GAY SEXUALITY AND ANXIETY

This article is aimed at defining the relationship between gay sexuality and anxiety on the basis of the experience gained in Gay Project.

The issues related to sexuality are dealt in general with specific categories different from that used for all other issues. The first reaction, or rather the first public reaction, is demonstrated by smiles, winks, jokes, all attitudes based on the apparent uniformity of the points of view, which is equivalent to saying that “everybody knows how these things go!”

It is difficult, in public, to go beyond the level of formal uniformity. Sexuality is almost always conceived as a private matter, or in public, as a matter of ideology. Precisely for this reason the serious comparison of experiences beyond the limits of formal uniformity takes place in practice only between two people or in very limited groups. There is still a fear of being judged when it comes to sexuality and that’s why speech is, in public, on a very general level, and only in private can start a serious and useful dialog.

I would say that sexuality is the area in which the uniformity is experienced at the highest level. In a group of one hundred people chosen at random, political and cultural elements of all kinds emerge through discussion, but when it comes to sexuality the group seems made up of uniformly heterosexual persons, you may question some external behaviors but not heterosexuality in itself. I cite a concrete example: in a school with a thousand students there are on average eighty gay guys but no one of them can be identified.

The heterosexuality “seems” to dominate the horizon, but in reality, when you start knowing each individual member of the group, you realize that things are not so, that homosexuality exists and that it is not a phenomenon related to minimum minorities. If, going into the specifics, we talk exclusively with that 8% of homosexual population, we realize that those people are actually not only very far from sharing the general idea to be straight, but also that sexuality is still considered by them as a kind of taboo to be experienced only in secret and guilt, in essence, you realize that gay sexuality is often experienced with anxiety.

While 67.97% of heterosexual guys responded to the survey of Gay Project that they had never lived with anxiety the issues related to their sexual orientation, only 20.45% of gay guys gave the same answer.

Which points of reference can have a gay guy in terms of sexuality? The answers seem obvious, first the parents, then the peer group, then the educational system, etc. etc. . In fact it is already difficult for a straight guy to talk about sexuality with his parents, but for a gay guy the problem is often unsurpassable, not only he wouldn’t probably find on the other side a competent answer but he would face a significant risk of being rejected by his own family. The same could happen with the peer group (classmates, friends, etc.).

The education system in most cases is totally unprepared to provide serious answers in these areas. There are notable exceptions in the countries of Northern Europe but in southern European countries, mostly the United States and in almost all other states, not only there is no form of sex education that includes seriously also homosexuality, but in practice projects are reduced to convey some notion of reproductive physiology leaving entirely aside the emotional dimension and the psychological problems related to sexuality. I had to consider some of the projects of sexual education presented in Italy, aimed at young people aged 16 to 18 years, and I found not only the total absence of any reference to homosexuality, but even the total absence of any reference to masturbation, which is then, today, still a taboo also in the straight field.

To get a detailed picture of the situation we can use the statistics of Gay Project.

The following table compares the percentage of gay guys and straight guys who have never used sex chats or have never used dating sites.

                                     straight            gay
never sex chats             80.47%        61.14%
never dating sites          84.38%        53.14%

It is clear that gay guys do more use of gay sex chats and dating sites than straight guys but the reason does not lie in a greater propensity toward sex as fun or toward quick sex, it is instead a reaction entirely predictable to the marginalization to which gays are forced.

Another significant difference is in the reaction of gay guys and straight guys to the discovery of masturbation:

                                    straight          gay
I didn’t tell anyone         58.59%      80.57%
I told friends                  35.94%      15.43%

It is clear that for a gay guy to talk about sexuality is much more problematic. The confidence in the group of peers for a gay guy, on average, is less than half of that of a straight guy.

A similar situation is found with the question “Have you ever told anyone that you used pornography?”

                                     straight        gay
I haven’t told anyone     36.72%    64.00%
I told friends                  56.25%    25.15%

Very significant is the comparison of the number of those who have never had sexual intercourse

                                     straight        gay
I’ve never had sex          32.03%     46.29%
mean age                      26.23         26.25

The overall picture shows that a gay guy has a lot more problems than a straight guy in talking about sexuality with his parents, with peers and at school, and then turns to sex chats and dating sites much more than a straight guy the same age, and also that a gay guy has much less chance to have sexual experiences compared to a straight guy.

Unfortunately, even though it is disheartening, the first source of information on sexuality, for gay guys, is the internet, and especially pornography and the environments of erotic chats and dating sites, which provide images that are often very far from the reality of the life of the vast majority of gay guys. Internet affects gay guys much more than it affects the straight guys. All this makes sexuality a taboo subject for gay guys much more than for straight guys.

