SEXUAL PLAY AND GAY SEX

A large number of guys, if not all, sooner or later take part in or attend to episodes of play with a more or less evident sexual background, that is episodes of play which involve more or less overtly sexual content or content concerning nudity.

The play usually begins with only the verbal content, for example playing “truth or dare” when it comes to “truth phase” about sexual content, then passing through physical contact not specifically genital, as in the wrestling for fun, that, for example, when you are on the beach and wrestle with only the swimsuit on, involves a very direct physical contact, sometimes also embarrassing, can also end up with sexually explicit play that also includes the possibility of touching the genitals, or implicates that one of the participants is expected to remain naked at the end of the play (strip poker).

The sexual play can be simple, that is it can arise without any explicit sexual purposes, but can also be programmed precisely in order to create a sexual involvement. In some cases, the sexual play verges on the edge of violence, when it comes to group play imposed on an unwilling victim. This is the case of “pantsing/de-pantsing”, a play that sometimes involves also behaviors of sexual violence and is practiced in schools or universities against freshmen or in military environments. The “pantsing” usually consists in yanking down quickly and unexpectedly the underwear of a guy in order to leave him exposed in front of everyone, but sometimes the “pantsing” means stripping a guy in group, obviously against his will, blocking him and preventing him from defending himself, often the others may touch the genitals of the victim even if in a playful way.

The violent meaning of this play is considerably reduced because the rite is performed as if it was a joke and those who have been “pantsed” can change role the next time. It should be emphasized that this sexual play is characteristic of environments dominated by men (male barracks and classrooms). Today, with the obligation of mixed classes (male and female together) and also of mixed teams of physical education, the “pantsing” has almost gone and only remains in college dorms only for guys.

Among the games that are on the border between play and sexuality there is the tickling, that starts trivially as a play but allows two guys to familiarize with themselves, with mutual physicality and especially lowers the threshold of the defenses and makes the behavior less controlled. When the laugh becomes uncontrollable, physical contact is accepted in a dimension of play and fun. It is not unlikely that a gay guy goes to erection being in a similar situation, which does not happen as easily not even in explicit sexual contexts.

The laugh is the Trojan horse of sexuality that allows a guy to accept in this way, what explicitly he would not accept. Through the tickling and through sexual play often occur early signs of gay sexuality in young people who are deemed always straight.

However, participate in sexual games between persons of the same sex does not mean being gay. In an all guys class “pantsing” was a typical straight play. I emphasize that it is not the participating in the game that determines sexual orientation but, according to sexual orientation, participation in sexual play is experienced in a different way. The straight guys, participating in a sexual play between friends of the same sex, see it as a game, as the most uninhibited game, but not as sexual activity, on the contrary gay guys, participating in a same sex sexual play, consider it precisely as a sexual activity.

The difference in the way to participate is reflected in the fact that a straight guy who is involved in a sexual play with other guys will not load the memory of that episode with sexual meanings, what on the contrary a gay guy will certainly do. The gay guy will transform the memory of that episode, which for him is clearly a sexual experience, into a strong masturbatory fantasy and that episode will be printed indelibly in his mind.

The difference in experiencing the participation in the sexual game between a straight guy and a gay guy can create big problems in the event that the gay guy falls in love with the straight one and between the two guys the atmosphere is so uninhibited to actually allow sexual plays, what is quite common.

Each of the two guys projects his own personal view of the sexual play on the other guy, so the straight guy thinks that for his friend the sexual game is just a game with no real sexual significance, therefore feels uninhibited because assumes that the other guy is also straight. The gay guy sees the participation in sexual plays by his straight friend as if it was a real gay sexual activity and begins to fantasize about the hypothesis that his friend is not really straight but in reality is a latent gay guy who sooner or later will realize that he is really gay because “if a guy participates in sexual activities with another guy clearly cannot be straight.”

Understandably these types of projections can create sexual expectations, hopes and, later, bitter disappointments. Sexual play is often used by gay men, consciously or unconsciously, as an attempt to involve their friends in a sexual dimension. For a gay guy is actually very difficult to understand that a straight guy is going through a sexual play in a completely different way. In this sense, try to involve a friend in a sexual play is definitely not a sensible system to verify his possible being gay. To find out if a guy is really gay there is only one way, that is, talk to him explicitly, what is often very difficult, if not impossible. To use various substitutes of the explicit direct speech means to choose unreliable methods.

A common feature of sexual games in which a gay guy tries to involve his friend to test his homosexuality or to lead him to homosexuality (what is absolutely meaningless because or you’re gay or you’re not), is the “graduality” which is a typical characteristic of not spontaneous but planned sexual play. In this situation, a gay guy who does not know the sexual orientation of his partner tries to involve him in forms of sexual play in which the sexual dimension is only just visible, if the participatory response of his friend is spontaneous, after a while the gay guy experiments a play in which sexual contents are more explicit, only if also in this case the participation of the friend is spontaneous it becomes possible to program another step towards a more explicit sexuality.

From the point of view of the gay guy, when his friend has accepted an openly sexual play, doing so he has clearly shown his homosexuality. This strategy of small steps moves ever forward the limit that separates the play from sexuality.

