This post is divided into two distinct sections:
1) the first is dedicated to the distinction between the behaviors that that are indicator lights of exhausted gay relationships (that is, of the gay relationships that have lost the original momentum and the motivational drive of the early days but, despite everything, continue out of habit or out of reluctance to change perspectives) and the affective requests that can hide behind those behaviors;
2) and the second dedicated to the trend towards free relationships, that is, towards relationships without any legal constraint (without Marriage or Civil Union at the Municipalities' Registry Offices).
The two arguments may seem somewhat heterogeneous but are actually deeply connected.
SYMPTOMS OF EXHAUSTED GAY RELATIONSHIPS AND AFFECTIVE REQUESTS
Interpersonal relationships, even the most lasting ones, over the years, inevitably face wear and tear. Many times these relationships were from the beginning without solid foundations, that is, they were relationships upstream of which there was no instinctive and conscious and above all mutual choice, sometimes they are stories that began, then interrupted, then started again, that for both partners are not an instinctive, at least potentially definitive choice, but one of the possible hypotheses on which a perpetual indecision remains. But even when a story initially has all the necessary requirements to last, daily life, or rather the transcription of the story from the lyrical level of falling in love (assuming that there was a real falling in love at least at the beginning) to that of everyday life brings out weaknesses and critical issues.
Symptoms of attrition are generally small episodes in which each of the two partners manifests forms of intolerance towards the weaknesses of the other or shows judgmental attitudes systematically avoiding any effort of understanding, classic are the behaviors related to the idea that the partner is not quick enough to understand, he cannot do elementary things, he always falls back into the same mistakes. Often the request to have time for oneself is an indicator of the wear and tear of a relationship. Behaviors become standardized, everyone knows exactly what to expect, the speeches are always the same, the mutual reproaches, more or less veiled, are repeated in substantially similar situations, it is as if a script was repeated, the partner person is considered to be lackluster and unattractive, not up to the situation, the talks that could stray from the routine are stopped in the bud and there is room for unexpected reactions, which then can be followed by an internal repentance which, however, is not manifested to the partner for reasons of pride, the insistence on keeping the point, not giving in, not leaving room for the partner is quite evident.
Even sexual behaviors become more and more standardized, partners no longer try to find a balance that can be satisfactory for both and begin to think that there can certainly be better alternatives than the story that is being lived, even if, in practice, those alternatives do not exist at all. Sex becomes a hurried affair in which everyone relates only to himself, and it is no longer accompanied by an emotional atmosphere full of desire as in the times of falling in love. The interest in the sexuality of the partner gives way to sexual selfishness that reduces the other to an instrument, an object rather than a subject.
This description of the characteristic signals of a worn-out relationship is however only theoretical because it is objectively very difficult to distinguish between such signals and the requests for greater emotional involvement addressed to the partner, and the risk that a wrong interpretation of those behaviors could undermine an important relationship, conditioned only by a communication defect, it is quite concrete. Formal detachment is often not a detachment at all but an affective request. The difference between the two situations lies in the absence of final declarations, that is, in always leaving a door open to the partner, in the case of an emotional request. I give a typical example. Two partners can also go so far as to say big words and indulge in forms of intemperance, but if after the reproaches, for example contained in an email, the email ends with a ILY (I love you) it is evident that the dominant dimension is the emotional one. If after the sprint of pride and the request for autonomy there is an attempt to go back, it is clear that the sprint of pride and the request for autonomy were actually affective requests, they were ways to elicit a response from the partner.
Even in the context of strictly sexual behaviors it is possible and often easy to confuse the characteristic behaviors of a worn down relationship with the requests for greater involvement by the partner. A very typical behavior characteristic of worn out relationships is the sexual unavailability of one of the partners, declaring himself tired, little interested in sex, stressed, etc. etc., or even simply the reduction of the frequency of sexual intercourse. Stress and fatigue can be real and not being episodically available to sexual contact can certainly have objective reasons. Obviously, if saying no becomes systematic it is a sign of rejection, if instead the sexual contact, when it is realized , is truly experienced as a form of deep communication, then saying sometimes no it is not an indication of a worn relationship. In general, it is not a sign of wear and tear of the relationship to try to correct the partner's attitudes by demanding less artificial forms of communication from him. There are people who experience sexuality by mediating it with many words that can sound unnecessary and rhetorical to the partner, in cases of this kind, the request to avoid excessive words is not a refusal of the partner but an attempt to correct him.
Given these clarifications on the difficulty of discerning the signs of wear and tear of a relationship from emotional requests, we take another step forward. What do you do when you realize that the relationship "probably" is about to end? do you stop it immediately? Do you expect the other to do it? Or do you let the passage of time decide the end of the relationship? In any case, you have to think very well before taking action, because often creaking buildings, if properly renovated, withstand time and earthquakes, while new buildings poorly designed collapse at the slightest failure.