I often talk in chat with gay guys having a picture of reality derived entirely from the internet, which means almost exclusively from pornography, sex chats and dating sites. Often these guys are not absolutely at ease with the models they have learned from pornography or chats and end up considering their attitude as something abnormal and deviant to be corrected and for this reason they strive to change their point of view. But if they knew the reality of the lives of other gay guys, they would realize that there’s anything to fix.

Issues related to performance anxiety are still common among gay guys and in these cases the erectile deficit is often considered by the guys themselves as their own personal problem to be solved through the complete acceptance of a pattern of behavior that falsely they consider as the rule of the gay world, but that is far from reality and instead derives almost exclusively from pornography.

There are guys with excellent level of culture and remarkable intellectual gifts that are dominated by anxiety related to the idea of having a small penis or of having problems with sexual response, things that doesn’t exist at all, except as a result of an attempt to integrate at any cost, that is forcedly, in a particular gay scene that they consider to be the typical expression of homosexuality.

There are guys who never use the word gay and avoid all matters relating to physical sexuality. The idea that gay guys can talk seriously even about oral sex or masturbation is still very scarcely spread. In reality, these things should not be considered in any way as a taboo because sexuality is an essential part of life for all guys. A good guy is not a good student who will make his way in life but to be a good guy should not have sex or should largely suppress his sexuality, no! A good guy is obviously (and it would be absurd to think otherwise) a guy who has his sexuality and has every right to live it in any way he likes, with the only limit of the respect of the freedom of others. A good guy lives his masturbation and couple sex when he has a partner, and it is essential that he lives these things with confidence and in a relaxed manner, without stupid conditioning, because sexuality is one of the pillars of well-being. In sexuality, more than in any other issue, the restriction of freedom has an impact heavily negative.

The idea that sexuality is a normal reality of life for all, which is not nothing to be ashamed of and that we can speak seriously of sexuality as we speak of all other things, is almost completely lacking, especially among gay guys.

In situations of isolation, that is in a condition where it is not possible or is very difficult to talk about contents related to sexuality, the anxious reaction prevails and behaviors can become risky. The self-esteem itself of a gay guy is often heavily influenced by the perception of his own sexuality as something that he can’t even speak about.

Addressing seriously the issues related to sexuality, putting aside the anxiety, means regaining self-esteem, reducing problems and maintaining a peaceful contact with reality, that is, in short, feeling better about themselves and others.

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If you like, you can join the discussion on this post on Gay Project Forum:

