FREE GAY LOVE SEEN FROM THE OTHER SIDE

Hi Project,

I’m 34 years old and for the first time I fell in love with a guy. I've been with several guys and had sex with them but I wasn't really in love with them, but a little over a year ago I fell in love with a guy and it's a completely different thing. Before my first and real falling in love I used to think about what I could have from those guys, while now I think about what I can do for the guy I’m in love with, I’m not looking for a reciprocation from him also because that reciprocation already exists, and is also superabundant, without my asking, at least for the moment, however I'm really happy that there is someone like him. He’s not a saint, he has his faults, sometimes he treats me roughly but with love, at least I think so. He doesn’t make calculations on feelings, he isn’t hypocritical, I found him close to me every time I needed him, he took me seriously right away, three things about him won me over, intelligence, respect for others and immediacy.

 

He’s a handsome guy, but that is not the note that characterizes him, there are many beautiful guys. He had a difficult life and has a singular ability to penetrate the human soul, to read the feelings of his interlocutor. He doesn’t judge, he doesn’t condemn, he needs to understand, he’s capable of loving in an adult way which for me means in a non-possessive way, he has always left me completely free, he has never forced me, not even in the most light od adulatory way. He doesn’t try to put into practice a code of behavior learned from pornography, but pays attention to his boyfriend, or rather to the guy he is with at that moment and tries to understand him, to go in his direction.

 

He knows that I’m in love with him and he isn’t afraid or seems not to be afraid that my love for him could be a brake for him. He knows that he is loved for who he is and not for what he does or could do, that there are no conditions of any kind. He knows that I only expect spontaneity from him, without obligations of any kind, and that is why we love each other, it is our choice from moment to moment. The choice of being together as a couple is always reversible, that of loving and respecting each other is absolutely irreversible. He’s the type of man I like, and I’m not just talking about the physical, a guy like him is a model to follow, yet he’s a person who has his frailties, his insecurities. He is not a model of courage or fortitude or even of consistency, but he is a model of balance, in him I find everything I need, or almost: the compliance and the ability to stop me and say no, the common sense in decisions, the patience but up to a certain point, and above all the sweetness, the total absence of aggression, which is something that I appreciate very much.

 

He told me that he wasn't like that before, that he used to snap, that he reacted very badly but then he changed when we started being together because he saw that I never got angry with him, and then he says that now he is not aggressive because he feels pacified inside. We have never actually quarreled, we have never raised our voices. He wanted me and I didn't even understand why, he really wanted me, or rather me too, not just me, but neither of us ever thought of abandoning the other, at least that's what I think.

There is an unwritten rule between us: neither of us asks the other about questions concerning his sex life beyond our relationship, this doesn't mean we don't talk about other relationships, if we can to call them so, that we have or have had, we talk about such things spontaneously if we like, but if we want to keep our private we can also keep it for ourselves and nothing will collapse. In reality we talk or rather we have talked a lot about such things and there have never been jealousies either on his part or on my part. I know that he has had and perhaps has other guys as well, he has never hidden it from me. The only problems (and they are not small problems) arise for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases but on his honesty on this point I would put my hand on the fire. When he had some doubts he told me and we didn't see each other until he took the test, currently he doesn't talk about other guys anymore, I don't know if there are still other guys in his life, but I would be inclined to think that there are none. He knows that I've only had no other guys than him for four years now, and he's okay with that.

 

I had never desired the presence of a guy as I desire his, perhaps it's for sex, I don’t deny it, but more than anything it’s also for that form of wordless complicity that grows up on the sexual ground, for that immediate and reciprocal understanding, for that knowing each other thoroughly and trust each other. When we meet, which, after all, still happens  a single day a week now, we dedicate a lot of time to sex and the bare minimum to sleep and eat. Generally we are unable to talk seriously in those situations, it is as if sex was an automatic thing and talking to each other was much less so, when we separate it is the worst moment, but not in the sense that we are sorry to separate, because we got used to it, but in the sense that we never fix an appointment for the next time and not because it’s something obvious, but precisely because it is not at all. An appointment is a constraint, a point of reference, let's say a limit to freedom, and we must mutually guarantee our freedom, today we are together, but it is not taken for granted that we will be together again next weekend.

 

If there is one thing I lack in my contact with him, it is precisely the fact of speaking without fear, I mean fear of breaking the rule of freedom. If I told him "I love you!" somehow I would give the impression of wanting to tie him to the fact that I love him, demanding something in return. I miss his daily presence, the conversation about banalities. We hardly ever talk to each other during the week and we only see each other on Saturday nights. I would also like to do trivial things with him, I would like to share everyday life, but I don’t miss it for objective and external reasons, I miss it because I’m afraid that trying to share all aspects of everyday life could shift the axis of our relationship a little from sex, which now is the very center of it, and I don't know if he really wants such a thing.