There are rare situations in which there are very few doubts and these situations are those in which we must move away from a violent partner or prone to emotional blackmail, or from a partner who identifies sex as a domain and as a reality completely detached from affectivity. But in all other cases, haste is often a bad adviser. It happens that, after instinctive and uncontrolled moments of reaction that lead to decisions that are as quick as they are little thought about, there are second thoughts and attempts to recover situations that are no longer recoverable. The one-minute outburst can lead to the immediate gratification due to the refusal of the other considered not up to situation but in the long run can trigger late and useless regrets. We should never forget that destroying is always much easier than building and that giving your partner one more chance is not a gesture of weakness but often exactly the opposite.
COUPLE PROBLEMS AND TREND TO FREE UNIONS
The following analysis refers to the Italian situation and the reported data come from ISTAT, the Italian Institute of Statistics, but the discussion has a much more general validity and certainly applies to all Western European countries and also to North American countries.
In the heterosexual world, when couples are stabilized by the bond of marriage, especially when there are children, the problems related to the crisis of the couple can be truly enormous even from a legal point of view, for the custody of the children and for the economic aspects related to communion of goods, when the marriage took place under the communion of goods regime, or when family relationships overlap with legal relationships related to the ownership of the family business or professional studies. For gays, complications of this type are absolutely exceptional. These problems that could have arisen even for gay couples united by a Civil Union pact, in reality did not arise, because Civil Unions have a much weaker bond regime than that of marriage, because the Civil Union can be dissolved at the simple request of only one of the two contracting parties, which, it was believed, would have made the Civil Union a reality very appreciated by the population. In reality, Civil Unions, despite the very light bond regime, have been and still are a very little widespread reality and this not so much for the fact that homosexual couples do not yet have the social approval that characterizes marriage, but because, both in the heterosexual context and in the gay sphere the model of free relationships is increasingly gaining ground, that is, of unions absolutely without legal sanctions.
I quote here below a ISTAT Report of November, 20, 2019.
"In 2018, 2,808 civil unions (between same-sex couples) were established at the registrars of Italian municipalities. These must be added to those already established during the second half of 2016 (2,336), the year of entry into force of the Law May,20, 2016, no. 76, and during the year 2017 (4,376). As expected, after the peak immediately following the entry into force of the new law, the phenomenon is now stabilizing. The prevalence of couples of men is also confirmed in 2018 (1,802 unions, 64.2% of the total), albeit gradually decreasing (73.6% in 2016, 67.7% in 2017). 37.2% of civil unions were established in the Northwest, followed by the Center (27.2%). Lombardy is in the lead with 25%, followed by Lazio (15.1%), Emilia-Romagna (10.0%) and Tuscany (9.4%).The civil unions established in Italy in 2018 are 4.6 per 100 thousand inhabitants: ranging from 7 in Lazio, Lombardy and Tuscany to about 0.5 per 100 thousand in Calabria, Basilicata and Molise. The attractive role of some metropolises emerges with particular evidence. In 2018, in fact, 32.7% of the civil unions occurred in Italy were concentrated in the big cities: at the top of the ranking are Rome (290 unions, 10.3%) and Milan (257 unions, 9.2%) ; the share of civil unions of couples of men is particularly high in Milan (equal to 75.5%) compared to Rome (66.9%). Considering the incidence of civil unions on the total resident population, in 2018 18.7 civil unions per 100 thousand inhabitants were established in Milan, in Rome 10.1. Among the cities of the South, only Naples and Palermo show values above 1 per 100 thousand inhabitants."
I would add that civilly united homosexual couples have an average age of 49.5 years if male and 45.9 years if female, that is, homosexual couples are non-young couples. If we consider that in 2018 there were 195,778 marriages celebrated in Italy and 2,808 civil unions, we immediately notice that the same-sex civil unions were just over 1,4% compared to marriages, even if in recent years the number of marriages has drastically decreased in favor of free unions, a phenomenon on which we must stop to reflect.
Also from ISTAT we know that:
"The comparison between the data from the 1991 population census and those from 2018 shows the profound changes that have taken place. Among individuals aged 15-64, in the face of a slight drop in the population (-309 thousand), married people decrease (3 million and 843 thousand less), especially for the benefit of single and unmarried people (+3 million and 90 thousand) and, to a much lesser extent, of the divorced (over 972 thousand more).
The decrease and postponement of marriage, in place for over forty years, partially offset by the growth of free partnerships, led between 1991 and 2018 to a sharp decline in married couples, especially in the 25-34 age group (from 51.5% to 19.1% men, from 69.5% to 34.3% women). Single people go from 48.1% to 80.6% and single girls from 29.2% to 64.9%. In the 45-54 age group, almost one in four men never married while almost 18% of women are unmarried. "
From the above data, it is clear that the model of the Free Union, that is, of the couple's union, straight or homosexual, without any legal sanction, is spreading very decisively among the Italian population. Marriage, as far as hetero people are concerned, and civil unions, as far as gays are concerned, are seen more as a useless or even harmful bond, than as a protection of the couple's relationship, whose existence can neither be protected nor favored by legal constraints of any kind.
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If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-exhausted-gay-relationships-and-free-unions
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