Welcome, Guest You have to register before you can post on our site. Username    Password    Remember me Search Forums (Advanced Search) Forum Statistics » Members: 757 » Latest member: mozgdodo » Forum threads: 548 » Forum posts: 570 Full Statistics Online Users There are currently 78 online users. » 3 Member(s) | 75 Guest(s) AlexMt, Austinhita, Stevengal Latest Threads END OF A GAY COUPLE Forum: Gay couples Last Post: gayprojectforum 4 hours ago » Replies: 0 » Views: 30 GAY DREAMS AND REAL LIFE Forum: Gay guys Last Post: gayprojectforum Yesterday, 08:45 PM » Replies: 0 » Views: 7 GAY LOVE AS AN ANTIDOTE T... Forum: Gay couples Last Post: gayprojectforum Yesterday, 04:50 PM » Replies: 0 » Views: 115 HOW TO REGISTER ON THIS F... Forum: Announcements and Services Last Post: HappySoul Yesterday, 03:35 PM » Replies: 6 » Views: 4,810 IMPORTANT NOTICE Forum: Announcements and Services Last Post: gayprojectforum Yesterday, 01:56 PM » Replies: 0 » Views: 64 GAY SEX AND DEPRESSION Forum: Gay discomfort Last Post: gayprojectforum Yesterday, 12:58 PM » Replies: 0 » Views: 11 COOLING OF A GAY COUPLE A... Forum: Gay couples Last Post: gayprojectforum 12-12-2023, 04:16 AM » Replies: 0 » Views: 3,284 GAY SEX AND AFFECTIVE INV... Forum: Gay couples Last Post: gayprojectforum 11-05-2023, 09:50 PM » Replies: 0 » Views: 2,684 GAYS BETWEEN DREAM AND RE... Forum: Gay discomfort Last Post: gayprojectforum 10-25-2023, 03:36 PM » Replies: 2 » Views: 247 GAYS AND SEXUAL DISCOMFOR... Forum: Gay discomfort Last Post: gayprojectforum 10-21-2023, 09:20 PM » Replies: 0 » Views: 160

CONCRETE PROBLEMS OF GAY COUPLES Posted by: gayprojectforum - 12-21-2020, 02:46 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, every now and then I happen to enter Gay Project forum and look for new posts, especially those that talk about life as a couple. I like reading those things, it's somehow like a way to understand how others think and how they live their everyday life, but I only find stories that tell how a life as a couple began, or rarely how it ended, but I hardly find stories that involve everyday life, that is the more or less banal everyday life made of economic and family problems. I can understand that the idea of living together is a dream for many guys, but when you get there, in my opinion, you are still a long way from understanding what it really means to share your life with another man.   Real life is not a fairy tale and has to deal with many things that at the beginning are never taken into consideration or even imagined. If one thinks that life as a couple is a kind of sexual paradise that leads to the world of dreams, obviously he doesn't understand what couple life means. Often, in the stories I read about the lives of others, there is the moral of the story but there is not the story itself. I would like to try to tell you how my partner and I actually live our life as a couple, but I would like to do it according to the facts, avoiding judgments as much as possible. There is therefore no background, or rather there is, but I leave it out to make room for the facts. I will start directly from living together.   We (for privacy reasons the names have been changed):   1) Francis (me), 29 years old, agronomist. 2) Andrew 31 years old, owner, together with his father, of the family farm, a very well-managed farm.   The places   We live in Northern Italy, in a province with a specialized agricultural vocation.   The facts   Francis and Andrew met for work reasons. Francis organized the restructuring of a considerable part of Andrew's farm. The two are estimate very much each other professionally. Both Francis and Andrew, in their lives, have essentially thought about working and have not had stories of any weight with other guys. Their families knew about their homosexuality well before the guys met and never created any problems. Both communicated to their parents that they were going to live together, and parents accepted the idea without problems and even with some satisfaction. Francis is an only child, Andrew has a brother whom I will call Mark here, 24 years old, recently married and with a baby just a few months old. Both Andrew and Mark live in the big farm, in different apartments, obviously Mark lives with his wife and son in the largest apartment. A third apartment is occupied by the parents.   Mark initially had no problems with Francis, the fact that his brother was gay and was in a couple with Francis seemed not to concern him in the least. Then one day Andrew tells his parents that he wants to live with Francis in the farm apartment, Mark doesn’t raise problems of any kind. Then one day Andrew makes a speech on Civil Unions in front of his parents and brother and, perhaps naively, touches a sore point and says that the partner of the Civil Union has the same inheritance rights as the spouse. After that speech, Mark's position changes radically. Mark doesn’t want Andrew to live with Francis, and least of all that they share the apartment in the farm, he says that Francis is a stranger and that he mustn’t compromise the integrity of the farm. Andrew tells him that he is by no means a stranger to him and that he has a position quite similar to that of Mark's wife.   In reality, Mark doesn’t fear the coexistence of Francis and Andrew in itself, but the fact that the coexistence is a prelude to the Civil Union, because if Andrew and Francis were partners of a Civil Union, in the event of Andrew's death, Francis would inherite a half of the farm, while without any Civil Union, the whole farm would be inherited by Mark or by Mark's son. It is obvious that Mark is not angry with Francis for reasons of homophobia or something like that, but only because he sees him as a possible impediment to the fact that the whole farm ends up in his and his son's hands.   Francis and Andrew have an excellent understanding between them and Andrew is not the type willing to bear impositions. The parents swing a little on Andrews's side and a little on Mark's side, they try somehow to give a hammer blow to the iron circle and one to the barrel or, it would be better to say, to keep one foot in two shoes, and prevent sons from fighting for economic reasons when their parents are still alive and in full activity. Relations between Francis and Mark quickly become unmanageable. Francis is accused of being an opportunist and an exploiter, Mark would like it not to reach the Civil Union or to get there with a declaration of renunciation of the rights on the farm by Francis. Francis would be willing to give up but Andrew, as I have already said, cannot bear impositions and clearly says that he is free to do what he likes without being accountable to anyone and reminds his brother that if the farm is in good condition, the credit is largely attributable to Francis.   Andrew and Francis, to avoid fuss, go to live together in an apartment outside the farm, in a city 30 km away. Their former apartment in the farm is occupied "free of charge" by Mark's in-laws. Andrew prefers not to make a fuss and leave things as they are. However, since he works in the farm, he is forced to travel 30 km outward and 30 km back to go to work every day, and his work some days begins when it is still night and ends when it is already night.   Shortly after another dispute broke out between the brothers. Mark accuses his brother of "stealing the farm's money to spend it who knows how", implying that Andrew throws money away with men, which is objectively unthinkable, and asks the parents to do three equal parts og the farm's profits, one for the parents, one for Andrew and one for Mark, completely neglecting the fact that the farm is managed by Andrew and his father, who work there from morning to evening. The parents this time are not hesitant and defend Andrew who "for all the work he does, deserves much more than he earns."   Francis (that is, me) cannot bear the hierarchies within the couple, that is, in particular, he cannot bear that Andrew is the rich partner while the role of Francis is reduced to something secondary. Andrew never had attitudes of superiority, which he might have had, but Francis has always had a straw tail when it came to money or property. In essence, the difference in economic status between Francis and Andrew has always been experienced by Francis as a heavy conditioning. If on the one hand Francis was happy that Andrew defended him in front of Mark, on the other hand, if he had been able to renounce the rights on the farm he would have felt much less conditioned, but Andrew prevented him by telling him: "Don't throw away an opportunity that you don't need today but could help you tomorrow!“ In this Andrew was more provident than Francis and was able to see far.   Andrew wants to arrive at the Civil Union in tight deadlines, Francis wouldn’t want to feel forced, but in the end he accepts and so the time of the Civil Union arrives. Both Andrew and Francis' parents are there on the day of the ceremony, who already knew each other for some time and got along well, obviously Mark is not there. Andrew never takes a vacation, he often works even on Sundays, obviously for him and Francis there is nothing like a honeymoon, just a lunch in a reserved room of a restaurant with Francis, Andrew, the four witnesses and the four parents, 10 people in all, and with a moment of embarrassment when the manager of the restaurant says that to begin with, It’s necessary to wait for "the bride". When the manager realizes that it was a two men Civil Union he tries to make up for the gaffe but in a painful way. The embarrassment is considerable. After all, Francis and Andrew had booked for a separate room just to avoid perplexed glances and stupid comments.   Francis and Andrew really live together now. Francis is a freelancer but about a third of his income comes from Andrew's farm, to which Francis dedicates at least 80% of his work. Francis and Andrew and also Andrew's father share the idea of a transparent company based on two principles: "never take the step longer than the leg" and "always respect the law", even at the cost of having less profits.” The farm underwent both financial and social security checks namely on the position of the workers and always came out of it well. In recent times, Mark, who is still finishing his studies in sectors that have nothing to do with agriculture, has begun to express the idea of also taking care he too of the management of the farm, but according to him managing the farm doesn’t mean working on it physically from morning to evening but having pharaonic ideas far beyond the concrete economic possibilities.   Mark, who doesn't understand anything about the economic management of a farm, went to speak with the director of a local bank using his surname, which is well known in these parts, to explore the ground about the possibility of having a loan for a an astronomical sum compared to the size of Andrew’s farm, and Andrew has been notified of this by the bank manager himself who had already informed the father. Mark, now has his own idea about how to transform the farm, he bites the brake, he bought a car for 40,000 euros and Andrew and his father don’t even know where he gets the money from because he doesn’t officially work and his father certainly didn't give him 40,000 euros. Mark probably borrowed them from someone. Andrew is very often in a bad mood when he returns from the farm, he tries to talk to his brother to understand how things really are but his brother doesn't even want to see him.   The couple relationship between Francis and Andrew is very conditioned by Andrew's family problems. Francis tries to console his partner as best he can but the couple life ends up becoming a marginal appendage to the issues related to Andrews's brother. When Andrew returns home to the city, he is affectionate towards Francis, he cooks for Francis, he seeks physical contact with Francis, he wants to make it clear that he is there even though he has a thousand problems in his mind. Francis would like his partner to be serene but realizes that instead he is almost always pensive. Andrew's father, with the excuse of consulting Francis for problems related to the farm, often calls him and tries to stay close to him and tells him that he is very worried about Mark.   At the end Andrew's father has paid off the promissory notes signed by Mark for the car, but Mark continues to ask him for money to go on vacation with his family but his father is determined not to give him money to waste. Mark doesn’t work and occupies (between himself and the in-laws) two apartments in the farm and doesn’t really realize the value of money.   Recently a new quarrel broke out between Mark and his father. Beyond  Andrew, Francis and Andrew's parents, three families of specialized farmers live permanently in the farm and have been working there for generations. The head of one of those three families died and under the terms of the contract, the family should have left the apartment, but Andrews's father, who knew this family very well, sought a different solution. Since the dead man had a 16-year-old son, Andrew's father hired him instead of his father, and so he left the apartment to the family, he pays the boy as an employee but the boy doesn’t actually work in the farm because he still studies (as an agricultural expert). When the father told Andrew that he had  hired the boy, Andrew replied immediately: “Well done!! You sure did well!” And I saw that the father felt a moment of happiness. Mark, on the other hand, considered the fact a way of throwing money away and couldn't bear the fact that Andrew's father treated the sixteen year old boy almost as if he were a bit like a third son. Among other things, this guy knows about the story between Francis and Andrew and has never had problems of any kind with them.   Francis and Andrew love each other, first of all they esteem each other as men, they have a system of values in common, they know that they can count on each other, in theory they would have all the credentials to be able to live a quiet life as a couple but Andrew's family problems continually erupt into their life as a couple. Francis and Andrew, at the beginning, thought that the couple problems, between them, could be problems of fidelity, jealousy, sexual compatibility, and instead they never experienced problems of that kind. By now Francis and Andrew know very well that their life will be conditioned by Mark in a very heavy way but they also know that they will always be together to fell stronger and to face every difficulty.   I wrote this email to make it clear that, at least in our case, it is not homophobia that affects our life, but above all family problems related to money. I think these problems are not typically gay, but certainly Mark's homophobic moralism appeared out just when Mark realized that as a partner in a Civil Union, Francis would be a competitor for him to his father's legacy.   Take care! Francis (clearly, if you want, you are free to publish the email, the meaning reflects reality but I changed some circumstances so as not to compromise anyone's privacy.)   BUT CAN WE BE A GAY COUPLE? Posted by: gayprojectforum - 12-20-2020, 04:44 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, I'd like to talk a little with you to know what you think about some important points for my relationship with my partner. I read your “Being Gay” manual and found many things in it that match my experience. I will try first to summarize the facts and then to present my doubts to you.   I'm 29 years old, you can call me Max, I have never attended gay circles and until a couple of years ago I had never had gay friends and least of all a partner. I have always made a lot of use of pornography, not really at the level of addiction but almost, let's say it was like a drug that allowed me to have somehow a sexuality even if I had no partners of any kind. I have never used dating sites or sex chats or gay dating apps, I think I didn't do it more for fear of diseases than for the thing itself. Meanwhile, I graduated and I also found a job.   When I was at university I dreamed of finding the guy of my dreams at university, when I started working I dreamed of finding him in the workplace, but I never found anyone either on one side or the other. I am not a cover boy, I am very normal, passable but not a movie star, maybe this also counts for a lot and maybe the fact that I don't go around looking for bargains also counts for a lot.   However, at Easter 2017 I meet by pure chance, through friends, a married man 36 years old, exactly ten years older than me, a very handsome man, there is a certain mutual sympathy, on my part also something more, but he is married, he has no children but he is married, when he uses for the first time the expression "my wife" he freezes all my hot spirits and I tries to get away from him who instead does everything to keep me. Or rather he doesn't try at all on a sexual level, but he has attention for me that no one had ever had, he often called me on the phone, we talked about everything, but not about sex or love life, in short he's a good friend and something more than a good friend.   I couldn't break away because he courted me in a very discreet way but his way of doing was, despite everything, the way of doing a lover, not that of a friend. Obviously he must have understood that I was gay, I don't know what he understood it from, but he certainly understood it because at some point he started talking about sex and basically told me he was married but he was gay, he could also have intercourse with his wife, and it happened, but it wasn't what he really wanted, he told me that when he masturbated he thought of men and that since he had known me he had started to think of me. It is clear that to make a speech of this kind he had to assume that I was gay, and in fact then he told me clearly.   I swear to you, Project, that I didn't know how to behave, I would have liked being with him, but he was married and the complications would have been so many. For me they have been days full of anxiety, you have a practically unique opportunity to be with the man you want but he is married, he is gay, but he is married. Since I did not know what to say, I mentioned to him that he could get a divorce, because by now there was a short divorce and with the consent of both spouses 6 months of separation would have been enough, otherwise twelve, but in any case it could have been a short thing after all. He was perfectly aware of all these things and therefore he had concretely thought about the divorce but in the end he didn’t feel like to take any initiative. When we talked about it together he was very hesitant. I did not feel like insisting, also because, if he hadn't divorced, I would have found myself into a very complicated situation and since the summer of 2017 we have cut off all types of contact, including telephone contact.   In February 2018 he calls me very early one morning, it must have been 6.00, more or less, and asks me if I have found a boyfriend, I tell him no and he says: "I don't know if it might interest you but I'm in pending divorce. My wife found a partner and asked me if I was willing to do a divorce by mutual consent and I said yes. " I felt caught off guard and replied: “Let me think about. I have to think about it a bit ... I'll call you back at lunchtime." He simply told me. "Ok!" and we ended the call. He had talked from the beginning about going to live together. I knew that the house where he was staying with his wife was his and that they were under a separation of property regime, but the house problem would not exist anyway because I had my small apartment for rent, even if bringing in another person permanently would have created big problems with the landlord. In short, Project, before giving him my answer I asked myself a thousand questions but only on economic or social aspects. at that time I thought that there could be no other problems.   At lunchtime I call him and tell him that I am very interested in it! He is happy with it. We meet at his house to have dinner together and to talk about us. I go to his house, he has prepared a dinner with candles, something I can't stand, I ask him to blow out the candles, he does it without saying a word, realizing that all that seduction staging is only counterproductive. I realize that he expects me to have sex with him after dinner, but I stop him right away and tell him: "We have to take the test first!" and he replies: "But there is no need, and then I have condoms." I told him we shouldn't take any chances because neither of us could know each other's sex life. He asked me if I had had many guys, when I told him I had never had one he didn't believe it and thought it was a joke, then as far as he was concerned he said to me: "I have had sex only with my wife and sometimes before, but only with women." Almost as if sex with a girl was less dangerous. In that moment I didn't understand what it could mean that before getting married he had sex with other girls.   