 

When I'm with him a reflection comes to my mind, the statements made in words have a general value, they are like theorems, on the contrary sex is a physical, concrete thing, it is the application of some of those theorems to a particular case, this means that exceptions matter more than rules. Sex doesn’t obey general rules, it’s absolutely subjective, it concerns our relationship with a single person and in a precise moment, it’s not repeatable, it’s not generalizable, it’s not predictable. The variables are so numerous and so little known that in the end one has to put aside all projections and predictions.

 

Many consider sex as a way to understand another person, but in reality when you truly experience sex with another person, you realize the complexity of sexuality and its substantially incomprehensible dimension. In the end, I don't even know what pushes me to live my sexuality with him, how can I understand what pushes him to be with me? With me and not with another guy, at least at that moment. And even if I can say that there is real sharing and reciprocal transport, spontaneity is anyway held back. It is never possible to truly understand your partner's desires and limitations. Hence the uncertainty, the tendency to slow down not to rush too much, the sense of limit, and this could be one of the reasons that makes our relationship stable anyway.

 

It is beautiful when we meet on Saturday, they are moments of enthusiasm, sexual harmony is there, but it is very difficult to go further, and then when we separate, the days of waiting begin every time, days that are of real solitude, in practice long pauses between two days of life, empty days, in which a thousand thoughts come to the surface, days in which I think that what I want is something else, that I would like to see him happy to be with me every day, I wish I could wake up and find him next to me, I would like to prepare breakfast for him, I would like - it seems a paradox - even to argue with him in a strong and aggressive way and then make peace, and instead there is the fear of making mistakes, of exceeding our own rules, and so nothing is said, because there is always the doubt: would or wouldn’t he be willing to build a different relationship, more affective, I don't say less sexual, but just more affective?

 

I feel the detachment between the moments of sexual participation in which he is totally involved and the much colder after-sex moments, in which we never joke and talk very little, almost as if we thought "both of us" that we have done something that basically we shouldn't have done. I have observed over the months that there have been changes in our sexual relations. At the beginning the limits were very tight: no pampering that tastes too much like affectivity, but only sex and nothing else, he didn't want me to run my hands through his hair or touch his beard, then slowly he overcame these things, now he allows me to caress him, but he doesn't do the same with me, if the caresses are explicitly sexual then he accepts them, but if they are simple gestures of affection, I have to be careful not to insist too much because it might bother him.

 

It's not that we don't love each other, but I think he's not used to affectionate gestures, that those things somehow frighten him, that he feels them as something aggressive, too free, not codified, that he feels them as an attempt to create an obligation, a close bond, capable of taking away or restricting his freedom. The small changes I've noticed in the way we have sex make me think that something is really changing, but I don't deny, Project, that I'm not at all sure things will move forward in this direction. He can't bear to be told that he is a handsome guy, he is almost annoyed by it, he considers these speeches a parody of the speeches a guy uses to seduce a girl. When he talks about us he never uses the word love but only the word sex. But one thing I wonder, but if he is really just looking for sex, why did he choose me? He could have found so many guys better than me, who wouldn’t have created problems of any kind and would have easily adapted to his way of seeing things. And it's not even a problem of exclusive choice, he knows very well that he’s free to go with another guy too, but if he doesn't, as I believe, even if he claims the freedom to be able to do it, in the end he must have a serious motivation.

 

He tells me that I stimulate him a lot sexually, but in my opinion it's something that doesn't really have any foundation. In sex it’s me the one who follows him and not the opposite. I thought he might really like me because I hardly ever say no to him, and try to understand him. When I see him sad or distant I feel really bad and I think he has noticed it. When we have sex, he’s completely involved. I had never seen guys so involved in sex. In those situations he totally trusts me and seems absolutely and deeply participatory, but after sex he looks like another person, he gets dark, becomes more aggressive in his ways, more ironic, but with a bitter ironic, not towards me but towards himself.