There are rare cases of straight guys who are willing even to be masturbated by their friends supposed to be straight. Such a thing is automatically interpreted by a gay guy as a manifested admission of homosexuality on the part of his friend. This conclusion derives from an assumption, namely, that what matters to identify a gay guy are external behaviors, i. e. that there are “behaviors” typically gay that a straight guy would never put into practice. In fact, experience shows that to identify a gay guy you must know his own interpretation of his own behaviors and those of others. In other words, it is not the behavior itself that defines a gay guy but the interpretations that he gives of that behavior.

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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=97

SPECIAL FRIENDSHIP AND GAY SEXUAL EXPERIENCES

This post is dedicated to the concept of “gay sexual experiences”. It is a concept that recurs frequently when chatting online with gay guys.

Gay sexual experiences can be considered in several ways:

1) As a kind of license to have attained the age of majority in gay sexuality on the basis of the theorem according to which masturbatory sexuality belongs to adolescents while couple’s sexual experiences are the passport to the adult sexual life.

2) As an exploration of sexuality conducted in couple.

3) As a sexual gradual approach to another guy to which there is already a real affective attraction but you don’t know his sexual orientation.

The point of view n. 1 assumes sexuality not as a contact between two people, but as an individual skill. Younger guys use expressions like “At my age, others have already done it,” guys about 25 years and beyond express themselves differently: “I still have not ever done it …”. Guys over thirties express themselves in a more melancholic way like “I do not want to miss the train” or worse, “if I don’t do it now I’ll never do anymore.”

Despite the differences in tone it’s evident, however, that these are people who give their sexual initiation a particular value in itself, regardless of who is the person with whom they will have their first experience. Basically there is an underestimation of the affective dimension and an overestimation of the sexual dimension.

In these situations the anxiety of the first time is not the anxiety that takes a guy who is having sex for the first time with a guy with whom he is in love, but just the anxiety to achieve as soon as possible that first experience, even with an unknown guy. People use the term ” weaning” to qualify what happens from the point of view of the guy who allows another guy to have his first sexual experience and “loss of virginity” to allude to that first experience so coveted and finally reached, without any too specific sexual reference.

Very often in such situations you end up being more or less satisfied or frustrated depending on the variety of sexual performances and on their correspondence to a model of gay sexuality derived from pornography. In this sense, expressions such as “we did not do everything” or “we had a full intercourse” hide the idea of sexuality as performance. The idea of being adult or realized through sex dominates, it’s typical idea of guys not yet fully mature in terms of affection, independently of the age.

The point of view n. 2 is already a condition of much more mature sexuality and is more or less genuinely satisfying according to how the dimension of being a couple is experienced in terms of affection.

In fact, each of the two guys who make up the couple may consider the other as a simple tool you need to fulfill sexual fantasies, and here I would say that the affective dimension is marginal, but the idea of sexual experiences as exploratory mode of couple’s sexuality can also be linked to a deep feeling of friendship and mutual respect or affection and also to a transport even more involving, that could be precisely an approach to affective true couple’s sexuality.

I would add that it is not unusual to experience sexual contacts born under genuine emotional relationships with the premise that “there is nothing binding” that slowly and almost imperceptibly consolidate, first for the establishment of a shared custom of sexual contacts and then for the establishment of more complex relationships in which affectivity and sexuality interact. In any case the point of view n. 2 starts with a couple where both guys have definite ideas about their behavior and can deal explicitly in a dimension of authentic sharing, but it is a condition that is not very common for gay guys.

The point of view n. 3 is probably the most common among hidden gay guys to whom a couple’s relationship or just a friendship that provides the opportunity to speak openly about gay sexuality is more a dream than a hypothesis. For these guys, and certainly not just for young guys but also for guys aged over thirty, the physical sexuality does not go beyond masturbation, at least for long periods. These guys live nevertheless their falling in love, even if in many cases the attraction is strictly one-sided. They fall in love with straight guys and more often with guys whom they consider only weakly straight and whose they do not know with certainty the sexual orientation.

It must be said that these particular friendships are much more common than people think and cannot be reduced to the category of gay-straight relationship because during the construction phase of friendship many selective mechanisms operate and the gay guy tends to automatically reject the hypothesis of creating a serious relationship with a guy strongly heterosexual or with a guy who does not offer an encouraging answer at the first attempts to get in contact.

The guy who does not feel gay, on the other hand, lives a close friendship with another guy only if in principle there are no closures to the deep emotional involvement that ties him to his friend. Basically, guys don’t enter by chance into these particular friendships. I must underline that I am referring to deep emotional relationships and very wanted by both sides. The guy who is not gay is anyway fully at ease within this relationship. The gay guy lives the friendship at two different levels, one of friendship and sharing that does not involve anything sexual neither explicitly nor implicitly and one unstated, dominated by sexual attraction.

In particular inside the friendship the gay guy sees the possibility of a love story and the relationship is experienced by him in a developmental dimension towards a sexually explicit story that is often destined to produce frustration. The gay guy lives that friendship in a way highly sexualized, he masturbates thinking about his friend, but he cannot talk about this with his friend. Apparently such a mechanism leads to a stalemate, but in reality things are sometimes different.

In some cases the evolution of the relationship towards forms of sexual friendship is a realistic assumption. As I have said elsewhere, sometimes the partner not explicitly gay of these friendships is a guy sexually confused, apparently straight but with a typically gay affectivity, in other words, is a guy with latent homosexuality; in other cases, is a guy who shows a partial bisexuality, but in most cases guys involved in such friendships are objectively straight guys, available and very open to forms of friendship that can seem, in behaviors, similar to homosexual ones. In all these cases the particular friendship may have not only a deep sense in the terms in which it manifests itself initially but can also present possible developments sometimes unforeseen and unpredictable because it can lead to the maturation process of awareness on the part of the guy who does not behave explicitly gay and it could push forward the boundaries of the relationship to include ways of doing things that are virtually impossible for any pair of straight friends.

A gay guy knowingly engaged in a friendship of this kind conceives sexuality only within that friendship for him sexual experiences are neither a source of pride nor a personal way of living forms of shared sexuality but are an attempt to involve his friend also from the sexual point of view, especially if the hypothesis seems accredited by various behavioral signals coming from the other guy.

If a guy loves another guy in an authentic way and is not aimed only to have sex with him, he tries to corresponds to the needs of the guy he loves, and does not attempt in any way to impose his own point of view or his own sexual categories. However, even when the loved guy appears genuinely straight, the gay guy starts anyway from the assumption that, under the appearances there is something gay. Adapt to the partner doesn’t mean, therefore, adapt to what he manifests of himself, which could result in a stalemate, but promote the growth and the emergence into the consciousness of the submerged part of the personality of the partner. The gay guy, driven by the idea of the latent homosexuality of his friend, cannot anyway stop to deal with him as if he actually was 100% hetero but will build in his mind a gradual path made of gay sexual experiences, more or less explicit, that could awake the homosexuality of his friend. It is usually a real therapeutic path toward homosexuality. In this way, if there is true love of the gay guy toward his partner, are taken for granted certain assumptions:

1) If my friend is really straight I will love him anyway.

2) The path based on sexual experiences is essentially aimed at the good of my friend, I shall be happy to share with him a sexual contact but the purpose is not primarily my sexuality but his.

3) There is no hurry and I have no essential targets, but I will adapt, anyway, to the time of my friend and to his true needs.

These assumptions combine a selfish dimension linked to the personal sexuality with an altruistic motivation of love which is to promote the sexuality of a friend.

The gradual sexual experiences that the gay guy tries to make and suggest derive from the assumption that in his friend there are forms of inhibition of sexuality and so the path will be governed by guiding principles like the followings :

a) Anything that creates or stabilizes inhibition should be avoided: the aggressive behaviors, the insistence, the tones that indicate disappointment or frustration.

b) You must ensure that the behaviors gradually more uninhibited arise spontaneously in a very relaxed way, on gaming and on non-sexual intimate moments.

c) You must avoid inappropriate steps or at the wrong times while the response to the verbal and nonverbal proposals coming from the friend must be immediate and accompanied by a smile.

d) You must show the maximum availability to the friend, both of time and affective response. Devote time to the partner is the greatest sign of attention.

e) The purpose is not to have a sexual relationship with a friend but to allow him to overcome blockages and inhibitions through a soft approach to gay sexuality.

f) When your partner takes a step forward in the size of the acceptance of gay sexuality it must be presented as perfectly normal, expected and obvious. When there is a refusal, a partial rejection or a referral to another time, it mustn’t be accepted as frustrating and the relationship must go on as if nothing had happened.

The path to acceptance of gay sexuality for some guys is long and for guys with latent homosexuality can end in nothing, I mean that unfortunately it usually doesn’t lead to the outcrop of the homosexuality at the conscious level. The path based on gay experiences progressively more explicit, to bring a guy with latent homosexuality towards awareness of his sexual orientation can stop immediately or can be very long and winding and often the dreamed results are not achieved at all. The awareness of this fact, is enough by itself to turn away from the idea to engage in this difficult path the guys who are not really in love, and this path sometimes very difficult and with an uncertain outcome remains the prerogative of the only guys who feel a real deep love interest to their friend. For these guys the true satisfaction is not to fulfill their personal sexual dream but to share with their friend a path, or a path segment, that seeks at least ideally a deeper life community.

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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=96

GAY FRIENDSHIP AND GAY LOVE VIA CHAT

This post aims to clarify some of the focal points of the virtual relationships (chat, e-mail and forums) that may arise between gay guys. On the definition of love and friendship in general terms were written many books and is not my intention to discuss the Two Chief World Systems, but if you want to give to the word love a connotation that is not too abstract, it must be assumed that falling in love is may not be limited to intellectual affinity or to sharing moral values but must necessarily involve physical-physiological feelings related to sexuality in a profound way.

At this point a remark is necessary. When, in real life, a gay guy falls in love with another guy, his falling in love doesn’t start from the intellectual level or from the possible cultural affinities but from the physical attraction, i.e. by a whole set of factors that depend on the physicality of the other: smile, physique, voice, body attitudes, the tendency to behave more or less seductive.

