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Dan Pal's avatar

I can totally relate. I've been with my husband for 37 years and yes our life has developed into a series of routines, shared experiences, friendships and so on. I wouldn't trade it!

U.Y. HABEN's avatar

The reason heterosexual people don't understand queer people is because they wake up everyday and they are them,in a world that is made for them.They don't even notice the damn Privilege they have over people like us.I remember being with a hetero person in my past life and everyday i woke up,i had to perform straightness and it felt like drowning but in slow motion. I know my life is not "style" because i don't do any preparation to live it,i just wake up and boom i'm queer

Michael Horvich's avatar

Gino, I like "There’s a life here. Not a lifestyle. A life built out of routines, relationships, responsibilities, habits, and small decisions. Over time, these become repeated often enough they become a home." I guess that even gay men are like all other men in some ways. We are all people and on the continuum from flashy, funny, vibrant, creative, beautiful to boring, dull, plain, unimaginative, ugly and a variety of which and when as well. Thanks. Fondly, Michael

Mark S's avatar

This is a wonderful post! I hope to meet my forever partner someday and enjoy all the “boring” times together.

Tali Sarnetzky's avatar

No one's existence should be up for debate. You make excellent points: It is all about others' inability to consider the experiences of other people, to find the similar rather than the different, and to become involved in someone else's life beyond what is decent or reasonable. And yes, It's much harder to stop and admit they might be wrong, that they might not have all the answers and everything figured out. I know the experience I've had as a person with disability is quite different, but I can also say that people rarely understand what it's really like to be blind, or have any other disability. It took me years to understand that it had nothing to do with who I am as a person, but rather with others' views and fears. It does affect us when people refuse to consider the human being behind the stereotype in their head, and I am grateful you are helping others to find ways to cope.

Karthik Gurumurthy's avatar

It took me 95% of my life to learn that I don't have to live according to the straight male "shoulds" and "should nots."

I hate that the possibility of an ordinary life for us as gay men makes the ones who can't visualize the same for us, hate us, profile us, and label us as abnormal.

I was just like you when you were a kid well into my early 20s. I'm 26 now and those inhibitory, self-censoring reflexes are still hard to get rid of. I was so sick of hiding that I compensated for the time lost in the wrong way by reducing myself to just a body to be used.

I'm positive that if the boring, ordinary, life with unconditional love and acceptance were modeled for me and people like me, I may not have been led astray by the viral gay twitter stereotypes.

I hope I get to spend several boring days with my future man like you get to with yours.