 

I have a fundamental doubt, now things are like this and I think that the problem lies in the distance and in the fact that we see each other one day a week, the solution, in theory, would be to try to change jobs and to be able to really live with him. For him it is undoubtedly more difficult than for me, then I could also try to change jobs and move to his city, but I would have to sell my house, for which I still have to pay several years of mortgage, and move to his house, but he proposed it to me only in a very vague and probably unconvinced way, and I don't know if it is really what he would like, but I wonder if this living together, instead of making things improve by sharing everyday life, it cannot actually undermine that relationship that now exists and that maybe is based right on the fact that we are 150 km away and that we are both free anyway. Honestly, I don't know how to make a decision, going on as has happened up to now is an unsatisfactory option, but the other option, that is to bet everything on coexistence, I fear it could even be destructive. What do you think about?

______________________

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GAYS BETWEEN DIVERGENT THINKING AND INTELLECTUALISM

 Hi Project,

I read on the forum a very interesting discussion entitled: “Gay affectivity and divergent thinking”. It is a discussion from more than eight years ago that particularly attracted me not because I’m or feel like a guy capable of a really divergent thinking, I’d like a lot if it was so! But because my boyfriend, whom I will call Elio here, is so, in my opinion, and I would like to bring my small contribution to the discussion by considering the question from another point of view slightly different. I state that to understand that we are dealing with divergent thinking and not just with petty rhetoric or a show of exasperated intellectualism, a counterpart of a certain cultural depth is needed. 

I have read some books but frankly I don’t feel quite up to these speeches. Elio, who in my opinion is a refined intellectual, one who reads a lot and above all who thinks a lot, has not won me over for this aspect of his personality, which I think serves him above all as a defense weapon when he doesn’t really trust someone, and even a little to hide his fragile ego. I’m not doing intellectualistic speeches in my turn, Project, I mean that in the end the affective research that you yourself associated with divergent thinking, in Elio’s life ended up being the prevailing element. When the affective dimension creaked or failed, then divergent thinking came out. A little as if the genius was born out of the frustration of feelings. 

I remember now that I have not yet told you that I am 35 and Elio is 32. Fortunately for us we both work, Elio in a much better situation than mine, and it is right that it should be so because objectively his work commits him much more than mine commits me. He may be proud of what he has done but he is absolutely not proud, on the contrary, he underlines in a thousand ways that he has done much less than he could and that I think he is a great person, while he is just one who strives to do what others do spontaneously without any effort. Those who only know him through work respect him and in a sense fear him. I, who have known him for almost 10 years and have followed step by step all his studies and all his work successes, I also know the human side of Elio, his weaknesses, which in my opinion are the most fascinating side of his character. 

Some days he comes back from work very tired, because he often works even in the afternoon, he goes into the house, he leaves his shoes near the entrance and puts on some house slippers, then he goes into the dining room and I make him find the table set and he sits down and lifts his neck towards me because that’s the moment for a kiss on the forehead, a use that we inaugurated many years ago, when we met. During dinner we don’t see TV, sometimes I mess around his hair or stroke his hand and he squeezes it tightly. During the dinner he uses only one plate, he is very careful not to dirty the tablecloth because he knows that I should wash it later. Sometimes he tells me some anecdotes of his work but always in brief. 

After dinner we go into the living room and he takes off his slippers because he likes to walk on the carpet only with socks, he says it’s a bit like walking on grass. I sit on the sofa and he lies down and rests his head on my legs and when he is very tired he falls asleep like this! We talk little between us, we are able to tell each other everything with a hug. 

We have been living together for 4 years now and we share the costs, but not at 50%. He earns 1.45 times what I earn, and pays 1.45 / 2.45 of all expenses. He tells me that that is the minimum of the equity and that I work at home while he does practically nothing at home and it is obvious that I contribute in other ways to the functioning of the house. This precision in the division of expenses, however, is a kind of game, because Elio, who in the past has always had very little money, is not in the least stingy and leaves his salary together with mine without distinguishing mine and his, the one  of us who needs money takes freely what he needs. We have a joint account which by law is half his and half mine, although obviously he contributes much more than me. At first I thought that there could be money problems between us but it never happened. 

His parents once found themselves in the faculty to redeem the apartment they lived in but they didn’t have all the money they needed and we gave them (not lent) all our savings. Please note, Project, that we weren’t expecting any money back and instead they returned everything to us in just three years. I no longer have my parents and Elio’s parents are a bit like my family. They cuddle me more than Elio because they know that he appreciates a lot such a behavior. We see them every week, as far as possible, and I think that the fact that Elio is a man inwardly calm is largely due to them. In Elio’s attitudes I see many attitudes of his father. 