This is so true that often gay guys fall in love with straight guys far away from them in every way, but able to embody “physically” their ideal guy. If a guy seems physically attractive we begin to ask ourselves questions about him and seek a closer contact in terms of dialogue, in practice we are interested in that guy. This mechanism of falling in love, which is typical of real life, cannot operate through the internet where everything remains detached from the physical dimension. In these situations is involved a projective mechanism that makes us imagine the guy with whom we are talking in chat according to our categories.

I stop for a moment to clarify what is a projective mechanism and how it may be conditioning reporting a concrete example.

There is a way to test the sexual orientation based on the reading a story “not sexually connoted”, i. e. that does not have in the text in any evidence to clarify with certainty whether one of the characters is a guy or a girl (lack of pronouns such as he or she, him or her and so on). The text then, in itself, is neutral.

When the story is read by a straight guy, that guy interprets it according to his categories as a straight story. But when the story is read by a gay guy, reading is not so automatic and often the guy comes to notice that the text hasn’t any sexual connotation, what a straight guy almost always doesn’t notice. On this basis it’s possible to construct projective tests for the determination of sexual orientation that have a concrete reliability. The projective reading is basically the reason of the charm of literature or the cinema because we project ourselves in the events and interpret them according to our experience.

An exchange of mail, a conversation via chat or a dialogue on a forum creates a text, more specifically a text written “with four hands”. This text has the characteristics of literature, even more accentuated by the fact that it is built with four hands, that is the better situation for projective readings but while the projective reading of a book is not aimed at the construction of an interpersonal relationship and everything remains inside the mind of the reader, in exchanging texts via the internet the projective inclination must sooner or later come to terms with the fact that on the other side there is another guy with his projections on the same conversation. There is basically the risk of misunderstanding, compounded by the fact that many chats remain at extremely symbolic and sublimated level and therefore are extremely open to projective interpretation. The projective mechanisms in contacts via the internet can be so important to bring even to put aside the idea of meeting the other guy in person because that could disturb or destroy the projective mechanism which in itself is apparently rewarding.

I would add that often in conversations in chat among gay guys is common the mechanism of the “drift towards the language of love” that is, the gradual and automatic indulge in a language that looks more and more like a language of love. It’s not at all uncommon that two guys who have never met in person end up talking like lovers. The emotional investment in these mechanisms is often very high and the projective dimension is so strong that the risk that the conversation is only the starting point for the construction of stories that exist only in fantastic projections is very real. Basically we create a partner to our measure, completing in a projective way the real elements (often of very low significance) that emerge from real dialogue. This is so true that a gay guy gets to fall in love with a straight guy, reading every single element that does not appear 100% straight as a sign of possible homosexuality and devaluating all those elements, usually very clear, showing that the guy is 100% straight. But

I must underline that the mechanism also operates in relationships between gay guys, that is, between guys who know with certainty that the other guy is gay. The projective mechanism reaches the point of attributing to the other guy a projective physical identity that doesn’t belong to him at all, that is, to embody him in an image that represents the projective ideal for the gay who fell in love with him. It gets to the point that the projective image of the other is also loaded with sexual values and it’s possible for a guy to experience a true sexual attraction towards another guy who he has never met. In practice we can fall in love also sexually with a person that 90% has been created by our projective imagination that also attributes to him a body according to what we want. The drift towards the language of love does the rest and gives the distinct impression that you are building a true love story. But in all this there is a fundamental error, in practice the natural mechanism that leads from the physical attraction to the affection and love is quite upset.

Just remember that to fall in love in the true sense of the word physical and physiological involvements are essential but must be addressed to a real person, not to an image created by the projective fantasy. Some substitutes of the physical presence, such as photos or images sent by a camera cannot in any way replace the physical presence itself that remains the necessary element of the real falling in love, I mean that without the physical presence and without a genuine form of physical and physiological involvement there is no love.

I would warn guys who meet in chat to avoid the drift towards the language of love that only creates expectations that can be completely destroyed even by a short meeting where we realize that our projections had nothing in common with reality and that the speech (only the speech) went on to freewheel, far beyond reality. It is generally very easy to go on chatting using strong expressions, to say “I love you” and even without any real base but it is very difficult to resize these statements later, when they have already created big expectations that the direct personal knowledge has contradicted. At this point, if when the two guys meet, the disappointment is mutual, after all, the problem is easily solved because the expectations from both sides collapse at the same time, but if one is disillusioned and the other one feels physically strongly attracted, asymmetries become very strong and situations are difficult to manage.

In chat rooms or via e-mail, i.e. without direct personal knowledge, it is quite possible and I would say very less risky to create friendships, which are much less affected by projective mechanisms than possible love stories. I notice that the spontaneous tendency of guys is to look for a boyfriend to fall in love with, rather than one or more real friends in chat, but the tools are much more suited to the creation and maintenance of friendships than to the creation of love stories. As a good rule of prudence I would say that it would be good to reserve discourses with strong affective connotation only to people who you have actually met even outside the chat or forum that is you have known in person.

