual possessiveness, we had no duties towards each other but we were fine that way.  Then he started other stories, when it happened, paradoxically, I was happy about it both because I saw him happy and because, forgive me the expression, I had got rid of him, who in some way, precisely because of his insistence, had also became a problem because finding a balance point between my way of seeing things and his was not easy at all and misunderstandings and long pauses began to become frequent. I will not go into details out of respect for his privacy.  It was fine to me that he had another life, and also another guy, but after long adventures he ended up getting tired of his partners, or maybe he had fallen in love with impossible people and was disappointed and so he started looking for me again, but he always repeated to me that he was not in love with me and that it was just a question of sex because he would never want to deceive me. At first I thought that sooner or later our relationship would take on an emotional meaning for him too, but over time I realized that it wouldn't happen, that the dialogue was no longer there and that the only point of contact between us it was represented by sex, and even in sex it had to be everything in his own way, not in the sense of strange things but in the sense of only technical sex, without affection, without pampering.  I tried to distance myself, I responded negatively to his requests a couple of times and he told me he had got tired of me and then he disappeared. I haven't called him for a month, but in a few days it's his name day and I thought I'd send him at least my best wishes using a text message, but honestly I don't know what to do. I would like to keep a relationship with him, something to last over time, but I wouldn’t like it to end up in usual mechanisms. I think this is in practice the last chance I don’t say to rebuild something but to leave in a less drastic way.  He is a good guy, and I respect him a lot from many points of view, although I think that, precisely because he always tells me that he is not in love with me, perhaps it doesn’t even make sense to try to maintain a relationship. Sometimes I think that for him I could be more a burden than a positive presence, just like he was perhaps more a concern to me than a dream of love. However, despite all these substantial perplexities, at least from my point of view, our relationship had a profound meaning, because at least at the beginning we understood each other.  However, a deep esteem remains on my part, somehow I love him and I can't consider him as a stranger, he was not the right guy for me, assuming there can be one, but he was an honest, serious guy. Sex for him was never a play, maybe it was a little bit so for me. But why should it always be assumed that having sex is the most important thing in any situation? I've never understood this. He used to think I was embarrassed, too easily inclined to giving up, he thought I had moral scruples or something like that but in reality I would have wanted a quieter sexuality and at least a little affection. I was afraid of diseases and this used to hold me back a lot and he didn’t accept it.  In short, Project, I think I will not forget him anyway, because in practice he has been my only partner and I add, probably the only guy I somehow loved, and after him I just put aside the idea  to look for other guys. Something tells me that maybe I would be fine with him, but can you be fine with someone who tells you that he is not in love with you? What do you think about it?   ATTRACTION AND REPULSION BETWEEN GAY GUYS WHO HAD BEEN LOVERS Posted by: gayprojectforum - 12-26-2020, 04:23 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, first of all Merry Christmas! We are all a bit stuck for the pandemic and it is a bit like Christmas was to be celebrated more lightly, so to speak. How are you spending Christmas? Alone, I bet! But do well, because the risks are great.   I'll tell you a few things, so you’ll spend some time reading and I'll spend some time writing.   I'm 36, I don't like parties, I'm like a bear and I love living in the den. Yesterday I spent the day replying to a lot of people who have wished me Merry Christmas, but 99% of them have a mailing list and the wishes are automatic, I understand this because they are very standard messages, and this makes me a little melancholy. Then there are also the messages from true friends, which are very few, and which this year I have basically only heard by phone. I have never liked responding to all these messages, most of which come from business contacts, and that's why I don't like the holidays, but the holidays this year have made me understand many things.   I have had three stories of a certain importance, I mean stories with guys, of two of them I have not known anything anymore, with the third (actually it was the first) I maintained a certain relationship, in the end I have always cared about him, even if in the end both of us made our own lives. But our contacts, after we broke up, have always been evanescent, almost ambiguous. The other two have disappeared, he has not, let's say that he has "almost disappeared" and perhaps he too has some interest in me, but the trouble is that we never really understood each other. The risk of misunderstanding, of not really understanding each other, or of understanding one thing for another, I perceive it very clear.   