Sometimes we talk about cultural things, that is a bit of the “highest systems”, and I am often amazed because he listens to me. He makes me talk and listens to me, he never silences me, he tries to follow the logical thread of what I tell him. When I have finished, he keeps quiet for a few seconds and then takes up all the points of my speech, enriches them, develops them, and if they weren’t already part of his way of thinking, he makes them his, integrates them into his way of seeing things, tells me that I give him often some tips that are also useful to him in his work and that you don’t need to have studied philosophy to be a philosopher. Note, Project, he tells me this very seriously. He often tells me that I reassure him, that I am his anxiolytic, his antidepressant. He is very rational but easily goes into crisis when he sees people suffering. 

When we first went to live together, in our building there was an elderly lady, the lady or rather Miss Adele, who treated us very well from the beginning, when she met us on the stairs she always smiled at us and I think she understood very well that we were a couple, then, after a few months, we never saw her again, Elio inquired and learned that Miss Adele could no longer leave the house, she lived alone and was assisted by a voluntary association. We went to see her when the guys from the association were there, the house was clean and tidy, thanks to those guys, even though the young lady couldn’t get out of her wheelchair. But she was very alert mentally, she joked with us and treated us well and so we got into the habit of spending two evenings a week with her and having dinner with her. I can tell you, Project, they were beautiful evenings, nothing forced, everything was very spontaneous, it was a bit like having a grandmother. 

Then Miss Adele’s health deteriorated and they hospitalized her, and after three weeks she died. For us it was a real family mourning. At the funeral it was just us and we paid for the funeral. Less than a week later, a notary called us and told us that the Miss Adelina had made her will and had left us the apartment and all the money she had, as well as a sealed letter. In the letter she told us that she would pray for us from Heaven and that she had left us her things so that we could do with them what we thought was right. Three days later we returned to the notary with the legal representative of the association who had assisted the young lady and we left everything to them. 

Project, it may seem incredible to you but when we left the notary’s office we hugged each other tightly for the happiness of having done what had to be done. You can understand, Project, that in my opinion these gestures are the real divergent thinking, because Elio is not only cultured and intelligent but he is good, he is a good man that I can only admire. He is not narrow-minded, he does not think only of himself. When I embrace it, I know I hold the rarest treasure in the world. And do you know what he told me? He said when he realized that about Miss Adele’s legacy we were thinking of doing exactly the same thing, he felt the happiest man on Earth because both of us were inclined to divergent thinking but to a divergent thinking in exactly the same direction. 

When you meet such a man there is no need for words! This divergent thinking is not intellectualism, it is absolutely another thing. When I think of Elio, tears come to my eyes, being together we have learned to be better. You can understand why we get along well. Sometimes I read stories of jealousy, sex and power play within the couple on the forum. Before meeting Elio I too lived that kind of situation and he probably lived them too, but then we met and our life really changed. 

In Miss Adele’s house the voluntary association has accommodated two elderly ladies, we went to visit them but they looked at us as if we were two intruders, so we said goodbye and left. They weren’t like Miss Adele who used to smile at us when she saw us, showing a face full of happiness and when we dined together she was all well dressed and combed and hugged us tightly to make us understand that we were important to her. 

Yesterday Elio came home in the evening all wet, he did not have the hood of his raincoat on his head but he carried it with the utmost care, I approached and he motioned me to shut up, then he opened the hood of the waterproof and there was a not so small kitten inside, all wet. We dried it, we made a kind of kennel for him and then we tried to give it some milk, after having warmed it a little in our hands, and the kitten was able to eat on his own which was a huge relief for us. We have a veterinary friend to ask for advice but if the kitten eats alone it means that all in all he’s fine. We set him up in our room and spent the whole evening cuddling the kitten who also looked in great shape. Today our vet friend told us that the kitten was actually a she kitten and that she was in good health and we decided to call her Adelina. You can’t imagine how carefully Elio treats the kitten and the kitten trusts him, and actually me too, as if she had always known us, a bit like Miss Adele had done, that’s why we chose that name. 

Today Elio began to call her “the baby-girl” and many thoughts came to mind about how nice it would be to have a real baby-girl. I know these are just dreams, but Elio would be a really good dad and I would try my best too. Now I’ll send you the email, otherwise I won’t finish it anymore. Of course, you can use it as you like better.

Thanks for what you do, Project. Keep it up.

_________________________

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PROBLEMS OF AN INTERGENERATIONAL GAY RELATIONSHIP

 Hi Project,

I saw that on your forum there are some posts about so-called gay intergenerational relationships, I have read them and I can say that, at least in part, they also reflect my experience, because I’m the oldest partner of something similar to a gay couple, if I can say so, I’m now almost 60 years old, my partner is 30. My experience of gay stories has been always very small, but my life has changed dramatically a year ago. I met a man who is almost half my age, as I told before, and it happened to me what had never happened to me before. As you can well understand his freedom is an absolute value for me. Although he was much younger than me, he had a very concrete and varied experience of gay environments and behaviors. 