However, he swallowed the bitter morsel of the fact that we had to do the test first and after a few days we did it and it all turned out negative, so we could give the green light to sex. I go to his house for dinner, this time without candles, Spartan and quick dinner and then to the bedroom. And here for me the first cold shower has arrived, he expects to undress me, it's not the best but I can let him, while he undresses me he says: Now you have to give me your "little pussy", I look at him very perplexed  and he immediately recovers: "... your big dick" ... I make a face at him again as if to say, at least shut up! He signals to me that the message has been received. For a while, things go on passably, then he gets distracted and calls me with the nickname he used for his wife. I look at him again with a fiery gaze. Things get better again, but after a few minutes he tells me: "You are my favorite bitch!" And here I felt no more up to stand such things and said to him: " I guess you're confusing me with another person ..." In short, we have not reached the end, because sometimes strange things came out, very typically hetero, and in any case I don't want to be the substitute of a woman, if he wants a woman what's the problem? There are so many women!   At the end of the night he was almost in tears and told me: "You have to teach me how to have sex like gays, because I'm still far behind." The second time we met to have sex he avoided the grossest gaffes and we also had some sex, really very little, he was happy because I didn't scold him and we got to the end but I felt in a very heavy way the substitute for a woman. I had to do to him everything a woman does, but he never reciprocated, he was disinterested in my "big dick" as he called it but told me that I have beautiful breasts and a nice butt, something that I would never have told a gay guy.   Anyway, one way or another we did some sex but frankly it wasn't that great. After the second time I was starting to think that I was really in trouble and that he was probably not gay at all, maybe vaguely bisexual. One night when he was a little disheartened by our experience instead of having sex we just talked and it was so much better. I asked him what he felt when he had sex with a woman and he told me about it in a very hetero way, I also asked him what he expected from a man and he replied: "First of all friendship ... then also sex, but above all I would like affection from a man. " I asked him: "But why then the first time I came to you, you seemed to want to have sex with me right away?" He answered me: “Because I thought you would like it… now if you don't want to have sex with me anymore, I can understand it, but don't go away I need a person who respects and understands me. I don't know if I really fell in love with you, you are the friend I never had ... it's absurd huh? " I said to him: “It's not absurd at all… I think we should talk a lot… what can I tell you? I didn't expect such a thing, you've trusted me up to this point ... it's obvious that I'm not leaving, but it seems strange to me to become the closest friend of a straight guy who can even have sex with me, at least up to a certain point, but then he will continue to love women ... ”   He replied: “No I'm not straight, I want to be with you, I really don't think I could get back with a woman, the contact I have with you is really different. I love you more than how I love women, I've never found a woman who really understood me, I thought it happened with my wife but when she saw my weaknesses she behaved like everyone else. I don't blame her, maybe in her place I would have done the same. But you haven't run away and I don't think for that bit of awkward sex you can have with me who am trying to love you like a gay would but I don't even know where to start, sometimes I think I could but sometimes I think really not. I asked myself: can we be a gay couple? Don't ask me what I think because I don't know either, I'm fine now but I'm afraid you may disappear as my wife disappeared."   Dear, Project, the facts end there. I love him, he is a good man who at first seemed strong and unattainable but then proved fragile and very insecure. He was 100% honest with me and probably with his wife as well, and I think that his wife left precisely because of his fragility, for his perpetual indecision and because you realize that in the end you can only count on him up to a certain point. He was straight in his own way for many years, then he tried to be gay, but always in his own way, and so someway he failed both times. He is afraid of being himself, he has to follow a script dictated from the outside, he thinks that if he follows his instinct he is wrong and so holds back himself, he always does things halfway, he participates, but with the perennial fear of making mistakes, he trusts me but at the same time he fears me, of his sexuality he says: "I am gay" and in a sense it is true, he is happy to be with me but he is afraid to delude, to promise without keeping promises, he's afraid of not being up to it even if it is not at all like so. Now we don't live together, but he would like it, he makes me understand it in every way. Before I had some doubts about whether he was really gay, but then those doubts vanished because he is sexually involved and this is undeniable, in essence I am not afraid of a flashback towards women because he is fine with me, and in a sense for me it's the same. He told me a little about his life which was basically a normal life. He says he has always known that he liked men but that he only had sex with girls because it was much easier with them and in the end he was not resistant to women, but he says that when he was with a woman, if he had a choice, he would have gone with a man.   Now I come to the point, Project, I can't tell you if the story with him really satisfies me, maybe I could feel better with another, but in the end I think that even with another I would always feel happy in an imperfect way. the problems would be other but it is not said at all that they would be less than those I have with him. Of course I found myself in a situation very far from the one I had dreamed of for years, but I really love this man, I don't know how to say it, I don't see him so much as the companion for life according to the model I had imagined but somehow I love him, I have the impression that he counts a lot on me and that gratifies me. There is a dialogue between us that I think is unimaginable for many people. For a while I thought that I would have to find a way to cut the rope and get rid of him, but now I'm starting to think that basically I don't want to do it. And here comes the question I ask you: what would you do?   I am not afraid that he will take badly that I sent you this email, because he knows exactly how things are and he also knows that I am very uncertain, or maybe he knows that even if I am very uncertain, I love him anyway.   I am attaching my skype contact [omitted] because I would prefer to talk about it verbally, if you think it possible, put the email in the forum, maybe some right input may come from there too.   Thanks and hope to hear from you soon. Max   A GAY GUY AND HIS FIRST TIMES Posted by: gayprojectforum - 12-16-2020, 05:51 PM - Forum: True gay stories - No Replies Hi Project, I’m 32 years old, I was born in 88, a year of iron (I'm kidding, unfortunately!), when I was 16 I was the classic guy who dreams only about the charming prince and who lives on pornography, I say it and I'm not ashamed at all, at least there was that! At 17 I had my first experiences with a guy who was a year older than me, whom I’ll call Mino here, who perhaps wasn't the guy of my dreams, indeed he certainly wasn't the guy of my dreams, but I thought that in the end he would agree to share some intimacy (I mean sex) with me. He was neither rude nor aggressive, we often talked on the phone for hours, he never cut short the conversation and waited for me to end the call. At first I don't think he understood what kind of interest I had in him. Let's be clear, I first of all wanted to see how he was made, physically of course, that is, I wanted to see him naked and then I wanted to experience some sex with him. He never provoked me but allowed me to provoke him, that is, he allowed me forms of physical contact, not exactly sexual though, which I liked a lot and which evidently suited him too.  Between us there was somehow that unclear border atmosphere, in which friendship and sexuality mix until they lose their traditional borders. I didn't know if Mino was gay, he didn't talk about girls and that was enough for me to fuel my fantasy. I was not in love with him, I just wanted to try something sexual with him, but I didn’t know where to start and I was afraid that the charm of that undefined but concrete intimacy could end abruptly if I had taken a too risky step. We weren't school friends, we had met through mutual friends and the classic opportunities to be together, like for example in order to study and things like that, as it happens between schoolmates, didn’t exist at all between us. We had nothing institutional in common, we used to meet almost every day just because it suited us. Then he gets his driving license and on the evening of April 23, 2005, a Saturday evening, he asks me if I'm willing to go camping with him for two days on April 24 and 25, it was a rare opportunity because on Saturdays we had to go to school. The first thing I think is that when we are together he will let himself go.  The next morning we leave. Beautiful journey, 300 km in a row, then we arrive at a seaside campsite. We set up the tent, a two-seater Canadian, we eat something we had brought from home, at a certain point I lie down on the mattress and he says to me: "We have to go to the beach!" He hasn't even finished speaking when he takes off his pants and briefs and puts on his bathing suit. Seeing him like this, I was almost having a heart attack but it seemed he hadn't noticed it. He had it (you know what I'm talking about) not really erect but not really flaccid. I, on the other hand, had it hard and wet and therefore I couldn't put my swimsuit on in front of him, I didn't know how to get out of the embarrassing situation, but he was the one who solved the problem. He told me: "I'm going, you come when you want!" I wondered if he understood the situation, but I didn't know what answer to give me. I waited for the hormonal storm to pass, put on my swimsuit and went to the beach too.  Mino in his bathing suit was not bad, that is, he was much better this way than fully dressed. He had a beautiful body, hairy in the right amounts and in the right places, he was tall, snappy, thinner than he looked when he was dressed. All in all he was much better than I had thought he was. We swam together, we played in the water but without sexual things, also because I was always almost erect and I had to be careful because sooner or later we had to get out of the water. He went out first without telling me and went to lie down on the sand. I waited a few minutes and once I reached a quiet situation I too went out of the water and went to sit next to him. I began to think with desire but also with anxiety about the fact that sooner or later we would go back to the tent to change, I would see him naked again but I would be naked too. When the sun started to go down we went back to the campsite, I went into the tent first and I started changing thinking that if I had done everything very quickly I would have avoided any embarrassment, but just when I was about to put my underwear back on he walked in, gave me a look and said: "Sorry. May I?" I told him: "Sure!" And he came in and changed in front of me without the slightest embarrassment and even this time he didn't really have it (you know what) in a flaccid state, but exactly the opposite! But he made no comments of any kind, and obviously I too avoided any comment.  Then we went to the camping self-service to get something to eat and we started being stupid and we went on like this until almost eleven in the night, then we went to the tent to sleep. Clearly I didn't want to sleep and I started to provoke him, he started laughing and I didn't give him any respite and in the end he got involved and there has been also some sex between us, but he was laughing like crazy while trying to do everything to keep me quiet because he was afraid someone would hear us, since we were in a tent. I don't go into details, it wasn't really overwhelming but fun yes. The next morning I woke up very early, while he was still asleep and I began to be afraid of his reactions because maybe, the next day, thinking about what had happened, he could have taken it badly but nothing like this happened. When he woke up he started laughing and saying nonsense, like the night before, repeating to me: “You are terrible!" But he was saying it jokingly and I began to think that in the evening we would have to make the return trip and that our sexual experience would be the only one. When we returned to Milan, everything started again as before. Every now and then that phrase came back: "You are really terrible!" but said with a smile as had happened in the campsite, in practice there have never been other references to what I, mentally, used to call "our first time". During the summer we lost sight because he went abroad with his family. We still spoke on the phone, but the calls were always shorter, not formal or distant but only shorter. In the last days of August, Maya's veil is torn, that is, basically the slices of ham fall out of my eyes. Mino calls me on the phone and we talk for hours, he tells me that he has fallen in love with a girl and that he feels very deeply involved, he has had sex with this girl and says that it was a beautiful thing but he is desperate because the girl doesn’t take him seriously and doesn’t want to give up her freedom, while he is madly jealous and feels terrible. Mino talks to me because he considers me a true friend whom he can trust 100%. It is evident that he is straight and that our first time for him was just a game that hasn't changed anything in his world. I had sex with him only once and he never talked about it again not because he removed the subject but because it never occurred to him. When he was in crisis with the girl he would call me and stay with me on the phone for hours, in short, I had to listen to the amorous moans of a straight guy.  Well, I did, that is, I kept doing it because he was convinced that I was straight, I couldn't tell him the truth, because he could feel uncomfortable and then I started playing the role of the straight guy who prefers to keep women at a distance so as not to get too involved! Mino told me that it was evident that I knew how to manage women! Just think, Project, that then, for a certain period, I began to feel guilty because Mino took me seriously and I had the impression of making fun of him. Basically I was making fun of him, for his own good, but anyhow I was making fun of him. At the university he found another girl who, unlike the first, really cared about him, he had a son with her and he got married at 23, in 2010, and I went first to the wedding and then to the baptism of the son, but then we almost completely lost touch. In practice, my story, if we want to call it so, with Mino lasted almost five years. At 22 I had come to a conclusion: if you are not sure about a guy whether he is gay or not, it is better that you let him go from the beginning. Mino was a very good guy but he was straight and had to go his own way, by now I understood that a gay guy must keep away from straight guys. With Mino I have maintained a good relationship that still lasts, even if very at a distance, but it is now a kind of archaeological remnant of another age.   Already in 2007, at university, I had begun to look around, since with Mino it was clear that I couldn’t build anything that made sense to me. There were many beautiful guys at university, but I, after the experience with Mino, didn’t want to do the second edition, and then at university students used to think about studying and certainly not about collecting gossip that would allow to understand if a guy was gay or not. Anyway I was always on guard and always with the radar on. A couple of times I said to myself: "It could be him!" but then I was proved wrong by the facts. I was careful not to discover myself and I think that other gays did the same, but probably my way of doing, very circumspect and prudent, didn’t go unnoticed in the eyes of other gay guys.    One day I realized that I was being watched by one of my colleagues, who was not, however, part of the group of so-called friends. He was a guy who looked at me every now and then and apparently he had no official reason, so to say, to behave this way, but there was a problem, a terrible problem, I didn't like this guy physically, I really didn't like him. Mino was not my charming prince, but all in all he was not so bad physically, but I didn't like Patrick (fantasy name) at all. And here  something began that would never have occurred to me before, I started running away from the one guy I knew was not only gay but also interested in me, I wasn't 100% sure but suspected it on very concrete grounds. He didn't even talk to me, he didn't come close to me, he simply observed me from a distance and I tried to avoid him but it was not easy because we were few and to avoid Patrick I started, let's say so, my straight life ... Project, I had never had sexual fantasies about girls and I never did, not even after, but I thought that being seen with a girl might cool off Patrick's undeclared enthusiasm. And here I made a terrible mistake. Since I didn't want to compete with my clearly straight colleagues, I looked for a girl who was among the least popular and also among the least talked about and enterprising.  Among my colleagues there was Mary (this is also an invented name), a really decent girl, at a level that a straight guy could fall in love with her, not very talkative, that is, not much gossipy, but with a dignity that inspired me trust, and I started talking to her in the short intervals between one lesson and another, we used to go to the bar together for breakfast, in short, we gradually became friends. She was very reserved but also very attentive to what I said to her, she seemed to have no friends and didn't hang out with anyone, for me she was, all in all, a pleasant company, mind you, it started as a system to keep Patrick at a distance, but then it had a minimum of meaning for me too, I think that, for her, all the story was much more important, but I didn't realize these things at the time, I didn't understand how unbalanced our relationship could be and slowly I deluded her to have started a true love story.   She never took a step forward, she followed me but never took the initiative and I felt encouraged. Here I have to shorten the  story, even if it has not been short at all. At a certain point I invite her to dinner but on the evening of dinner I realize that I’m entering a dead end street, I understand that she is in love and I don't know how to get rid of her. After a quick dinner, the exact opposite of a romantic dinner, we go out for a walk and I confess to her that I'm gay. I think for her it was as if an anvil had fallen on her head but she maintained maximum self-control, she stayed talking to me in the car for a couple of hours, when I took her back home, before getting out of the car she took my hand, squeezed it very tightly, and told me: "I'm glad to be your friend!" I then told her clearly that I had approached her only to push away Patrick and all the rest, that is, I told her the truth and she replied: "Look, it is the first time that a guy really tells me how things are and this, beyond what you think, is a sign of respect." In fact I think that Mary has suffered a lot, but between us, after the evening of the invitation to dinner nothing has collapsed, at least apparently, indeed I would say that our relations have improved, in the sense that between us spontaneity became the rule and role games completely disappeared, she was aware that, anyway, I would be looking for a boyfriend and that sooner or later even our friendship would end, simply because we would go different paths, this was somehow inevitable, anyway she used to say: "But there is a here and now, the future will take care of itself, in the meantime let's think about the present ..." Then I learned, by underground ways, that Patrick had started a relationship with an unsuspected guy of our course, one of whom I could have sworn he was 100% straight.   Meanwhile, the university was over. Fortunately for me, it didn't take me long to find a job in a medium-sized road construction company. Certainly we do not build motorways but we work above all for small mountain municipalities for consolidation, enlargement and extraordinary maintenance of roads, small and medium bridges and viaducts. I work in a team with a geologist between 40 and 45 years old, very good but very professional and then married and with children, clearly far from my interests, with a girl which deals with estimates, accounts, subcontracts, in other words, she is charged of economic evaluations, she is also very competent but you see her in the office during her work hours and then you don't see her anymore. Those rare times that we in the group had a dinner together she never came, and therefore she is out of our group, then there are two other engineers, one in his 50s, very frustrated because he feels compelled, or better forced to work with rookies like me. He's also very resentful towards the managers of the company who didn’t allow him to reach a role equal to his abilities, but in reality, even if he would be able to do much more, he's a slacker who, if he can, downloads his work on other people. Then there is Gaetano, known as Tano, a guy from Benevento, little more old than me, I would definitely say a handsome guy, but with him I have little opportunity to talk, even on a professional level and just no opportunity to talk about anything else. He wears a gold ring quite similar to a wedding ring, and this pushes me to keep him off the list of eligible candidates.   