This post is dedicated to the so-called “gay sex without commitments” or to those sexual contacts that do not take place within a stable couple relationship, that is, they are not part of a structured relationship.
Two elements appear in this definition: the “stable couple” and the “structured relationship”, which must be further clarified.
It is common practice to compare stable couples with unstable (short term) ones and structured relationships to unstructured ones, commonly called free relationships. The legacy of the traditional marriage concept is evident in these distinctions, marriage intends to structure and legitimize a couple’s relationship around the presumed indissoluble mutual fidelity which also implies a social meaning. In the case of marriage, the union is born indissoluble, or at least with the claim, more or less credible, of being indissoluble, but indissolubility is only a hypothesis that is taken for granted, because indissolubility manifests itself over time, in substance indissolubility, which in itself is by no means an obvious thing, is favored, if not actually induced and obliged by the structure that connotes the marriage bond.
The “social”, not “couple” dimension of marriage is clearly revealed in the celebration of the wedding ceremony which is a social ceremony. Structuring a couple’s reaction means conforming to a codified and socially recognized standard, that is, inserting one’s life as a couple partner in a legal-social structure that in theory protects it but which risks distorting it completely.
Today free relationships, even in the hetero field, are many, even in couples with children. This, in general, does not mean that one renounces inserting the couple life into a wider social structure, but simply that one intends to avoid legal constraints. Removing legal constraints from couple life means safeguard the freedom to interrupt couple life (without prejudice to the rights of children) without legal complications, should the need to do so be felt.
For a gay couple, for whom insertion into a wider social structure can be very problematic, it is certainly difficult if not impossible to accept even very weak legal formalizations, such as civil unions, but it is very often necessary or at least very appropriate to avoid the socialization of the relationship beyond a very limited and reliable circle of friends. In essence, the great majority of gays, and especially young gays, do not aspire to any legalization of the couple’s relationship and to the inclusion of the couple’s life in a social dimension with not well defined borders.
Many gays, after having dreamed of an almost matrimonial life as a couple and having collected a more or less long series of illusions and disillusions, begin to convince themselves that those who promise sublime things are generally unreliable and that the risk to get involved with individuals of this kind in very structured stories, that are or can became sometimes real traps, is concrete and also probable. Those who, on the other hand, do not promise anything and indeed point out that they do not promise anything and consequently do not require any kind of a priori commitments, can, in the long run, prove to be much more serious and reliable people than they seemed at the beginning. A weak bond, both in the sense of unstructured on a social level, and in the sense of light, partial and non-totalizing, can prove to be very stable, while maintaining its characteristics of absence of structure and lightness, precisely because it is in fact a pure couple relationship on which no pressure or expectation, by the social environment or bay partner, can be loaded.
Generally we tend to distinguish simple friendships (without sex) from sexualized friendships, in which some sexual contact can also occur. If it is true that not all friendships last over time, it is equally true that not all sexualized friendships last over time. What gives both the ability to last? And here the answer is immediate. With or without sex, lasting friendships are those in which there is a real emotional foundation. It should be stressed that the sexualization of affectivity aims to maintain the relationship, apparently, on a purely or essentially sexual level, because a contact purely sexual is or seems less demanding than an important affective relationship.
It should also be clarified that the sharing of sexuality inevitably leads to the sharing of several other aspects of emotional life and individual history: illusions, frustrations, moments of depression but also moments of joy. Those who are involved in a relationship of this kind do not fear it, they have no reason to run away, they know that no obligation, either social or towards the partner, will derive from it, they don’t feel forced,
don’t feel judged even by their friend, but rather they feel free and this is enough to make them feel deeply gratified.
Of course these relationships have nothing of the fusion of two lives, the partners are not two people who share every aspect of their life. Each of the two retains its full autonomy, there are no legal or economic constraints, there is no obligation of cohabitation, cohabitation can also exist but it is an absolutely free and revocable choice at any time. The circles of friends can very well remain completely separate, the relationships with the family of origin of the partner are a pure possibility which often is not followed up because a different behavior would authorize expectations and interferences that in a couple relationship should be avoided.
I do not intend to make the apology of free unions, which, as it is easy to deduce from the statistics on straight marriages and gay civil unions, are progressively gaining ground compared to legalized forms of union, in fact, sexual contacts without commitments are not even a free union, which however postulates some explicit assumption of commitments.
Sexual contacts without commitments very often are such only formally, because the expression “without any commitment” does not prevent that such a contact can at least involve the moral commitment of the partners to respect each other. Formally there are no constraints and there are no expectations on either side, but over time it is possible, not to say probable, that behind a purpose declared as only sexual and “without commitments” there is actually something more, that, under the protection of the clause “without commitment”, can have the possibility to develop spontaneously and without forcing. Those who consciously live this type of experiences, in general, do not tend to transform them into something else, that is, in stable and structured relationships, and for this reason they do not experience any sense of frustration. It often happens that sex, which had been taken as the basic postulate of the relationship, over time becomes only a possible option and leaves room for other content as well.
It should be clarified that, just as stable couple relationships are not a generalizable model of gay life, so are not a generalizable model the sexual contacts without commitments”. It is obvious that each has his own genetic and cultural predisposition to one or another type of relationship, but from what I see, now more and more often, the assumption that it is possible to realize one’s own affectivity-sexuality only in the context of a stable and structured couple is something that does not correspond to reality. Affective gratification derives neither from the presumed definitive nature of the relationship nor from its social or legal sanction, but exclusively from the presence of a real emotional contact which, when it exists, is spontaneous and whose duration cannot be guaranteed by any legal mechanism of protection.
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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-the-meaning-of-gay-sex-without-commitments
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