We met in a very curious way, our cars have collided at an intersection but with minimal damage, both his and mine. It happened through my fault or rather because of one of my my too frequent inattentions, anyway he got out of the car furious, but more because of the loss of time and the bureaucracy problems he  was going to face out of necessity than because he was angry with me, I was also a little scared at first, because he has a very solid physical constitution. He addressed me kindly and politely, I think because of my age, he saw me willing to take on my responsibilities with the blue form, and treated me with respect. He looked at his car and said to me: “Okay, it’s a minimal damage, you can go away quietly, let’s say nothing happened … ok?” I didn’t trust him and I was afraid of being tricked or blackmailed later. I insisted that the blue form had to be filled in anyway, so he eventually agreed and we filled in the form, one copy of it for me and the other for him. According to the insurance rules it was up to him to send the form within three days to his insurance, because since the accident had happened out of my fault and I had admitted it, it was up to his insurance company to pay him back within 30 days. 

At a certain point he told me that my damage was greater that his and that if he had send the form I would have lost a not negligible amount of money and I would have lost my previous insurance category to be inserted into another much more expensive. At this point I was about to think he would ask me to pay the damage immediately in cash and in the end I would have done it, and I said: “If you prefer, I can pay you back in cash now …” He replied: “The damage is minimal and my car is old, let’s just leave things like that!” I told him: “Don’t worry about me, you now have the blue form with my signature, just send it to your insurance. Ok?” He said to me: “Ok, ok, I’ll think about it.” He greeted me very quietly and we left. Five days later I received this email: 

“Dear Mr. James,I’m Andrew G, the one with whom you signed the blue form for the friendly accident report. I wanted to inform you that I preferred not to send the blue form to my insurance company, because you would have suffered financial damage and I would have received negligible compensation. I had the pleasure of meeting in you a serious person who didn’t hesitate to take on his responsibilities. I greet you with true respect. ” 

After a long meditation, I answered him like this: 

“Dear Mr. Andrew,certainly it’s not so common to meet people like you, I can say that your gesture surprised me, even if in a sense I expected it. If it weren’t too inconvenient for you, I’d like you to accept at least one invitation from me to dinner, not as compensation but out of sympathy. I greet you with esteem.” 

He replied after a few seconds: 

“Dear Mr. James, I accept your invitation with great pleasure.” 

We agreed for the following Monday evening, at the time there was still no talk of Covid. On Monday evening he arrives right on time, he is dressed in a simple but very nice way. He has a brown beard, hair trimmed, he’s a really handsome man, I know from the documents he’s 30 years old. We shake hands, he is perfectly at ease. I chose a very quiet, open-air restaurant, because it’s the height of summer and it’s still hot. There are few people because the space is huge and the restaurant is almost empty on Mondays. I insist that he order the dinner before me, and here he already amazes me, because he is a vegetarian, he doesn’t take pride in it but follows his rule. I adapt immediately, he tells me I can take whatever I like better and I tell him that if he has decided to be a vegetarian there must be a good reason, he just smiles. 

Slowly we come to talk about work but on those things he is very reserved, I avoid insisting and he notices and appreciates it, I talk to him very succinctly about me and above all I tell him that I would like to be already retired but I still have to work to many years. We don’t talk about family or private life. Then we move on to politics and on that level we get along very well. Our first meeting ends with the realization that it was a really good evening and the final handshake is much warmer than the initial one. He unexpectedly adds: “We have to meet again …” and I tell him: “Very, very gladly!” 

A sympathy was certainly born between us but Andrew could have been my son and I just felt a great melancholy because I was not thirty but almost 60, and everything stopped there. Returning home I seriously thought I would never see him again, but after a few minutes he writes to me: 

“Dear James, I returned home. Thank you! It was truly a very enjoyable evening. I think you will hear again from me. Thanks again for everything.” 

In fact, since then I’ve heard Andrew at least once a week, but not in the sense that we talked on the phone once a week, no! On the contrary it became an habit for us to go out together in the evenings at least once a week to go around the city and we were happy of it, there was a very special atmosphere. Tis way we slowly trusted each other more and more. 

With the changing of the season and with the arrival of the cold our walks were more and more problematic and either he came to my house or I went to his house, and it was really a new phase, in the sense that, before he came for the first time at my house, I made all the gay books I have in the library disappear, because I thought he might be straight and that seeing certain books would make him uncomfortable. It’s a stupid thought, I know, but anyhow I hid all the gay books. My home had become an absolutely neutral environment. 

