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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.   BEST WISHES FROM GAYS TO JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS Posted by: gayprojectforum - 11-08-2020, 03:31 AM - Forum: Gays and secularity - No Replies I have followed with trepidation the votes for the election of the President of the United States of America and I can say that at the news that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won the elections and were now the President-elect and the Vice-President-elect, I experienced moments of authentic satisfaction. Biden's clear, never opportunist and genuinely progressive positions on issues related to gay rights and civil rights more generally have endeared him to gays across the Atlantic but also to those in Europe. Biden is a Catholic but he speaks in terms of freedom and the secular nature of the state, which must not repress freedom in the name of other principles but must defend it because it is the only truly common value on which human coexistence can be durably founded. Biden promised to be a staunch ally of the LGBTQ community. “You deserve a partner in the White House to fight with conviction and win the battles ahead,” he said. “Together we’ll pass the Equality Act, protect LGBTQ youth, expand access to health care, support LGBTQ workers, win full rights for transgender Americans, recommit to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2025, advance LGBT rights around the globe, not just at home.” Joe Biden declared his commitment to LGBTQ rights, including his support for the Equality Act to modify existing civil rights legislation and to add protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Biden is a Catholic who does not want to impose moralizations on anyone, but wants to try to achieve greater social justice which is the minimum form of love of neighbor. Speaking at the Human Rights Campaign’s National Dinner in Washington, Biden spoke of the “terrible disease” that killed his son Beau, and said it’s just as important to challenge homophobia as it is cancer. “My son felt so strongly about this, and Jill and I do,” he said. “This is a disease and a plight on America, this disease of homophobia. But we can end it. We can save my grandkids, my great-grandkids, and thousands and thousands of Americans, and the rest of the world will repair to the American standard.”   POPE FRANCIS, GAY COUPLES AND LAITY Posted by: gayprojectforum - 11-04-2020, 05:02 PM - Forum: Gays and religion - No Replies The strong inhomogeneity is typical of all human aggregations that are constituted and recognized on the basis of a single characteristic. One might think that if it is evident that gays differ from each other in thousands of characteristics, ethnic, physical, cultural, educational, social condition, etc. etc., it can at least be assumed that they are similar in the only characteristic they have in common, that is, in sexuality, if this is true as regards the identification of the object of love, or rather of the sex of the object of love, it is certainly not, if we consider sexuality in all its implications, including affective ones and in all its behavioral manifestations.   Among gays, the ability to integrate deriving from having the same sexual orientation doesn’t necessarily prevail over disintegrating elements of a social or cultural or even political or economic nature. Gay guys often dream of reciprocated love with another gay guy, but the famous “GAY + GAY = LOVE” theorem has never been proven and in most cases is very far from reality. The personalization of being gay is so strong that there are no standard ways of being gay and incompatibilities are absolutely not predictable.   Despite everything, however, some stable gay couples exist, even if they are certainly not the norm of gay sex life, most gay couples are not stable and are above all a means to realize a sexual experience more or less based on a deep emotional dimension. Cataloging the experiences of unstable couples is virtually impossible because their variability is extreme.   I have only heard one thing repeated almost constantly by those who had lived the experience of sexuality within an unstable couple, and that is that things, in the first experiences, were completely different from expectations, not better or worse, but simply different, almost always much simpler and even banal, in some cases more ritual and complicated.   In subsequent experiences, the more superficial and less personalized the relationship was, the more a standardization of behavior emerged. This means that the trivialization of the relationship deprives it of its essential characteristic, that is of relationality, and transforms it into a predominantly selfish and banally repetitive way of gratification.   In the vast majority of cases, in the evaluations of the first experiences a phrase recurs: "He was not as I had imagined him." The conflict between expectations and reality appears to be the most common basis of the frequent disillusionment and sometimes, much more rarely, also of the discovery of unexpected worlds and completely new forms of gratification.   We are inclined by nature to believe that we are the model of reality and to think that the world of others is necessarily similar to ours but over the years we discover a much more articulated and complex truth of which we are not the center neither the unit of measure but where there isn't any center neither any unit of measure, we discover that differences go far beyond appearance, that individuals are intrinsically different even in terms of dreams, desires, drives and sexuality, and that also sexuality, if it is true sexuality, has nothing standard and is probably the most typical expression of an absolutely individual dimension, because nothing like sexuality is substantiated and fueled by meanings rather than gestures, interpretations rather than behaviors, in a plurality of attitudes which is all the more varied, complex and unpredictable the more an individual's life is problematic, difficult and unsatisfactory.   One of the fundamental problems of sexuality, which in some way suffocates it, consists in attributing to it meanings and functions that are foreign to it, as if sexuality were almost a magic wand to solve the unresolved problems, to allay anxieties, remedy frustrations and to make us enter a mythical world of love and understanding mediated by sex. Sexuality very often is a substitute value that should make up for lack of affection, lack of gratification and disillusionment of practical life, a kind of parallel world in which to take refuge when there is a stormy air. In this way, however, sexuality becomes a strictly individual patrimony that doesn't find its realization in a real relationship with a concrete person but in an exercise of fantasy that gratifies us because it distances us from reality.   True sexuality is expressed in a relationship, not in a fantastic projection, and must be built in two, in the search for a possible balance that is sometimes found even starting from very distant positions and sometimes cannot be reached even starting from apparently very nearby positions.   Relationality, or individual aptitude for relationships, is an extremely complex dimension, essentially instinctual in which emotional and sexual components can meet and mix in various ways and degrees, extremely different gratification mechanisms can coexist, and selection criteria are often used of which no rational motivation can be found.   A relationship arises from the meeting of two harmonic relationalities, that is, mutually compatible. A couple relationship (I am obviously talking about gay couples), is a reciprocal and basically symmetrical relationship, obviously equal. In this definition of couple neither exclusivity (monogamy) nor indissolubility appear in a necessary way, and strictly speaking, sexuality doesn't appear either, which is not a necessary component of the couple relationship, reciprocity and symmetry are instead explicitly needed according to the definition, and also the condition of equality, concepts that require some clarification. There is a reciprocal but not symmetrical relationship between parents and children, in the sense that the type of involvement that the parent feels towards the son is different from that which the son feels towards the parent, while the two partners of a gay couple live a basically symmetrical condition. The condition of equality consists in the fact that A must recognize to B the same rights that B recognizes to A. In a hetero relationship reciprocity and the condition of equality are needed but the element of symmetry is missing, which is replaced by that of complementarity.   