BOYFRIEND UNIVERSITY: What’s love got to do with it?

Executive Director of PhillyGayCalendar

Years ago during a therapy session with my first therapist, I said pleadingly, “But I love him.” Betsy kindly rolled her eyes (or knowingly yawned) and then said, “So – who cares?” I desperately replied, “but…but…you don’t understand.” She then asked, “Does he treat you right?” I knew the answer was no, but didn’t say anything, instead looked out the window.

So what’s love got to do with it, Tina? To quote Ms. Turner, “It’s physical, only logical, you must try to ignore, that it means more than that.” Loving is not enough. It doesn’t resolve conflicts. It doesn’t bridge disconnects. It doesn’t bring us closer. At times, it even feels superfluous. Here’s my metaphor for love and relating. Relationships are like swimming and love is just the water in the pool. Sure you need the water – that’s a given. But just because you have a pool and water doesn’t make swimming laps any easier. Do you know how to swim? How’s your backstroke these days?

I remember contemplating a Stephen Dunn poem in my last relationship. The poem’s about loving despite inevitable disappointment. That’s the nature of relating – missed opportunities, feeling misunderstood, and needs going unmet. It’s normal and human to feel disappointed at times, even in relationships. Here’s the poem’s ending: “I will say I love you, which of course will lead to disappointment, but those words unsaid will poison every next moment. Therefore, I promise to disappoint you better than anyone ever has.”

Love alone does not make for a sustainable relationship. We need tangible skills. We need to know our limitations and expectations. Personally, I believe gay men need a bigger purpose for relating because love’s not enough. Let’s approach love and relationship from the bigger picture of culture and society. What’s the purpose of being gay anyway? What’s the value of gay relationships? Does loving another man really serve the greater good?

Our love goes unacknowledged as having any real purpose or importance for society. Don’t get me wrong – we have basic visibility and some cultural acceptance for which I am grateful. We’re not as invisible as we once were in years’ past. (Thank you Harvey Milk and all others.) However, my point is that, culturally, love between men is impotent, flaccid, and ineffectual; it’s meaningless. So how are you going to create and sustain a beautiful and healthy relationship if the greater context for your love is devalued?

To illustrate my point further here’s a quote by Gerald Unks, Editor of The Gay Teen. Gerald writes, “Within the typical secondary school curriculum, homosexuals do not exist. They are ‘non-persons’ in the finest Stalinist sense. They have fought no battles, held no offices, explored nowhere, written no literature, built nothing, invented nothing and solved no equations. The lesson to the heterosexual student is abundantly clear: homosexuals do nothing of consequence. To the homosexual student, the message has even greater power: no one who has ever felt as you do has done anything worth mentioning.” I also will add these words: no one who has ever loved the way you love is worthy of recognition.

Generally, gay men have the shortest-lived intimate relationships of any other group. The odds of maintaining longevity of a death-do-us-part are not in our favor. We suffer invalidating childhoods, internalized homophobia, and community neglect. In a word – we’re fucked!

So is that it – the future’s dismally bleak and I’m just a messenger of hopelessness? Is this all there is to look forward to? If that were true, then maybe I’d too slit my wrists like so many of my gay brothers before me. But it’s not true – I bring a message of hope. Let me answer the question I asked earlier: does loving another man really serve the greater good?

I answer resoundingly – yes! The cultural purpose of homosexuality and the necessity for gay relationships can be found in the basic definition of homosexuality itself. Same-sex attraction predicates same-sex relationships – simply, we are hard-wired physiologically to love other men.

Can you now see how our desires become an inherent gift for humanity? More than ever in humankind’s existence, all the world’s cultures need men to learn how to love each other better. Gay men are at the forefront of that worthwhile crusade. By design, we are chosen to answer the planetary call for more intimate, kind relating between men. We are called to teach by example, showing our straight brothers how to nurture tenderness between each other. Of course, we are aided with the help of sexual desire to accomplish this great task. Yet as I see it, straight men do not need our same sexual desire to benefit and learn from the results of our loving.

If we were to align ourselves with this greater vision of homosexuality, then I propose more gay relationships would thrive. If we could fix our eyes to this bright star on the horizon, then daily relationship struggles would be surmountable and trivialized. Gay relationships would become grounded in a contextual purpose, releasing men from relying on love alone to sustain and protect their unions. We could return to valuing love for its ability to enliven relationships and not necessarily define them. If we consciously protected this profound purpose for our homosexuality and let love exist independent of why men partner in the first place, then when asked the question, “What’s love got to do with it?” we’d have no choice but to shout out our answer – everything! It has to do with everything!

Now go out there and love each other.

Alan Robarge is a Philadelphia-based Psychotherapist in private practice. Learn more by visiting http://www.alanrobarge.com or http://www.boyfriend-university.com

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