Just a Letter

Hey all…Sorry it took me so long to respond to yesterday’s e-mail fun. By the time I checked my e-mail there were about 40 e-mails and I wanted to see where it was going before I threw in my 2 cents. Oh yeah, here’s my disclaimer—I’m male and gay so that does affect my viewpoint at more than even I suspected.

1) First off—we’re all; men and women, fucked from the get go. We’ve all been a victim of society’s expectations—I blame pop culture—when it comes to romantic relationships. We have to be a certain way, he is going to be a certain way, it has to happen a certain way and it has to go a certain way for it to be ‘right’. We’re fed so much garbage about what ‘love’ is supposed to be that we are already at a disadvantage.

And the soul mate ideal fucks things up even more—this idea that there is just one person meant for us and vise versa. It doesn’t take into account how much we change through out our lives—the boy I wanted at 16 (a motorcycle riding rebel to burst into 4th period English as ‘Cool Rider’ blares over the intercom system) is not the same guy I would want now. I think we’re meant to fall in love several times during the course of lives but it is not a set pattern—some of us meet the right guy at 16 and some of us will meet him at 38.

The soul mate ideal puts such pressure on each relationship—each guy becomes a contender for ‘the one’ and when it doesn’t work out we question ourselves as to what was wrong. I’ve come to learn so much about myself from each of my past relationships and don’t see them as failures as much as practice for the real thing. I still have hope that it can happen.

What really sucks is that women have more pressure at the end of the day due to the biological. I mean, if you want to have a family that you birth then you do have a set time table where as men can reproduce when ever. I have never had male friend say that he needs to get his family plan started by a certain age where as the girls I know have said that to have their kids by the early to mid thirties that they have to start dating the right guy sooner than later. And this is true.

Most guys have a different viewpoint all together. They don’t ever feel that the ‘family time frame’ ever really closes. Even the ones who want marriage and kids still know that they can take their time to find whatever is their ‘right girl’. And society allows men the open timetable—just talk to any single guy in his 30’s and any single woman in her 30’s to see what’s going on.

So from the get-go there is a lot of pressure. And this turns most of us into either the serial dater—every guy they date is going to be the one—or the cynic—every guy is flawed because he isn’t going to be everything that we ‘want’ or ‘going to last’ so why bother? Neither side is right because the serial dater will date just about anyone while the cynic turns down every guy she meets. It’s easy to see how each side gets screwed.

2) In terms of couple and singles ‘getting each other’ and having common ground—to a degree we just don’t. Being in a couple means a responsibility to another person, someone who we have to taken into account when we make plans, choices and even what the goals are. Sometimes that sucks—I remember when I was with Fernando how many times I wished I could go out dancing with Jessica and Little Jen or dinner with ‘the girls’ or stretch out in my own bed.

Whereas being single is about responsibility to our selves, which means our happiness rests solely in our hands. We can go anywhere we want, take whatever job catches our eye, and dance with as many boys as we dare. But this sucks too; we all want someone who has an investment in who we are. There are so many times I wished I had someone I could cry in front of and not feel weak, someone who I could share all of myself with or just a cuddle on a cold night.

Because we’re coming from these 2 different places it is hard sometimes to interact socially—most coupled people don’t want to go to a bar 24/7 and get hit on by drunken guys as the single friend is off chatting some random guy while most singles don’t want to spend their nights at someone’s apartment watching films while their couple friends are cuddling on the couch.

And our problems are different—the singles are trying to figure out why they’re going on so many bad dates or complaining about how guys ‘suck’ meanwhile the coupled friend is trying to figure out why they haven’t had a real conversation with boyfriend/husband in the last 2 days though they have been home together the whole time or how to get him to pick up his damn socks. So it can be hard to find a common ground mentally and physically.

3) So—where does that leave me in all of this? I think that we can all be too hard on our selves at times. It’s okay to be cynical, wrapped up in our relationship, upset that we let the wrong boy back in our heart, that maybe we can’t deal with our single friends sometimes and vise versa. What’s not okay is beating ourselves up for our choices long term because that doesn’t fix anything.

The thing about all these e-mails that impressed me is how different we all are and yet all the same too. Neddy already said this but each of you is amazing and funny and cool and sexy and a good friend. Of course that is just my opinion.