MyPartner

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.)

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.

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.

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.

Shout It Out

By Jack Mauro

We don't fight anymore. We still get angry with our partners but, thanks to counseling and education and cultural trends in domestic relations, we don't fight. We remain calm. We talk, we employ carefully chosen phrases which cast no blame, and we most emphatically don't yell at each other. Personally, I mistrust this strategy. Been there and done it. Moreover, I dislike it not only viscerally but intellectually as well. To my mind and soul, it doesn't work because a large element of any anger felt can only be released through an intensity of expression. It's that simple.

Yet these days, when your partner has hurt you by design or mischance, you relay this hurt with your rage in check. He hears you, he's contrite, and you then merrily go about your business, satisfied that the issue has been civilly resolved. But has it? The pain - and hatred - you earnestly felt had nowhere to go in that carefully checked interaction and it's naïve to think that a calmly reasoned resolution puts everything to bed. So might one believe that a moment of deepest caring can be adequately conveyed with a nice hug. It may do in PC circles, men, but your emotional base won't be so easily sated.

Reining in whatever made you fume does nothing but put the heat on hold. It's still there, even after the situation ends. In fact, it's hotter because there's a latent, infuriating aspect to a sedate apology given for a wrath-inducing remark or slight. Anger demands an equally emotionally charged form of redress, and there is no way on this good earth that a, "I now see how you feel and I regret having unintentionally been the cause of it" can do the job of a, "God, I'm so, so sorry. What an ass I was to you."

Yes, there are times when a cool head and low voice are called for. But not always, and they make for a flimsy, temporary fix when your feelings require some healthy, luxuriant, high-volume bellowing.

The Muddied Buddy Syndrome

By Jack Mauro

Rik's recent post got me thinking about another facet of the friendships of our lives. Not the straight-buddy-crush (and, believe me, I'm an expert on that particular mix of bliss and misery). No, I'm talking about the feelings either emanating from, or being a little forced out of, plain old friendships between gay men.

It happens all the time. We get weary of dating and impatient of finding the partner we so crave. Then, and often when we're crying these very blues to him, we look at an old buddy in a new light. After all, you love him, right? He knows you and cares about you deeply, right? And he is kind of cute too, right? Maybe it's been smack in front of you all the time. Maybe your search is over because all you ever wanted is right there, on your doorstep.

Umm…no. That is, probably not. Of course real love can bloom under those circumstances, but it happens rarely. What occurs more commonly is the forcing of it, the muddying of the friendship waters we do out of mild desperation commingled with genuine caring. As I've stated time and again, true friendship is a very different animal than romantic love, despite people's insistent thinking that friendship is, somehow, love on a back burner. And a determination to morph your dear friend into your partner – usually born from, again, loving motives – can spell disaster for the prize you already have.

Think long and hard before eagerness and/or impatience compels you to try to 'promote', as it were, your old pal into your new boyfriend. If it doesn't work, and the odds are it won't, you will have placed something wonderful at serious risk. Besides, you may lose the best person in the world to confide in when the new, real boyfriend comes along.

The Children's Hour (or Two)

By Jack Mauro

"Give me the child until he is seven; after that, you may have him." This biblical paraphrasing of mine I bring out to serve a point, and a point having much to do with getting to know, really know, your partner. There's quite a bit that goes into making each one of us tick, and you do not need to embrace Freud or Jung or any other of that scary set to know that much of the clockwork is constructed when we're very young.

On more than a few occasions, I've been with couples – of longstanding relationships, too – who are largely in the dark regarding each other's childhood. One tells a story about his, it comes as a great surprise to his partner, and I'm always mystified. A major pleasure in any sort of intimate understanding with someone you care for is in discovering those little, often formative incidents of the past. How they reacted to the school bully. The first awareness they had of something odd in the world around them, or just what childish remark caused an uproar in the family. It's the stuff we're all made of and it reveals volumes about why we do what we do.

Now, you don't want to draw this out from your partner in a deliberate way. It should come naturally, in the course of conversation and reminiscence. But you may prod it along a little bit. Use the reliable means of simply relating a minor (probably stupid) episode from your own kidhood. Such anecdotes almost always trigger something similar and, if it's from a place your partner rarely goes, so much the better. It isn't merely fun to exchange these tales; it's a treasure trove of insight into your guy and it takes the intimacy you already share into a richer, deeper closeness.