These arguments may seem like abstract puns, but they are well rooted in real life. It has happened to me often and still happens to talk to guys who have come out of a couple relationship or who have transformed their relationship into something else and I tried to understand with them why the couple relationship had gone into crisis. In the vast majority of cases the essential requirements were lacking, first of all reciprocity, the relationship was experienced as a couple relationship on one side only, while the other partner didn't substantially correspond to the feelings of the first, that is, the relationship was basically unilateral, and unilateral relationships are not true couple relationships. In a smaller number of cases there was no real symmetry, in the sense that the type of involvement experienced by one of the two partners was different from that experienced by the other, as it happens for example when one of the two partners feels attracted both at emotional and sexual levels, while the other doesn’t feel deep a emotional or sexual involvement. Only in a limited number of cases did the breakup of the couple derive from the breaking of the equilibrium between the partners, that is, from the fact that one of the two tends to independently determine the rules of the couple, demanding that the other adapt without questioning.   When the fundamental elements to constitute the couple are missing from the beginning, that is when there is no real couple relationship, the unilateral fantastic projections make up for the shortcomings more or less efficiently and something is created that resembles a couple, but it is not. In this "improper couple" various types of discomfort are produced that wear it down and lead it to break only after a long time, fueling states of frustration and discomfort that last for years.   Often couples, despite having all the requisites to be true couples at the beginning, see this condition change over time. In these cases the state of discomfort becomes particularly serious and highly dissymmetrical. Classic is the case of carrying on, for reasons of opportunity or even in order not to traumatize the partner, a relationship in which one no longer believes, it is clear that these two reasons have a very different moral meaning, but the result is still the same: sooner or later the other partner will realize the situation and feel cheated.   I have to strongly underline that the discomfort of the couple life breakup doesn’t come from the breakup itself, but from the fact that one of the two partners feels deceived. Saying to your partner: "I loved you but I fell in love with another guy and it is right that you know" is very different from pretending that on your part nothing in the relationship has changed, trying at the same time to blame your partner for the breakup. In this case it makes sense to speak of "betrayal" which is not essentially a betrayal of sexual fidelity, but of the partner's trust.   As it happens in the straight world, so also in the gay world, the preconceptions and mythologies related to sex and love heavily condition the approaches to love life and sexuality. The story of the Charming Prince totally in love with Cinderella can also be declined in a gay version and can very easily convey completely inadequate and misleading patterns of reading reality. In a more or less conscious way, the model of the marriage relationship is improperly extrapolated to the gay dimension and carries with it the idea of exclusivity and the substantial indissolubility of the couple bond. These ideas are now so radically and frequently contradicted by reality, even in the hetero field, that the marriage itself as institution is questioned, which for many couples no longer represents an aspiration but a useless and harmful bond from which it is good to keep away.   The emotional life escapes any institutionalization and takes place according to its paths that cannot be defined a priori. An institution, which, like marriage, tends to regulate the emotional life, is judged good or bad not because it applies right or wrong principles, since about emotional life there are a lot of opinions and points of view and nothing can be considered a priori right or wrong, but because it produces good or bad results. The legal institution that recognizes the couple bond is not the substantial component of the couple. A couple, if it works, works because it has the necessary resistance to overcome difficulties and this regardless of compliance with any a priori rule. Two people are a couple if they love each other, the fact that they are married is a pure circumstance that should legally recognize a couple bond that actually pre-exists marriage, but sometimes formally declares the existence of a couple bond that, substantially, doesn’t exist at all, and only takes concrete form in a pure legal fiction which, even without any basis, still creates expectations and obligations.   Marriage is a traditional institution that has undergone historical wear and is on the way to becoming a legacy of the past, too binding to be acceptable, also for straight couples. The gay world is interested in a civil recognition of the couple bond, but certainly not in its legalization in the forms of marriage which, if they are difficult to accept for straight people, are certainly very far from the mentality of the great majority of gays. Civil unions have nothing in common with marriage, they are no more than civil unions from which people expect a series of legal consequences aimed at creating legal effects between the partners of a gay couple for some aspects similar to those that marriage produces between two spouses.   The emotional life of gays not only doesn’t aim at para-marital institutions but tends to guarantee people maximum freedom. Among gay, except in cases still very exceptional, there are no problems related to the protection of children and, in relations between free and consenting adults, it is not clear how the State can claim the right to interfere. This, at least, according to the Italian legal tradition. In the Report on the first Penal Code for the Kingdom of Italy [1887], Title VIII "Crimes against morality and the order of families", Zanardelli, Minister of Justice at the time, a man with with an openly secular mentality, wrote:   "In determining the facts to be inserted in this Title, the current Project, in accordance with the previous ones, is inspired by this fundamental concept: if it is necessary on the one hand to severely repress the facts from which an obvious and appreciable damage to the families can result or that are contrary to public decency, on the other hand it is also necessary that the legislator does not invade the field of morality. Consequently, the criminal sanctions of the Project don't indiscriminately affect the facts that offend the morality and the order of families, but only those that are expressed with the characteristics of violence, insult, fraud or scandal, the repression of which is most strongly claimed in the social interest. So the actions that don't have those characteristics, and the investigation of which would make the legislative work transcend beyond its just borders, are not incriminated."   The Zanardelli Code knew and applied the distinction between law (objective facts and rules valid for everyone) and morality (subjective, questionable judgments and rules that cannot be imposed on everyone). I emphasize that the Zanardelli Code abolishes the death penalty, guarantees the freedom to strike and never considers homosexuality either as a possible crime or as an aggravating circumstance for other crimes.   Gays, in their behavior, despite all possible hesitation and weaknesses, tend anyway to follow a morality and this morality recognizes three of the four fundamental principles of the Zanardelli Code: for gay morality, violence, insult and fraud are never acceptable, because violent, insulting or fraudulent behaviors are not only harmful to the legal order but are repugnant to the individual conscience. A separate discussion can be made for the scandal. Giving scandal to minors who are not yet prepared to understand the meaning of certain speeches and behaviors is very different from speaking and behaving freely in front of adults who use their proclivity to feel scandalized as a means for the repression of those who have other points of view and other ways of life. Gay morality can be summarized in two fundamental principles: in the guarantee of everyone's own individual freedom and in the unacceptability of violence, insult and fraud and in some cases of scandal.   