So, at first glance, zero opportunity at work! But no! Because the works must not only to be planned but also be carried out and the company has six groups of workers specialized by type of work (excavation and earth moving, foundations, bridges and viaducts, mantle and street furniture, reinforced concrete maintenance, stone and metal structures). The company rotates the teams of workers according to the executive stage of the projects. Over the months I got to know almost all the workers in the teams, at least of the first five teams, since managers almost always sent me to supervise the execution of the work, because I had no family and I was quite happy to go to work and also to sleep outside, but since it is quite rare that on mountain roads there are stone or metal bridges, I had never met the workers of Team 6. One day they send me to a mountain village, whose territory extends down to the valley, there is a crossing of a stream on a stone bridge and the arch of the bridge seems to me in critical state and unable to stand the load of the new road and therefore I ask someone from Team 6 be sent to me to get an evaluation from an expert technician. Two days later Daniel arrives, he must have been more or less my age, I was looking at him almost enchanted by his eyes, he was really my model of a perfect man, so much so that Michelangelo's David in comparison is really ugly. Daniel is handsome, smiling, full of enthusiasm, in short, he has everything it takes to make me take a tremendous crush, but I didn't want to do the second edition of Mino, and the first day I was a bit on my own, however, always treating him in a very direct and loose way. We go and see the arch of the bridge at risk, he evaluates things by eye, does not make calculations, but he is extremely practical in dealing with construction problems, far beyond the level of his colleagues of the other teams, he tells me that according to him there is little to do, that arch would certainly not hold up and that it would be necessary to carry out load tests to be sure, anyhow it seemed to him that it would not hold.   The thing would be quite unpleasing, because the bridge would have to be redone exactly as it was and couldn’t have been replaced with a concrete bridge, which would have been the simplest solution. It would have been necessary to stop the works and ask for the authorization of a variant for the lot that included the bridge, which however was a new lot on which a real design had never been done. My bosses would certainly not have liked the idea and would have turned up their noses, and to convince them a very precise technical report was needed, to be presented also to the local authority that should have assumed the greatest expense. The technical report to be sent to the municipality had to be impeccable. In the evening I stayed up late to agree on what to do with Daniel. I contacted my team's geologist and he told me he would come immediately to do the tests he was responsible for, I called Tano and told him that I would need a load test on the bridge and he replied that he would also come as soon as possible with everything necessary. We agreed to meet all together on the construction site the following Saturday. On the appointed day, both Tano and the geologist began to work and collect data and the work went on until the evening. In the end they concluded that the bridge wouldn’t hold the new road with the expected loads and it would be necessary to make a new bridge, again in stone but new, with much more resistant materials and with modern criteria. They told me that they would send me the technical reports within a couple of days and that I would have to send them to the company to see what to do with the municipality. So, as far as the issue of jobs was concerned, Daniel was absolutely right, but there was another thing that I hadn't lost sight of during the day beyond Daniel's technical ability, I mean the furtive glances and the exchanges of smiles between Tano and Daniel. Tano wore that golden ring, yes, but ... the accounts just didn't add up. Both Tano's and Daniel's behavior seemed suspicious to me, and very suspicious.   However, on Saturday evening the geologist, Tano and Daniel went away and I stayed on the construction site to go on with the other jobs with the workers of another team. The technical issues about the bridge were unraveled fairly quickly. In a relatively short time we have designed a new bridge, with all the geological and technical reports.   One morning they warn me that Team 6 will come on the following Monday to start the work because most of the stone artifacts had been prefabricated and the work would have been quite quick at the level of load-bearing structures. Innediately after the other teams had to be ready tointervene for the parts of their competence. On Friday morning Daniel returns, I thought there would be the same ease climate as the first time but it doesn't happen like that, he doesn't go off the rails of work. He goes on working continuously with the company cell phone for the whole Friday and Saturday, the shoulders of the bridge had to be redone, it was a difficult job especially because the place was very tight. I should have checked Daniel's work but he knew a hundred times more than me about his job. I don’t hide from you, Project, that the situation created many problems for me. I should have spent at least a couple of weeks with Daniel, just staying together, but the atmosphere was not like that of the first time. The first day was really embarrassing, I felt like a complete moron, about the bridge, he was able to understand everything much more than I did and we couldn't talk about anything other than work. In the following days we found a balance but we only talked about work, I wondered what had happened but I kept this question to myself. The following Saturday Tano comes to help in the assembly of the supporting structures of the new arch, and here the mystery is revealed to me. Tano and Daniel tended to isolate themselves and often talked in two but they didn’t have the air of those who talk about work and between them there was an exchange of physical contacts (pats on the back) which is not typical of people who have only seen each other once for business purposes. It didn't take me long to understand why Daniel kept so far away from me. In practice, even with Daniel things had gone up in smoke. For all the time that Daniel remained on the works we both kept a low profile, but in the last days a minimum of communication was restored, we began to trust each other more, at least at the work level, but personal arguments remained a taboo.   Once the work was finished, I returned to my team and there I had another confirmation that something had happened between Tano and Daniel. Tano was no longer part of my team and had been replaced by an engineer who had just joined the company, one in his forties, married and with a photo of his children always on his desk. Good person, for heaven's sake, but very far from me. I asked the geologist where Tano had been moved and he said they hadn't moved him but he had asked to be sent to coordinate Team 6. The geologist insinuated that he had gone there because "Team 6 never does anything, while in our team Tano would have to work hard”, but I suspected the reason was completely different. I had no way to verify my hypothesis but the probability of having seen things just as they really were was very, very high. Tano and Daniel had their base of operations in another area of the city and so I didn't see or hear from them for a long time. The engineer, all home and family, was very good in his field and in my opinion he was a bit wasted to do a job like ours, the managers noticed it and took it to a little higher level and we remained understaffed for a few months. One morning the geologist, who was the coordinator of the team, arrives and tells me that they have sent us a new engineer who will come next morning to start his new job, but the geologist has no other news about it, he doesn't know who the new engineer is. I tidy up his office and am curious to see what the newcomer will be like. The next day I see Daniel arrive!    He tells me that he finished his studies late and that he started working before graduation, but that in the end he too had made it and as he said it his eyes were shining. I don't know what to do, I feel restrained, he smiles at me as if to melt me and give me the green light. I hug him tightly and he gives me back the hug warmly, he does the same with the others in the team, but it's not exactly the same thing. During the break he says to me: "Are you coming to eat something with me?" I immediately tell him: "Sure!" and we stay together talking in a very pleasant way. He tells me about his studies and many other things, obviously he never talks about girls and from all his way of doing it is clear that he is happy to be with me. Then he talks to me about his problems at work, he tells me that Tano had been sent to Team 6 and adds "because between us there was more than a sympathy, ... and I think you understood this ..." I answer him: “I got it yes! ... and anyway ... "He tells me:" Now we're not together anymore, it wasn't a good experience, we just didn't understand each other, in short, the fact that he was my coordinator made me put maximum effort into studying, because I didn't even want to work with him ... " I asked him: "But did you deliberately choose to join our team?" He replied: "Yes ..." and looked into my eyes smiling. I told him: "And you did very well!" This was my first declaration of love to a gay guy! Up to this point it may seem like a fairy tale, but even if my relationship with Daniel has had ups and downs, it has been going on for a few years now and it seems to me strongly consolidated. He is a serious man and we love each other. At work, teammates think we are just friends but we plan to move in together. He's the one who introduced me to Gay Project and told me he knows you personally. I’m sending you a photo of us as a Christmas gift! Of course, if you want, you can publish the email. Manuel (and Daniel)   A QUARRELSOME GAY COUPLE Posted by: gayprojectforum - 12-09-2020, 01:23 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hello Project, I read your post "Gay between couple conflicts and utility relationships", please don’t be offended if I tell you it, but I made a terrible effort to get to the end, because your post seemed too theoretical and too much complicated. There was, however, a sentence that struck me a lot, because it corresponds to my personal experience: "The stalemate and the interruption of the dialogue are the premise of the formal rupture, which, however, doesn’t necessarily correspond to a substantial rupture, because confrontation through words is one thing and feelings are another thing." Here, it is precisely this the point I’d like to analyze referring to my personal experience.   I’m 34 years old and my partner is 31. We are the classic gay couple  used to quarrel. You don't know how many times we have soundly sent each other to the hell. In almost 10 years that we have been together, perhaps it is more the time we have spent quarreling than that we have spent together without quarreling, eventually, by dint of arguing, we have created an arsenal of fighting weapons, that is of insults and aggressive arguments that we use against each other when we quarrel and I could say that for us quarreling is the rule, not the exception. Today, perhaps, most of the quarrels we have are outbursts, squabbles, more a kind of raising your voice to do some theater than anything else, but a few years ago we used to reproach each other the worst things. This way sometime we reached  the "formal" breaking point, as you say, that is, we happened to end up to come to promise ourselves that we wouldn’t hear from each other again and it happened that once the two of us stopped meeting and staying in contact in any other way for three months, this to make you understand that then we used to take such things seriously. He accused me of being a hypocrite, that by now I was thinking of other guys and my head was elsewhere, even if I never thought of other guys, but I paid him back with the same coin, because I was convinced that he neglected me and that so many of those he called friends weren't really just friends. And he instead swore a thousand times that they were just friends.   Between us there has always been a considerable mutual jealousy, I have never borne the idea of sharing my boyfriend with someone else, I just don't like these things. I'm not enough for you? You need anyone else? So goodbye! You find another guy but you don't see me anymore! Trios and quartets are good for music but in sex stories I've never put up with such things. However, that there is jealousy in a couple of guys it is also a beautiful thing, because it means that they love each other. I will never understand a lover who is not jealous. I mean that quarrel out of jealousy is somehow acceptable, and it doesn't bother me so much, but between us there were also other reasons for quarrel and in particular when we said no to each other. If you are in love with a guy and you ask him something, anything, you expect a positive response not something like: “Look, don't bother me, today I have to deal with my problems!" Or, even worse:" Let's postpone it to another time! ... come on, not now!" It is clear that if you hear yourself answered like this, you have every right to be angry and try to take revenge, because, Project, these things exist even when two guys love each other. We love each other, okay, but if you play stupid with me I have to block you, I have to make you pay for it.   You wrote somewhere that in a couple that works well there must also be the pleasure of giving in to the other, and yes I like such an idea, but every now and then some small settling of scores is necessary, because he must understand that if he wants to play small dictator, it takes me just a second to send him to the hell. I don't tell you what happens if sometimes I don't feel like having sex! I try to explain it to him, just to make him understand that it is neither out of rejection nor out of spite, but he takes it badly and begins to insult me and tells me that I use him, because he never tells me no, but if it's true that he never tells me no, it is because in practice I never ask him for anything, while he harasses me in such a way that I have to send him to the hell anyway. That is, I mean: if you want to be with me you have to take me as I am, if not, bye! Then there are some speeches he makes that make me angry and that have been several times subject of quarrels.   Sometimes he starts like this: “Today I'd like to do this and that to a guy like …”, clearly and openly speaking about sexual things and then I say to him: “Well, go and do it! What are you waiting for?" and from there springs a quarrel without an end , because in that way he wants to tell me that I’m not up to his fantasies and that "therefore" that is "because of my fault”, he "must" look for other guys, and I reply: “Have you ever looked in the mirror? But where do you find another idiot like me who runs after you?"   We once had a bad fight, right in the early days, when we really knew very little about each other, because I had introduced him to a female friend of mine and he thought she was my girlfriend, or at least that she wasn't a simple friend but a friend to have sex with, like hetero guys say today. But I never thought about going to bed with a woman not even in my worst nightmares, but he was obsessed with this idea and accused me of "having one foot in both worlds". Now he realizes that such a thing is just grotesque, but then he considered it realistic.   We quarreled because he considered my attitudes towards my parents too compliant, but also because those very few times we went on vacation together he demanded to choose where and when, but also because he uses an after shave with a too much sweet scent I cannot bear, I asked him to change it but he didn't, because he doesn't care about what I tell him. He accused me of being slimy and insinuating and I accused him of being crude and rude and sometimes even aggressive and abusive, because he is much more robust than me and he takes advantage of it, that is, he overwhelms me physically.   We had a fight because he went gossiping about our affairs with his so-called friends. I never gossip about him, I keep to myself the things he tells me, he does exactly the opposite! But he doesn't tell me, and I learn from the others that he has gossiped and when I point it out to him he denies everything, even the evidence. He accuses me of being a coward because I don't want to come out in public, but he's not out of the closet! He too doesn’t want to come out in public, with friends yes, but at work he would never do it, but he poses as a gay guy who came out without any problem ... and that’s why he’s doubly hypocritical because he attributes to me a distorted way of reasoning that’s typically his. I’m yet in the closet and it suits me well so, he’s not out and pretends to be out! Such a behavior isn't it hypocrisy?   But we also fought over less noble things, that is, over money matters. Consider that we don’t live together, because it wouldn’t be possible, so there is no problem of shared money between us, but we fought because we are two opposites, I’m an ant and he is a cicada, he tells me that I’m a stingy guy, indeed, he says miser guy, and I accuse him of throwing money out the window posing as a great lord with his friends, for whom he often pays lunch when they go out together ... and they obviously feel grateful and never let him go, because they found the chicken to pluck!   I have always wondered what I can find in an idiot like him ... average intelligence, no more,  ... handsome? Nothing exceptional, he's average, nothing more, and when he poses as a viveur he’s really ridiculous, he tells me that I don't have the poetic sense of life ... but the sense of what? He tells me that I don't understand modern art, that I've never been young, that I had an old mentality even at 25. I told him: "There is one thing I really like about you ..." He expected who knows what, but I said to him: "... I like it when you do the rabbit face which is a very cute thing!" It is a kind of tic that he repeats every now and then, a bit even when he doesn't realize it, and he got angry because he thought that I wanted to tease him about something that was a defect for him ... yet when he does the rabbit face he is actually very cute.   I told him I don't like tattoos and he didn't have any ... it seems to me that telling someone who doesn't have tattoos that I don't like tattoos is an appreciation ... isn't it? And after a week he had a tattoo done in a somewhat delicate place, I asked him why he had done it and he, who is hypocritical up to this point, told me that he had that tattoo for a long time. But how can he think that I don’t know if my boyfriend has or doesn’t have a tattoo in a spot like that? This is to say how hypocritical he is.   He says of me that I go around slovenly in dressing and in personal care, I’m the jeans and t-shirt type, and winter jacket if needed, he is totally different! He must look special anyway and so throws money he earns and also the one he borrows from his parents (without ever returning). But I say: as for the guy, you have him! You don't have to look for another one! I once said to him: “Look, it's better that we don't go to live together (and he would never go to live with me because he would disgrace himself in public!) because if you think that ironing your shirts is up to me, or better is my duty, you are totally wrong! If you want a maid you must pay for it!"   He has ways of doing things that irritate me, but let's say he's the least worst of the guys I've met. He is not vindictive, but I am! We are like a big dog, him, and a small dog, me! I am always biting him but he doesn't react, he never aggressed me badly, he is a braggart, a smoke seller, he attacks only with words and swear words, but then forgets it. If you lecture him, it enters one ear and comes out of the other, it passes like fresh water. But he has a good thing, if he has the opportunity to put me badly in trouble, that is, to tear me apart he doesn't do it, he waits for my reaction, and if he sees that he can really hurt me, he stops. He never really did bad things to me, he never really disgraced me in public even when he could have done it.   