GAY SEX AND MELANCHOLY

 Hi Project,

we met on chat last winter and you were the only one who told me that my story with Max was a very serious thing and I think it really is. I’m sending you these reflections of mine to update you, perhaps they could be included in the forum, I would like it. 

Yesterday I spent the night with Max, the guy I’ve known for several years, who is not my boyfriend, because I don’t have a boyfriend, but with whom it sometimes happens. Our sex night has been very different from how people imagine these things. Seen from the outside, everything would be normal, sex, in behavior, is more or less always the same, but lived with a strong emotional involvement it can take on a thousand meanings, even apparently contradictory: participation and detachment, illusion of having involved the other in our world and acknowledgment that this is not the case, and in particular sexual participation and affective detachment on the one hand and strong affective participation and decidedly weaker sexual involvement on the other. The asymmetries between me and Max are apparently profound but the similarities are certainly deeper and our asymmetries have progressively reduced over the years and in any case have never been destructive. I know well that this is not the classic language of lovers, but there are many kinds of love, some of them lead to the need to absolutize and mythologize opening the door to hopes and dreams without foundation, others pass through this stage without too many dreams. The illusion that sex can solve all problems, can remove anxious people from anxiety, the indifferent ones from indifference and can create that magical atmosphere that is a bit like the Arab Phoenix, which everyone talks about, even if it doesn’t exist, unfortunately it is a weak postulate of sexuality that doesn’t stand up to comparison with reality.

All this doesn’t mean at all that sex has no meaning because it doesn’t work miracles, but that it can have another meaning, even partial and relative, and that this other meaning, a liberating meaning because it is communicative, affective and stabilizing, in some cases can become the most important one. You can have sex with enthusiasm or even out of desperation, of course, sex may not solve everything, but it is still a help, a different way of looking for a real contact that can also be frustrating but can, despite everything, allow a form of communication that would be very difficult to realize verbally. My sexual contacts with Max have apparently always been problematic. He cares a lot about sex, and especially when he’s alone, he’s looking for me to have sex. When he’s not looking for me, I know he’s found a boyfriend and all in all he’s fine with him. It seems paradoxical, but I’m happy when he doesn’t look for me, but not because I feel bad with him or because I want an exclusivity from him that I don’t find, but simply because I know that if he doesn’t look for me it is because he is fine and does not need me. Do I need him? I’ve asked myself this many times, of course he hasn’t been the only guy in my life, but he has been certainly the only important guy. During the day I think about him many times, I’m convinced that he is an excellent person from all points of view, physically he embodies my ideal type, if I were to lose him definitively, a hypothesis that seems objectively unrealistic to me, because we have known each other for a long time and our relationship has gone through storms of all kinds without falling apart, I think I would feel very bad, but if it happened because he found a guy and feels fulfilled, well, then I would accept it, but losing him with the awareness that he is abandoned to his melancholy, well, I wouldn’t accept this, it would make me feel really bad, I would consider it a heavy failure of my life. I don’t want him to be mine, even if I would like it, I want him to be happy!

Max had called me three days ago after a long silence that lasted more than two months, but in those two months he hadn’t completely disappeared, he had called me a couple of times for a few seconds to ask me how I was and to tell me that he had found a guy with which he was fine. He knows that receiving news of this kind, for me, it is a positive thing and his phone calls are due precisely to this. Three days ago he calls me and it is evident that he is not well, the enthusiasm is no longer there and melancholy reigns supreme, he speaks little, he only says very significant things and listens. The phone call ends well, at least as far as possible, but it is clear that he is alone or that at least he feels alone despite everything. Yesterday afternoon he calls me and tells me that he will come to me in the late evening, I tell him that I’m waiting for him and that I’m pleased to see him, which is very true. While I was waiting for him I changed the bed linen and the pillow case, cleaned the room a bit and open the windows, I can’t deny that I was happy to see him again.