http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=127

A GAY LOVE THAT WILL NEVER END

Hello Project,
I am a thirty years old guy, convinced follower of gay project, not a day goes by that I do not do my research on it and discover a multitude of new things. In practice I have learned on your site what it means to be gay and now, for about six months I’ve been seeing in practice that you were right and that the guys of the forum are the picture of reality. Six months ago I met a 23 year old guy, I’ll call him Paul, who inspired me especially tenderness but from many points of view, looked too young for me, then I still had in mind many patterns of behavior and for me I chose the role of older brother. I did not know Paul yet, I knew nothing about him but already he fascinated me. He reasoned following different ways, was much more temperamental, perhaps he surprised me because he followed a logic different from mine. In no time we got to see each other almost every day. It was obvious that Paul was determined to be close to me and realized that he had a huge influence on me. I had become for him a point of reference and he spoke to me openly, he was sometimes very depressed and this put me in turmoil, we stayed hours talking on msn and eventually he calmed down, sometimes he called me every name under the sun with an unleashed aggressive violence but after a few hours it was all over, I think he felt loved unconditionally. At the beginning we never talked about sex in a direct way and this for fear of being misjudged by each other, then he began to talk also about sex, about his dreams and desires, that he felt too attracted by sex but essentially unable to loving. I listened to him, then tried to respond in the way I thought the best. Between us we never used the explicit language of love, or rather, I did it but for him it was much more difficult, he said he did not want to delude me, that it was not in love with me, that for him I was an important person but in another way. Both he and I, probably for very different reasons, we tried to keep sex completely outside of our relationship, I thought it was absolutely my duty to go like that. Then I began to understand that Paul felt rejected by me, that he thought that I would not consider him at my level and he also told me such things directly. As for me, I tried to make him understand that for me he was something sacred and I thought that I would only have been a burden for him, the speech was actually a bit cold and abstract and I knew that he did not take it well then I hugged him close and I felt him in a moment of happiness. It was a physical contact, sure, but not a sexual contact, I thought I had made a nice gesture but I did not understand that Paul needed to be accepted without any reserve and in a much deeper sense, he tried to make me understand his need in every way, sought a more lasting physical contact and then slowly tried to take me to overcome my hesitation and to have also a physical sex contact with him. It took me a lot to understand how to behave because in his quest for sexual contact he swung between moments of serenity and moments of deep melancholy that I could not calm down in any other way than creating those moments of sexual contact, it was like for him sex was the only medicine against melancholy, a drug with only temporary effects, but a medicine that could change his mood. By Paul I learned something that now seems fundamental to me, namely that love is not like playing a role. I was led to identify with a character and play that role in full even when it was not exactly spontaneous but Paul was totally spontaneous and slowly managed to get me out of my more or less phony inhibitions. When we were in bed together he was always afraid to exaggerate and that I could feel uncomfortable for some reason, he thought that his sexuality might seem to me excessive, too much exuberant, but in reality he was exactly as I would have liked to be. I felt his sexuality intimately close to mine, it was a way to understand each other beyond words and he was well aware of it. Even when we got to live our sexual live without inhibitions, sex was just one component of our relationship, something important but not decisive, now we loved each other deeply. Sometimes he was so abrupt and even seemingly uninterested but I knew that in a short time these things would have been exceeded. We remained often talking about politics, science and philosophy, and often also about melancholy and fear that filled our heart, slowly we came to the realization that our relationship would not be lost, in any case, and that whatever we will do in the future there will always be a thread to hold us together. I’m not afraid of losing Paul, I’m mentally prepared for the fact that he will fall in love with another guy but that does not mean that I have to lose him. In fact I could not resign myself to the idea of losing him that is that he can forget me. Before Paul, I had met other guys but I never fell in love with anybody, I liked someone of those guys but I’ve never felt anyone with a feeling as deep as it happens with Paul, he’s the only guy who I’d always stay close, he’s the only guy I feel really close. According to certain criteria it may be a relationship that will not become a stable couple’s relationship, but I do not care stable couple’s relationships, I do not want a stable couple’s relationship but I wish that Paul always loves me just as it happens now. Between us there are also long pauses, but I see it very well, the affection remains absolutely unchanged. Before, when I did not hear him for a few days I was acting out of fear but now is no longer the case because now I know that our story cannot end because the basis is true love. I love Paul, before I knew him, when I was thinking about a guy I had a limited view of love, I considered it a noble version of sexual attraction and did not give much value to what could really be the guy that I would be in love with, I never considered the soul of the guy, as if I thought my soul would have been enough for both of us, then I met Paul and I realized that falling in love is something else and have a deep contact with a guy who loves you really enriches you, gives you a purpose to your life and is not something partial that concerns only sexuality but on the contrary involves you totally, and I would say makes you think that sex is just a means by which two people come to know each other for what they really are. I’m in love with Paul and especially I know that he loves me, he says he’s not in love with me but he somehow loves me and I think that’s true, there is also sex between us but there are also, and I would say especially, moments of family life and are deep moments, there is a trusting each other, each of us can take for granted that the other really loves him. He always warned me against its instability, against the fact that he might fall in love with another guy, but in fact I’m not afraid of this but of the fact that he can stop loving me anyway and beyond any situation. In a way, he knows that our love will never end. I do not ask him anything in particular, at least, I do not want to be his boyfriend, I want his happiness and I know there will always be a place for me in his heart. I have often said that it is perhaps too early to say that I know him well and that I’m building castles in the air, but I think this way only when I do not see him for a few days, but when we can talk a bit even on a cell phone, my doubts disappear and I would hug him strongly because I feel the strong affection that binds us. At first I thought that I could make him feel worse with all my hang-ups and my convoluted mind, I did not feel like being the right fellow for a young guy, I reasoned too much on things and didn’t let myself go, I thought I had always to be controlled then I saw him play with me, I saw him smile, I saw him try to be cuddled in every situation and I remained fascinated. Finding Paul has changed my life. I had never understood what it meant to feel really happy, but now I know what it is. The sex with him was not at all as I had imagined and allowed me to feel truly part a couple, to remove from sexuality the patina of too much important thing and to live it lightly, a bit as a game and a bit, I would say above all, as a way to transmit affection. When we are together and he hugs me and smiles or when he falls asleep in my arms, I feel invaded by an indescribable tenderness, I know that in those moments he feels safe and knows that when he is my arms I feel perfectly happy. Project, I think I’ve found the love indeed, I am sure!

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If you like, you can join the discussion on this post on Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=57