Judging an action moral or immoral depends exclusively on the criterion one chooses for judging. If we assume, as the Catholic Church does, that the only legitimate couple is that between a man and a woman, united in the bond of Catholic marriage, and that the use of sexuality is legitimate only for procreative purposes, we tend, more or less directly, to limit people's behavior on the basis of what a specific vision of morality assumes to be the Law of God. Without prejudice to the freedom to believe and therefore to conform to any doctrine as long as it doesn't limit the freedom of others, the Catholic believer is obviously free to follow the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as long as he feels Catholic.   And here I come to the fundamental point of my speech. Gay morality, intended to guarantee one's own individual freedom and that of others, in the total rejection of violence, insult and fraud and in some cases of scandal, presents completely different and substantially "secular" criteria of morality, i.e. not dependent on faith. Secularism represents the fundamental condition of erga omnes validity of the norm. Gay morality certainly doesn’t prevent a Catholic from conforming to Catholic doctrine, but it cannot tolerate that Catholic doctrine, or any other doctrine, may be imposed on those who don’t share it or may in any way, directly or indirectly, limit their freedom and their rights.   I don’t feel Catholic and I don’t claim or even expect that something in Catholic doctrine relating to sexuality change. Whoever wants to be Catholic is free to be such. What I can’t accept at all and which I consider profoundly immoral is trying to limit the freedom of others, that is, of those who don’t feel Catholic (as it usually happened with Pope Ratzinger) attempting to moralize the whole population in the Catholic manner, limiting their rights and freedom.   Pope Bergoglio recently spoke out in favor of the legal recognition of homosexual unions, and he did not do so by entering into issues of Italian politics, because in Italy this legal recognition already exists, but he did so by expressing a global judgment, not referable to any particular country; it is an evaluation that has nothing to do with doctrine, but only with common sense and with a substantially secular vision of the recognition of gay civil unions, a recognition that doesn’t in the least affect Catholic doctrine, which can only bind the consciences of believers. But if some gay couples wish to have legal protection, which is not and absolutely doesn’t want to be a Catholic marriage or anything like Catholic marriage, why deprive these couples of a legal guarantee that doesn’t reduce in any way the freedom of Catholics to follow Catholic doctrine and doesn’t devalue from any point of view the marriage bond as the Catholic Church understands it? The problem doesn’t concern Catholics but the rights of those who don’t feel Catholic and on whom it is not legitimate to "impose" any limitation of freedom or rights deriving from the faiths of others.   Pope Francis has expressed a judgment in favor of the secular nature of the State. The State and the Church are two completely different entities, with completely different functions and purposes. According to the Constitution of the Italian Republic, “The Republic recognizes and guarantees the inviolable rights of man, both as an individual and in the social formations where his personality takes place, and requires the fulfillment of the mandatory duties of political, economic and social solidarity. " (Art. 2); and again: "All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal in front the law, without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, personal and social conditions." (Art. 3). The obligation of the Republic is to guarantee the exercise of freedom of all, certainly not to limit the guarantees and freedoms of a group according to the convictions professed by another group, even if it were a majority group, because articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution are a constitutional cornerstone of the State from which all legislation must be inspired and constitute the fundamental criterion on which the legitimacy of the Laws is measured.   It should be emphasized that Pope Francis has not changed anything in relation to Catholic doctrine, he has only shown that he gives a meaning that is not purely formal to Art. 7 of the Italian Constitution, according to which "The State and the Catholic Church are, each in their own order, independent and sovereign". I add that Cardinal Martini, bishop of Milan from 1979 to 2002, also a Jesuit like Pope Francis, had expressed substantially identical judgments.   Pope Francis is not the protector of Gays, who don’t need protectors of any kind, but he is a person who demonstrates that he understands that homosexuality exists and that the Church should not worry about promoting homophobic crusades but should finally consider as brothers even homosexual people who don’t consider themselves Catholic, to try to build a better world together with them and for them too.   BEEING OR NOT BEEING PRESENT: A CLASSIC GAY PROBLEM Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-27-2020, 04:04 AM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, I wrote to you a few months ago and you replied things I appreciated a lot. The problem is always the same. I don't know if you remember, me forty-one and my boyfriend (an expression that in this case has a very special meaning) thirty-one. I’m fixated on how I’m old and he is interested in me, but only from a sexual point of view. Something that would have seemed absolutely incredible to me. A few more months have passed and the situation has remained more or less the same. We never lost sight of each other, every now and then a little sex, but otherwise two separate worlds, we almost never hear each other and we meet only for sex. Nevertheless there is a kind of relationship between us that has its own seriousness, even if it is very diluted and also quite a bit ritualized. He’s never satisfied with the guys he meets and then he comes to me, but in practice he comes to me only when he has nothing better. I want to emphasize that I don't blame him for this, because I would most likely do the same in his place. I never tell him no, but I never look for him because I'm afraid of interfering with the mechanisms of his real life, that is, the one he would like, even if he can't live it with the guys he really cares about. I haven't heard from him for three weeks now and I can't deny that I miss him, because there has always been a relationship between us that is not at all stupid, even if it cannot be summarized under any label. In short, now I miss him and I miss him in every sense. I have wondered a thousand times what to do, whether to call him or not to call him. I don't know if calling him will bother him or if maybe it's something he would like, but the fact remains that he has not been heard for a long time now and this makes me think that maybe he has found a guy with whom he is feels happy and it would be a great thing for him. I would gladly put myself aside and basically I have always been aside, but I would also accept to disappear completely, letting him forget about me and remove me from his consciousness. He never reproaches me for anything, when we talk he’s very spontaneous, he doesn't tell lies. In short, I don’t know what to do, or rather I know it, because I think I will do nothing, I will not call him, and if he doesn’t call me, our story will end up by natural consumption. I wouldn't want one thing only, I wouldn't want him to feel bad and not tell me because maybe he thinks I want to distance myself because I'm no longer interested in him. He changed several guys and never understood why I never used those special apps looking for guys. He doesn't realize that he's really important to me. Today I thought about calling him but then I started thinking that maybe he could be with a guy and that I would bother him and so I gave up. I don't want another guy and deep down I don't want him either. I only wish that he loved me, even without going to bed with me and instead it happens