There is one thing about him that I can't stand and that is the fact that he uses too direct language, that is, he talks about sex in very explicit terms, not only when it's just the two of us, but also when there are people, and above all he talks about sex using typical porn video jargon, and this bothers me terribly, he tells me that precisely in this he sees me hypocritical because I do things but I don't want to say it, while he is not afraid to say them (obviously always and only to his friends when he's gossiping). I like to have some privacy, for him privacy is unnecessary. Then I can't stand his friends, I adapt to seeing them every now and then, but I don't like them, they are all like him. For them seeing each other with friends is a bit like going to a play, they go out together as if they were going to the theater but not to see a play, but right to play it, and then you can't imagine the attitudes, as if they were scientists who read two books a day! I read very little or rather nothing! They too don't read anything at all but it seems that they live on books.   I have only two friends and I rarely contact them, because I have to work and the time I have left I want to dedicate it to my boyfriend and also a little to my parents who are not the best but are now old and have accepted my situation, or at least they don’t cause me problems, before they did, but now not anymore, and, well, basically they didn't create problems not even before, they were just worried because they thought that if you are gay you must go around with your butt outside and must speak in a woman's voice. On the other hand, my partner never sees his parents, or rather he sees them only to ask them for money to throw out the window for the most absurd things.   Another thing comes to mind now: I have an old and very battered car that is full of garbage inside, plastic bottles, greasy papers of all kinds, old bags of chips, etc. etc.; his car, on the contrary, is a cult object, for him, of course. The first time he let me in his car it seemed that he was giving me an extraordinary concession, I went inside and he immediately said not to slam the door, as soon as I entered I smelled a terrible chemical stench and I said: "What's this terrible smell ?" And he got mad, because he said it was a very expensive deodorant! (Immediately the opportunity to put the dot on the i!) I got off immediately because I was suffocating and then he too got off and started to explain to me about alloy wheels and many other devilry, but I stopped him immediately and said: "To me all these things seem like bullshit!" He would have exploded in anger but held himself back ... in practice he kicked me out, with an insult that he often uses: "How the hell did I put myself with a starving man like you!"   Here, however, I have to explain to you that he doesn't call me starving because he is rich and I am not, because he is not rich at all, neither is his family, we are more or less people of the same level. He calls me starved in the sense of stingy, miserly, one who behaves like starving man even if he is not starving. This is to make you understand. Last Christmas he gave me a pink case for the  mobile phone with little hearts on it and I said to him with a laugh: “Neither you can use such a case! Tell us the truth! Did your friends have recommended it to you?”   It takes patience with him! He is not bad, but he is not even good, he is one in the middle, so, a little yes and a little no, but by now we have created our own way of life. I can forgive him everything, or almost everything, but I could never bear him falling in love with someone else. Betrayal would make me outburst! I would react like a beast! But now ten years have passed and there has been nothing like that and then I think I'll keep him for me like he is, and then he too must have some patience to put up with me because he wants to be looked after in everything and I never treat him like the charming prince, because he is not, and I show him that he is just a guy like many and that when he poses as a superior man he only makes people pity him. However, Project, he is MY boyfriend! And tell me it's little!   Umbertino (that's what they called me when I was a child! And still they call me so.) Ps: Project, I hope you won't be angry because I said you write boring things… because it's true! But keep writing and take for granted that I'll always read you, but never forget that couples like mine really exist!   GAYS BETWEEN COUPLE CONFLICTS AND UTILITY RELATIONSHIPS Posted by: gayprojectforum - 12-06-2020, 05:00 PM - Forum: Gay orientation - No Replies There is a question about gay couple relationships whose answer is usually taken for granted but, nevertheless, has nothing obvious or trivial: "What does it mean to say that a gay relationship ends?" If it is obvious to think that a story can be considered finished when both partners consider it a fact of the past, which cannot resume living in the present, it is not at all obvious that a story is over, that is, it no longer produces effects, when only one of the two partners thinks that that story belongs definitively to the past, while the other partner still considers it alive and engaging, and even less one should think that a story is over when, despite reaching the decision to separate, both partners continue to feel somehow involved, because this also happens and not so rarely.   The emotional relationships between two people are lived on two distinct levels, the first is that of words and "declared" feelings, the second is that of the unspoken, in which the dimension of communication is expressed through much more subtle means than words such as the tone of the voice, the attitudes of the face, the physical contact, the attitudes of the body, not quickly closing a phone call, trying, at least in some moments, not to reach a definitive break despite having the opportunity, etc.. In fact it is very rare that the declared feelings and those actually experienced coincide. The explicit expression of feelings through words is necessarily linked to the categories of logic, that is, it must have its own coherence and must proceed through structured rational arguments that have at least the appearance of a logical discourse. Often, when one of the partners of the couple says to the other: "We must talk", with these words heralds a clarification considered indispensable, a kind of reckoning, which could define the conclusion of the couple relationship. Unfortunately, very often words not only serve to acknowledge a crisis situation already present, even if not declared, but they are themselves the cause or catalyst of the crisis, because words sound like judgments, like foreclosures, like preconceptions, like exclusions and therefore they can hurt. Affective communication without the use of words is much more direct and effective precisely because it avoids linguistic mediations and never sounds like a judgment, a refusal or a foreclosure.   Explicit speeches about feelings should be a clear representation of those feelings that makes them visible without deforming them, but often speeches about feelings have a strong autonomy with respect to the feelings they should represent and this way provide a very schematic, and not rarely strongly deformed image of those feelings, and so they often induce the counterpart to respond with specular tones or with silences that sound like forms of perplexity, disinterest or detachment. In this way the purely verbal and formally logical dialectic ends up replacing the feelings and being predominant and unstoppable. Unfortunately, deep feelings almost never come to manifest themselves in words, also because they would often appear uncertain and oscillating between the enthusiastic tone and the disenchanted one and therefore we prefer to omit them in order to rely on a much more tested communicative scheme.   In purely verbal communication a role is inevitably assumed. It must be clearly stated that in a dimension limited to social communication, in which in practice there are no deep affective involvements, the assumption of a role, with greater or lesser openings to a more personal dimension, can work well. In these relationships the problem of breaking a strong emotional bond doesn’t even exist, but in the context of the couple's life, however relaxed it is, that is, in the context of a relationship that has a strong emotional component, the problem of explicit communication it is fundamental, because through an explicit communication the relationship is defined and placed in this or that category and one's level of involvement is declared. Typical is the case of wanting to define whether the relationship is a couple relationship or a simple friendship, and if you agree on the fact that it is a couple relationship, then you can go on to define whether it is a closed or open couple. The reduction of the relationship within abstract schemes is in itself forced and dangerous. Obviously, if the communication took place through non-verbal channels, the abstract classification logic would be completely absent and the risks connected to it would be automatically avoided.   The explicit couple communication can become one of the critical moments of the relationship because, when there is no “affective” and non-verbal communication, which would be fundamental, communication is entirely entrusted to words and inevitably becomes fraught with ambiguity. I try to explain myself with an example. Let's say that two guys who have been in a couple for some time are forced to separate for a long time, non-verbal communication between them (tone of voice, exchanges of glances, physical contact) becomes impossible and everything is entrusted to the words. As long as at least telephone contact is possible and the tone of voice is still a fundamental communicative element, the dictatorship of abstract language is diluted and attention to words and their use is still relative, although still much stronger than it is when non-verbal affective communication is possible. But if the contact were to be limited only to the exchange of letters (or emails), the attention to words and their use would become maniacal, because written words would be the only means of communication and they alone would have the role of being mediators of feelings.   In correspondence exchanges and written chats, the request for clarifications, explanations and motivations is very frequent precisely because communication is entrusted only to words and any reassurance can only come from words. Any deviation from the topic of greatest interest to one of the two interlocutors is interpreted as a sign of disinterest.   Today, with video calls, even remote communications can maintain a certain amount of non-verbal communication, but the telephone and often also social networks and text messages are almost the only standard means of communication. Using these means it is very difficult to express feelings and the risk of misunderstanding is particularly high.   Obviously expressing feelings in words means reducing them to concepts, that is, to abstractions. We must never forget that animals, which don’t use a verbal language, that is, conceptual and abstract, are nevertheless able to express their feelings with the attitudes of the body that they also use as a means of very effective social communication. Communicating by combining verbal language with non-verbal language enriches communication and makes it possible even in very abstract sectors in which it is impossible to use non-verbal language, but communicating by substituting verbal language for non-verbal language means forcing feelings into logical categories and substantially distorting them.   There are sectors in which precise and abstract conceptual categories are used, in these sectors the language encodings are standard. The word “circle”, once the definition is given, assumes the same meaning for everyone, precisely because it responds to a precise definition, but the word “love” is indefinable in itself and arouses very varied and divergent content and reactions in those who heard that word, precisely because it cannot be defined and the areas of meaning that each one attributes to it are deeply linked to the personality and to the individual experience. Under these conditions, the possibilities of misunderstanding are enormous.   The possibilities of not understanding each other are inherent in every word and in every behavior, to overcome them you should be able to identify with the other person and to make your own the wealth of experiences, frustrations and gratifications that have defined the language of that person. Differences in language can derive from differences in age, social condition, role, but also from a myriad of imponderable but nonetheless determining factors, such as previous affective experiences, readings and cultural and political interests.   Unfortunately, dialogue often becomes a confrontation, not intended as a sharing of experiences but as a contrast, that is, it turns into an entrenchment on one's own positions and a strenuous attempt to defend them against those of the other person, with a kind of prejudicial closure that is incompatible with any form of dialogue-sharing. In general, the stiffeners and closures are symmetrical and you end up entrenching yourself in stalemate positions from which it would be possible to exit only by taking a step back that neither of the partners wants to take. The stalemate and the interruption of the dialogue are the premise of the formal rupture, which, however, doesn’t necessarily correspond to a substantial rupture, because the confrontation through words is one thing and feelings are another thing.   The verbal dialogue intended as a confrontation-opposition can also end with a truce, that is with the acceptance by both sides of some conditions considered "condicio sine qua non" for the continuation of the relationship. The military jargon used in these situations (confrontation as opposition, truce, truce conditions, entrenchment) is indicative of a climate of unresolved conflict which, at the slightest disregard of the conditions of truce, could again become an open conflict.   Even the most important emotional relationships can have conflicting aspects and the tendency to prevail over the other guy is never completely dormant, but the prevalence of one guy over the other, which appears to one of the two as a victory, appears to the other as an unavoidable renouncing, or better like a giving in without the pleasure of giving in that is the fundamental characteristic of love relationships, but anyhow is felt as an ending up accepting a forcing and this undermines the equilibrium of the gay couple which is based on equality.   Why is it so easy to end up in conflict situations? And what can be done to reduce the risk of an emotional relationship becoming conflictual?   I'll try to answer the first of the two questions right away. Conflict arises when the collaboration relationship ceases. The couple partners collaborate to achieve a truly shared common goal. When a common project is missing within a couple, each of the two partners tends to pursue its goals, even if they are not shared by the other partner, i.e. behaves as an individual and no longer as part of a couple. We must not believe that going from having a common goal to pursuing our own personal goals can be so easy, very often the common goal was missing from the beginning and we were simply deluding ourselves into having a common goal with another person and we were led to create a couple relationship or rather a pseudo-couple relationship  based on what was believed to be shared but wasn't really so. Then, over time, one realizes that sharing was purely illusory and that, even if formally in couple, the two partners continued to be emotionally and mentally single, that is, they continued to pursue their own life project, trying to involve the other, but avoiding give up their own personal project to build a new one as a couple.   A characteristic element of conflictual relationships is the search for the "other's faults" to which to attribute the failure of the relationship. Here too the use of war terminology recurs, the search for the "other's faults" is equivalent to the search for real or presumed violations of the conditions of truce that could justify a large-scale attack. Nobody wants for themselves the not very noble role of the aggressor and everyone wants to appear as the victim of an aggression who is forced to react to restore order and justice violated by the counterpart.   There are the recent faults, which constitute the real "casus belli" and there are the historical faults that had been kept in silence for a long time and that are recalled to the memory to corroborate one's condition of victim forced by the aggressor to put in practice a defensive strategy.   In true couple relationships, when there are conflicts that are then overcome, it’s usual to proceed to a true general and mutual amnesty, that is, partners mutually forgive each other the past and decide to put a stone on it and to start over. All this is made in order to avoid that old misunderstandings, now overcome, can condition the future of a relationship that is to be rebuilt on a different and stronger basis. Relationships become chronically conflictual when there has never been or ceases to exist a strong emotional relationship. In any other case, the relationship can be rebuilt, but if a strong emotional relationship is lacking, irrevocable conflict is the rule.   I now come to the second question: "What can be done to reduce the risk of an emotional relationship becoming conflictual?" The answer is connected to the answer given to the first question: to reduce the risk of a relationship becoming conflictual, one can only try to strengthen its affective, cooperative dimension of collaboration on truly shared projects. An affective relationship is in itself a relationship that involves some form of common life, even partial, even limited, even symbolic but affectively shared by both, and here the discussion must be extended to another concept, that of “reciprocal utility relationship”, which is not a couple relationship even if it can take on the appearance of it.   In social life it often happens that interaction relationships are created aimed at an exchange of favors, the rule of these relationships is that of the commercial relationship: performance versus performance, or "do ut des". Many times such relationships are created aimed at find a sexual partner. Let me be clear, when the thing is explicit and declared, it constitutes a kind of contract between consenting adults on which there is very little to object, but it is not a matter of couple relationships, because there is no real sharing of life, there are no common goals and each of the two partners pursues his own profit.   It is very difficult to distinguish reciprocal utility relationship from true couple relationships, because both can last indefinite and because both can become conflicting. The difference lies in the affective dimension. However, it would be an undue simplification to say that while couple relationships are built on a strong affective dimension, utility relationships lack it, in fact between the two categories there is an infinite variety of intermediate gradations in which the two aspects, the affective one and that of utility, mix in various ways and degrees. If, however, when the possibility of obtaining a profit fails, the relationship itself fails, certainly it can be said that utility was the real motivation of the relationship. In other words, the utility relationship is instrumental and selfish, while the emotional relationship is unconditional and substantially altruistic.   MY GAY LIFE AS A SINGLE OVER 50 Posted by: gayprojectforum - 12-04-2020, 02:54 PM - Forum: True gay stories - No Replies Hi Project, I'm here and I too am sending you my short email, I’m now over 50 and I have come to the conclusion that I will be alone for the rest of my life, I accepted it well, I don’t feel frustrated or depressed about this, I have had my stories, even beautiful, but now they belong to the past. I lived with a guy for 5 years before the age of 40, it was a good experience, which slowly wore out and got lost, but, let's say, even the exit from this relationship has had its dignity, he told me honestly which way things were going and he left without slamming the door and all in all we have maintained a good relationship for years, we used to speak on the phone every now and then because he had gone with his new partner to another city, but every time they came to Milan they came to see me and this used to make me very happy. He's now over 55 and, over time, our relationship tends inevitably to fade.   I know that this is how things work and I don't have a worry about it, but sure, if I think about the years we spent together and how our relationship is now, well, it almost seems to me that the past was just a dream or a transitory phase swept away by time, in the sense that you do a lot to live together, then you succeed but when you live in two you understand that in any case nothing has changed and that in the end the problems can be more increased than decreased by the fact of living together and one way or another you come to separate without rancor and all in all continuing in some way to love each other, but then time passes and takes everything away, in the end even the memory begins to fade because the ages of life change.   