I never understood if he had or still has some project about me, it's all played on the unspoken, it's all played on allusions, on saying half a word and then immediately going back, on taking the intentions of the other for granted even when the other hasn’t said or done anything clear, and I fear very seriously that he can mistake some of my reluctances for refusals, because many times I fear him even a little that is I’m almost afraid of him, in a good sense, I see him fearful but at the same time intrusive.   We lived a very beautiful story many years ago, which then ended because it was evident that he needed a more alive person, more like him. When he told me he didn't feel like going on he expected a jealousy scene that didn't happen and he was blown away because my behavior was far from his expectations, but by now he had said what he had said and he kept the point. I didn't look for him to resume the relationship because I understood that he felt somehow limited and conditioned by me, but anyhow I love him "in my own way" and I'm sorry to see him always dissatisfied.   When we were together we loved each other but each one of us had a project on the other that was too individual and too far from reality. I would have lived a life with him but with many ifs and with many buts. And perhaps he himself would not have wanted a life with me. I love him but I understand that to build something together this is not enough, and it was not enough, and I would say that the discourse also applies to a possible future, assuming that he has similar things in mind, what certainly can't be taken for granted and is probably wrong.   He then easily takes things badly and feels out, he thinks that I keep him at a distance, maybe somehow I do it, but we never explain ourselves, we think that everything can and must understood only by intuition and so there are many misunderstandings. Our mistake, his and also mine, was to set essential conditions, fundamentally unacceptable to the other. And when he thinks or supposes that he is somehow rejected, he simply shuts down all communication and disappears for long periods, waiting for me to take the first step again.   Our relationships are contradictory, we have divergent goals and each of us, most likely he too, often changes his mind and attitude not only on the possibility of getting back together as lovers but even of cultivating a true friendship. We are not friends, we talk little, that is, now we talk little, years ago we talked a lot and it was quite another thing, but now we talk very little, snap answers and escapes between us are the rule. We can only be lovers or rather anomalous ex-lovers, who seek each other but fear each other at the same time, and all this is stressful, I say it for me but I think it is exactly the same for him. In theory the most obvious thing to do would be to move beyond and turn the page, but it is a step we have never been able to take.   We are very different in many things, but he, in my life, is still an important presence, even if he will probably never understand it, I feel him emotionally very close, those few bristly and grumpy contacts we have are much more important for me than the statements of love I received from the other two boys. The two boys were playing a part, he didn't, he was living things deeply.   With me he is at the same time very shy and very aggressive but aggressive in an apparently giving up way, when he's angry with me he tells me that I will no longer hear from him and disappears, he has the impression that I want to curb and stop him, that I'm never ready to say yes without putting any boundaries of various kinds. I have asked myself many times what I should do but understanding it is not easy at all. Lovers see everything pink, if I think of him I see "also" a sea of complications, I don't see only that, that is, there are not only problems, but problems exist. I feel that somehow he cares about me, but I think I'm not exactly the right person for him, and deep down he thinks so too. Sometimes I think he hasn't completely forgotten me because he had bad experiences afterwards, but he also said very positive things about some of the guys he had, much better than what he says about me, and yet he lost sight of those guys. Can two ex-lovers be friends? It seems to me not, because friendship and love are different things.   I still feel a sexual involvement towards him, I would say almost abstract, theoretical, in fact from him, however, I don't want sex or rather I don't want only or above all sex, I would like us to understand each other, but he says that to understand each other there is one way and that is to live sex together, but he says it taking for granted that the bond cannot be exclusive and this scares me. He is very autonomous and free and he gave the well-served to guys who in my opinion were interested in him much more than I did, but maybe they gave in to him too easily or maybe he didn't have a clear dialogue with them exactly as happens with me but those guys preferred a radical change of scenery.   Here everything is pending. I don't know how it will end. Doubts, always doubts, deciding is not really my job and not even his. I finish the story here, otherwise I won't finish it anymore.   If you want, you can publish the email, which is sufficiently generic. I have deliberately omitted the latest incident of misunderstanding that occurred this morning. How nice it would be if everything were simpler!   Merry Christmas Project! Pages (55): « Previous 1 ... 4 5 6 7 8 ... 55 Next » Jump to page: