NORMAL GAY LIFE AND DEPENDENCE ON PORN

Dear Project,

I walked into an impossible situation and I want to get out of there, I say that I want but I cannot, that’s why I’m writing to you, because maybe other things like that can be happened and perhaps you can give me and advice and help me to get rid of all this. I tell you that I’m just unable to get out by myself. I’m 24, almost 25, I feel gay, I say I feel because I do not know if that’s the case, but the point is not this. Maybe it’s better I tell you things in order. I felt straight up to 22 y.o., again I say that I felt because I do not know if I really was, but from 18 on I had two girlfriends, although for me it was not the best, I was aware that it was not the best, but I didn’t yet think that I was gay. With the two girls I had as well sex, perhaps more out of curiosity but I liked it, that is that when it happened I was not uncomfortable but when it didn’t I was not missing it. I masturbated thinking about girls, there was nothing overwhelming but I felt normal and then the girls I mentioned had just fallen in love with me, I too, maybe, with them, but maybe not seriously. Up to 22, with the University things were going well, I passed my exams and with good grades, then at about 22/23, started the disaster. I’ll explain. I knew a guy who came to us for the first year graduate and we started studying together, and so I realized that I loved being with him. He is straight and don’t have the slightest doubt. I red what you think about falling in love with a straight guy and I understand but I could not get it out of my head, then he was very attentive to me and I think that “in his own way,” he loved me too. However, I was completely upset. I was aroused just thinking about this guy and then we saw each other every day, morning and afternoon to study. When we were together he was studying and I was thinking of him. Studying together lasted six months then he passed his exams and went on, I was not even present the day of the exams and basically I lost the first year of post-graduate, but this would still be a relative thing. Since I was in love with him I began to masturbate thinking about him, and it was something that I loved, all fancy but I felt satisfied, I realized that I was gay and it did not even create problems, if I had him close to me I was happy. When he left me alone to study because I didn’t pass the exams I felt really uncomfortable. I did not go to University not to see him because I knew that between us there could not be anything. My parents went to work and I sat alone at home to watch porn movies starting in a morning, when my parents leaved to the evening when they came back, I used to say to them that I went to the University but did not go. When the night they went to sleep I newly was on my computer to watch porn until three o’clock. When I was more able to manage myself I felt like an idiot to throw away my life like that, but then I could not tear myself away from porn, I had filled the computer of such things. There was no risk because my parents do not even know how to turn on a computer, but my whole life turned around porn and masturbation, which, among other things, now seemed to me a very stupid thing. I began to regret the time when I was straight and had maybe half a normal life. I can no more stand to go on this way. My friend will take the degree in November and I didin’t anything, I’ve only passed two exams and the most stupid. I must absolutely change my life. Among other things, I started to drink a little, not yet too much, and I have to stop before it becomes a problem, even if it still is not. Project I want the life of a gay guy, because it’s what I’m, but a normal life. When I was a hetero girls were looking for me because they tell me I’m a nice guy, but as a gay man I feel nearly the total vacuum. Nobody knows that I’m gay, but being gay is unnerving, if you fall in love with a guy most likely he is straight and you cannot even tell him and then you must have an iron will otherwise you end up on porn like me. I want to be a normal gay, to have a boyfriend who loves me, but this turns out to be difficult and then I start to have the nightmare that I’m going on with my age and also that I could fall into depression. So far I don’t seem to be depressed but if I go on like this the risk is there. I have almost an obsessive fear of not being able to get out and throwing away all my life. You can imagine how I surfed gay sites on the internet and of course I ended up several times on gay project, always avoiding it because there are no pictures and stuff like that then I came across a forum post, a 32 year-old dependent on pornography. For him, things are different, but the obsession with pornography, in fact, is similar. I’m a very private guy and for me telling someone certain things is embarrassing but I can’t do anything more to move forward. University is about to start and I do not want to throw away the third year in a row. I need someone to give me a little desire to start over and tell me that for someone like me there may be a future of normality. You say that for a gay there may be an opportunity to live as he wishes, are you sure? You say it in every way but I see in front of me like a wall of impossibility. I know that I must return to a normal life, it’s almost a week that I force myself not to see more porn and not to drink but then it seems to me a big shit and I’m afraid that everything could resume as before. Answer me in private if you want.

Matthew

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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=43

GAY REALITY AND DAILY LIFE

This post will point out the concept of daily  gay reality that often, if neglected, can lead to discomfort and dissatisfaction.

The life of each of us is a “unit” extremely complex and varied where multiple factors of a rational, emotional and sexual origin interact. The interactions are not always aware and are often not easy to understand. However, it remains as a basic postulate that the “well-being” is a category that covers all the entire life of a person. In this sense, talking about sexual or emotional well-being, is to lose sight of the unity of the person. This speech may sound very abstract, but it follows, as a corollary, that any attempt to separate one element from others and consider them singularly produces by itself forms of discomfort. The interaction between the components of rational, emotional and sexual life depends largely on the relationships, that is, on the set of contacts and relations that the individual is able to establish and their performance, and in this sense we are deeply social animals.

Homosexuality is not a characteristic of sexuality but of the person. Any attempt to see homosexuality as purely sexual produces discomfort. To live well, homosexuality, as any form of sexuality, requires a strong affective component and a healthy dose of rationality. The affective component gives to sexuality its relational value, that is helps to consider it as a part of a relationship and even values it, that is gives it a specific value in order to improve couple’s partnership .

In sexuality, the typical effects of the lack of affective-relational component materialize to see homosexuality as a pure individual pleasure-seeking where the contact with the partner is only instrumental and the need to identify with standard patterns of behavior is particularly strong. In these cases, sexuality has an essentially individual significance, even when it occurs in the life of the couple, and the imitative attitude is pleading the lack of sexual fantasy.

The typical effects of the lack of rational component, for a gay guy, are to continue to foster a love towards a straight guy despite knowing that he is a straight guy or towards a gay guy basically uninterested. In these cases, in the absence of a real rational control, falling in love is seen as an absolute individual value even if it is completely irrational, a value that must be grown even if in fact its relational implications will not be realized. Due to the lack of proper rational control returns however the idea of ​​sexuality as a strictly individual dimension.

These concepts apply not only to the couple’s sexuality, these concepts apply also to masturbation that is not originally a search for an individual pleasure but is instead an attempt to build an interpersonal relationship, even if only in projective. I used the adverb originally to refer to masturbation before the introduction of pornography, that is when masturbation always had a sentimental value because the masturbatory fantasies were projected on real people to whom was addressed also the love interest. In that situation (affective masturbation ) the masturbation was really a way to live in projective  an interpersonal relationship. Today, however, very often, emotional masturbation, i.e. the combination of masturbation and affection has given way to the association of masturbation and pornography. Statistics show that about 40% of people masturbation happens on average in 90% of cases looking at pornography. It is easy to understand how pornography has distorted the original meaning of masturbation. In fact, pornography has taken to masturbation the value of interpersonal projective and turned it into a pure form of individual satisfaction. When pornography, which is impersonal, replaces the presence of true sexual fantasies projected onto another person, sexuality loses much of its meaning. The masturbation on cam deserves a separate mention. Of course, to practice it with your boyfriend, that is with a guy who loves you beyond sex, gives this type of masturbation an affective valence because it is actually a real couple’s sex. To practice it instead with strangers, with whom there is no relationship except during masturbation on cam, just means considering the other person as a substitute of pornography, perhaps more challenging. In this case there is no emotional dimension or communicative at all.

Sexuality is a fundamental but also ordinary dimension of the life, it should have its daily life, that should be integrated in the individual’s life as one of many aspects and should not be marginalized or seen as transgression. Sexuality should have a size of tenderness rather than of escape from the daily life. Undoubtedly because of the fact that sexuality is still seen as a way to break the taboo of the forbidden, sexuality itself continues to remain  in a shaded area, and talking about seriously remains a very difficult thing and prejudice and intolerance spread .

For a gay guy it’s certainly difficult to imagine living sexuality under ideal conditions. The limitations are a lot also for straight people, but for gay people the situation is particularly heavy. Before expecting that things will change starting at higher level, that is, at the legislative level, you should try to change them starting from your level, encouraging the growth of a new generation of gay people, more self-aware and therefore less substantially conditioned.

The key is the socialization, if the environment is a favorable environment. In this sense, it is essential to realize that beyond being gay many other aspects are important, it is essential to cultivate true friendships, to create a diffuse a network that fosters relationships and widens communication. The friendship between gay guys has a value similar to that of the Internet, because it makes a group of people something other than an amount of separated individualities. Overcome solipsism is essential at all levels.

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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=9&t=4