He came to me the first time and we talked for hours, he was melancholy, I didn’t know what to do and the embarrassment was palpable. He said to me: “Don’t pay attention to my melancholy, I’m like this.” His house, when I went there, seemed even more neutral than mine, everything was simple, banal, ordinary, too simple, too banal and too ordinary to be true. This fact, combined with everything that had happened, led me to think that Andrew was gay. Everything was anonymous and there was no trace of emotional life. Little by little he talked to me about his family, his distant and essentially indifferent parents, his older sister who lives in Austria and also about his work in a very important research Institute. 

He didn’t ask me questions but slowly allowed me to enter his world. I listened to him for hours, fascinated, then he also told me, almost as if it were an irrelevant detail that “he had lost his head for a guy”, at which point it would not have been dignified not to tell him clearly about me. I told him: “I think you understand that I’m gay too …” And he said to me: “Well, that’s why I’m here …” Once we had clarified this point, we had taken a step forward, but I didn’t understand why he had chosen me as his confidant, because he had had some guys and still had at least one, but evidently he couldn’t have those kinds of conversations with those guys. 

I must confess, Project, that for me there was nothing easy: doubts, anxieties, scruples have upset my life, because objectively I would never have believed that anything like this could happen to me. I had found a gay friend much younger than me who had taken me seriously, because then our relationship was at that level and at that level, all in all, I could manage it, but slowly I began to understand that Andrew was really sexually attracted from me, something that I would have considered absolutely unthinkable if it hadn’t happened to me firsthand. The fact is that Andrew had at least one other boyfriend, so to say, not a stable boyfriend but, let’s say, a friend of reference. I didn’t understand what Andrew could find in me. I loved him, his image was always present in my mind I was thinking of him a thousand times a day, especially because I wanted to see him smile, but his smile was an absolute rarity. 

If you add the fact that Andrew was really a handsome man and wasn’t indifferent to me at all, you can understand that I was on hot coals, on the one hand I wanted him and on the other I thought I had to get away from him as soon as possible. However, he didn’t allow me to escape, he remained close to me, I don’t want to say that he remained close to me in a nagging way but he didn’t leave me the opportunity to break away and cool down the relationship. 

When he started looking for a minimum of physical contact I was really scared, all my contradictions were exploding and I didn’t know how to behave with him, then, in the end, I realized that it was what he wanted and what I wanted even though I was trying to avoid it and so we had our first sexual intercourse one night. I like sex even though, before meeting him, it was almost always more fantasy than reality. I had been with a couple of guys many years ago but it was a completely different thing. I certainly don’t have much experience of love affairs with men but I had never seen someone who lived sex like Andrew, who was totally involved. But somehow he was perplexed because he saw me very hesitant, certainly not disinterested but, let’s say, less deeply involved and he didn’t understand that for me that level of involvement was the highest level possible, sometimes he thought that in sex I acted to make him happy, but it wasn’t like that at all, sex used to make me tired because I’m 30 years older than him. 

Don’t believe that it was easy to be with him, sometimes he treated me in a brusque way, especially when I tried to procrastinate and didn’t give him clear answers, this irritated him and sometimes he went away without giving explanations. When it happened the first time, I was very upset because I thought our relationship was over, but then, the next week, he was looking for me again as if nothing had happened. I wonder if a 30-year-old can truly understand how a 60-year-old can live certain moments and the uncertainty that a 60-year-old feels in a situation like ours. 

He sees the immediate but I think that in not many years I will become a ball and chain for him that he will have to get rid of. If you are with a peer, you get older with him and the differences are always limited, but if you are with someone who is 30 years younger than you, you almost wish it would all end as soon as possible, because you understand that even if there is love, the differences are enormous and in any case everything is precarious. At present I don’t know what sense I can have in his life, I can’t understand it, I know he has a boyfriend and he even told me about him, but obviously his boyfriend doesn’t absorb him completely. I’m only afraid that in the end he may take our whole story badly, that he may take it as a crush gone wrong, a personal failure, almost a kind of self-punishing personal degradation. This fear haunted me especially at the beginning, but now it it’s somewhat attenuated. I never look for him, and maybe I do wrong. 