And here comes an important consideration. When two guys meet, being really two in front of each other, in real life after they have met in chat, the meeting gains a very strong affective connotation thet makes it appear as a step towards the construction of an important and reciprocal story. This is why it is usually better to build relationships that start from friendship, meeting as a group and not as a couple, that is, starting relationships that do not create too many expectations that could turn into disillusionment. Friendship is always the first step, if the physical presence is engaging and encouraging then it may make sense to go a further step, otherwise the friendship remains and is not affected by the fact that is not followed by a story with a higher involvement because expectations have not been fed in the dark.

I would like to conclude that the internet (used with great caution, for heaven’s sake!) provides opportunities but can also create heavy disappointments and that if you love someone, even if only as a friend, you must avoid to deceive him letting him run towards cold final showers that leave a sense of deep sorrow. So it is good to always keep an attitude of responsibility and think before about the possible consequences of what you do and you say.

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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=94

MARRIED GAY GUYS AND SUBLIMATION

Hello Project,

I am writing you this email because I had a look at your google site and also at your forum and it seems a serious thing, neither ideological nor to make money. I am in a rather difficult situation and I need to understand what is happening to me.

I’m 31 years old, I could tell you that I’ve always been straight, because the outside was always so, and I could say that for a long time, I also thought that I was really so, but if I go to look far back in memory, when I was 11 – 12 y. o., I find in practice many things that make me doubt.

As a kid, I was obsessed by the idea of seeing other kids naked, at the beach I tried to spy on them, the boys not the girls, and I still remember very well when a 19 y. o. guy who was playing with us on the shore took off his swimming suit in front of me with the most natural. I would not have forgotten it, at that time I was more or less 14 y. o.. I discovered masturbation this way and alone of course. I tried to do everything to be with that guy who treated me well, but he had a girlfriend and his parents had given him a canoe for two people, and since then he had started to sit always with the girl, when they came back to earth he was playing football with us and it was very nice, then the girl called him and they left. I’ve hated that girl. From 14 years onwards my fantasies have been about guys older than me, I was already no longer interested in my peers.

The following summer, I was 16, and I met at the beach a 17 year old guy, a guy with a nice body. After a few days we got into the habit of bathing in the sea together, he had an inflatable raft, we went where the water is a bit deeper, but not too much because we still were able to touch the ground with our feet, he would stand in the raft and I was trying to drop him in the sea and in the end I could drop him in the water but deliberately I waited a few minutes before deciding to drop him.

The thing that mattered to me was the fact that he wore a swimsuit very wide and when he put up in the raft while I was shaking it trying to get him down, I could see everything (his sex). Clearly he was not excited at all but I liked a lot to see his penis that way.

When I was aged 17, attending penultimate year of school, my life has changed. A priest who was more or less 50 y. o. came to teach us Catholic religion, this priest had his charm because he presented religion in a smart way. This priest was leading an oratory for guys and I started to attend it, at the beginning just because there were guys. There was also a Sunday Mass together.

My teacher introduced me to religion, he never confessed the school boys and I appreciated it very much, in short, with a lot of resistance, at least at the beginning, I started going to church and there came the first problems with sexuality. I think that all the guys who attend the church have had to deal with sexual problems but nothing serious.

In the group managed by the priest girls were rare but it was possible to meet also girls. One of them was called L. was pretty and also a lot smart. I’ll spare you the details, at age 17 and a half I had my first sexual relationship with L. and I liked it well. In practice since then I have no more had gay fantasies of any kind. I was an athlete, I was naked with my teammates every day but I never got excited.

Two years ago I married L., in practice, according to the canons, I become a normal man. L. didn’t know anything of my sexual fantasies when I was young because I never had had told her such things and at that time I honestly thought that I had completely overcome that things.

But for six months now things have changed, but have changed very slowly, I met at work a 24 y. o. guy, frankly I do not even care whether he is gay or straight, even if I think he’s straight. He knows that I’m married and I love my wife very much which in a way is true because I live with her my sexuality and sexually I’m completely happy and also when I rarely masturbate I think about my wife, but the trouble is that I tend to see my wife especially or rather only under sexual profile. When something is not right between us we put it on the sexual and overcome all the problems, at least in appearance.

With my colleague I don’t feel sexual physical implications of any kind, but I think I’m nevertheless in love with him, I do not know how to explain, I got to lie to my wife to spend an evening with him, I feel an extreme tenderness towards him and between us grew a very strong relationship that appears to me that he lives the same way. We’re good together, when I quarrel with my wife (it happens rarely) I call him and his voice has the power to calm me down, when I see him in the office I’m just fine, I miss him badly when he is away, it’s a little what should happen with my wife but with her things never go this way, on the contrary with my colleague it always happens.

I have read on the forum of the dissociation between affectivity and sexuality, however, it refers only to men who are sexually attracted to other men and fall in love only with women, the opposite is happening to me. I do not think I could conceive the idea of having sex with my colleague, I tried to see him also from the sexual point of view but the sense of our relationship is not that I do not know what to think, perhaps I can have it removed. However, what makes me think more and in a way encourages me is the fact that it is a shared thing, I do not know if he realizes it or lives it simply as a beautiful friendship between straight guys but it is certainly something special also for him.

In recent times this story has increasingly become inside me. I do not know if you can call it falling in love, certainly there isn’t visible sex but just seeing him makes me feel good, it’s a bit as if he were my model of man, the best I’ve known, physically but also emotionally, I respect him really, I love him, I think he is better than me and that gives me great pleasure. I came to think something paradoxical and that maybe I could come to prefer to live with my colleague without sex than with my wife with sex. I know I may sound hypocritical but that’s what happens to me.

What should do a married 31 y. o. guy who is in this situation? I do not have any intention of losing my friend. My wife could be happy also this way, in practice what am I depriving het of? A little affection, it is true, but this is a betrayal? And how it will end?

Project, no problem if you want to publish the mail, but please answer me in private. Thanks for your patience. I’m waiting for your answer (and possibly your msn contact).

Robert (not my real name)

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If you like, you can join the discussion on this post on Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-married-gay-guys-and-sublimation

GAY-HETERO RELATIONSHIP AND SEXUAL EMBARRASSMENT

Hello Project,

my name is Jake, it’s not a pseudonym, I am the son of an American father and an Italian mother, my mother was from Milan (unfortunately she died three years ago), my father is from Baltimore. I studied in a Catholic boarding school in Baltimore until I was 13 years old, living practically always there. My father is even now a manager and he never had time to spend with me. My parents never went over well then, when I was 13 years they divorced and I have been entrusted to my mother and I went to live in Milan. I went also to high school in Milan and graduated there. Now I am 34 years old. I recovered a little my relationship with my father when I was 30 years old when my mother became ill. He did everything to help my her, he took her to the U.S. and made the best specialists visit her. He has been close to her until the end even though they were divorced. Not only he had a dignity, but he behaved with me unexpectedly, he was then 62 years old and I think he realized what it means to have a child. I told him openly that I was gay and he was going to cry, he was glad that I trusted him to the point of saying such a thing. Now he is 66 years old and is going to retire, he will leave his job in July. He has no one in U.S. and I think he will come to live in Milan because my mother has bequeathed to him her apartment in Milan (the divorce of my parents was really a bit strange!).

I understood I was gay in my last year in Baltimore, between 13 and 14 y. o., when I fell in love with another guy who was in college with me, but then I came to Italy. The first months I was in Italy were terrible, my Italian was terrible and at school my friends were saying things I was not able to understand exactly and I did not dare to ask in order to get more explications. Physically I was not like others. I am kind of very English, not a Californian guy, I’m very tall and very thin and not at all muscular. At school I was very marginal and did not do well. My mother tried to do everything but it was not easy. I was good in English and bad in Italian. Then slowly, reading a lot and being with my teammates I began to understand the language better and my problems became more and more easier to overcame.

I was about 16 y. o. old and was attending the third year of high school when I took my first strong crush for a guy who had arrived that year and was clearly straight, but nevertheless I was in love with him. From then until the end of high school and over, I thought that that guy would become gay due to the fact that I loved him. He was very friendly with me and treated me very well, but for him girls were too much important. We studied together often. Spending an afternoon beside him, shoulder to shoulder and do the math together, for me, was both a torture and the thing I wanted most. I longed to see him naked but it never happened, not because it was impossible, but because I was convinced that such things would have soiled the love I felt for him. Maybe I was too idealistic, but at that time I reasoned that way. After high school I saw him only a couple of times, then he got married at the age of 24 and I went to his wedding, with a bit strange feelings but I went there.

Then there was the Polytechnic. I am now a civil engineer but I’ve never been too good at science. The engineering degree was certainly not my biggest dream, but my mother worked in that area and I would find an excellent accommodation. The problem was to get a degree. At first I sat down to cry of despair on the exercises of analysis and geometry. I learned things mechanically but understanding very little. Then, coincidentally, just before Christmas, a guy asked me to take the place also for him in the morning for classes, which were very crowded, I did so and from there was born a story, the most important story of my life and at the same time the most conditioning. His name was Henry, an average guy, not beautiful, but at 20 also an average guy looks beautiful! We started studying together. He was a monster of brain! He was able to understand things that I could never understand. So in the morning we attended classes together until 14.00, then lunch together and then study together until ten o’clock in the night and beyond. He pulled like a tractor, he would not let me lose a second, I struggled a lot at the beginning, but I knew that if I had not worked hard to be at his height I would have lost him, because he could not waste time without exams. Well, I got 24/30 in analysis, my first exam, he got 30/30, but, I confess, I was not jealous, then, after the first exam came the second. I was recuperating. My grades were always lower than his, but the difference decreased. Then, after a long time, an examination of topography, I got more than him and I loved his reaction: he was happy for me, he was not envious.

To realize that I was in love with him it took me two years and a half. At first I was too stressed out by the university and the hamletic doubt “Is he gay or he’s not?” always came back to my mind. I’ll make it short. We graduated in the same session, for two years we went on holiday together, we continued seeing each other even after we had found a job, often spending Sundays together. He never, never, talked about girls! I do not tell you about ruminations I did on these signals. The relationship between us was excellent, just like two brothers, but even more. I went back and forth a thousand times between the idea of telling him explicitly that I was in love with him and the idea of leaving it all up.