Last night I did everything to put Max at ease, at certain moments he was serene, distracted, he smiled, joked, it was a wonderful thing, and for me those were the most beautiful moments, those I try to impress in my memory, but in other times, if I looked into his eyes, I realized that he was on the verge of crying, He participated in sex with me, at least in certain moments, but didn’t completely detach himself from his problems and thoughts, I would have done everything to get him away from his frustrations and his feelings of emptiness, I was under the illusion that sex could do this miracle, but obviously it was impossible. The deep reasons for his melancholy were there, they had not been eliminated and they smoldered like fire under the ashes, you could see them in his eyes. I had my sexual problems with him last night, as it has happened at other times, I would have told him about it, as I have done other times, but he looked me straight in the eyes and passed his index finger in front of his mouth as if to tell me to shut up and that there was no need to say anything, because in fact he didn’t care about sex. Sex was the official reason for our meeting, but the real reason was to realize that we still exist for each other and to see that the mutual physical attraction, that confirms that there is a real interest on the other side, still exists between us, and that nothing has failed or changed at least between us. He never points out the failures or weaknesses of others, but only his own. I asked him if he was disappointed in me, he replied that he was not at all disappointed but that he saw me tired, and I really was, because in fact he has much more resistance than me. What was the point of having sex with me if in the end, even if he wasn’t disappointed, he still didn’t succeed in removing his melancholy? I think that behind all this there is a desire to be accepted for who he really is. In sex he has patience, he is very sweet, he guides me, he never gets angry, and with me patience is really needed.

The nakedness of the body is the symbol of the nakedness of the soul. Spending time naked, together, without sex, but only to rest when a bit of fatigue occurs, gives the feeling of being fully accepted by the other because that non-sexual moment is probably more important than everything else, because it is a moment of normality: you stay with your partner as you would be with yourself, you don’t involve him in a moment of sexual performance but in a moment of your daily life, you don’t have to prove anything to him, you just have to be as you are. But anyhow that deep loneliness that comes from the knowledge, real or assumed, that you will never have what you really want and that your whole life will be filled with substitutions and substitutes for what you really want cannot be broken, not even this way. The feeling that that state of dissatisfaction that has grayed your life up to now will manifest itself anyway, identical or almost, many other times it seems a granite certainty that will condition and devalue the future.

He noticed that last night I never said no to him, that I followed him in everything and this fact gratified him a little, not so much for the sex but because he understands that if I don’t tell him no it means that I realize that he feels really bad. In certain moments, I would say in the moments when he was further away from his negative thoughts, I think he had the feeling that a strong bond was being created between us, but he would have wanted to create that kind of bond with another person with whom he knows he cannot create anything like that, and therefore something that in itself could be beautiful has turned into another frustrating thought, and I think his wet eyes were due precisely to this.

What does it mean to love and be loved? Each of us, at different times, gives different meanings to those words and they are often incompatible meanings: bond and freedom; selfishness and altruism; happiness and martyrdom. Why does a very handsome guy, very intelligent and in many non-affective respects even very fulfilled, end up crushed, at least in certain moments, by depression, by the idea that the world sucks and that the future can only be worse than the present? I have known Max for many years and I love him but I realize that our acquaintance, which is also a long-standing acquaintance, based on mutual respect and affection, cannot alleviate his melancholy. Max has an extreme need for affection but always claims his autonomy, his not wanting to depend on anyone. His self-esteem largely depends on the level of his autonomy. He tries to reconcile the fact of being loved with the fact of being totally free, perhaps with me he succeeds but with others this attempt ends always in a failure.

By now, several hours have passed since our sex night and I keep thinking about it, and the dominant feeling is that there was something not expressed, that sex was just an excuse to be accepted with all his melancholy. I tried to understand how he could feel, but except for the slightest flashes of smile, very few but very beautiful, the dominant tone was one of sadness. At one point we stopped and he started talking to me about his frustrations and his sadness, and deep down he didn’t understand the cause of it. In a way, he accepts half things from me, but from the guys he is really interested in he would like total involvement, but even there he finds only half things and tells himself that he is better off alone, but then he doesn’t accept the idea of being alone and looks for me and in the end he realizes that he is alone even when he’s  with me and so he comes back to his melancholy. He tells me that I behave with him a bit like he behaves with the guys he cares about, in the sense that I always say yes and I try to please him and then I feel bad because he doesn’t correspond to me, or at least at the affective level, he does not correspond to me as I would like. I tried to make him understand that I love him, but this expression, spoken by me, scares him, I told him that I’m not at all upset that he has sex with other guys, but I wish he wasn’t sad and he could manage to chase out that black melancholy that he carries inside, but this discourse seems strange to him, as if behind it there was the desire to cage him, to take away his freedom.