A year has passed now. With the complications of the lockdown we had met much less, but in the summer we started again. He’s periodically tested with swabs at the Institute where he works and I never leave the house except to do the shopping. I think a lot about him, he’s a good man who feels frail and knows he lacks something to be happy, he looks for that something in sex and doesn’t even find it there and oscillates between sexual frenzy and depression, of course everything within the limits and with common sense but the fact remains that he is not happy. I told him that he’s really charming but he says that his belly is too prominent, which is absolutely not true, and he takes my compliments as a reason to be ironic about himself. 

Why does a young man in his thirties and seemingly fulfilled like him, want to maintain a relationship with someone like me? Can I be something similar to the father he didn’t have? Frankly, I don’t think so. He’s in love not with me but with his special friend with whom, however, he doesn’t lack frustrations. I love him, we have some sexual intercourse but frankly, for me, having sex with him it is not only not the essential but it is a concern, a bit for health, even if we are very cautious, but above all because I don’t want him to think I’m taking advantage of his weakness. 

There is a huge age difference between us, but he is a grown man who knows what he is doing and these fears I should really put them aside and instead they accompany me constantly. I feel very unbalanced, it is true that it is an important thing, I don’t question it, but it is something that has put in crisis the routine to which, for better or worse, I was used to, and has led me to rhythms and problems that are no longer for my age. I ask myself several times if it’s possible or at least if it would be advisable, for him, as well as for me, if I got out of this story, and sometimes I think it would be good for both of us, but then I wonder how I can get out and I don’t find any plausible way. 

I can’t make arguments of this kind with him, because he would consider them a betrayal, a bad gesture towards him, for him it’s obvious that we must go on like this, for me it’s not at all. I want to say that when we pass the night together, while it lasts, the two of us are fine, he is fine and I’m fine too, but later, when we are done, the melancholy begins for him and for me the doubts begin. I have never seen him go away happy after a sex meeting with me, he is not unhappy, but he is sad and this scares me, but we don’t talk about it, it’s a taboo subject. I go to bed with him but I don’t have access to his melancholies, sometimes I think he doesn’t even know why he gets those melancholies. 

I’m so afraid that in the long run I may be considered a negative presence, I have no arguments to say it but it is a feeling that I have had several times. Sometimes I happened to tell him something my melancholy to him, but he silenced me, he told me that I always try to talk about negative things and that he “when he comes to me” he doesn’t want to hear those things, it’s a sign perhaps that he must hear such things too many times in other situations. I wondered if I’m not by chance, for him, just a sexual diversion, but such a thing would make no sense, if only he wanted to, he could very well find a much more interesting company than me, and he did so before. I don’t want to be the sackcloth he has chosen to wear or self-inflict for some reason I can’t understand. In short, I feel really tossed from one extreme to the other.

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GAY SEX AND CELL PHONE

 Hi Project,

everyone calls me Martin, even if my name is Gabriel, I’m a 26 year old guy who has been working for a few years and who has always dreamed of opening his own business. Unfortunately, now I have also had problems with the covid, but all in all relative, because I’m a computer scientist and I know how to do my job. 

However, this is not what I would like to talk to you about but I want to talk about something that I absolutely cannot stand and for some time has been ruining my life, that is the cell phone. As you can imagine, the mobile phone has no secrets for me, I have an amazing one where there is everything, but I mean everything always and only related to work. You could never find my private, let’s say so, on my mobile phone, because I keep my private only on my home PC. On the home PC I have installed all the possible security systems, in case someone steals it from me, an extremely remote hypothesis, and among other things I live alone and therefore I don’t have to defend myself from anyone’s prying eyes. 

I’ve a boyfriend for two years, or better I should  say that I had had a boyfriend for two years. There was no possibility of living together because he lived still with his family and his parents didn’t know anything about him but also because I was very reluctant to live together with him, because I didn’t feel sure of him. He’s two years younger than me, he’s a good guy, but I didn’t really feel him interested in me. We were fine together, but relatively. I didn’t feel that need to be with him that I had felt with other guys. It must be said that in the end I couldn’t build anything with those other guys because I felt the need to be with them but they didn’t feel the need to be with me, and then they double-crossed me, they used to tell me that for them there was just me, but anyhow they constantly went around sites and applications to look for other guys. It wouldn’t even bother me too much, but I can’t stand being told lies … Oh my God, maybe I couldn’t even bear the idea of my boyfriend going away with others, I don’t know, but I’d rather not try such experiences. 

