MyPartner

Welcome to The Perfect Partner Forum hosted by myPartner.com!

The Perfect Partner Forum is an online forum to bring relationship experts together with tens of thousands of single gay men looking for their perfect partner. The focus of the forum is for our experts to share their knowledge around developing and establishing healthy and happy gay relationships. The forum is meant for our experts to posit their own thoughts through blog postings, but also to engage online users on the content that is important to them.

So don't hold back, ask us the questions that are burning for you and/or engage the experts and respond to their latest postings!

Eyes on the Prize

Jack Mauro

Being involved with a guy who's just plain fantastic looking isn't, as they used to say in my parents' day, all skittles and beer. Oh, it has its moments, you bet. It's nice to walk down the avenue with gorgeousness by your side. It's uplifting to know that the gorgeousness wants to be with you. And it's fun, if not praiseworthy, to be envied by those less blessed in the partner department.

But it's different. Make no mistake. I dare say it's as different as being drop-dead gorgeous yourself is and that, I can tell you, is a rough road. No, that has never been my own personal hell. But it doesn't require much in the way of transference to see that being assessed by nothing but incredible looks – which is what happens, almost always, to them what has them – can be a bitch. And the guy with the beautiful guy is in a secondhand, similar quagmire, usually and automatically judged as a shallow trophy hunter. There, I have been.

How do you deal with this? You don't. That is, since you're not some superficial ass willing to date only breathtaking faces and bodies, you are with your man because you know him and care for him as a human being. So his sensational looks are not your issue. Your bond with him, moreover, is stronger because you're one of the few in his life who will dismiss – or at least keep in perspective - what the world values so disproportionately. That is pure gold, to the stunning individuals out there. (One other benefit: when you're out to dinner, getting the server's attention is rarely a problem.)

Is Gaydar a Function of Pheromones?

By Rik Isensee, LCSW

We’ve all heard of the power of pheromones, those seductive hormones that waft in the wake of everyone who passes by, and how they influence mate selection. But I had always wondered whether these scents also capture the imagination (and sexual responsiveness!) of gay men.

A recent article in Psychology Today (February, 2008, p.73) describes an experiment by Charles Wisocki, a geneticist at U. Penn’s Chemical Senses Center. He had participants smell the sweat from the underarms of several different sources. Gay men preferred the scent from other gay men, lesbians from other lesbians, and heterosexual women preferred the scent of straight guys.

They also reported that researchers from Karolinska University in Sweden had found that brain areas that influence sexual behavior light up in gay men in response to androstenone, a male hormone secreted in sweat--but there was no corresponding response in heterosexual men.

These findings may strike you as no big surprise, but they’re very significant in terms of validating yet another biological marker for sexual orientation.

Nonetheless, it makes you kind of wonder about those seductive straight men--Sensitive New Age Guys (or
“SNUGs”) as a friend of mine likes to call them--are they really that straight, after all? What else might it be that we’re responding to, other than our own wishful thinking?

There were 16 guys on the second floor of my dorm at college--although unbeknownst to us at the time, four of us turned out to be gay (including my own roommate!). This was pre-Stonewall, but I wonder, aside from our own obliviousness, was there something else we were missing?

So I’d be very curious to hear about your own experience with gay “smelldar”--Have you ever noticed that you were put off by the smell of straight guys?

And have you ever been led astray by seductive straight men, only to discover later that they weren’t that straight, after all?

You Again

Jack Mauro

Here's a little something to ponder. It's weighty but I'm confident you will give it the thought it merits, for it has much to do with your feelings for your partner. It's what I call love-as-recognition.

It once hit me, rather out of the blue and while I was writing fiction, that, when we fall for someone hard and fairly suddenly, it's not because we are thunderstruck by this new presence. We are instead somehow recognizing a love we have known before and dazzled that it is back. Now, before you pooh-pooh this as Karmic rubbish, please know that I am not necessarily referring to anything mystical (although that possibility exists). I think rather that this guy who so mesmerizes us is bringing before us a composite of elements all loved, desired and familiar, yet unfamiliar – or at least impossible to identify as such – because we have never seen this exact mix before.

Yet the magic happens, nonetheless, due to what has happened in the past. There is evidence of this belief of an ugly and pragmatic kind in the common cycles gone through by those unable to free themselves of abusive partners, time and again. They do not consciously choose the abuse but they know it, and familiarity is not a pull to be lightly dismissed. So as well, and more happily, do we moth-like turn to traces of what we have known and wanted before. The traces, again, may be too indistinct to note. But something is reminding you of what you feel love to be. It is rarely new, love. When we're lucky, however, it's better than new because it's finally just right.

You may now officially cease pondering.

Recession Proof Your Dating Life

By Ramon Johnson

Is your dating life slipping into a recession just like your checking account? Sometimes the forces around us push us down the slippery slide of dating slumps. You can reduce your dating debt with a little management. Here’s how:

Diversify. Until you can cash in on a big pay off, diversify your man search with frequent changes to your profile text. Experiment with different moods that reflect different parts of your personality. Try the fun text, the serious, and the intellectual to see which gets a better response.

Expand. Types are so 90s. What matters today is compatibility and deeper connections. Ditch your previous filters and expand your candidate pool. Give a guy you would normally dismiss a chance to woo you. You may be pleasantly surprised at how attractive he really is.

Switch Displays. Change your visual message to reflect your diversified profile text. All covered up? Show a little shoulder without the sleaze. Like the Speedo look? Try a blazer.

Practice. Solicit your BFF to help you practice talking or writing messages to guys. Your best bud or betty will tell you (hopefully with blunt honesty) if you are cheese ball or a hot pocket.

If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got. Switch up your techniques and help prevent a dating depression.

Those Lips, Those Eyes

By Jack Mauro

From the 'Relatively New Issues for Gay Men Dating with Serious Ends in Sight' digest comes this little irritant, and it's one men have dealt with – poorly – since men first began seriously dating women or men. It's an aspect of the social scene. It's when his or your own eye involuntarily takes in, sizes up and admires the hell out of the hot guy at the nearby table. And it never, ever goes unnoticed by the guy sitting across from you.

Let's say you're the owner of the guilty eye. What do you do, caught in the act of a reflex of minor lust? There are a few options but it's what you don't do that's important, and that's the ancient and absurd pretense of, No, no, you weren't even looking. Cough, cough. If that gossamer falsehood ever worked, women might never have required wedding rings. The best thing you can do is be sweetly sheepish, followed through with a little extra attention to your man. Denying the look gives it weight it doesn't merit; acknowledging the quick, straying glance eviscerates it. It's a romantic faux pas but it's a teeny one, and admitting to it keeps it miniscule and harmless.

And when he's the culprit? In the words of a neo-classic film, lighten up, Francis. We date, we commit, we marry but, as has been noted, we're not dead yet and reflexes are persistent things. As his refuting of the look adds import, so too does your over-reacting to it. Shrug it off. In doing so, you make yourself more attractive, too. Besides – you can also then feel better about checking out the busboy when your guy goes to the men's room.

Dating Efficiency

By Ramon Johnson

As resources become more limited, our lives are becoming more efficient. We thirst for more conscious everything: cars, appliances, materials, and our personal and professional time. Industries and individuals can no longer afford waste of any kind.

Still, despite the limitation of resources, our needs and desires change little (if at all). In relation to romance, the need for companionship remains constant yet the availability of the personal time and energy available for dating dries up faster than an SUV gallon. We’re working longer hours, planning bigger, and wading just above the surface of a crude environment. So, where do we find the time to look for a date?

In times of limited resources, we must manage dating the same as other areas of our lives. The anticipation of finding a man and the excitement of a potential match is great, but it can become an obsession when we spend countless hours refreshing our inbox, hoping for a new message.

Instead, use your time more wisely with a proactive approach. Set time limits for yourself and be direct about your interests and disinterest. Try not to view your search as a stressor, but an experience that will eventually produce a return on your investment.

A better managed dating approach will optimize your resources and balance your life, making you a better catch in the long run.

Ka-Boom

By Jack Mauro

What are your plans for the holiday? None? Maybe taking in the fireworks – if the crowds and traffic aren't too bad – and that's it?

Not astonishing. As holiday weekends become more and more holiday weeks, what increasingly matters to most of us isn't what we do, but what we don't do. Namely, go to work. God bless Independence Day.

However – there are two kinds of days off. There's the single man's day off, which usually consists of sleeping in, flopping around in PJ bottoms, reading the 1992 GQ he found under the bed, scratching, and taking a long nap. Then there are partnered days off. These require just a little planning. Because nothing, including sex and eating, is more intimate than filling idle hours with no agenda or obligations, no matter how blessedly anticipated those hours are.

Here's what you do: make a plan with your partner, even if, if not especially, you want no plan to follow. If you've been seeing each other only for a few months and since after the last long weekend, this is a new stop on the relationship express. Let him know how these rare occasions of special freedom compel you to tackle nothing more daunting than, maybe, a line at the movies. The odds are he'll be like-minded – he's a guy too, after all. And what you're avoiding is that dreadful, mystifying clash of intent, when he's suddenly and irritatingly all bounce and eager for adventure, you're yawning and scratching, and both of you are wondering just whom, exactly, you're with.

The lesson is pretty damn simple and doesn't require fireworks. Don't take anything for granted. Not until you know each other's rhythms, habits, and ideas of what's fun or relaxing on time off. And Happy 4th, y'all.

Type and Typo

By Jack Mauro

Another advantage to employing mypartner.com--as though the roster of such wasn't already spilling into the margins--isn't apparent immediately. In fact, it may not be apparent till after you've established the relationship you were after, and it has to do with an often slandered aspect of the online world. Namely, the blind spot. The inability to see, a few pictures aside, what the guy you're interested in is all about physically.

At a club, not an issue. On the street or in a meeting, boozeless, clearer and better. But this very sight, this freedom to immediately take in a man's complete physicality, hampers. We never get the opportunity to stretch beyond the types we've always been drawn to because our heads just keep turning only when that type walks in or walks by. If you're attracted to bears, your eyes and senses are loaded for bear (sorry) in the non-virtual world, and you're inclined to see nothing but bear.

Swell. Except--what exactly, then, are you not seeing? Instantaneous physical attraction is terrific but, as we move more to wanting to feel that attraction grow with the knowing of the man himself, we're missing everything outside of the target zone. In the outside world, anyway, and that's why generating contact online opens doors as it widens your peripheral vision. Online, what he has to say is more the trigger.

Oh, pictures are important, yes, and you tend as well to make contact with the bear or the blond or the bearish blond man who's always sparked your fire. But you don't always, now. If the visual/physicality restrictions of online life are a roadblock, you then simply veer into fresh paths, away from your classic type. So, as disadvantages go, it ain't bad at all.

Breathing Space

By Jack Mauro

Things are terrific with you and your partner, all things considered. You get along just great and share compatibility in all sorts of things. Add it to which, your sex life is the stuff that dreams – well, sex dreams – are made of. It appears that nothing could go wrong. What could go wrong, after all?

He touches you too much. He's too near on the sofa when you watch a movie and he has to throw an arm around you when there's no earthly reason for him to do so. That's all, and that's it. And it could do it. I've seen it happen. We all have our little sets of parameters regarding just how much basic physical contact we're comfortable with, leaving aside the more general abhorrence most of us harbor for too in-your-face types, those who allow no personal space. When it comes to the guy you plan on being with forever, this can be a serious danger zone, and it can destroy relationships precisely because you value him so much. That is, you try desperately to let it go and say nothing.

Bad strategy. Yes, this is as delicate an area to broach as any sexual issue between you, but broach it you must. Far, far worse is to silently transmit the signals of discomfort you're undoubtedly signaling, because his seemingly perverse response will be to be even more physically attentive. Or he will interpret your slight cringing as indicative of something much worse and begin seeing a completely avoidable end in sight. In this case, guys, silence is deadly.

Talk to him, and be sure you do so when you yourself are most at ease with being physically close to him; this reassurance will be essential. Let him know how you love him – it's old-hat, yes, but it works when it's true, always. You can even share jokes about it and set up coach partitions. Let him be sarcastic if it mollifies any hurt he may feel. Just by treating it lightly, albeit directly, you render it no big deal. And that's how those bad issues disappear.

Why They Do It

By Jack Mauro

As you date, explore, and seek the right partner, there's another thing about the lure of straight guys/friends to consider. They waylay us, to be sure. They make us think in terms of possibilities that are most likely not very real (not counting drunken lapses into pure sex). And it becomes rather easy to paint them as seductive, unfair users, men who toy with our hearts and dreams. The unobtainable, sexy bastards.

Yet we want to be fair and fairness demands that we see something not all that obvious. Our crushes on straight men are far from illusory fantasy because, as you may know from experience, the longing isn't all on our side and it definitely isn't exclusively sexual. The reality is that many straight men are deeply drawn to gay men because we're all men, and we share a background, however dissimilar it may be in certain elements, women simply can't relate to. The cliché of the battle of the sexes is and always has been based on the true and monolithic fact that women and men cannot understand each other in a host of ways. Thus works nature, inscrutable creature that she is.

Be a little merciful, when your straight buddy emits vibes perhaps beyond friendship. He himself is ensnared. You are, in a sense, the seducer, because you have that one inestimable thing no woman can give him: a genuine understanding of everything that being a male is all about. He probably isn't even aware of it as such – what straight man questions the why of why he likes being with guys, anyway? – but it's there, it's potent, and it's turning his head.

Which raises the question: is it OK to use this bonding, then, as a tool to forge a real relationship? Yes. But only because it won't be enough, unless he's one of the rare birds encountered by and drawn to you at that crossroads in his life.