I also have had a couple of other stories, let's say minor, I mean too much short because lasted a few months and no more, even those guys were decent guys, but with them it all ended much earlier. For six years now I have not only had no affairs with anyone but I don't even want to have any. I see the idea of building a relationship after 50 as practically impossible, or perhaps it would take a very important emotional bond, which however is precisely what is systematically missing. I met many guys (so to speak, because they were all at least forty years old) on the internet, someone was really quite pathological but there were also decent ones, with a couple of them I built a kind of friendship from a distance, but something very superficial and essentially useless. I also stopped reading gay love stories and watching gay themed movies, apart from the fact that there were very few of them on the net, they seemed far away from my world, and looked like the world of dreams or sometimes  true nightmares, and in practice I never found anything that described a life similar to mine.   Some of the guys I’m in touch with tell me that at 50 one still has a long way to go and that I have to work hard,  but telling that I have to work hard, they mean that I have to work "but not with them" and therefore the speech tastes a lot of preaching, done just to say something. With younger guys, perhaps an approach would be easier (who knows) But I see them very far away, I was not like them even when I was twenty, you can imagine now! Sometimes I think that deep down I have never gotten into trouble and I have never had bad experiences, I will still have to work almost twenty years to retire but luckily I have some economic security and I have my own quiet life.   I have asked myself many times if, right now, I would really put my quiet life at risk, in the name of living as a couple, and frankly I think there will be no opportunity for life as a couple and therefore there will be very little to decide. It's not even a renunciation, I really don't have that kind of temptation anymore. I have had my experiences and now I'm fine by myself. Which is also a common fate for many hetero guys without children, who separate more or less at my age and stop looking for alternatives. Feelings are not a spiritual thing but a very physical thing and as the body ages the feelings grow older and become weaker and less demanding.   I have friendships, more or less serious, but still pleasant and to pass some time those too are fine, and I also have female friendships, with women around 50-55, who don’t see me as a possible companion, they are friends, but friends who don't know about me and who think that deep down I have a secret lover (obviously a woman), because for them it is impossible to conceive a man without a woman. However, apart from these aspects, which fortunately are never talked about, they are a quiet company.   Two of my straight friends know about me and nothing has changed with them, they are married and have grown up children, but they maintain very serious relationships with me, obviously we don't talk about sex, but we talk about a lot of things and I'm fine with them, I feel at ease. My gay friends are four, a couple, whom I adore, and two singles with whom I have relationships that are sometimes a bit problematic because with them there is some ambiguity and also a quite competitive spirit. They are all established people in the world of work and are not declared, not even those who live in couple, but there have never been problems between us, we keep each other at a distance, there is respect but more as non-belligerence than as true confidence.   I also have my relatives, my brother knows nothing about me and doesn’t suspect anything, but he has been living abroad for 30 years and we feel more or less formally a couple of times a year, I also have two male nephews aged 24 and 26, but I think I haven't seen them more than 4 or 5 times in all. My sister-in-law is a good woman, those very rare times we met she tried to make me feel at home, but obviously it was too difficult. This is my whole life.   I have to add something about my work which, all in all, gives me some satisfaction and I would also say that it absorbs me a lot. Eventually, by chance, I have been able to do a rewarding job. I have the opportunity to work with other people and there are beautiful forms of collaboration which, however, are strictly professional. Every now and then some sympathy arises, but to say friendship would be unrealistic.   In my life there is nothing exceptional, romantic or passionate, it is not a novel, it is a now stable routine that ensures me at least some tranquility. I know this is a trivial email, one that does not attract crowds of readers, but I send it to you anyway, please feel free to make with it what you like better.   Joseph  G.   GAY COUPLES AND SOCIAL CLASS Posted by: gayprojectforum - 11-29-2020, 05:33 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project,  I’m a 35 year old guy from Northern Italy and I have recently started reading your forum that intrigues me a lot, sometimes I think that the emails reported in the forum represent a bit, let's say, quite rare cases, that is couple situations which are more the exception than the rule in the gay world, other times, however, I think that beyond a visible gay world, there is also another reality, if you want, much less connoted in a gay sense, that is, without the classical gay appearance , in which the stories I read in the forum may be not the general rule, but at least something much less unusual.   There is one thing that guys tend to avoid, at least in words, and that is compromise. According to my experience, most of the important things in life are not the result of conscious choices, because no one foresees the future, but they are things that just happen or don't happen. Randomness and instinctive choices play a fundamental role, I don't know if they are always decisive but they certainly weigh a lot. For example, finding a guy with whom you are really good, which is a very complicated thing, in essence it is a random matter, you have to stay in the right place at the right time and meet the right person, if this doesn’t happen, you can waste years in useless research and in trying to build substantially impossible things. And then you have to understand that the "perfect" guy, which corresponds perfectly to your expectations and desires, doesn’t exist at all and therefore in any case it is unavoidable to move towards an adaptation, that is in practice towards a compromise.   It is a bit like when a couple has to buy a house and they want it not to cost too much but also to be large enough, they would like it to be in a certain neighborhood in order to have pleasant neighbors and to live according to a certain decorum, etc. etc.. Starting from these assumptions you can spend years in a continuous and vain research because a solution that satisfies 100% all the often contradictory needs doesn’t exist. When you "look for" a guy the situation is very similar, you know many guys, the perfect one is just a dream and you have to put aside the idea of finding him, otherwise you would end up remaining single, and if we think about ourselves, whether we accept it or not, we too are a compromise choice for our partner, because we all have defects. I don't want to give general rules, instead I would like to show how weak and dangerous the idea that general rules exist is.   I say these things because I have personally experienced them. I live in a big city in the North and I grew up in a wealthy family and all in all also mentally open towards homosexuality but not so much towards other things, primarily social rank. Let me explain: my parents didn’t cause me problems for the fact that I was gay, in the sense that they have known it since I was 16, with them no coming out has been needed because they are not stupid, I could go out with a guy instead of a girl, but he had to be a guy "from my world" (expression of my parents), if I had chosen a guy coming from a social category a very far from mine, they wouldn’t have accepted it easily, at least that is what I have always thought, and this idea of social rank, in the long run, I internalized it without even realizing it, that is, as something obvious and natural. I started very early, in practice already at 18, to frequent gay circles, but "good" gay circles, that is, selected clubs, high-level discos, etc. etc.. I grew up in cotton wool, isolated from reality since I was a baby, I only attended private schools, which were excellent in some respects but bad in others, because they were closed boxes that prevented me from looking around.   Personally I have never experienced being gay as a problem and I have not even had any other problems, at 18 I had a car, I had my personal bank account, powered by my father, of course, but I had it and above all, I thought it was more or less like this for everyone else, because for everyone around me it was like that. I used to spend my time hunting for gay experiences, thinking of vacations and weekends as if those things were the essentials in life. Basically, I had reached 25 years, I had graduated, I had started to work and earn and therefore also to be independent from the family, I had had three almost important stories with "good" guys, who in fact weren't too bad, but for me , and perhaps for them too, living as a couple was above all a game. I had never actually taken those things too seriously and for the guys I had been with, in all likelihood, it was exactly the same.   I was looking for a guy basically to have sex and not to disfigure with my friends and because, as I used to say then, I wanted to have fun, and I really used to have fun spending my life like that because that was my world, or better, my world ended up there, then at 26, in the summer in 2011, I met Joseph, who came with another worker to do a renovation work at my parents' house, because I was still living with my parents at the time. Joseph struck me immediately: his handshake was very different from that of the guys I used to meet, who didn't even like to touch my hand, and furthermore he was very direct and cordial. The work he did in my parents' house lasted several days and in a way we made friends. We talked about the work he was doing, the working hours, the technical solutions to be adopted, but sometimes we also exchanged a kind of complicity smile because we were the same age. The day he finished work I asked him for his mobile number and we exchanged numbers.    I thought he was going to call me because I felt like I had at least fascinated him a little, but he didn't call me. After a week I was no more able to wait and called him. I think he felt pleased of my call. I proposed to meet him one afternoon after work and he said yes, he added he would come to me and we made arrangements for the following Saturday. He showed up on his bicycle, which I never expected, left the bicycle in a parking for bicycles, and we started walking around the city.   In such a situation, either you tell him immediately how things are or nothing goes on. I didn't know where to start, he was the one who got me immediately out of my embarrassment, he looked me straight in the eye and said: "I think it wouldn't work ... I'm flattered by the fact that you invited me, but it wouldn't work ..." I pretended to be stupid, that is, I tried to avoid an explicit speech by continuing to remain vague but he blocked me immediately, he looked me another time straight in the eye and said: "If a guy like you asks for the mobile number of a guy like me and then he calls him after a week, it means only one thing ... isn’t it?" I said to him: "Yes, sure, but there is nothing wrong with that ... " But he continued his speech: "And if a guy like me he accepts the proposal, this also means only one thing, but it wouldn't work anyway ... " I was really fascinated by his way of dealing with the issue, but I was scared by the harshness of that" it wouldn't work anyway ... " and I tried to insist: "But we can at least try ... " And he told me : "Your approach is not like that of those who are playing with guys..."   We continued talking all evening, I suggested to go have a pizza but he said no, so I proposed him at least to go to the bar for an aperitif, and he looked at me smiling and repeated: "It cannot work … ” We  kept walking around the city, he didn't want to cut it short and neither did I., despite what he had told me. We dealt with lighter speeches, we talked about music and sports, about school memories, but not about our families, I clearly felt that it would be an unwelcome topic. I saw him several times amused and in any case always participatory, every now and then he made a comic face, let's say so, between amazement and amusement, which made me smile too. Despite that terrible statement: "it could never work ...", for me it was a really beautiful afternoon and I think it was for him too.   In the end I asked him if he had a boyfriend and he said no and this time he avoided repeating that terrible "it could never work ..." and then, before saying goodbye, I asked him if we would meet again and he told me: "It can also be done, but I told you, it won't work ..." I tried to ask him why and he replied that I would have realized it by myself. He treated me with respect, I would even say with affection but he kept me at a distance. We finally made a new appointment after two weeks, but I should have called him a couple of days before to confirm.   I waited 12 days and then called him back and we agreed for the following Saturday. I told him: "I'll come to you this time!" But he was very clear: "No, I'm coming to you, exactly like last time." On Saturday afternoon he arrived very punctual and left his bike at the usual parking, this time we just walked, and I didn't even try to offer him a pizza or an aperitif because I thought that being seen around with me might bother him. We walked a lot, we also talked a lot, even if maybe it was me the one who talked mostly, he listened to me, he wasn't or didn't seem bored but, when I asked him about him, he told me that there was very little to tell. He never called me on the phone, I called him from time to time and he stayed talking to me for a long time, he didn't cut it short. We went on like this from summer until Christmas.   At Christmas I had the idea of giving him a gift, I bought him a watch, a modern type watch, since he always looked at the time on his mobile. On December 17, 2011, which was the last useful Saturday because the next one was 24, that is Christmas Eve, I gave him my parcel, but he didn't want it, he didn't even open it, I stayed there very badly, and he said to me: "I told you it wouldn't work ..." Then he saw me in big trouble and said: "I'm sorry too that it can't work but it's a fact, you see, you proposed to me to go for an aperitif in a luxury bar, but I have never been to such a place, and then you invited me to have a pizza in a very special pizzeria and you didn't wonder how much it would cost, now you give me a gift and you don't ask yourself if I can reciprocate ... "And I said to him:" But you don't have to reciprocate anything!" And he replied: "You see, you didn't understand, we would never be at the same level ..." For me an answer like that was like a stab, I didn't know what to say but I absolutely didn't want to lose him, in the end I said: "But we can at least be friends ..." He looked at me and said: "But that's not what you really want ..." I told him: "Please don't destroy me completely ..." He looked at me steadily, he sighed, and said: “Let's leave each other like this, without farewells and promises. I was happy to meet you ... " I told him: " Me too!" I would have hugged him but he kept me at a distance. Then we said goodbye, he took his bike back and walked away. Seeing him go away I thought that I would never see him again.   I just had time to go home when he called me on the phone and we talked until two in the morning. Joseph's behavior had exposed me to a series of cold showers but had also opened my eyes to things I would never had suspected could exist. He kept me at a distance because he thought that the social differences between us were such as to make a relationship impossible, but nevertheless he didn’t treat me badly, he wasn’t vindictive, hard or assertive, he had realized that I was in difficulty and tried to make the situation less bitter.   You must think, Project, that before Joseph spoke clearly to me, I had absolutely no understanding of the reasons for his keeping me at a distance, I thought there were psychological problems, that he wanted to feel superior, yet he treated me with extreme delicacy, he was always quiet, never aggressive. He spoke little but when he spoke he said things that made me think. I must say that I felt him much more mature than me. We were the same age, but I learned something new from him every day. Sometimes he would reproach me even with just a smile, for example when I talked too much freely, when I was shooting a barrage of banalities one after the other, or when I let myself go to some too simplifying political speech, or when I repeated the pronoun "I" a little too many times.   Since Christmas 2011 we started to talk often, always by phone, we met no more than a couple of times a month. Little by little, telephone conversations have become more personal. Let's say that since the summer of 2012 it was already evident that our friendship would not end so easily. Obviously I would never have been able to propose to him to meet my friends or to come to my house to meet my parents, he always told me that friendship must be cultivated in two and it is not a social issue, but I would have liked to know some of his friends about whom he had told me very nice things, but obviously this too could not be proposed. One thing used to struck me about him: he only said positive things about his friends. At one point I asked him if he ever had any friends he didn't like for some reason, and he replied: "Sure, but I prefer to talk about those with whom I have been well." Answers of this kind used to totally disarm me and, despite all the declared impossibilities, I began to fall seriously in love with Joseph.   Physically I liked him from the beginning but the more I got to know him the more I dreamed of being able to live with him, even though he had told me a thousand times that it couldn't work. Let's say that throughout 2012 I continued to cultivate the idea that, instead, maybe over time, it could have worked. Joseph loved me, I had no doubts about this but he didn't want to get involved too much and he repeated to me that we had to feel free in relation to any other possible story, that is, we had to feel free to look for a guy anyway, because we were only friends, but also in saying this he was neither drastic nor peremptory, he said it calmly, as if he were leaving the door open to other possible evolutions. We went on like this until 2015, that is, up to 30 years old or a little less.   Keep in mind, Project, that until the summer of 2015 we had never talked about sex, that is, it wasn't a 100% removed topic, but, let's say, we had never talked about it in personal terms. He was theoretically a friend but for me he was really the deepest desire, because he was the only guy who took me seriously and told me what he thought without acting according to a script, my sexual fantasies had been all about him since the beginning and I was having a lot of problems about this fact, I felt dishonest towards him, and so it happened that in a fit of sincerity I told him that I used to masturbate thinking about him and asked him if this bothered him and he replied: " It cannot bother me, because I do it too thinking about you ...". Since then we have also started talking about our sexuality, I wanted to make him accept that somehow we were already a couple but he would repeat to me: “It can't work…” I told him: “But why not? I now live on my own, and practically of the people of my old world I don't see anyone anymore, except my father and my mother, a couple of times a year, why shouldn't it work?" "Because you have your own home and I don't, you have no ties with your parents while I have to stay with mine, I’m not obliged to stay with them but I have to do it because it is a moral obligation, because they need me." It was on that occasion that he told me about his parents, who were very old. He was an only child, his mother was almost 70 years old, while mine was not yet 55; his father had already turned 80, while my father was even a year younger than my mother, and then Joseph's parents also had serious health problems and were autonomous just theoretically but weren’t really able to live without Joseph.   The more I thought about it, the more I realized that with Joseph I would have to face many problems and I began to give a more concrete meaning to the expression "it couldn't work anyway …" but I wanted Joseph, not an easy story with an ordinary person, and I told him: "I know there will be many complications, I'm starting to realize it, but the problems can be faced and solved ..." He replied very seriously: "With you I think I'd be fine, in fact we've been together for years ... but we are fine because from many points of view we are each on our own. It's not that I don't want to be with you, God forbid, but we can't live together, I'm not free because I have my parents and they need me … “ He hasn't even finished saying that and he hugged me very tightly as if to make me understand physically that he wanted to be with me but he couldn't. It was the first physical contact really shared and wanted between us and it lasted a long time, it had nothing erotic, it was almost a hug of despair but it was very strong and gave me the necessary strength to put aside any hesitation.    