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GAY AFFECTIVITY AND DIVERGENT THINKING - gayprojectforum - 08-12-2018

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