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A GAY STORY OF ALMOST LOVE - Printable Version

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A GAY STORY OF ALMOST LOVE - gayprojectforum - 07-12-2020

Hi Project,
I don't know who you are, but if you put all the Project material together you are one who tried to do everything he could to do something good and I think you did it, at least to me in these days it was useful to read the forum, it helped me to feel less alone.
 
I’m 43 years old, middle age, I’m neither young nor old, it is no longer the age to sow, that time has passed, I think about it with nostalgia but that time has passed. In these days I find myself experiencing situations and sensations that I had envisioned for a long time, but perhaps it is better to start from the beginning.
 
Up to 32 years old, I had lived on dreams only, out of laziness or out of fear, I had never looked for or favored any concrete opportunity to find a guy, then at 32, it happened to me what I had dreamed of at least a little and had also scared me a little. I met a very young gay guy, he was 18 at the time, 14 years younger than me, he was a beautiful guy but I considered him a kind of unattainable youth myth.
 
We started talking in chat, then we met in person and he fascinated me, he was very intelligent and then he had a dignity that I have never seen in anyone else. It happened that he fell in love with me, something I never would have imagined because he could have had any guy if he only wanted or, better, I think he hadn't really fallen in love with me but he was fine with me, he felt important, he knew I loved him. My first time, at 32, was with him, and it was the first for him too.
 
On one hand I was fine with him but on the other I felt like a thief, one who takes advantage of another. There was not only sex between us, we talked a lot, I can say that we never had secrets from each other. At times he fell into deep depression and I tried to do everything to make him feel better and he had infinite patience with me and accepted the thousand complexes I had with sexuality.
 
In the period in which we were together he had other stories that then ended, this actually didn’t create any particular problems for me because I thought that I wouldn’t lose him anyway and that, perhaps, even if in a marginal position, for me there would always be a corner, at least as a friend, and it would have been enough for me, but lately things have changed, he has restarted a relationship with one of his ex, a guy his same age, and since then I haven't heard from him, I called him, at least to know how he was, but he was strange and detached, he seemed almost worried that I wanted to come forward. Obviously I haven't looked for him since then and more than two months have passed and he hasn't made himself heard. In practice what I was afraid of became real, he built an important relationship, which now completely absorbs him, and for me there is space anymore.
 
I must say that all this makes me a little melancholy on a personal level, but I also know his ex with whom he restarted the relationship and I know that he is a good guy, that he is not playing with him but really loves him, so I'm happy that things have taken this course, which on the other hand, was inevitable sooner or later. I have been a phase and now my job is to step aside and not interfere in the least. I don't deny that I think of him and that I remember many situations in which we have been together and those moments have all been very beautiful. I'm sorry that he can consider me a danger or one who can try to get into his life inappropriately. In fact, from many points of view it is much better that things have gone this way, it’s obvious that anyway I will have to get used to a life without him. And afterwards why can't we stay friends anyway? From my point of view this would be fine, but from his? "In theory" it should not create problems, but perhaps it creates some problem for his partner, or it really creates some problem for him too because now he feels himself involved in an important story.
 
After him, for me, there will be no one, he was special and still is, I have nothing to reproach him for, we never quarreled, he was always honest with me and I cannot stop loving him just because he found himself a another guy, I’m only sorry that he is afraid of me, that he may think that I could undermine his happiness, because this will never happen. I would have liked to see him happy, I would have liked him to have said it to me and instead I will only have to imagine it. This is my only displeasure.
 
It seems like a paradox, but I'm glad he has found a way that can make him feel better, because I know that he feels really better now. He wasn't really happy when he was with me, but he has been better since he got back in touch with his ex-boyfriend, the positive effects were evident and I can't deny it at all. If I hadn't seen them, I would have had a thousand doubts, but he seemed really another person. Now I will devote myself more to my work, I will resume contacts with my parents, who are now about 70. It may seem absurd but I feel happy!
 
I embrace you, Project, use my email as you like better, but tell me what you think about, if you can.
Paul
_____________________
 
Hi Paul,
first of all happy birthday, because today is the 29th June, feast of Saints Peter and Paul!
 
Reading your email makes me think that, beyond what you say and the melancholy you speak of, there is also a bitter background because the last chapter of the story should have gone another way. It is as if in the end he was afraid of you and tried to keep you at bay to save his autonomy, which, if you allow me, frames the story in a slightly different way.
 
It is true that, as you say, you felt like a thief of his youth but it is equally true that he looked for you until he felt sure of himself, in some ways it is a love story but in some ways it is not is. There was certainly the big age difference but I don't think that this was the basic problem. You yourself wrote that he probably hadn't fallen in love with you but that he was fine with you because he felt loved and you talked about some moments of depression when you managed to make him feel better. On the other hand, he too gave you a hand to open a chapter in your life, that of sexuality, which you had left more or less deliberately closed. In fact, you yourself expected it to end like this and probably when it happened you weren't very surprised. You helped each other to grow, which is already a great and rare thing, but it does not in itself create a love story.
 
If he will be fine with his new-old partner, something that now seems to come true but it is not for sure that it lasts over time, you would do well not to live by myths or, if you want, by poignant but now unrepeatable memories. I know that such a thing is easy to say but very difficult to do, but time and detachment will do their job. If, in the long run, his new story doesn't last, try to build a solid friendship with him avoiding to consider him as your boyfriend, because what happened could very well happen again.
 
It’s evident that you love him but life goes on. I'm not telling you to find another guy, which would still be a very complicated thing, but not to depend on his memory and to leave to the past what has been and cannot be repeated.
 
A hug.
Project