One day he came to me with an air of mystery and sentimental confession and told me that he was going to tell me a very important thing that I absolutely had to know. I thought it would finally come to the point, instead he told me he was about to get married because his girlfriend was pregnant. I passed from riches to rags, but I had to prove my enthusiasm and hugged him so tight that rose him from the ground, he was beaming really, I was pretending to be happy, but world works this way. I have been also the best man at his wedding.

Inside of me I thought I was doomed to fall in love just with straight guys. That’s enough! No more hetero guys! So I decided at about 26 or 27 y. o. to throw myself completely into the gay world: gay chats, gay dating sites, communities and so on, I filled out all my ads. I was determined to try. I thought, but hey, guys my age have a love life (and even a sex life) and what do I do? It’s not fair! I’m wasting the best years of your life! I began to get responses to my ads, Project, what a squalor! People who put fake photos, boys who only know how to say ass and cock, men aged 50 who think they are 20 y. o., people broken out which are quite crazy. I’ve met some fifty of these people in couple of years, I found only one of them quite normal but I think he was a minor pretending to be an adult, I asked him to show me the identity card but he did not want to let me see it. I said: but you’re a young boy, but what are you doing on these sites? And he answered me one thing that put me in crisis, he said: and you then, what are you doing? Then I invited him to dinner. He thought that we would go to bed, but I told him that maybe I was not on those sites for the reason that he had thought, and I took him back to his house, when he got out he gave me a very strong handshake. Now, after so long, occasionally he sends a message. Let’s say it was the most beautiful story I have experienced in recent years. So we arrived between my 28 and 29. I was a virgin, and so I’m now and I’m not afraid of that because having sex with shabby people just to see what it is, it’s not really something I want. In practice, until this year I have continued to live the sex as I lived it when I was 16 y. o., then that is not too bad and at least you certainly don’t get in trouble catching diseases.

And now I come to the last part of the story. In my project group of Civil Engineering, three months ago, arrives Mark (let’s call him this way) a young 31 y. o. engineer beautiful as the sun, I can just say so, and I start to go back into the flask. In practice Mark, for me, at the official level, is just a work colleague, our relationship is strange halfway between formal (shy) behavior and subliminal messages. Mark has invaded my brain and dominates even the smallest spaces. I think of him at all the day, I feel very strong feelings for him as I have never felt for anyone else. I have to wear always very wide clothes because just thinking of him makes me to get a hard-on, I don’t tell you when I’m close to him. Project, now I’m really in trouble. Mark will be the third straight guy I fall in love with? I would not for no reason that it was so, because I think that for me this is the last train. Or Mark or no one at all! He has nothing to do with guys of gay sites, he’s very careful about what he does and what he says to never pass the border but has some hesitation, some breaks certain ways of sighing just a little while talking, some small facial movements and in some very special moments that can only be gay.

Apart from the trivial. No rings, no familiarity with the office girls, no private problems at work, but he flashes you (accidentally?) certain looks that make you dry, and steal your soul. Project, it’s about three months that I’m back in anguish. I do not know what to do, have I invite him to my house, alone or with other people? I’d invite him to come to the pool with me, I’d certainly do, but then I do not do so at all and when I’m in front of him I feel totally embarrassed and treat him in a formal way and I would not absolutely.

Then there’s just a very private question I’d like to talk with you about me and this guy because something sexual happed between us and I felt a terrible embarrassment for what he may have felt, I really wanted to disappear. Now he behaves as if nothing had happened and this worries me even more, but for that I would like to talk in private. My contact is [omitted]. Just add me and I’ll call you.

