GAY GUYS AND OVER 30 CRISIS

 Hi Project,

I have read so many of the things you have posted in the forum, your and others’ things, that I seem to understand your way of reasoning. I especially liked real stories. I understand that there is also a need to catalog, but the human world is that of individuals and not that of categories. I especially liked the “non-standard” stories as you call them, even if, I tell you frankly, stories of that kind have never happened to me, and are certainly exceptions rather far from becoming the rule.

There is a problem that I often think about these days and it is the loss of affective values as we age, I’m not talking about old age, in which you perhaps may lose sexuality or the urgency of sexuality, but I think that anyway affectivity remains. I’m referring to the thirty years old or better to the first years after thirty which for me are the most complicated age in the life of other guys, in which affectivity fades to the advantage of sexuality. I’m 40 years old now and honestly, when I was around the age of 30 and immediately afterwards I didn’t go through a cooling of affectivity because my affectivity has always been very slowed down by education and a thousand objective impossibilities. In the guys I have known very closely, however, I have practically always seen the crisis of affectivity after the age of thirty. Generally they reproach me for not giving space to sexuality and for “chatting too much” but also for being depressed, for putting people in a bad mood, depressing them and extinguishing their enthusiasm, especially sexual, with too melancholy speeches. The guys I have been with, after the initial period of falling in love, didn’t try to build a solid relationship with me, on the contrary they tended to move away whenever the emotional dimension became or risked becoming prevalent. There was a recurring situation that systematically put me in crisis and that is the fact that when a guy was depressed, angry, frustrated and so on, not for reasons dependent on me but for other reasons, he used to tell me: “What a terrible shit day today!” and this was always both the starting and the ending of the conversation, that is, guys didn’t allow me to enter the world of their frustrations and private melancholies. I would have liked a real dialogue and instead the whole discourse either referred strictly to sex and only to that or it became so academic and theoretical up to losing any interest. I had a sexual intimacy with those guys, but only that, as for the rest they were closed worlds in which I wasn’t allowed to enter. I really loved some of these guys, because there had been also periods when we were not just a couple of strangers who meet to have sex and that’s it, but then, after the honeymoon, the emotional distancing began, not the sexual one, which was generally much slower. I have always thought I could be much more attractive on an emotional level than on a sexual one and instead for those guys it was exactly the opposite. I asked myself many times what they could find in me and I never understood it. But if you not only have sex with a guy but you realize that he cares, not about you, but about having sex with you, what is the value of the sex we have together? Sometimes, and I emphasize this, only a few times, I have felt used. Let’s understand each other well: it was okay for me to have sex with those guys, but I couldn’t stand it all ending there, and instead it always happened like this. We used to sleep together but we weren’t even friends, because you talk to a friend and listen to him while we used to go on just to perform sexually. Maybe they were afraid of emotional bonds? Maybe they had been emotionally badly scalded sometimes. I remember a guy I had seen one afternoon and after we had done what we had to do, when I asked him to stay with me a little longer but, note well, after sex, he replied that he couldn’t because he had to go out with friends. But why do you come and have sex with me if then going out with friends is more important than being with me? But obviously I couldn’t ask him such a question. Many times I have tried to put myself in those guys’ shoes and I seemed to understand that deep down they may have their motivations, because they are not stupid, but in the end I realize that my interest in those guys has gone away too, fading over the years. At first I used to see them as central figures in my life, I repeat, in the phase of falling in love and honeymoon, then things changed and I too began to distance, not that I didn’t care anymore, but that interest strong, that physical need of the early days had vanished. Before we used to meet very often, they called me and I called them, then I stopped calling them and they continued, but they didn’t even ask me how I was, they used to go immediately to the concrete proposal: “I’ll come to you and then we have to (omissis) What do you say?” So, Project, let’s also assume that these guys after the honeymoon are tired of my affection and continue to look for me only for sex, which doesn’t upset me at all, because little by little you get used to everything, but, I wonder, will they ever fall in love seriously, that is, permanently, with someone? They are not kids, they are adults and no longer very young. It’s true that we are all very different and that there are no general rules, but by dint of devaluing affectivity we end up being alone and nothing is built. You will tell me that they have devalued my affectivity and maybe they have taken a terrible crush on other guys, and it could also be true, but I haven’t lost sight of these guys at all and I can tell you that they don’t seem at all like guys happy with themselves. Don’t tie yourself up too much! Ok, I’m fine with this thought that in the end belongs to me too, I can understand it but sooner or later we must also start to put some fixed points. A guy once gave me a serious talk and opened my eyes to something