that we go to bed together but not that he loves me or rather loves me as I would like, because he treats me with respect, except in some moments of nervousness. I have known other guys in the past and even now there are some guys who have shown me a certain sympathy and who I think would be happy to be with me, but for me there is only one guy who matters, the others are friends, but I would not be able to be myself with them, while with him I feel completely at ease and I think he too feels the same way , even if sometimes, after sex, he becomes a little more aggressive (verbally) towards me and he reproaches me for being physically decayed, for not playing sports, for letting go, for eating too much, and he’s probably right. This is a stupid email, now that I have tried to reread it I have noticed it. In fact, it sounds like a one-sided story, but it isn't. I would like to see him smile, play, be less serious than his usual, but he never really melts with me because I think he doesn't even melt with himself, or maybe he would or even does it with other guys. He doesn’t have a great idea of himself neither from the physical point of view nor from the mental and work point of view and instead he seems to me a beautiful guy and also very intelligent and capable to deal with every situation, but as for beauty, at least, my judgment could be a little biased. There are some guys who turned him away because they thought he was ugly … and this is something that I will never be able to understand. Not only is he a handsome boy, but he looks much younger than his age. In short, I love him and maybe somehow he loves me too, but obviously this is not enough to get together. There are other needs, let's say primary, but in the end those primary needs still fail to make him feel good. We certainly share a fear and it is the fear of time passing, I’m now over 40 and I have to start getting used to the idea that the best period of life has passed and that now more than dreaming we must try to build something that can last, I’m not talking about building a life as a couple or anything like that, what I would like is to be able to maintain a true friendship with him, perhaps even with a little sex but, at the limit, I could even do without sex. Having him as a friend would make me happy and then, if I saw him happy, fulfilled, then my happiness would be perfect. But I wish I could count on his friendship with the certainty that it would not fade over the years. In fact, we met 12 years ago and we never really lost touch. Today, however, I’m afraid that what hasn’t happened up to now could happen just now, for me it would be a problem because I would lose the person who, strange as he was and very different from me, has been anyhow the most important person of these years. I feel melancholy not because I'm afraid of losing a boyfriend, but because I'm afraid of losing a true friend. Who knows why one falls in love with a guy and keeps him in his soul so than there isn’t any place there for anyone else! The fact is that you feel that guy frighteningly similar from many aspects which however are not those needed for the couple life. A smile from him or a kind word from him counts more than any seduction. I love him because he’s him and because deep down he too recognizes that he has something in common with me. I'm very sad, Project, because I haven't heard from him in a long time and I'm tempted to call him. I could do it tomorrow, but he certainly has to work tomorrow morning, his hours of the week change frequently and then I could wait until next Sunday, when almost a month will be passed since our last meeting. I hope that my call may be something welcome for him, and it would be enough for me. I will let you know. Hamlet79   GAYS BETWEEN DIVERGENT THINKING AND INTELLECTUALISM Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-25-2020, 03:11 AM - Forum: True gay stories - No Replies Hi Project, I read on the forum a very interesting discussion entitled: “Gay affectivity and divergent thinking”. It is a discussion from more than eight years ago that particularly attracted me not because I'm or feel like a guy capable of a really divergent thinking, I'd like a lot if it was so! But because my boyfriend, whom I will call Elio here, is so, in my opinion, and I would like to bring my small contribution to the discussion by considering the question from another point of view slightly different. I state that to understand that we are dealing with divergent thinking and not just with petty rhetoric or a show of exasperated intellectualism, a counterpart of a certain cultural depth is needed.  I have read some books but frankly I don’t feel quite up to these speeches. Elio, who in my opinion is a refined intellectual, one who reads a lot and above all who thinks a lot, has not won me over for this aspect of his personality, which I think serves him above all as a defense weapon when he doesn’t really trust someone, and even a little to hide his fragile ego. I'm not doing intellectualistic speeches in my turn, Project, I mean that in the end the affective research that you yourself associated with divergent thinking, in Elio's life ended up being the prevailing element. When the affective dimension creaked or failed, then divergent thinking came out. A little as if the genius was born out of the frustration of feelings.  I remember now that I have not yet told you that I am 35 and Elio is 32. Fortunately for us we both work, Elio in a much better situation than mine, and it is right that it should be so because objectively his work commits him much more than mine commits me. He may be proud of what he has done but he is absolutely not proud, on the contrary, he underlines in a thousand ways that he has done much less than he could and that I think he is a great person, while he is just one who strives to do what others do spontaneously without any effort. Those who only know him through work respect him and in a sense fear him. I, who have known him for almost 10 years and have followed step by step all his studies and all his work successes, I also know the human side of Elio, his weaknesses, which in my opinion are the most fascinating side of his character.  Some days he comes back from work very tired, because he often works even in the afternoon, he goes into the house, he leaves his shoes near the entrance and puts on some house slippers, then he goes into the dining room and I make him find the table set and he sits down and lifts his neck towards me because that's the moment for a kiss on the forehead, a use that we inaugurated many years ago, when we met. During dinner we don't see TV, sometimes I mess around his hair or stroke his hand and he squeezes it tightly. During the dinner he uses only one plate, he is very careful not to dirty the tablecloth because he knows that I should wash it later. Sometimes he tells me some anecdotes of his work but always in brief.  After dinner we go into the living room and he takes off his slippers because he likes to walk on the carpet only with socks, he says it's a bit like walking on grass. I sit on the sofa and he lies down and rests his head on my legs and when he is very tired he falls asleep like this! We talk little between us, we are able to tell each other everything with a hug.  We have been living together for 4 years now and we share the costs, but not at 50%. He earns 1.45 times what I earn, and pays 1.45 / 2.45 of all expenses. He tells me that that is the minimum of the equity and that I work at home while he does practically nothing at home and it is obvious that I contribute in other ways to the functioning of the house. This precision in the division of expenses, however, is a kind of game, because Elio, who in the past has always had very little money, is not in the least stingy and leaves his salary together with mine without distinguishing mine and his, the one  of us who needs money takes freely what he needs. We have a joint account which by law is half his and half mine, although obviously he contributes much more than me. At first I thought that there could be money problems between us but it never happened.  His parents once found themselves in the faculty to redeem the apartment they lived in but they didn't have all the money they needed and we gave them (not lent) all our savings. Please note, Project, that we weren't expecting any money back and instead they returned everything to us in just three years. I no longer have my parents and Elio's parents are a bit like my family. They cuddle me more than Elio because they know that he appreciates a lot such a behavior. We see them every week, as far as possible, and I think that the fact that Elio is a man inwardly calm is largely due to them. In Elio's attitudes I see many attitudes of his father.  