Last night my sexual behaviors were hesitant, we were having sex, nevertheless I was afraid to caress his face, afraid to kiss him, which I haven’t done in a very long time, because these things make him think that I fell in love with him and that between us a dissymmetrical and sick relationship is taking place. We can have sex, but exchanging tenderness, cuddles, it would be difficult for him to accept it, but not because he considers such behaviors childish or too sweet but because of the emotional content they express. I think of sex above all as the physical proximity of the guy I love, for him to associate sex and affectivity is difficult, he has dreamed of it with other people, but he has never realized his dream and at least, with me, he finds something similar to what he has dreamed of. The emotional involvement on my part is deep and he realizes it but at the same time he fears it, because he doesn’t want to end up in anyone’s orbit. He confuses love and addiction, for him the two things are essentially identical. He has always told me that he is not in love with me and he has always been convinced that I was in love with him, in reality I love him, in the sense that I would like to see him happy because he has unique virtues that not even he knows he has, he is not aggressive, he is not angry with others but with himself, he does not complain, he does not reproach. Last night I asked him if he was disappointed and he told me that he was satisfied instead, but this means that he felt satisfied not with the sex but with the fact that the wall built by me against his melancholy has not collapsed and that I remain close to him despite all, I think the meaning of the evening was just that. I know well that when he is with me he doesn’t think of me, except in some magical moments, and that he always carries with him the heavy baggage of his thoughts and this is precisely what I would like to happen less and less, I don’t say I would like it happen nevermore  because I know it will happen anyway. I would like the spaces of clear weather on a gray day to become many and long, that that light smile would be seen more often, that those eyes were not so often wet with melancholy.

I love one thing above all about him, honesty, the fact that he never acts a role, that he wants to be accepted even in what he considers his weakest sides, his contradictions. It strikes me a lot when he tells me he wants to be alone, because he doesn’t say it thinking of me but the guys he is in love with and who don’t return his love, he feels those bonds as forms of addiction. He loves those guys but he realizes that they don’t love him the same way, they wouldn’t feel really bad if he broke away from them, after a few weeks they wouldn’t call him anymore because mentally they would have already gone their own way. He never tells me that he wants to break away from me very simply because he doesn’t feel me like a bond, he realizes that I can never be a viable hypothesis for him and this fact reassures him, he’s aware that, despite some pampering too much, I will not try to cage him, that I will be there when he needs me, as on the other hand he has been there when I needed him, but in my loving him I will leave him free. He knows that ours is anyhow a stable relationship, which has lasted for years and doesn’t claim to become a bond at any level. We rarely hear each other, we see each other even more rarely, when we see each other there is a little bit of sex, which by his standards I don’t think is very exciting, but above all there is that little bit of emotional warmth that he lacks. When we make love, he hugs me very strongly and these are the moments when she is better and puts aside other thoughts. Sex, for him, is a way of expressing himself that I think in most cases remains completely misunderstood. Sex for him is affectivity embodied and when I see him happy to be with me, because sometimes it happens, I think that, even if he devalues these things, it also gives my presence an important emotional value. He tells me I’m not his type but he’s fine with me. He tells me that he appreciates the fact that I don’t judge him, that I don’t shoot stupid sentences, that I know how to shut up at the right moment, that I never keep him under pressure, that I have the perception of the limit, he sees these things as a form of hesitation and respect. He feels that I try to make him feel good, he is not afraid of me, he trusts me, at least up to a certain point, he can talk about his melancholy, his failures, his way of feeling inadequate to build truly mutual relationships. In fact he is not the guy who attracts people, to appreciate him you have to know him closely, his frankness is unsettling, but if he loves you even a little, he doesn’t forget you, he doesn’t bury you in the past. With his ex-boyfriends, at least with the serious ones, because there have also been some, in the end he maintained a relationship, sporadic but real.

When I talk to him, it strikes me that his answers are always different from how I expect them. I feel that he is another, he is not my double, he doesn’t talk just to talk, he doesn’t always agree with me, he doesn’t trivialize but takes me seriously, he listens to me, he remembers the things I tell him. I don’t know how to define our relationship and I think it cannot be defined by any common category, we are both strange, we are different but we understand each other, we are also different in sexuality but in the end we found our balance and I didn’t think it would happen, neither on his part nor on mine, and instead it happened. There is not the slightest embarrassment, we know our physical and mental limits and we don’t let ourselves be conditioned. I’ve had other guys, let’s say less complicated, but with him it’s different, he never made stupid talk about sex, after I met him in my life there has been no room for anyone else. I met a lot of very beautiful guys, but he is different, he is not my boyfriend but I love him in a deep way.

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