A hug. Jake

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GAY-STRAIGHT LOVE STORY

Listen guys, I read this blog choosing posts randomly and I like it, I somehow find myself here, I’m 27 and do not know anything about gay life, as it is called today, that is, gay associations and gay clubs, and I have to add, I do not want to know anything, it is not a matter of principle, I think they are useful things but I don’t feel close to these things, if you’ll pardon the term, these things make me think even more that we, gay people, and I am proud to use the word gay, even now dream of social integration and maybe we’ll dream forever. A little time ago browsing internet I found a statement that struck me: “gays will be truly socially integrated when there will be no more gay bookstores or gay sections of bookstores, but gay books will be on display on the shelves along with all the other books.” I believe that we should not be ashamed of being gay, but that we should not even try to create a world apart, because if we act so it is obvious that others will consider us another planet. I do not want to dream too much, I just can tell you that I didn’t yet come out and probably never will, because honestly I’d have big problems, especially with my parents, even now at age 27, but things are this way and I cannot do anything, nevertheless I try to see the positive, browsing for blogs I’ve seen that there are serious gay blogs and more than a few. I think that many guys who try to write honestly about their lives without shame and without locking in a ghetto do important work for many others who now perhaps only read. Meanwhile, be aware that other gay guys really exist and they are not all fans of gay clubs is something that helps to grow. When I found out that I was gay, now more than 11 years ago, there was internet, I don’t come from the Stone Age, there were very few things for gay guys and it was almost only porn, on the one hand I was attracted but on the other I hated such things, I didn’t feel close to this kind of things. Then things changed, gay sites with traps for cash as dialers have declined dramatically, and I say thankfully, and we began to see a little gay erotic but not exactly the heavy porno, and we have also seen sites with gay stories not necessarily gay porn stories, erotic stories, yes, but already at an acceptable level and sometimes even artistic, but they were all in English. I read English quite well and I’ve read so many gay erotic stories, even beautiful, even artistic, with too much erotic emphasis to be true works of art, but in essence very nice things, but in Italian? I red only a few stories in Italian, almost all erotic stories. Then slowly grew the fever of blogs. But serious gay blogs in Italian were very rare, maybe the guys were afraid, I don’t know, in fact I also started a blog but I told friends and then I could not post gay content, I would have been able to open another blog but I was puzzled, I was afraid of being detected, I know, in fact I never started a gay blog. Now slowly the mentality of gay guys has changed, many gay blogs are not related to associations, are gay free blogs, are blogs of a personal nature and I like them very much because their authors are fully normal gay guys. Now, to make you realize the level of paranoia of a gay like me, think that a while ago I wanted to write “fully normal” gay guys, but with the quotation marks, which is a contradiction because there should be no emphasis to be done. First of all, gay people, before anyone else, should put in mind the idea of ​​not being a ghetto. You might say, “But after all this talking where’s the story?” And you are right but I do not have a gay story to tell, at least in the usual sense of the term, I’m a gay without a story typically gay, running after a million fantasies, falling in unilateral love tens of times, taking crushes absolutely unilateral at least two or three times a month, but gay life in the sense of true gay love life with another guy … well, there’s nothing like this! I feel deeply affected by these things, call me stupid but I would have sex only if I was really in love with a guy, or I just put the idea aside. I read in many places that gay men just want sex … But for goodness sake! For me it has never been so, and now another thing against the tide: if I had to choose between a relationship based on sex with a guy whom I don’t really love, who even attracts me on a physical level but I don’t really love, and a serious friendship, maybe even with a straight guy, I would not doubt, I would prefer true friendship with a straight guy. This is not a generic way of saying because I have a straight friend that I love deeply, his name is John, he would never be in bed with me, or maybe in extreme circumstances he would, but would do it for me, not because he really wants, I honestly will not give up this friendship for anything in the world, I miss like a crazy a sexual relationship with John, but I want John, and if I can have John close to me only without sex, that’s okay. If you want to read, now I try to tell my story, as I said before, it is not a gay story in the true sense of the word, I don’t even know how to describe it. He’s a bit younger than me but not so much, he’s 24 years old. I met him by chance at a party and I fell in love right away, he danced with the girls, I obviously didn’t, but he noticed me, came close to me and introduced himself, we didn’t shake hands, then came the buffet and he brought some sandwiches for me and passed them to me on a plate. Passing the plate, perhaps inadvertently, but I’ll never know if that’s it, he touched my hand lightly, I felt an electric shock in 2000 volts, he noticed it and looked me in the eyes and understood everything, I did not say a word, I was in total embarrassment, he continued to look into my eyes and smiled at me. Every now and then during the feast our eyes met, I had the heart rate to a thousand, because I loved John, I could have sworn he was gay and I was in a tremendous turmoil. In the evening, when the party was about to end, he asked me a ride home and I said, here we go! We left and we stopped to talk a bit about this and that, but it was obvious that it would not end there, honestly at this point I expected a little sex. He told me: “Do you feel embarrassed?”, I replied: “Yes a little ‘” and he continued: “Well, if you tell someone that you’re in love with him, you tell him a beautiful thing” I said, “Then you understand?” and he answered: “Yes, but there is a problem, I cannot respond to your feelings the way you prefer because I’m not gay, but wait, I can love you seriously and I think I love you … what do you say about? It makes sense to you? “. In a way my world had collapsed, on the other hand I did not know what to say to such a proposal that I did not expect at all. John continued: “I’m in love with you, in another way, but I’m really in love with you, do not say no, please do not put me out just because I’m straight, I’m fine with you, I’m fine really.” I didn’t know what to do and I ended up just smiling and nodding. Now I do not want to dwell on things that I feel are of enormous value but maybe you can consider worthless things, in short, two years have passed since that afternoon and we met almost every night, we talked with each other opening ourselves to total, he told about girls he met and one girl in particular he was very interested in and I said to myself, that my fantasies, including sexual ones, are about John and his are about  that girl but in the end fantasies are very similar, we look for the same things, there is an underlying sweetness in the way of being of John that enchants me, I think he’s really an happy guy and he deserves it and I’m happy because I was able to meet him. Sometimes when we drive we sing the Marseillaise and we are moved thinking of those who fight for freedom against tyranny. The first times I thought he was with me for moral duty, for pity’s sake, something like that, and then I tried to leave and he felt very badly and attacked me saying that I went around to deceive people and he needed me and that I did not understand anything and that I reasoned not as a gay but as a stupid, that I had in mind only four idiot patterns of behavior and then he started to cry. I felt the desperation inside me because I had hurt him so deeply, then I took his hand and he shook mine very strong. We were there for a quarter of an hour. He was crying more and more slowly, then turned to me and smiled, still with tears in his eyes and told me: “Do not you dare ever again!” and I told him: “John, I love you!”

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