that I have always greatly underestimated because I used to take it for granted, that guy told me that I was lucky but I shouldn’t allow myself to judge others, because if one wins a lottery he must not allow himself to judge those who have not won it. I have often thought that many of my basic certainties are such because they have never measured themselves against reality. Basically, I use very abstract arguments because I have always found myself on the side of the guy who is neglected at emotional level. In theory I complain about this thing but in the end it suits me and if some guys became fond of me as I was fond of them, in the end I would be the one who runs away. So: flash in the pan! All the reasoning in smoke! In fact I don’t mind that somehow they drift away and that in any case there remains a sexual interest for a long time, in theory it seems silly to me but in practice it has its logic: the fundamental thing is to save one’s freedom! Everyone wants a companion, but they want him how and when they want him, if he’s not according to their model, they look for another one that is closer to their model and above all they want a partner when they want him, because on many occasions he becomes a brake, a bond, a weight to carry around that takes away your freedom. If it’s cold, everyone wants a blanket at the campsite in the evening, but during the day they don’t want to carry their rucksacks. It is understandable but inconsistent. I will never understand the meaning of sex only for sex and yet until now I have found only that. In the thirty-year-olds I met, I saw the tendency towards widening the horizon of possible relationships, but not that towards deepening them. I have often wondered why, despite everything, the sexual interest didn’t fail. It’s clear that, if you spread sexual interest over several people, out of necessity contacts must thin out, however, why don’t they completely disappear? And here I have an answer. My thirty-year-olds gave terrible judgments about their mates with whom they had had stories ended badly  and I talk about judgments about people and I think that with those people they ceased all contacts even those of sex, while about me they said that I was depressed, boring, that I used to extinguish their enthusiasm, but they didn’t have a negative opinion and somehow things went on and then they also told me that I was hypocritical because they said I dodged the talk about sex and even sexual innuendo but anyhow I liked sex a lot, and in a way it is true. But with a hypocrite who first acts as a depressed moralist and then tells you yes, you can also have sex, while with someone who shows you all the enthusiasm and then, when you need something, doesn’t even listen to you and disconnects your phone, well, it is obvious that things are different. I have never said no, or only very few times, also because my thirties were honest with me and never made fun of me. In a way I was lucky. Some of these sporadic relationships of only sex still exist, they are sporadic relationships, it is true, apparently very elementary, that after all I have said, for me should be meaningless, yet they are human contacts that I feel are important. They are marginal in the sense that they certainly don’t invade my whole life, they have nothing extraordinary, yet they have a human dimension that has its own dignity. One said to me: “I come to you when I’m worse off, I come to have sex but I know that if something pushes me towards melancholy and I don’t feel like having sex you won’t send me to hell and perhaps it will even better for you. You are available, for others it’s either sex or it doesn’t make sense, for you it’s different.” He asked me if I pitied him, if I felt sorry for him and such! I replied that he made me feel an infinite tenderness, because he seemed to me a lost soul looking for a quite harbor. He smiled at me and all ended there. Many years have passed and I still see this guy now but at very long intervals, of a month or even two, and I’m glad when he remembers me. When he arrives, he always asks me if I’m in love with someone, he means with other guys, I flash to him my best smile as to say that there are no other guys, and he smiles in turn, and that strikes me a lot. I let him do whatever he likes better, I want him to feel completely comfortable. There are very few words between us. He expects me to never tell him no, but he also adjusts to me and asks me only for things that are good for me too. It is he who leads the sexual game but he does it with respect, with delicacy. These things seem silly but qualify the person. I would like the relationship with this guy, whom I think about with tenderness quite often, to become I don’t say stable but just a little more stable and frequent. Deep down, I know that it won’t happen. It would be enough for me to go on like this, maybe seeing each other once a month or every two months, and instead I’m afraid of losing him permanently. I would like to have a place in his life, the place he wants, as marginal as he wants, but I wish he wouldn’t forget me. I know he needs more and this is not a problem, or rather it wouldn’t be if he didn’t end up forgetting about me. Is it a fallback solution? Am I wasting my time on totally stupid fantasies? Maybe so, but in the end, this relationship has stood the test of time, it’s a light, fragile thing, apparently made of only sex, but perhaps not only. I don’t know what to think, Project, I haven’t looked for another guy, because he somehow exists in my life, he is not a meteor that explodes and disappears, you know that sooner or later you’ll see him again, or at least you hope it will be so. At the moment I don’t know if I will see him again but I know I would like it.

What do you think about Project?

p.s.: obviously do what you want with the email. I would like to know if any of the guys have had similar experiences.

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