Sometimes we talk about cultural things, that is a bit of the "highest systems", and I am often amazed because he listens to me. He makes me talk and listens to me, he never silences me, he tries to follow the logical thread of what I tell him. When I have finished, he keeps quiet for a few seconds and then takes up all the points of my speech, enriches them, develops them, and if they weren't already part of his way of thinking, he makes them his, integrates them into his way of seeing things, tells me that I give him often some tips that are also useful to him in his work and that you don't need to have studied philosophy to be a philosopher. Note, Project, he tells me this very seriously. He often tells me that I reassure him, that I am his anxiolytic, his antidepressant. He is very rational but easily goes into crisis when he sees people suffering.  When we first went to live together, in our building there was an elderly lady, the lady or rather Miss Adele, who treated us very well from the beginning, when she met us on the stairs she always smiled at us and I think she understood very well that we were a couple, then, after a few months, we never saw her again, Elio inquired and learned that Miss Adele could no longer leave the house, she lived alone and was assisted by a voluntary association. We went to see her when the guys from the association were there, the house was clean and tidy, thanks to those guys, even though the young lady couldn't get out of her wheelchair. But she was very alert mentally, she joked with us and treated us well and so we got into the habit of spending two evenings a week with her and having dinner with her. I can tell you, Project, they were beautiful evenings, nothing forced, everything was very spontaneous, it was a bit like having a grandmother.  Then Miss Adele's health deteriorated and they hospitalized her, and after three weeks she died. For us it was a real family mourning. At the funeral it was just us and we paid for the funeral. Less than a week later, a notary called us and told us that the Miss Adelina had made her will and had left us the apartment and all the money she had, as well as a sealed letter. In the letter she told us that she would pray for us from Heaven and that she had left us her things so that we could do with them what we thought was right. Three days later we returned to the notary with the legal representative of the association who had assisted the young lady and we left everything to them.  Project, it may seem incredible to you but when we left the notary's office we hugged each other tightly for the happiness of having done what had to be done. You can understand, Project, that in my opinion these gestures are the real divergent thinking, because Elio is not only cultured and intelligent but he is good, he is a good man that I can only admire. He is not narrow-minded, he does not think only of himself. When I embrace it, I know I hold the rarest treasure in the world. And do you know what he told me? He said when he realized that about Miss Adele's legacy we were thinking of doing exactly the same thing, he felt the happiest man on Earth because both of us were inclined to divergent thinking but to a divergent thinking in exactly the same direction.  When you meet such a man there is no need for words! This divergent thinking is not intellectualism, it is absolutely another thing. When I think of Elio, tears come to my eyes, being together we have learned to be better. You can understand why we get along well. Sometimes I read stories of jealousy, sex and power play within the couple on the forum. Before meeting Elio I too lived that kind of situation and he probably lived them too, but then we met and our life really changed.  In Miss Adele's house the voluntary association has accommodated two elderly ladies, we went to visit them but they looked at us as if we were two intruders, so we said goodbye and left. They weren't like Miss Adele who used to smile at us when she saw us, showing a face full of happiness and when we dined together she was all well dressed and combed and hugged us tightly to make us understand that we were important to her.  Yesterday Elio came home in the evening all wet, he did not have the hood of his raincoat on his head but he carried it with the utmost care, I approached and he motioned me to shut up, then he opened the hood of the waterproof and there was a not so small kitten inside, all wet. We dried it, we made a kind of kennel for him and then we tried to give it some milk, after having warmed it a little in our hands, and the kitten was able to eat on his own which was a huge relief for us. We have a veterinary friend to ask for advice but if the kitten eats alone it means that all in all he's fine. We set him up in our room and spent the whole evening cuddling the kitten who also looked in great shape. Today our vet friend told us that the kitten was actually a she kitten and that she was in good health and we decided to call her Adelina. You can't imagine how carefully Elio treats the kitten and the kitten trusts him, and actually me too, as if she had always known us, a bit like Miss Adele had done, that's why we chose that name.  Today Elio began to call her "the baby-girl" and many thoughts came to mind about how nice it would be to have a real baby-girl. I know these are just dreams, but Elio would be a really good dad and I would try my best too. Now I'll send you the email, otherwise I won't finish it anymore. Of course, you can use it as you like better. Thanks for what you do, Project. Keep it up.   UNDERSTANDING GAY SEX Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-15-2020, 02:24 PM - Forum: Gays and sex - No Replies Hi Project, I often read your forum posts, there are good stories but it seems to me that sex remains somehow a marginal topic, I don't say avoided but treated as much as possible in a neutral way. Instead, I would like to make it clear that it is a very important thing. Maybe you are laughing now because I’m saying something obvious, but for me it has become a very important thing. It wasn't always a very important thing or rather I didn't understand its meaning and trivialized it. But perhaps it is better that I tell you the facts, otherwise I will waste time.   I am 32 years old and I no longer feel like a boy from any point of view. I have had my experiences, I think more or less similar to those that all gays have, with the basic idea that sex was after all a marginal and also risky thing, so when I happened to have a concrete experience, I experienced it badly, a bit like I was doing it unwillingly just because my partner at the time wanted it.   Let's say that I always took it a bit as an imposition, then I never loved anal sex, which for some of my partners was instead a fixed idea, even if not for all, I have been with two guys of very different age, who told me that they didn’t like anal sex at all, but the two other guys I have been with were really obsessed with it and I couldn't stand them because they insisted we had to do it anyway, because it was the very important for them. Among other things I have never endured the condom that bothered me, but on the other hand I’m a phobic hypochondriac and the idea of doing something like that without a condom doesn’t even pass through the anteroom of my brain. You can understand well in what spirit I used to have sexual intercourse, let's say that in the end I have adapted quite reluctantly. I just didn't understand what others were finding in having anal sex. I looked at them in amazement, they seemed to me completely out of their mind.   With my fourth boyfriend it all ended because I couldn't bear that everything was reduced to have sex and nothing more. That is, at the limit I can also adapt to do what you want, but how can you think that for me that is the maximum enjoyment? It means that you don't really realize how I feel and that you only think about yourself. If I caressed him he replied that it bothered him, when we had finished he would get dressed and leave without even saying hello ... you can understand what level we were at!   