Then he said to me: “If you didn't consider having sex together as a kind of half marriage, for me having sex might as well be possible …” I was about to show him all my enthusiasm, but he held me back: “No! Not now, be calm, first we have to do the test together ... ok? " I replied: "Ok, sure!" We moved on to the topic of prevention and I realized that he had read a thousand things about sexually transmitted diseases and was extremely competent, I felt safe with him, he was prudent, informed, he conceived of sex as something that is not done impetuously but by choice and by a choice made together. He gave me a written list of tests to ask the doctor for and he didn't limit himself to just the HIV test but went much further.   I remember when we went to take the test together, there was an elderly nurse, in her sixties, who looked at us with some tenderness, I looked at her with a questioning look and she said. "You do very well to do the tests, everyone should do this!"   I remember the heart pounding at the time we went to get test results and the relief to see that there were no problems. However, a minor problem remained, the one of finding a time and a place where we could have a little privacy. He would never come to my house neither he would let me go to his house. He proposed a solution: he would leave his parents alone from Saturday afternoon until Sunday at lunchtime, that is, in practice, he would sleep with me on Saturday night, but he would have to return to his home by noon on Sunday. Time was very limited but it could have been fine too. As for the place, he suggested to go to a fairly close mountain area, where you can rent a bungalow even for just one night, but he strongly emphasized that all expenses had to be shared 50%. Since he didn't have a car, he told me that we had to use my car but that he would pay for the petrol and that he would also bring the Saturday dinner and Sunday morning breakfast. I could only accept and so I did. Saturday 19th September 2015 Joseph and I made love for the first time. It was something radically different from how I had imagined it, a climate made of tenderness, mutual attention, long times, physical intimacy, the best thing for me was to see Joseph totally involved, sometimes with playful attitudes, almost like a kid, and sometimes totally relaxed. With him I felt happy, that is, I felt loved as a person and it was something I had never experienced before.   What promised to be a happy period in our life, however, did not last more than a month. Joseph's mother was very ill and was hospitalized in October and it didn't take long to understand that she had an advanced tumor and that there would be no possibility of saving her. She was a very religious woman, she understood everything and tried to help and comfort her husband and son. She died in early January 2016. For Joseph it was a terrible blow, he was very close to his parents and after his father was widowed, only he could have assisted him, and he did it without sparing himself, but his father, who was already ill for some time, he passed away in early March 2016. After the funeral, Joseph inherited his parents' house, the one where he had always lived. In eighty days, Joseph's world had been completely upset.   We used to talk on the phone every night and I had followed his story moment by moment. I saw him emptied from the inside. Then he started to rearrange his parents' things and found a box that contained 26,000 euros in cash and a letter written by his father: "Dear Joseph, you have always given us a hand to make us feel comfortable in the things of money, but everything you have given us we have kept it for you, so that you can do with it what you want. You have always deprived yourself of many things for us, at least when we will be no longer there you too will be able to fulfill some of your wishes. I'm also speaking on behalf of your mother, even if she is already in heaven, because we had talked about it so many times. You loved us and every time we talked about you between us, tears came to our eyes. Be happy, Joseph, "as you want", following only your conscience as you always did, without worrying about what people think, never put aside the idea of doing what you really want to do out of fear or because it is difficult, no one has the right to judge you, and remember that you are a great person and dad and mom are pride of you and will be always be on your side, because you has been a golden son, a gift from God, who made us live a happy life. We love and will love you forever also from heaven. Dad and mom.   When Joseph read this letter in front of me, tears came to his eyes. I told him: "I think your parents had understood ..." and he replied: "I really think so ..."   At the end of March I saw Joseph more and more absorbed in his thoughts and I tried to ask him what he was thinking and he replied that he was thinking "of a crazy thing" that is, that he was thinking of enrolling in university, on the one hand he was very tempted but for the other he felt too out of time, because he was almost 31 years old. Age is not in itself an impediment, it is in practice only a psychological problem, I told him that in my opinion the problem would have been that of work, because he was now working with a permanent contract in a small construction company but very serious and, with the work commitments he had, putting study and work together would have been practically impossible. In fact, leaving a steady job to start university at 31 could have been madness. He was very restless and didn't know what to do, resign from work could be a real leap in the dark. He could count on what his parents had left him and it was not very little and then in any case I was there too, but one thing is to enroll in university and another is to get to graduate and, given the age, even to graduate without wasting time. But he was struggling with himself to figure out what he should do.   One day he comes back from work and says to me: "I talked to the boss, I was afraid he would take it badly, because being told that one of your employees wants abandon you out of the blue even if you have done everything to make him grow professionally can also be annoying, but he was perplexed, then he said to me: - Let me think. Pass by me again before leaving - I have come back to him and he said to me: - If you resign you take a very big risk and you know it well but you could do one thing, you could continue to work with me but maybe somehow changing job and helping me in other things, because the Accountant has retired and I would have to pay someone to calculate paychecks and all such stuff, the tax part and the commercial one of the company's accounting. I know it's not your first interest but you can learn and anyway you can get used to it, it's not very difficult, I can teach you how to do, but please put aside the idea of resigning! I can try to annoy you as little as possible, you can do those jobs instead of the construction work and we leave things as they are, ok? - I told him that at most I could try for a couple of months and if it didn't work I would resign."   In practice, Joseph had decided to resign without telling me anything, he didn’t want to give up university, he was willing or better inclined to risk everything, and his boss's proposal left him puzzled because somehow he would have to continue working and this would have prevented him from dedicating himself 100% to studying. I told him: "Joseph, the proposal the boss made you is a very important opportunity and I don't think the workload would be excessive ... no doubt, it will work and, anyway, never forget that I do just that kind of work! ... " He said to me: "I thought about it but the problem is mine, not yours." In the end he was convinced to try at least for a month. I explained to him the basics on wages, deductions, taxation, etc. etc. and when he went to make his boss explain him the job, he practically already knew almost everything. The boss was amazed and Joseph told him that he had tried to get busy with accounting in order to learn at least basic contents as soon as possible. In practice, Joseph was allowed to accessed the company's administrative computer from home and could have worked remotely, and to connect he used software that I knew very well because I used it every day.   One morning I saw that he was about to go to the computer and I said to him: “Stay away from that computer! That computer is my competence! You have to study for the entrance tests. You can't waste time!" He gave me a quite dirty look but then that look turned into a smile and he switched on the other PC to study physics and mathematics. I took a quick look at the company's payroll and fiscal accounting, and everything seemed in order. Even the commercial accounting was in order, in practice the work that Joseph should have done, and speaking clearly I should have done, was a really undemanding job. I did that little bit of work that needed to be done, and was very little, especially for someone like me, a skilled and refined accountant used to much more complicated things. I turned off the PC after no more than 45 minutes, when the work was finished.   He told me: "Where did you get with the job?" I replied: “I'm done! The accounting of your company is simple and clean, the work, if it is done every day doesn’t take more than an hour a day, I think the boss wanted to favor you a lot" He replied: "Well he's a good 'man, he guides you but doesn’t oppress you and above all he makes you work and doesn’t exploit you."   Joseph had attended scientific high school and had also been good in his time, but more than ten years had now passed. I saw him take a math book and do all the exercises, without exception, and he didn't get out of his chair until he finished all the work he had planned. He used to study practically 12 hours a day. I had my job and I used to come back home at 6.30 pm, then I seated at the PC and in half an hour the work for the company was done, then I had to do the laundry, to wash, to iron, to cook, to go to the supermarket and Joseph let me do. I was happy to be able to do something good for him, I no longer felt like a "daddy's boy" running after stupid things, I felt grown up, matured, by now Joseph no longer told me: "It could never work ..." by now he had had the proof that things were quite different.   He enrolled in university, at the Faculty of Engineering, he took the admission test and was ranked among the very first. He didn't expect it but he was happy with it. He told his boss and the boss gave him 500 euros in cash and Joseph was really moved and the boss told him: "I hope to live to see you graduate in 5 years!"   I make it short, Project, Joseph studied without interruption for 4 years and, it is now a certain thing, in July 2021 he will take his master's degree and he has not lost his job. I think that soon the boss will also be able to broaden the company's skills to non-executive sectors and Joseph will become the entrepreneurial engine of the company and I hope he can still count on a reliable and faithful accountant like me still for many and many years. I don't know if the fact that we loved each other really weighed on all these events, but one thing is certain: Joseph radically changed my life. If 9 years ago my parents hadn’t decided to renovate the house, I would never have met Joseph, maybe I would never have known love and I would never have been happy.   I hug you, Project, and I wish you a Merry Christmas even if a little in advance. Of course you can publish my story and I think Joseph would like it.   LOVE AND SEX IN A GAY COUPLE Posted by: gayprojectforum - 11-22-2020, 11:56 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, you certainly won't be able to remember me. I wrote to you for the first time many years ago precisely in February 2011, on February 18, 2011 (I found the email) and I simply signed Mark. I was twenty years old then and I felt free but at the same time oppressed by my family, which was and still is made up of people who loved me and who love me. You will remember that I have told you many times about my little village lost in the mountains, about the farm and the Pezzatella cow that had grown old with my family and that my father had kept as a pet until she died of old age, because he would have considered a betrayal send her to slaughterhouse. I’m writing to you today because I happened to enter the forum by chance and this fact made me feel weird, I mean that I felt at home. With me you had patience, an infinite patience, it was you who convinced me to go to university, and I went and a world opened up before me.   Now I work in the city, I only go to my parent's village on Saturdays and Sundays to spend some time with them, because the rest of the week I stay with my partner in the apartment we have shared for five years. If there is one thing that really embarrassed me for so long, that thing is the fact that my parents didn't know anything about me. They never came to see me in the city, it was always me who went to them. They thought that I lived alone in the city. My mother would tell me every now and then that I had to find a girlfriend, because now I had a position and it was time to start a family. Such speeches seemed amazing and were at the same time discouraging for me because even though we had had living together as a family for twenty years, they hadn't even remotely suspected how things really were. They are simple people, to the point that sometimes I struggle to understand their logic, which is too different from mine. In one thing, however, they gave me a good example, namely in the fact of being a united couple of people who love each other. I've never seen my father and mother arguing. A few days ago I came back from work and I saw my partner, whose name is Gianni, who was cleaning vegetables in front of the kitchen sink, I went up to him and gave him a light caress on the cheek and he looked at me smiling astonished, and I told him that when my father came back from the countryside, after having washed himself he used to go to the kitchen to give my mother a caress of the same kind. From them I learned how to live as a couple, even if they are a totally different couple from mine, and I was very sorry that we couldn't understand each other, because basically the feelings are the same.   You helped me to feel free without screwing up my relationship with my parents. You encouraged me to get away from my family for college. I was afraid that my parents would hold me back, if only for economic reasons, but it wasn't like that. My parents experienced my estrangement from them as something natural, which had to be done for my good and they supported me first of all financially, and for them it was a huge sacrifice, but they also encouraged me and the relationship with them was not lost. ...   I met Gianni in 2013, because we attended a course on air circulation in industrial plants together, because we take care of these things. I noticed him right away and I liked him at first sight, but I assumed he was straight, because he also wore a gold band, so I kept my distance. It was he who stepped forward, from day one. At lunchtime he always sat at my table. People attending the course, were no more than 20 in all, and came from all parts of Italy, some of them already knew each other and had already a stable group on their own. I saw him sitting at my table and I thought it was because he didn't know anyone, but the reasons were very different. We started talking about air circulation, ventilation, fluid dynamics, etc. etc.. We used to talk in the lunch break and then in the evening, because the course was residential and we all stayed in the guesthouse of our company.   At one point I asked him where he came from and he really came from far away (more than 900 km), while I was practically at my house. Then he gave me a speech that I didn't understand at the time but which later proved to have a very precise meaning, he told me that he was beginning to think about moving to my city, because in the city where he lived he was completely alone, then he added with an expression between puzzled and interrogative, that however would have had the problem of the house. I told him that I had a house quite large for two people near the company and that he could give it a little thought. He asked me: "Are you serious?" And I replied: "I live alone." At that time I wasn't in the least in love with Gianni, he seemed nice to me and all in all also a handsome guy but I certainly didn't consider him my charming prince, and then for me, he was 100% straight.   After the first days of the course it was clear that Gianni was single, but single doesn't mean gay at all, even a straight guy can be single but he remains straight anyway. Gianni had an attitude that used to struck me a lot and a little called my attention and made me think: apart from the fact that he never talked about girls, he didn't even use to talk about too personal things, he didn't tell jokes of a sexual nature and didn't ask questions, he wasn't nosy, if I received a call on my mobile he would go away to let me talk freely, when he stayed at my room to chat with me in the evening, he used to turn off automatically his mobile, but he never asked me to do the same. Conversation with him was very pleasant but also very disengaged. I liked him and was spending time with him willingly. Towards me he was not shy but respectful, with others, when the opportunity arose, he was rather a joker, and then if he had some free time he would spend it with me.   I had considered all these arguments many times but I didn't take into account the fact that he too must have made a lot of reasoning on me, because I too never talked about women or sex and avoided in the most rigorous way to ask him too personal questions. The last two days of the course he slept in my room, because there were two cots and we stayed in my room to talk until very late. By the end of the course we were already friends but I was still convinced that he was 100% straight. He, on the other hand, had probably understood almost everything about me. When we were at the station and he was about to board the train, the separation became melancholy, he reminded me of the proposal I had made him about the house, but I took this as a joke to make the situation less melancholy with the hypothesis of a possible meeting in the future. His, however, was a precise message, of which I then didn't understand the real meaning.   In the following days, at least in the very first days, I missed him a little, but I assumed that I would never see him again. The fifth day he calls me on the phone, we exchange social contacts and from there we start talking almost every night. Our speeches certainly did not seem those of two lovers, and on the other hand we weren't lovers, just short callings, even just few words, but calls that are pleasing. He didn't want to invade, he didn't want to become heavy, he wanted me to understand that he was there but he didn't want to take advantage of my time and above all he didn't want to be considered a burden. At first it was he only the one who called me, then I too began to call him, we used to talk every day we on the phone at least a couple of times, but even so I wasn't yet able to understand his real motivation. About a year later, in the company where I worked, a position corresponding to his qualification had become available and I called him to let him know, if he had come to my city we would have practically worked together, and he, on a technical level, is truly a genius. If he had accepted the transfer we would have become colleagues and we would have seen each other every day at work and outside. When I called him he was delighted, although I think he interpreted my call as a half declaration of love, which absolutely was not realistic. He told me that he already knew and that he had immediately asked to fill the vacancy and he also asked me if my proposal about sharing the house was still valid, but he immediately added that in any case there would be no problem and that “if I preferred to be on my own” he would find another accommodation. I told him that for me the proposal to come and stay with me was always valid, if he had adapted to living in a house that is not very small but is certainly not the Grand Hotel. He replied that it would certainly go very well and that then "for the price" we would agree later, I didn't expect this speech that surprised me a bit and then I just said "ok!"   Two weeks later, he arrived at the station on Sunday with a lot of luggage. I had prepared the room for him, everything was in order, besides the room he had a small bathroom with shower all for him. At the station there had been no particular manifestations of enthusiasm, he was happy but restrained, I was happy that he was coming to stay at my house but I didn't give it a particular meaning. He found the room to his liking, then he came into the living room where there was a picture of my sister and asked me: "Who is she?" I told him that it was my sister who was a lot older than me and passed away when I was 13 and she was 21. He was very upset by this speech, I saw him right in a moment of difficulty. He asked me if I and my sister got along and I told him that there was a lot of complicity between us and that for my parents her death had been heartbreaking.   