I will call my boyfriend or ex-boyfriend here by the name I have always given him: Slim, not because he’s particularly slim, rather it is not at all, but since I understood that he liked to be told that it was slim, I started calling it so. Meanwhile, one thing: the other guys I have disgraced them “all” on the ap. I had a doubt, I knew their nick, I registered on that application, I put down two photos a little provocative (even not mine) and they tried immediately to get in touch with me, but when we were together face to face they used to said they never go on that application! It happened to me three times and I sent all the three guys to … (you got it!). With Slim nothing like that, put to the test of facts, he didn’t tell lies, I knew the nick he used on the application, after we got together, he actually didn’t go there anymore. I thought he was going in with another nick and one day I challenged him to show me his cell phone and he said to me: “Ok! But on par! You have to show me yours! ” Since I have nothing personal on the cell phone I use, which is unique and which I also use for work, I told him I agreed and we exchanged cell phones. 

Actually he didn’t have anything compromising, but then I thought that he too had a home PC and maybe for some things he used only that, anyway, honestly, I have never been afraid that Slim would betray me, from this point of view he is clean, at least I think, what bothered me was that he always carried his mobile phone with him, even in the bathroom and in the shower! It wasn’t that he carried it around so as not to leave it around because maybe he was afraid that I would go and peek inside, he carried it with him because he always had to be connected with his friends. 

I work on my cell phone and can’t wait to turn it off when I can, because I get work calls and sometimes it’s a real obsession, that is, I have to keep it on at least from eight in the morning until ten in the evening, but at ten I turn it off anyway, especially when I’m at home and if people are looking for me for work they will call back the next day. Slim instead no! His cell phone was on 24/7. He always had to have his friends within reach, and he always answered, even to say absurd bullshit, they were friends with whom he laughed like an idiot, in short, with them he seemed really unleashed, which he practically never did with me. He was serious with me, or at least he wasn’t stupid up to that degree. 

We used to meet when we could, usually on Saturday nights, he would arrive at my house at ten and stay with me for four hours, more or less, then he had to go home. In those four hours we had to have as much sex as we could, because it was once a week… well, I used to turn off my cell phone, he as usually didn’t the same! Once we started making love and everything was fine, at a certain point his cell phone rings, I tell him: “Close it!” but he doesn’t close it and answers. I was black with rage! But then I let my anger go away and went to the kitchen to make coffee. He stayed on the phone talking about crazy shit for half an hour! But I say: we can only be together for four hours a week and you stay on the phone for half an hour?! Anyway I pretended nothing happened, but by now I felt strange and almost explosive. The sex had gone to hell, but he eventually tried everything to regain ground and the evening ended with some pampering and a promise that the next week we would make up for lost time and sex. 

During the week, I took care not to trouble him with the cell phone problems, thinking that he had understood, he was like a puppy on the phone and the week went on like this. The following Saturday, he arrives at me at ten, while he goes to the bathroom for a moment, I turn off his cell phone, thinking it is a foregone conclusion, but then I forget to tell him. We start making love but I see him strange, at midnight I see him very strange and I ask him what is happening it and he tells me that he is worried because Matthew and Francis didn’t call him, while they had told him that they would call him before eleven. I tell him that I turned off his cell phone because I thought that, after what had happened the previous Saturday, it was a foregone conclusion. 

He looks at me with disappointment. He immediately turns on his mobile phone, finds unanswered calls from Matthew and Francis and immediately calls them back and as soon as he talks to them he makes a face as radiant as the sun, while the face he had made for me was between angry and perplexed. I find it hard to hold back my anger, I go to make coffee and pretend nothing has happened, and he spends half an hour with Matthew, when they say goodbye I go back to the room, but he tells me that now he has to call Francis, otherwise Francis would worry, and attacks with another endless series of crap with Francis, I would beat him up but I don’t, I don’t tell him anything. He sees me dark in the face and asks me: “What’s wrong? Nothing happened! Are you jealous?”

I don’t answer his phone calls all the week long. He gets worried and sends me a message and asks me: “See you Saturday night?” I answer him: “Only on one condition.” And he immediately asks me: “Which one?” I place my condition: “That you don’t carry your cell phone with you.” I expect a simple ok! Maybe even apologizing, but his reaction is totally different! He Turns up the tone and takes it out on me because I am “mad jealous” and I want to take away his freedom. And here I couldn’t stand him anymore and I said: “I don’t want to take anything away from you but if you have to think about many other things even when you stay with me, maybe it is better that you feel totally free!” 

In practice it was a definitive farewell, at least I meant it that way, but he didn’t understand that either and kept bombarding me with messages. When I closed the phone I was very bad and maybe he too. It’s been 10 days now and we haven’t heard from each other anymore, I have very bad sensations. I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow and I don’t know what he will do. He went back to the usual sites and I went back there too, but it is absurd that a serious story should end like this for the cell phone!

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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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