And these stories went on for up to my 30 years! Then I meet Matthew, a guy more or less the same age that I like immediately, that is, he is my ideal type of guy, let's say that I have never seen one that interested me more than him, I mean that he attracted me precisely on a physical level and very. I was intrigued by Matthew, we started chatting and he intrigued me a lot, he too had had his stories and he had one that still went on, but he was not satisfied at all. He was in love with his boyfriend but did not feel reciprocated, somehow he felt exploited only for sexual reasons, but he could not detach himself from that guy.   Matthew was the first guy with whom I managed to build a relationship of serious friendship. We talked a lot, he didn't compliment me, he didn't try to seduce me, he talked to me about himself and above all about the discomfort he felt with his boyfriend and the fact that he loved him anyway and this made me uncomfortable, because I was in love about him and he kept talking to me about the other guy, even though the things he said to me were obvious signs of unease. I would have wanted some physical intimacy with him, but there was no such thing.   I trusted Matthew, he was very serious, always a little sad but he was a true, faithful friend, I too began to talk to him about me and my discomfort with my last boyfriend, that I had already archived for a few months. Slowly, with Matthew, we also came to talk about sex, but he used to speak about it in a different way from the other guys I had known, he was very direct he didn't sublimate speeches  but it was evident that sex for him had a strong emotional value. However, I realized that he had a different sexuality from mine, he too considered anal sex a very important thing and this made me uncomfortable because I thought that assuming that there could be sex between us, it would never be something of truly shared on the same level.   But time passed, we chatted a couple of times a week and several times even once, he had his life and I mine, he was very busy with work and often had to go out of town for work, and I in certain periods in practice I had no working hours and I had to work in the office as long as there were people and many times even at home in the evening, and nevertheless sometimes I have been waiting until late for his call, I avoided to call him because I would have risked calling him at a time when he was busy for work or maybe while she was with her boyfriend, because he kept having a boyfriend and feeling bad about it.   When we talked on the phone they were very special moments, very engaging, very real, something that had never happened to me with anyone before. I realized that I shared everything with him except sex. We talked for hours, he was often melancholy, even bordering on depressed. Our bond was strange, asymmetrical, at least in a certain sense, because I also wanted him sexually while he seemed essentially disinterested, however, slowly our relationship had become a very important thing both for him and for me, we were not just friends, it was evident that there was something more, we instinctively trusted each other, we were a real couple without sex.   I do not hide that for me it was a pain. He was the object of all my sexual fantasies and just hearing his voice on the phone caused me an erection and of course this lasted the entire time of the phone call long and afterwards I masturbated but with a background of melancholy, as for a wish that would never come true. And then I had never told him these things, I was afraid of influencing him or maybe letting him run away. We had talked a lot about sex, but about sex with others, while about sex between us, possible or not, we had never been talking and this made me very embarrassed, as if I were tricking him by trying to give him the idea that for me the fact that our relationship was without sex was somehow a quietly accepted fact. He treated me like a friend but to me he wasn't just a friend.   Then came a time when he was very grumpy, I mean that anyway he was always respectful, he treated me as best he could but he was sad and spoke little. There were moments of embarrassment between us when I didn't know what to say and once he gave me a caress and left without saying a word. I felt helpless, I loved him but obviously I couldn't change his life, I couldn't give him the serenity he needed.   Then he disappeared for 32 days, and disconnected his cell phone. I called his office and they told me he was on vacation and they didn't know anything else. But on vacation he would have carried his cell phone. I did not know where his parents lived and I did not have their telephone number, because Matthew lived on his own and so, day after day, I became terribly anxious, I tried to call him, I left him messages on the answering machine but I was very scared.   On the 32nd day at half past midnight he called me on the phone and just said, "Would you like to have sex with me?" I told him: “Sure! Where are you?" At that moment my intercom rang. It was him and he went up to my house. When he entered the house he hugged me, something he had never done! But it was a hug that had nothing sexual at al. Then he said to me: "I'll stay with you tonight ... ok?" I told him that I had been very worried about him, and he said to me:   "I'm done with Silvio, I felt like a complete fool, he was only interested in having sex with me, but he didn't care about me ..."   We went into the kitchen, he sat on a low stool and I made him a cup of tea with some biscuits and then we went back to the living room to talk. In reality we talked very little, he only told me that the next afternoon he had to go back to work, not a single word about sex. He lay down on the sofa and fell asleep. I stayed close to him and slept in the armchair.   I say I slept, but I actually wondered why he asked me if I wanted to have sex with him. That was the first time he had ever mentioned such a hypothesis. I had all night to think about it, but then I started thinking about something else, about the fact that he was next to me and that sex or not sex, somehow he loved me and that I had passed from the deep anguish of a few hours before to such a love feeling in that so incredible but true way.   In the morning we woke up before seven, went down to the bar to have breakfast and then went home. I was supposed to be at work at 9.00 and we had to say goodbye. I wanted to ask him what that request to have sex with me meant but I pretended to  have forgotten it, he said to me: “We have to talk, I'll come to you tonight around nine, if you like, make a little dinner to me , if you like." I said yes to him and he greeted me by giving me a very light kiss on the mouth, something he had never done before. My working day literally flew in a whirlwind of thoughts that you can well imagine. After work, I ran to the supermarket and then immediately home to prepare some dinner. He arrives on time, finds dinner ready and the table set. We have a quick dinner then we start talking. I'll quote here the speech on the basis of what I wrote down the next day in my diary:   “It's over with Silvio. I told you. I was in love with him but he always said that there was only sex between us. I mean, I felt treated like shit and finally got rid of it. With him I had deluded myself that it could work and instead it ended exactly as had ended all my previous stories. I felt like a total moron. You must have wondered why when I called you I asked you if you wanted to have sex with me and there is a reason for this question: it was what I told Silvio when I needed him. It was always me who called him and always when I knew he was free, and he didn't say no, but then I when we were together, we did what we had to do, and then it was automatic that I left immediately. When I last went there I asked him the same question, just as it had always happened, that is if he wanted to have sex with me, and he told me to go up but I didn't want to have sex with him at all, I needed him to listen to me but he didn't even try, he told me that if I ask him if he wants to have sex, then I can't start with "pathological bullshit" (his words) and that if I don't want to have sex I don't have to break his balls (always his words) so I left and came to your house and I asked you to if you would like to have sex with me. You let me in and it was all very different and I expected it would all be very different. I know you love me and I too love you in a sense, but I'm not in love with you, you are not physically my type, but I think I could be fine with you anyway. I think I'm not indifferent to you. In conclusion, if you think we can be together, we can also try. I do not know how I will react, it may be that then I will feel uncomfortable, but if it happens I will tell you immediately, it could be an experiment ... it seems absurd, I know, but we could try, however I do not promise anything, but now I think we might as well try ... ".   “Matthew, I'm only interested in that you are fine, what hurts me is to see you sad, discouraged, unmotivated. If you are better off without sex, we can be very well even without it, you don't have to feel forced into anything ... "   " But you are saying this because it is fine for you as we have done so far and only this way? "   "No, certainly not! It's fine for me if we try, but I wouldn't want that if it doesn't work, this was another reason for disappointment and frustration ... "   "No, I don't think there would be a risk of disappointment, I never felt exploited by you, but listen, first of all there is a very important fact to take account of, we need to get tested for HIV because with Silvio we also had risky behaviors and the idea of being able to infect you with a bad disease would destroy me ... and I would also like you to do the test too, it would be a way to start from scratch together. It was precisely out of the fear of infecting you something that I kept away from you when I was with Silvio ... "   " Well, I'm very attracted by you, sexually I mean, I masturbated dozens of times thinking about you but I didn't tell you never because you were thinking of Silvio and I should not interfere ... "   “Well, physically you are not my type but it just happened to me two days ago that I masturbated thinking about you and that's exactly why I told you we can try. I used to think I could not have sexual desires on you but now I think it is possible, in practice it happened. But understand me, for me it is all new and everything in reverse compared to what I have always lived, in short, what will happen I do not know ... but we can try. "   Dear Project, as you can understand, it was a very unusual start for a love story, but there was already a strong bond between us before and we didn't get scared. We went together to take the test, he was a little anxious but only a little because with Silvio they “almost” always used a condom, but luckily the test was negative for both of us. In theory, the first major obstacle was over. We still had to go from words to deeds and here the embarrassment was enormous, not because of the sex itself, but because neither he nor I wanted to put in crisis our relationship due to inexperience, or due to too much haste or unavailability. I had also mentally accepted the idea of having anal intercourse with him, because for him they were important and after all they practiced them in a reciprocal way with Silvio and perhaps it would have been so with me too. The problem anyway did not arise precisely because knowing that those things were never in my fantasies, he had accepted the idea of doing without them. Basically each of us had accepted the idea of having to adapt to the other. But problems occurred much earlier. The very idea of attempting a physical contact was also a problem. Luckily it was he who made the first move.   One night in my house, he undressed completely and lay down on the bed. I too undressed and he said to me: "You are such a beautiful guy!" and he said it with conviction, almost as if it were something he did not expect, a spontaneous smile came to me and he replied in the same way, then he gestured for me to approach ... the rest you can imagine it. He was not at all clumsy and we understood each other on the fly. It didn't even seem real to me that I was in such a situation, because I had dreamed of it for so long. We hugged naked, very tight and he kissed me tenderly. It was the height of summer and it was very hot, we went to the kitchen, naked as we were, and had two cold drinks. We looked like two Adams in the earthly Paradise. I didn't know what would happen next, but we went back to making love in a very playful way and then we went to sleep hugging. I woke up long before him in the morning and went to prepare some breakfast, when I brought it to him, he stretched like a cat and smiled as he hardly ever did.   Then several days later we also got to anal sex, I didn't tell him no, I put on a condom and then we went on, you could see that it was important for him, in the end he didn't ask me to change roles and said that after all it is not what you do that counts but with whom you do it and added that now he knew that if he had asked me I would not have said no. In the following months we did it a few more times but in the end it was not a fixed idea even for him, it was not a taboo but it was not even an obligatory step and slowly the matter became less important for him and less problematic for me, now it is done every now and then but mostly as a demonstration that I do not say no.   What I like most about Matteo's sexuality and that for him sex doesn't have a precise beginning and end, is a bit of a general atmosphere of warmth and intimacy. We now also know each other well sexually, for example   I know that he really likes that after sex I don't get dressed and stay naked with him on the bed to chat and joke. The post-sex phase for him is fundamental because it gives him the feeling of being considered like a man and not like a sex toy, in practice that post-sex phase, with Silvio, did not exist at all and he felt uncomfortable. He likes to have sex with the light on because he tells me he wants to see me in all my splendor and I know this means that he begins to appreciate me also from a sexual point of view, and he repeats to me that I am beautiful because he knows that I like very much to hear such things from him.   In a sense, our being a couple should be fragile but when we are together we see that it is not so, now he is much less melancholy than before, sometimes he jokes and above all sends me very tender text messages. To be honest, I have fulfilled my deepest wishes. When you hold the one guy you truly loved in your arms and feel that he is happy to be with you, I don't think you could want anything more.   I had Matthew read this email before sending it to you, since it also concerns him and he told me that I mythologized him, because he is not like that, but much worse! Publish the email, if you like, it's fine with us!   A warm greeting. Mark   A QUIET GAY COUPLE Posted by: gayprojectforum - 10-13-2020, 08:40 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies Hi Project, I remember starting to hang out on your forum many years ago and it made me a little vaccinated against dating sites, applications and especially easy sex. Somehow I owe you a lot, even if you don't know, because I met my partner, with whom I have lived for years, on the Gay Project Chat, when there was a lot of people and there were even two chat channels. You don't know me, because I was one of those hit and run users and then I would have been very embarrassed talking to you.   I'm 35 now and my partner is 31. I can say that all in all we are a nice couple. He is really beautiful, I am much less, but we are a beautiful couple because we have been living together for more than eight years and we love each other. My name is Paul and my partner is called John. We have always been calm and have had a lot of luck, in addition to meeting on Gay Project and feeling a little fond of the environment, even if from the outside.   We both had families that didn't cause us any problems. They certainly struggled to accept our relationship, but at least they didn’t create problems of principle, I would say that above all my parents struggled to accept the situation when they didn’t know John in person and therefore reasoned a lot in the abstract. John's parents had an excellent relationship with him even before and would never have been afraid that he might get into trouble. We are both only children, which on the one hand made family relationships easier but on the other, perhaps, made it more difficult to accept the idea of a gay son, but in the end, our parents met and made friends. This was our second luck, but the most important one was that we were just fine together.   