Tuesday, February 20, 2007

sticking together


moss and red paint
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

Gay relationships are hard. Most relationships are hard, but gay relationships lack the type of glue that holds many straight relationships together: children, marriage, family obligation. There is little in a gay relationship that prevents one or another party from leaving if the going gets rough. Society still doesn't recognize gay relationships in the way it does hetero ones, and so the end of a gay relationship is, symbolically at least, not the same kind of social problem that a failed marriage is. This knowledge, this essential instability, is a subtext for my own relationships, exacerbated by my own experience as a part of a family shattered by divorce. So I hold on hard to my relationships, trying to make them work. I hope that I am doing the right thing, in doing this. Since my own family was broken apart, I live in fear of my own stability breaking down, the bottom falling out, so that I am left in the same bewildered, confused state that I was as a kid when my dad left. I try to be rational as best I can, but I would be a fool to try and deny the power of my fear.

3 comments:

about a boy said...

wow. you hit the nail on the head.

SHE said...

my long winded comment vanished. (i'll take that as a hint from comcast or google)

but.. the less ambitious version goes like this:

quality over quantity.

that's what really matters (says me/divorced two times now/ and disqualified to say anything)

Unknown said...

I too lost my long comment. Is Blogger misbehaving??

Whilst gay relationships have a whole suite of different problems to contend with than het ones do - I think that the area of overlap is greater than the differences. I've only been in one same-sex relationship, which only lasted 6 months, but on so many levels it was easier than any of those I've had with men.

I envy your need to hold onto your relationships. It's been a long while since I've even wanted to speak to a person let alone have or (worse still) sustain a relationship. Your humanity is a lot more intact than mine. And from where I am sitting you are doing pretty well.

[She - twice divorced? Respect!]