On the furniture there were other photographs, one with my parents and me in their arms, one of my first communion and then one of me with a very dear friend named Alberto, with whom I used to study at university. He asked me who he was but he asked me it with too much hesitation and there I had the first flash of intuition about his possible being gay. I told him he was a friend, I was going to say "just" a friend but I stopped right a moment before that "just" getting out of my mouth, but I insisted that after university we had lost sight of each other and it seemed to me if he was happy with my answer, he certainly also noticed that apart from my sister's photo, there were no photos of girls anywhere. Even though he had probably guessed everything about me, he might still have some doubts.   I had prepared lunch, but it was still early and we went out for a tour of the city. He was enchanted by the city, he liked it very much. We essentially talked about work, about the organization of the technical office (the office we work for), about relations with senior management, and relations between colleagues. As we were supposed to do exactly the same job we went into a lot of details and we arrived at lunchtime talking about these things. After lunch, which was very short, he told me he would like to rest a bit because he had got up very early in the morning and then he wanted to sort things out in the closet. I wished him a good rest, he retired to his room and I stored in the fridge the leftovers from lunch and washed the dishes and then I too went to rest for a while.   After what had happened with Alberto's photo I had begun to ask myself a few more questions, but more out of curiosity than out of interest. After all, he had seen my house, the photographs and a little, let's say, my lifestyle, but I knew nothing about him, he was a friend, of course, he was also at my house, but in a sense we were not on an equal footing. Among other things, I realized that he had never told me about his family. Usually when someone tells you about his family, as I did, you answer him by telling him something about yours, but he never even spoke of it in passing. I only knew that he lived alone and the fact that he had asked to come to my city meant that he had no interest in staying in his, I was just wondering where his parents lived and why he had not tried to return to them. But due to the principle of non-interference that I had adopted, I would certainly not have asked questions, I would have only listened and tried to make my own deductions.   In the evening he asked me where all the necessary things for the kitchen were and he began to cook and he knew how to do it! Then we stayed to talking, but only about work, because the next day would be our first day of work together.   We began to work together on the same project that before I was working on alone, and I felt like a master, but this situation didn't last long. He had a monstrous PC with specific programs for our work, mostly made by him. I felt embarrassed, because Gianni was really a high-level scientist, I understood that I would have to study a lot to get to keep up but obviously I didn't say anything. I introduced him to colleagues and during the introductions a colleague of mine, whom I will call Ines here, began to flirt with him a bit ... and he seemed to be quite gratified by her behavior, and the situation bothered me a lot. Ines is not a bad girl, if you keep her at a distance you can also live with her but if you let her prevail she sticks to you and you don't get rid of her anymore, she is single too, but single looking for a "qualified" husband and Gianni could be just the right person from his point of view. Months ago Ines went so far as to invite me too to dinner , but at her house and in two! Obviously I have avoided such a dinner and, as they say now, I have begun to maintain adequate social distancing. Ines, even if certainly with a lot of class and ease, because such things don't miss her at all, anyway, she tries to seduce the guys she likes.   The presence of Ines next to Gianni bothered me. At the time I saw Gianni only as a friend even though my previous belief that he was straight had already suffered some cracks. I said to myself: "But if he is straight and Ines goes after him, it is obvious that this is gratifying for him, among other things Ines is also a beautiful girl!" In this way I tried to convince myself that I was not interested in Gianni. When we got home, at 6.00 pm, I thought he was going to ask me something about Ines and instead he didn't say anything, while he asked me about other colleagues, notoriously married and with children and told me that he really liked them. I wondered if a straight guy, after Ines' obvious flirtation, would have failed to ask me questions about her, and the accounts didn't add up. I would have liked to introduce a speech on Ines but I avoided it because it didn't seem the case. The dinner was prepared by him and he washed also the dishes, then we got to work on technical issues and the evening went by like that.   A balance had been created between us that made it particularly pleasant to be with him. I took it for granted, let's say 80%, that he was straight, but at least he wasn't a straight  fixated with girls! This is where I came up with a wicked idea, I wanted to find information about him and I thought the only way was to have his mobile available. Sometimes when he went out to buy bread or something, he used to leave his mobile in the room and didn't use a password or anything like that and anyway his mobile, from what I had seen, only rang for business calls. I thought he had another one for private calls, but he had one only. The temptation to get into his mobile was great, but it seemed so dishonest to me that I ended up putting the idea aside. One day he told me that while he was out he remembered that he had to make a business call, but he could not make it because he had left his mobile at home. I pointed out to him that he leaves it around in the office as well and then I said to him: "You must always carry your mobile with you because if it ends up in the hands of other people it can create embarrassing situations!" He looked at me and asked me: "In whose hands?" and I told him: "Of Ines for example!" At which he raised his eyebrows, opened his eyes wide and said, “Oh my God! Better not!" and he said it with an expression that didn't have anything hetero!   I had added another piece to my mosaic! And I must add that Gianni too had begun to avoid Ines exactly as I used to do. In the evening, at home, I decided to deal with him at least the topic of family and I asked him why he never talks about his parents, and he replied: "Because I don't consider them my parents ..." Then we went to sit down in the living room and he said: "I think it's time to speak out clearly. I am gay, and I think you have understood it for a long time, but my parents never accepted it, luckily I spoke out with them when I already had a job, and I did it so late because I was expecting their reaction, totally cold and self-righteous. I was living with them, but after a week the environment had become so intolerable that I asked my company to be moved far away and I left without even saying goodbye. My parents had my mobile number but they never called me. My father, the last time we spoke, he said to me: "How could you do this to us!" as if being gay was an aggression against them, and my parents are cultured people, ... they will never see me again."   At this point I too had to come out  and I said: "My parents are very good people but I have never been able to tell them what I'm because I don't know how they would have reacted, maybe they wouldn't have reacted badly, but for them, for their parameters would have been a terrible blow ... "He replied:" Would you like a cup of tea? " and I followed him into the kitchen, now we were somehow a family for each other, after tea we went back to the living room and he handed me his mobile and said: "At least you can understand a little bit how I lived ... ", I handed him mine and said:" This is mine, but there is nothing interesting inside. " We stayed awake until 2.00 am to tell each other about our lives. My life was much more monotonous, his was richest and with three stories with guys that ended badly.   There was a particularly intense moment when I told Gianni that dad kept the Pezzatella cow as a pet until she died of old age, because he didn't have the heart to send it to the slaughterhouse, Gianni was very impressed by this and he told me that as a child he had had a dog as a gift from relatives, his parents had not had the courage to say no, but then the dog disappeared and it was not known what happened to it, and he thought that had been suppressed because it could dirty the house, this thing seemed creepy and violent to me. He told me I still have to talk to him about my parents "because they must be good people." Then we went to sleep totally dazed by the day, obviously in separate rooms, but compared to the night before many things had changed, we had declared each other, then it was clear to me that somehow he had chosen me from the first day we met, so I could assume that he was really attracted to me, but unfortunately for me it was not the same.   I liked him, we worked very well together but I was not in love with him. After knowing he was gay, I had no moments of enthusiasm, in short, he didn't attract me sexually. Project, you have written many times that the theorem “gay + gay = love” has not only never been proved but it is misleading, and it really is. As absurd as it may seem, I was beginning to think that I had gotten into a very big mess: he moves from a very distant place to be with me, he comes to live in my house, he is in love with me, we live together but I'm not in love with him! I begin to wonder if and how I could have deluded him, if and how he came to think that his feelings were shared, and in the end I don't know what to think. Being two gays living together and working together doesn't mean being a gay couple!   Project, I lived through days of hell, I didn't know what to do, I could have tried to like him forcibly, but one cannot decide to fall in love so as not to disappoint another guy, feelings cannot be pretended. In the end, I take courage in both hands and speak to him very directly. In a way, he expected that speech because he hadn't seen the enthusiastic reactions he probably had imagined. At the end of the speech he said to me: "Ok, I understand, I will look for another room, but at work you will have to put up with me because anyway they would not move me another time at such a short distance from the first transfer " And here I stopped him and I said to him: "If you want to go because you feel uncomfortable staying at home with me, obviously I can't stop you, but if you go, I'm very sorry, I'm not in love with you and I don't want to affect your life, but I consider you an excellent person and I would really be sorry to lose you ... don't go away! " He was perplexed, he oscillated between the temptation to stay and the temptation to give vent to his frustrated pride, then he took a long sigh and said: "Okay, I'll stay!" smiling, I said only, "Thank you!" and then I told him: "Do you like a cup of tea?" and he nodded yes.   Over time we began to talk a lot, I tried to make him understand that I loved him but that I was not attracted to him, or rather I should say the opposite, that is, that I was not attracted to him but I loved him. Our coexistence went on quietly for a few months, as usual I went to visit my parents in the village on Friday evening and returned very early on Monday morning and Gianni stayed at home. He once said to me, "Would you mind if I brought someone home when you're not there?" I replied: "You can make to come whoever you want  not only when I'm not there but also when I'm there, no problem at all!" And he just said: "Ok" The speech meant that he had found another guy. This is where the speech got more complicated, I felt jealous, but on the other hand I had told him no.   When I was at my parents' house in the village on weekends, I tried not to think about him. He didn't tell me anything about his boyfriend and I didn't ask him anything. At the beginning things went on like this, then one Friday morning he said to me: "When you go to your parents' tonight, can I come too?" I answer him: "But don't you have to be with that guy?" and he tells me. "He said he's busy this week ..." I say to him: "Ok, that's no problem for me, but you can tell my parents that we work together but not that we live together, ok?" and he nodded yes.   It was a great weekend. He behaved very well with my parents, he knew how to take them. My father seemed 10 years younger, my mother started cooking special things and Gianni went to help her, it was a strange atmosphere, absolutely unusual for my parents, but   they were happy and I hadn't seen them so happy for many years. After dinner, my mother prepared the room that had been my sister's and turned on the radiator because it was very cold outside. We were supposed to leave on Monday morning at 5.00, well, at half past four mum made us find the hot breakfast on the table and loaded him with bags of vegetables, as she did with me. In the car he said to me: " I think your parents would react well!" I replied: "You have thrilled them, it is true that they are good people but they are very old-fashioned ..."   After another week of work he asks me to go back to my parents for the weekend. I ask him about the guy and he tells me: "Well we were too different ..." The story with that guy was over after about three months and I was happy because I was afraid of losing him, not that he would go away from my house but that he would began to have a shared life also with other people, in short, I was afraid that he was no longer completely mine. It goes without saying that the weekend spent together at my parents' house was splendid. They didn't expect to see him again but they showed him forms of enthusiasm that they had never shown even to me. My father took him for a walk in the high forest where there is also narrow a canal, that is, a little stream of cold water that comes from the mountain and with a jump of about ten meters throws itself into a kind of pond of about forty square meters, no more than one meter deep. The place is very difficult to reach, my father used to take me there often when I was a child, but it is quite far from the land downstream that he works for the family and the market. When they returned Gianni was enchanted, he had probably never seen anything like it.   At the table my father laughed, and I had never seen him laugh since my sister's death. Mom never ended to load huge portions into Gianni's plate, which laughing said "Enough, enough!" and my mother too let herself be carried away in laughter. I wondered what my parents thought of Gianni, who, for them, was just a work colleague of their son, but perhaps he was also the cheerful son they had never had and after all Gianni too, with my parents, found that atmosphere of a family that he had never lived. By now I saw Gianni as a brother, I loved him, I had realized that our lives would no longer be separated, but I didn't see him as my boyfriend, even if deep down I had never seen anyone like my boyfriend, but I felt happy, it was a strange feeling that I had never experienced before, I almost felt like Gianni's dad and seeing him smile made me feel good.   I didn't know what exactly Gianni felt for me, but he had entered my life and also my family. He never tried in any way to force things, to pose as a rejected lover, he even avoided getting too close to me, that is, he kept himself at a certain physical distance. We didn't even shake hands and we didn't even hug each other, all from a distance. He was very private, kept his room in perfect order and his bathroom was as polished as it had never been before. I tried to imagine his thoughts and feelings, because living with the person you love and who doesn't correspond to you can  be terrible, but he didn't give the slightest sign of discomfort, so much so that I wondered if he was really interested in me. Then it struck me that he never complained, that he made no mention of the fact that he wanted more from me. In fact I think he felt very loved and cared for, probably beyond his expectations, and that probably made up for the lack of physical contact.   Over time, but very slowly, I began to see him with other eyes, not so much those of sex but those of tenderness. We used to stay up late talking, he told me about when he was a child, about the things he wanted to do then but couldn't do, he told me about the melancholies of when he was afraid that his parents would find out he was gay, when he was looking for contacts on the internet late at night with the fear that his father suddenly appeared while he was on internet looking for guys, he told me of the desperation he felt when he wanted to leave home at any cost but he couldn't because first he had to finish his studies and then find a job, he told me how he studied from morning to night, because if others could waste time, he couldn't, because he couldn't anymore stay home with his parents, but he also told me that when during the interview with the CEO at the company building they told him they would hire him he felt over the moon but he couldn't say anything at home, that for the first four months he didn't spend a single cent because he wanted to scrape together a sum, the minimum necessary, to be able to pay the transitional lease of a small house.   When he did it, he was very agitated, he did not know what would happen. One day when his parents went to the countryside to visit friends, he took his things away from home by making more trips but taking only the essentials, because otherwise they would have considered him a thief, and he left without saying anything in the new home and without leaving the parents the address. Parents didn't call him, they acted as if he didn't exist and ignored him completely, he told me he was almost afraid of meeting them on the street and asked to be moved to the furthest possible place. He told me about the loneliness, the fact that he had lost all his contacts and the desperate searches for friendships online, the disappointments, his three sentimental stories that only further frustrated him.   So far, let's say, the story was something that could be told to a sincere friend, then I asked him why he fell in love with me, and here the conversation became much more intimate, in essence he didn't know why but instinctively, from the first day he saw me he had thought that he could count on me. It may seem paradoxical, but even for him the sex in this whole story weighed very little. In me he had found a friend and then also a family, a point of reference he had never had. He understood that he was somehow important to me and this thing seemed incredible to him, he told me that he had felt loved, at least for what was possible, but really loved. I sat on the sofa next to him, put my arm over his shoulder and pulled him close to me. It was the first physical contact between us, I can tell you that it was a moment of unimaginable intensity. Then, over time, many things changed, he came to sleep in my bed and I realized that with him I didn't feel at all uncomfortable and that beyond very stupid dreams I could never achieve something more beautiful with anyone.   Gianni, then, slowly led me to overcome another huge obstacle in my life, because he convinced me to speak clearly, he and I together, with my parents. The scene was between the tragic and the comic. My parents didn't really expect such a thing and they didn't know what to say, my father stood up and said almost laughing, “Well, I don't know, but do we have to worry about what people may say? If you, guys, are happy, you can keep it for you! And then, if you tell someone and they react badly, you can always send them to hell!… Am I right Gianni?" textual words.   We have had our little couple problems too, but they were just little problems. Once I had thought that he too could come to a form of reconciliation with his parents and I tried to suggest him the idea, but he took it badly and he didn't even want to talk about it, for him that was and should have remained a closed chapter. Today, with Gianni, I feel fulfilled, sex exists between us but it is not the substantial part of our loving each other, it is above all a form of tenderness, a way of telling each other that we are in love with each other, in fact in our relationship sex has been the last conquest in chronological order and not the fundamental one. I know that for many guys things are very different, but for us it has been like that.   