We are not partygoers, not obsessed with fashion, we don't smoke, we don't drink, we work a lot but without the determination to make a career or money at all costs, because we want to enjoy our life. First we studied, then we had to think about finding work and we had little time for ourselves, now that our work situations are at least relatively stabilized, we want to have some time for ourselves, not to travel or to do who knows what, but just to be among us. We always had both Saturdays and Sundays free and on Saturday evenings we had fun cooking something different, or doing laundry and ironing, or cleaning the house, and then we would get together on the sofa to watch TV. They may seem trivial things, but staying lying on the sofa and feeling the warmth of my partner's body leaning against me fills me with tenderness. A caress and a smile are the best thing in the world if they come from the right person.   Before getting to know each other we had some experiences but minimal, a little disappointing, and therefore in a certain sense educational, but never traumatic. I mean that we have understood that to be well together you have to stay on the same wavelength, that is, you have to see life in a rather similar way, otherwise the contradictions sooner or later come out. That is, in love the “who” counts much more than the “what” and the “how”.   Since we met we have lived in strict monogamy, not out of a theoretical duty of fidelity or out of fear of diseases but because we were well together. We looked for our sexual equilibrium together and it wasn't even difficult to find it because even from that point of view we reasoned more or less the same way. Sex between us exists and has always existed, since the beginning, but other moments in life have not been less fundamental for us.   In particular, it happened to me a few years ago to lose my job and at that moment I felt John very close. He knew that I was going through a very difficult time and he was close to me not in words, but by spending hours scrolling through advertisements and checking employment opportunities and conditions. Sometimes we spent the night in front of the computer preparing and mailing resumes, and we went out on Saturdays for job interviews. The problem of work was my problem but I felt very comforted by John's presence and I think that if the problem had been his he could not have done more than he did for me, and all this operationally, without useless chatter. He was anxious that I find the best possible job and quickly, he didn't think in the least to have to show me that he was taking care of it, he didn't have to make a good impression but to solve the problem.   He and I both had few friends before we met, then our friends met and his friends became my friends and vice versa. Now the friends are no longer mine or his but ours, in the sense of us as a couple, they are seven people in all, two straight couples, a gay couple and a straight guy looking for a girl. Among us everyone knows everything about everyone and there have never been problems. When I tell it nobody believes it, they tell me it's impossible, but that's exactly what happens.   Now I feel serene and I only have in the background the fear that all this could be upset at any moment by something unexpected and terrible, because when you have achieved your happiness you are afraid of losing it. In our life there have been no sensational facts, it was all very peaceful. Our parents are all still in good health and things should go on like this for at least ten years. The Covid virus, which for many people was a shock, brought both of us the opportunity to work from home. We work, yes, but there are no more transfer times and we have much more time for ourselves.   I am experiencing how important it is to be two in the substantial sense of the term, it is something that reassures you, that makes you feel good, and then you realize that you are also important for your partner, you know that you can put him in a good mood when he is sad or frustrated and above all you have a reason not to let yourself go when it turns bad, you have to feel good for him too, and it is not a small thing, it makes you bring out the best you have inside. When he is in a good mood, John hums and consequently I feel happy, when he stays too long without humming it means that there is something wrong and that he needs a caress or a kiss, and it works.   When we met we didn't live in the same city but in very close cities, just a few minutes away by train. We met every time we had a free afternoon, so at least twice a week, then slowly we began to move by car, also to have a place to stay and talk with a minimum of tranquility and privacy when it rained, because at the beginning our parents knew nothing about us; when they knew about us, basically a year after we met, John came to my house and I went to his house a lot of times, there were no problems, it's true, but we had need to have a little intimacy and that's how we started thinking about looking for work in the same city and living together.   Basically, I sent many resumes to companies in his city when he was still finishing his studies and I found a job in his city. He was not earning yet and the idea of taking an apartment together, I mean buying it together, that is, paying it each for a half, was not feasible, and so I was in a "student" rent, that is, in a rent that could be renovated annually and things went on like this for almost two years, but at least we had our own little place.   By the time he started working our parents met for the first time and week after week they got to know each other better and so, making a tremendous effort, they paid us an advance for the purchase of an apartment. To tell the truth, it wasn't all easy because neither his parents nor mine were in favor of a joint purchase, because if the relationship did not go well there would also be the problem of  sharing the house. But frankly, such an eventuality seemed completely unthinkable to both John and me and so we purchased the apartment.   The mortgage was not very heavy because we worked in two, then when I lost my job and I was without work for almost a year, that is, I did odd jobs for almost a year, for me, paying my share was not really easy, I continued to pay it anyway, but John paid all the bills, taxes, car tax and insurance, among other things we had also sold my car which was newer and worth something more, and we had kept for us only the John's one, because, since we lived in the same house, we didn't need two cars. We took a short mortgage to pay less interest. We would have made a more intense but shorter effort. Today we are only a year away from the end of the mortgage and then our house will truly be ours.   John says very well about the place where he works and his colleagues but he doesn't consider them friends, he never receives them at home. I have my satisfactions in the workplace but in a sense I don't physically have a place where to work, that is, in theory I do, but over 10 days, at least eight I spend them around the province, with the company car, to make inspections and to install systems. The teams of workers I work with change every time and I always find myself in the role of the expert who comes from outside but who has nothing to do with the environment. My bosses trust me because I don't create problems and on the contrary I solve them if there are any. If I have to tell the truth, I have never had any real work problems, some complications yes, but for administrative problems and only for that.   John, on the other hand, had some problems with a girl who has lost her mind a bit for him, and she is a colleague of his, but they don't really work together. We talked about it but I didn't know what to tell him. In the end, he showed detached and the girl put her soul in peace, without the need to say anything and make statements of any kind. The whole story didn't last more than a couple of months and it ended by itself. Such things have never happened to me because there are no women in my workplace. In this period of my life I feel happy and I see that John also feels happy.   Project, if you want to publish this email you can certainly do it, I often hear guys (straight but not only) who talk about homosexuality as if it were a kind of catastrophe and talk about homosexuals as a kind of damned race. I don’t know what experiences they have had in life and I don’t allow myself to judge anyone, I limit myself only to saying that it is precisely homosexuality that has made me happy. I love John and I feel loved by him. They may well be rare things, but these things do really exist!   See you Project! John too greets you. Thanks for what you unknowingly did for me and for John!   Paul Pages (56): « Previous 1 ... 6 7 8 9 10 ... 56 Next » Jump to page: