While gay men, reflecting the larger culture's biases and prejudice, don't acknowledge break-ups apart from traditional-looking committed relationships, many of them end up in therapy complaining about feeling mysteriously depressed, frustrated, and confused about their lives. Often, I have to gently push to get them to admit that they are allowed to feel sorrow and loss over an unconventional break-up. Men don't like to think of themselves as victims in romance, and it's hard for us to admit aloud that we were dumped by another man, or that we chose badly. In part, this is a result of the male socialization to be competitive, and with that comes shame when we think we've failed at something. It's no wonder gay men give short shrift to the emotional fall-out of the many break-ups that occur in their lives, not easily talking about the emotional, spiritual, sexual and intellectual connection they wish they had made with someone who decided to break off whatever relationship they were having. It's often a stretch for my clients to find language to acknowledge their sadness when a man with whom they may have wanted to become closer was only interested in the sexual encounter.
Some might say that we give casual sexual relationships too much importance by talking about their endings as "break-ups," but I think it's healthy for gay men to start to think about one another less as objects and more as vulnerable human beings. I have worked with men like Tom who are confused about how to express the pain and sadness of the break-up while they are still contentedly sharing a life with their primary partners. I have worked with men like Vincent, and Paul, who don't want to know the lover is mourning because catching a whiff of his emotional bond to another man is threatening and stirs up jealous feelings. Queer culture has been very rich and allowed us to experiment creatively with relationships, but there are emotional casualties along the way that we have to begin to acknowledge and that we have to take responsibility for creating. For example, sometimes gay men are baffled at the intensity of the other's response, or even annoyed, when they end what was tacitly agreed on as a purely sexual affair. "Why is he so angry with me? He knew I had another lover. I played by the rules, I didn't pretend I was available, I didn't say I was going to marry him." Gay men have to start challenging the effect of patriarchal male privilege on us, which raised us to believe we don't need to care about the impact of our behaviors on other people's feelings. I work with my clients to build empathy. "How would you feel if you were in Julio's position?" I would ask Tom.
Even though we apply the same terms for similar-looking relationships, every single relationship has its own rules, expectation and characters. Sometimes, for example, fuck buddies--men who get together for the express purpose of having sex--make no pretense about romance or longevity. The understanding, at least at the beginning, is that what they are to each other is convenient, easy and hot sex. The socializing that takes place will be light--going to a movie, having dinner--always with the possibility of sex during or at the end of the get-together, because sex is ostensibly the point. But even though the arrangement might start out that way, it often shifts gears for one person. He may find himself falling in love with the buddy, wanting to spend more time with him and then feeling vulnerable about the shift in the power dynamic caused by his escalating feelings. Other times, some outside event might intrude on the affair and change its nature. For example, an hour before their date, Chris heard the results of his HIV test and learned he was positive. He told Joe, his sex buddy, about it because he was unusually upset when they met. Joe responded with kindness and support, but neither one knew what to do with the relationship now that this intimate moment had been shared. They couldn't go back to just having light conversation and sex. They drifted apart because there had been no gradual preparation, emotionally, for moving from dating and casual sex to becoming emotionally involved on a more intimate level. When they ran into each other at the gym, they continued to feel uncomfortable with each other.
Joe came to therapy to talk about what had happened. He and Chris had practiced safe sex, so he wasn't concerned about the possibility of having been infected, but he was confused. He said he liked Chris and felt he had responded to Chris's crisis the way he would have with anyone he liked. But he didn't feel that what they had been doing--having sex regularly for 18 months--gave him a context for this new level of emotional intimacy. We explored his hesitations about pursuing more of a relationship, including a friendship, with Chris, and Joe said he wasn't sure Chris was someone he really wanted to become closer to on an emotional level. He had called once to see how Chris was doing, and neither asked the other out. While my client said he missed not sharing steady sex and companionship from Chris, he also realized he didn't miss it enough to call back and ask Chris for a date. He was afraid that if he did, the relationship might develop into something more serious than he wanted
I told Joe that I absolutely considered this to be a break-up. As soon as I suggested that he might be mourning the end of the relationship, Joe began to talk about his guilt at abandoning Chris, ambivalence about bumping into him and also missing what they once had and resenting Chris for sharing too much information with him, even though he also felt compassion for Chris's situation. Joe's lover had died two years earlier from AIDS, and Joe was challenging his right to feel badly about losing his relationship with Chris when comparing it to that loss. I told Joe he might let himself be open to feeling the whole range of emotions that might go along with another ending in his life. "These are relationships," I tell my friends, and clients. "Whatever names we come up for what we do with each other, the connections we make with each other are real, and we shouldn't be surprised when we actually feel things for one another besides horny."
For many gay men, the distinction between friends and lovers remains a complex area, and so the issue of breaking up becomes even more ambiguous. In more than one case, the friendship becomes strained after one man discloses his desire to change the nature of the relationship and become more emotionally and sexually intimate. A client who slept with one of his good friends, whom he had had a crush on for more than a year, felt hurt and completely used by his friend afterward. Although they both seemed to have a good time in the sack, and were affectionate immediately after, in the days following the encounter my client experienced a decided cooling and distancing from his friend and recent sex partner. At my urging, he confronted his friend about the change in how he was being treated. His buddy acknowledged that had been keeping my client at arm's length because he had enjoyed the sex and now had no idea what to do with his feelings, since he was not ready for a serious relationship. My client had to deal with his sadness, frustration and also glimmer of hope that the friend might change his mind, but the other man felt mostly sad that the comfortable friendship was now transformed into a more sexually charged relationship. On the other side of the spectrum are men who feel that once they have slept with a friend, the sexual tension is dissipated and they can then use the sexual history as another piece of the foundation of their friendship.
Martin was in his late twenties when he began therapy with me. Initially, he was only able to say that he was not as happy as he would like to be and was confused by this, since he liked his work, had a satisfying relationship and numerous friends and gay community involvements. He was troubled by a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. He had been in an open relationship with Geoff for the previous seven years. They had been living together for five years when Martin began therapy. Martin felt that Geoff was his life partner, but not his lover, since he and Geoff rarely had sex with each other unless a third person was involved. When I attempted to explore Martin's feelings about not being sexually active with Geoff, he had difficulty talking about his sadness. He talked about his unhappiness that Geoff used cocaine and alcohol regularly, and said that the only time Geoff allowed himself to be emotionally expressive was when Geoff was drunk. Only when Geoff had been regularly dating another man did Martin finally feel able to move into the spare bedroom and formally announce that the lover aspect of their relationship was ended. As Geoff's drinking and drug use escalated, their friendship deteriorated. Eventually, having done a lot of work in his therapy, Martin gave Geoff an ultimatum: get clean or move out.
After Geoff returned from rehab, Martin asked if I would see them as a couple to help them sort out their feelings and generally help them clean up the debris of years of bad communication. I helped each of them air their numerous hurts and grievances that had gone unexamined in the years that they were lovers. Their love for one another was palpable, but initially each was cautious because the trust had to be earned once again. I felt it was crucial for them to acknowledge and make amends for the emotional damage each had inflicted on the other in order for a friendship to be possible. "It's really strange," Martin said in a recent session. "Geoff and I now have more intimacy, closeness and genuine concern for each other than we ever did when we were romantically and sexually involved. We both have really grown." Neither is at all jealous of the other's current partner and the two couples form a core of a group of friends that functions as family for all involved. Today, Martin describes Geoff as his best friend and dearest family member.
I have known many couples both socially and professionally who fit White's description. I myself was part of a couple for more than 10 years where my partner and I were explicitly nonmonogamous and we each slept around a lot. Eventually, we stopped being sexual with one another, and the quality of our intimacy and friendship began to deteriorate as we drifted apart socially, then broke up. A few years later, we were able to rebuild our friendship with a depth and intimacy that it had lacked when we were lovers, and to this day we remain the closest of friends and truly family for each other through numerous good times as well as crises. But jealousy is always active, even in open relationships. Even my lover and I, totally open about our affairs, had problems with it. I had a lot more sex outside the relationship than he did, but whenever he was out on a date, or if he woke up with someone in our apartment, it bugged me--even if I had someone there, too. I attributed my own problem with it to competitiveness. But in hindsight, in those days, I was not very aware of my feelings and how each of our outside sexual liaisons impacted on me--generally, in open relationships, one of the partners wants the sexual freedom more than the other, and the man who wants it less may not feel as empowered to say he doesn't want it. If he doesn't go out and have affairs, he might feel less "marketable" and therefore less powerful in the relationship than his partner, and if he does have affairs, he often feels sad and frustrated since he would rather be in bed with his husband.
Because gay "promiscuity" has been so relentlessly pathologized, I feel the need to inject here that it is crucial that therapists not allow our own values, feelings and experiences about relationships and sexual exclusivity to influence the quality of the work we do. Our job is to urge our clients to explore their feelings about the nature of their relationships and the impact of ending those connections on their psyches and lives. Depending on our own history with dating and relationships, this is a time during treatment that is rife with the possibility of countertransference and lapses in empathy. In addition, political correctness should play no role in the therapeutic work surrounding these issues. It is amazing how often clients are embarrassed by what they believe are their own supposedly unliberated and non "pc" feelings regarding sexual exclusivity or jealousy over a partner's having sex outside of the primary relationship. Therapists have to watch their own knee-jerk reactions to encourage or suppress viewpoints that are not seen as currently in vogue.
For too long, all men, and certainly gay men, have been trying to split off their sexual selves from their emotional and social beings. I envision and work toward a time when increasing numbers of gay men understand and are comfortable with the obvious and profound connections between our emotional and sexual needs, so that we learn to recognize and value the entire spectrum of relationships we form, be they fleeting, temporary or permanent.
Key Words: gay men, homosexuality, divorce, relationships, couples