I’LL CALL HIM TOMORROW – GAY DIARY Posted by: gayprojectforum - 11-16-2020, 03:39 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hello Project, in your opinion, what should a 35-year-old do who has lost his mind a little for a 32-year-old who is a bit dissolute? We are not kids neither he nor I, between us there is a good emotional and even sexual understanding, when we meet, which happened rarely even before, but now with the lockdown it almost doesn't happen anymore. I say that I have lost my mind a bit because I like him first of all physically, he is the guy I have always dreamed of, strong, black haired, Mediterranean type, but gentle, smart. If I have to identify the ideal guy from my point of view there is no doubt that it is him. I met him for the first time in university, I was walking down the street and from afar I saw a beautiful guy sitting on a bench in a garden, he seemed really dazzling, sexy in the most natural way possible, for my eyes he was a real magnet. I walked over and we exchanged a very brief glance, but that glance said whatever was needed! All the guys who catch my attention even a little remind me of him for some reason: the smile, the voice, the posture, but above all the kindness. Having ascertained that he is my ideal type, the other problem remains: he’s a bit dissolute, I would say more than a bit, he is free, indeed very free in his behavior, I must say that however he spoke clearly from the first moment, he tells me how things are, he doesn’t play the part of the lover, a role which doesn’t fit him at all, my biggest concern is not that I could lose him, something I don’t want but I think it will happen sooner or later, even if it has not happened so far, but that he can get into trouble with sexually transmitted diseases, this holds me back a lot in regards to him, but with me, he has always had safe sex and always carries a box of condoms with him, because he is not reckless. We are very different, I dream of a tender, affectionate love, made above all of cuddles and naked hugs, he thinks that sex has very precise boundaries and that it is the fundamental thing, that is, he cannot bear caresses, mutual attentions, resting the head on each other's chest, sleeping together after sex. Starting from such different ways of seeing, it should be difficult to find a balance and instead it was not difficult at all, also because I tried to adapt to his ways of seeing and he blunted certain imperative tones that he had at the beginning. Sexually, there is harmony between us and, on a more general level, more than an emotional love there is a respect, an undeclared but shared rule of not judging the other, and taking him seriously for what he is, without the will to change him, while feeling him somehow distant and different. I loved him and didn't want to lose him but he could very well have done without me and he didn't, at least for a few years he didn't, now maybe he's starting to do it, in the sense that he calls me less. It is evident that he has other people in mind and that he must continue on his way, I know this and I have always known it and I’m not even sorry, but I would like that at least with another guy he was fine, that he wouldn’t feel frustrated and instead I fear that this doesn’t happen and that he ends up carrying on four or five stories in parallel without finding in any of them the answer he would like. He says he doesn't consider me a friend but just a sex partner,  but I find very strange that someone could refer to me this expression, because I consider my sexual performances the absolutely weakest aspect of my personality. Since in one way or another I take it for granted that he will end up staying permanently with another guy, or perhaps with more than another, but in any case not with me, I would like to remain his friend, and here, if on the one hand there is the question of the sexual partner, on the other hand there is the fact that, when we speak, we speak very seriously. I don't know if our story will ever end up into a friendship, I would like it, but my way, anyhow he sees these things in another way. I have no resentment towards him, because in his way (a bit brutal way) he also treats me with affection, even if he can't admit it, or maybe now he is beginning to admit it at least in part. I don't know if a relationship of this kind can stand up to comparison with his true love affairs, however, even if very slowly and marginally the story with me goes on, he hasn't put it aside definitively. Does all this come just out of sex? Frankly, it seems a bit absurd, also because he has told me a hundred times that I’m not his type. I'll call him in the morning. Sometimes when I call him, at the end of the call, I wonder why I called him … anyway I'll call him tomorrow!   I waited three weeks for him to call me but he didn't, so I called him. We spent a long time on the phone. Sometimes I was very attentive to what he was saying and sometimes I couldn't hear him, in the sense that I couldn't distinguish the words because the line was disturbed and I had to ask him to repeat. After the usual things he tells me that I put him in a bad mood and the call takes the tone of our last calls. So I greet him and close the call, thinking maybe he'll call me back, but he doesn't. It ended like this.   What does it remain? For his part I don't know but I think that for him it is more a solved annoyance than a problem, on my part there remains a sense of great uncertainty, confusion, loss, as in the face of a finished story, the feeling of a difficult dialogue, to the limit of the impossible, of a mutual inability to understand each other, I say mutual because even I too haven’t been able to fully understand him, each of us is perhaps attached to his models or behaves as if he were attached to his models and doesn’t give up his positions. We have to get used to the idea of being out of place, out of time, not of being marginal but of being worthless, or, from a certain point on, of having a negative value, so that the other can enrich himself getting rid of us, we have to get used even to the idea that at the end of illusions there is only loneliness and that there is nothing that can overcome it, neither sex nor friendship can do it, perhaps love could, which however, in reality doesn’t exist. The day is beautiful, bright, and we must remember this date: [- OMISSIS -], as the day of starting over. You have to realize that you aren’t important for anyone. It is necessary to understand that being single is not a sentence but the natural condition of anyone and perhaps, more brutally, that feelings don’t exist, I’m not talking about his, which I think exist even if they are directed elsewhere and I think they are also frustrated, but mine, because I don’t feel upset by his absence, I have already rationalized it precisely because I don’t feel and perhaps I didn’t even feel strongly involved before. Mild, evanescent feelings that are easily lost without pain. I have not been deceived, I have just done everything to deny the evidence. Today's disillusionment is only the acknowledgment of a general state of a large part of Humanity, or perhaps saying so I want to make a half-joy out of a common evil, which however is not really a common evil but only an individual evil, admitted and not granted that it's something bad. We must turn the page, indeed the page has turned by itself. On the previous page there were so many fantasies, on the next one there is nothing at all. The void must be filled. If the void cannot be filled with people and with loves, it must be filled with things and duties. First thing to do: get distracted, fill your mind with something else, sleep, read, see a movie, listen to some music, talk about something else with other people, change your thoughts. I have no resentment towards him, he has no faults, he is what he is, if we are incompatible it is no one's fault. I would like to sleep, but in a pause of being, sleep without dreams, without pain, without anxiety, I would like a pause, before starting again with a different, more essential scenario, without projections into the future, or rather before waking up after having forgotten or clouded everything and with no longer any desire to start over. I don't think he has rethought me and I think it's better this way, maybe we walked a little bit of road together, maybe I deluded myself also about this, but, if it happened, it is now part of the past. It wasn't a bad past or at least I didn't experience it badly even if maybe it was just a fantastic construction. I miss him a little, but I know that it must be like this, that it is better this way, and then it is better to fall asleep and not think.   GAY TEACHERS AND RISKY CIVIL UNIONS Posted by: gayprojectforum - 11-08-2020, 04:39 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, I saw that you wished Lorenz for his Civil Union and I also join in wishing him that the realization of this dream can bring great serenity to him and his partner. It is nice to think that someone can take such steps in peace.   I’m much younger than Lorenz, but I’m no longer a kid, I’m almost 50 years old, I'm very close to 50, and my partner is only one year younger than me, this means that we don’t have to face the environmental problems that an intergenerational couple faces in everyday life. It would therefore seem that things for us have to be all in all much simpler and yet this is not the case at all.   We met at school 12 years ago, we are both teachers, but unfortunately school is the least suitable environment for cultivating a gay relationship and I think that even for straight relationships, except for traditional marriages, it is more or less the same, there is underground gossip, backbiting, there are parents who are like two-faced Janus, they show smiling faces and use honey words when they are in front of you and then, secretly, they tell the most incredible stories about you. Now, with social media, "secret" groups of parents have been created who give help each other to "defend" their children and to attack the teachers, and then there are the students, who are grown up, are not naive at all and learn very quickly from parents the worst behaviors.   Both my partner (I’ll call him Luke here) and I have always been wary of the school environment in which we must limit ourselves to a technical work understood in the most theoretical and depersonalized way. Now there is the covid and with distance lessons many problems are avoided, but before the covid we, that is I and my partner, who teaches in another section of the school, used to make our students do the periodical tests that had to be graded, in the computer lab through a program that we had made just for this use, so that the test was automatically corrected and the grade was assigned by the machine itself, because this way it seemed possible to reduce the discussions and chatter related to the fact that some students had been "taken in sight" as they commonly say.   Keep in mind that Luke and I had developed the program together, but "out of prudence" we produced two versions of it graphically very different so that no one could suspect that we had worked together, in practice the storage and calculation core of the program was the same, but those who used the program could not realize it. Fortunately for us, as we taught the same school subject, we couldn't be colleagues in the same classes and this made things much easier. In our Institute, which is very large, there is also an internal bar where you can go during recess. Luke and I go there but on different days and we decide in the morning which of us goes to the bar. We insisted on one thing only that is to have the same day off, and we both chose Wednesday, a day that nobody wants, and we've both had the Wednesday off for years now and so, at least, we have a day to ourselves to spend in common. But don't think we can be free to do whatever we want on Wednesdays. We have a certain freedom and anyhow relative because we live in a neighborhood very far from the school, where nobody knows us, but when we go to school on the subway (which is the only possible means of transport) we get on two different subway cars. You will think we are paranoid but we know we need to be very careful.   In the year we met, there was a case of a declared gay student in our school, bullied by his classmates, but not with blows and punches, but by dint of malevolent smiles and poisonous jokes. Tis guy had become the school's gossip principal argument, and the usual committee of "serious" parents had made him the emblem of the degradation of the school that does not intervene. The parents had written to the principal, who as always had pretended nothing and had not intervened either in one direction or in the other, in the end the guy went to another school. In reality we too did nothing, the boy was not our pupil and in the College of Professors no one ever talked about this situation, in theory the problem could be raised but whoever did it would have been branded for life or as a "defender of lost causes ”, if married or better married and with numerous offspring, or more brutally as“ fagot ”or“ lesbian ”, if without spouse and without children.   But now I come to my story with Luke. You will understand that, in an environment like that, looking around for any sign of availability was very risky. Luke and I met a little less superficially, that is, we had the opportunity to exchange a few words in a less formal way by bringing two of our classes (one of his and one of mine) to visit the Science Museum in Naples. It was a completely random thing, but then a dialogue was born that did not stop and went on. It took us months to show each other our sympathy, that is, to say that we could be good friends, because then that too was not at all obvious. At school we didn't even talk to each other, but we only spoke privately on the phone, at first we only talked about school, then we came up with the idea of the program to have tests done and assessed in an automated way and that way we started meeting in person outside the school. Then, partly because we liked working on a software of that kind and partly because it was pleasant to work together, we started seeing each other practically every day. The program was a gem, apart from the different external appearance we gave the version that I would use and the one that he would use, the substantial part were identical but very flexible. Each student entered the program with his name and password, and the name always appeared at the top right of the monitor so that no one could use another's password. The questions were the same for everyone but the order was random and the order of the answers was also random, so that there was no possibility of copying. The machine, as the students delivered the test, printed the answers on a sheet with the date and the student had to sign and hand in a copy of the sheet so that it was impossible to say that he had delivered a test other than that evaluated by the program. As soon as the test was completed, the program put all the series of answers on the DB and then automatically evaluated the test by assigning the evaluations automatically so that the average grade of the class corresponded to a grade set by the teacher. In short, the program was truly a gem, both in terms of graphics and technology, because at the time of returning the test, the student could be given the series of his answers and that of the correct answers with a small comment chosen by the machine itself.   However, my relationship with Luca has grown thanks to the work done on this program. Of course, each of us knew well that the other was unmarried and had never talked about women. Over time Luke accepted the idea of staying for dinner with me and eventually sleeping with me, obviously in separate rooms, but slowly we had come to pass together from lunchtime on Tuesdays up to 7.00 am on Thursdays and from lunchtime on Saturdays up to 7.00 am on Mondays, there was no need to even make an appointment, we both knew things would turn out that way. There was no need to state anything explicitly, little by little the embarrassment dissolved by itself, and fears disappeared and we came to trust each other. We both were fully aware of how things were, then a bit of physical contact also began, a bit awkward at first, but then more and more free. One day he said to me: "What if I went to sleep with you?" I just looked him right in the eyes and we hugged. It was Saturday April 19th 2008. Since then we have lived together, only at school we behaved like strangers, but we used to go on vacation together, and then he decided to rent his house, which is smaller than mine, and move in permanently with me. We have exactly the same salary, and he gives me half of what his rent pays him, because he lives in my house, all expenses are 50%. He had proposed to me to make a joint account but I preferred that we have two separate accounts, because if things did not go well between us, we had to be free to go our separate ways.   It's been 12 years and I can say we got along perfectly. We don't have a form of symbiosis, no, we have some friends in common but not all of them, let's say better that among us there is no rule that friends must only be in common. I'd say we've been a nice couple for 12 years now and here I come to the point. About a month ago the speech of the Civil Union comes out. I state that I have nothing against Civil Unions, that's clear! After he mentioned it I went to see the related legal rules which are much less simple than I thought, in particular to dissolve the civil union unilaterally there is a two-phase procedure with a three-month break between the first phase and the second and then there is the choice of the property regime. I think that out of common sense guaranteeing the separation of assets especially when it comes to people of the same, let's say, economic strength is the most appropriate thing because this would greatly simplify the end of the civil union if it were needed. What scares me the most, however, is that taking a step like the Civil Union involves a change of official marital status, that is something legal, external, which in some cases has no real meaning ... I mean that nothing changes between us, we don't have to give birth to children, then there are work issues, for example that the severance pay in the event of the death of one of the two is up to the other, ok, it's an important thing, but one should consider dying before retirement and frankly it's an idea I don't even want to consider. We have been living in the same house for 12 years, in the sense that we have a residence in the same house, we have no assets in common and we have never had patrimonial problems of any kind and as for mutual assistance, between us, it has never been lacking, but it never failed spontaneously, not out of legal obligation, perhaps this happened because we never had real economic or health problems, neither he nor I, and therefore there was almost no need for mutual assistance, but I'm convinced that if one of us needed it, the other would not only not back down but would do everything he could. I mean that for us as a couple the civil union, at least in this moment of our lives, would not bring any advantage. This is to say only about the legal issues from our point of view, however, in fact, these are all theoretical discourses and one may want the Civil Union in itself, as a formal recognition of a life in common, I not only understand this but I accept it very well. I started thinking: “If he cares about it so much, what should I do? Should I tell him no? Objectively, I'm not afraid of being involved in problems because of the rules of the Civil Union because I trust Luke more than myself. " After some time Luke mentioned the same speech to me again a couple of times, because he saw me hesitant but he understood that in any case I would never say no to him, and in the end I said yes. He was happy ad a child with his teddy bear! Something I would never have expected. But then we went to the details: who do we tell? Not to my parents! Because they would feel incapable parents, punished by God through a son who is not only gay but also thinks of joining civilly with another man. Luke had barely the intention of telling his parents, but the more he thought about it the more it seemed impossible to him, because his parents, whom he only sees twice a year, know that he has gone to live together with another "person", but they don't know that he has gone to live with a man, and if they knew they would run the risk of dying of a heart attack. So no parents! I have no brothers or sisters; he has a brother but they never got along and they haven't talked to each other for years, so no families! Is there someone else? Two or three mutual friends who know that we are just friends and that we have never invited to our house because otherwise they would have noticed that we live together. Someone else? The school colleagues? But inviting any of them would be like inviting the fox into the chicken coop. In the end he said to me: “Oh well, we can't tell anyone … ok, no Civil Union!” And that's how the story ended.  Then I tried to think about what would have happened if they had known at school? They would have immediately made a nice committee of mothers ready to defend the little baby from the satanic clutches of two ... unmentionable ones who would certainly have ruined that so tender child, who loves his mom so much. And I imagine the principal who for fear of the committee of mothers would have put himself on leave until the end of the storm. Dear Project, the speech is bitter but realistic, I don't deny that elsewhere things can be different, but here the game rules are these, they don't lynch you because they don't know it otherwise they wouldn't have the slightest scruple. I'm happy for Lorenz and his partner but unfortunately it is not possible for me and Luke to follow their example. Pages (55): « Previous 1 ... 5 6 7 8 9 ... 55 Next » Jump to page: