My partner and I got invited to a wedding a couple of weeks ago. Of course it is always nice to be invited to a party. But honestly I have never really enjoyed being a guest at a wedding.
For one thing I am a guy - a gay guy but somethings are the same no matter what team you bat for. Weddings are, and this is a fact, for the bride not the groom. It is the little girl who dreams of what her wedding will be like, not the little boy. OK - maybe some gay boys but not me.
That being said I had a wedding when I was twenty years old. It was suppose to be a church wedding but my folks didn't approve so we eloped and got married in a friends living room with a total of three people in attendance. For more than three decades I celebrated that wedding. Yet every time I would attend a wedding a part of me was struggling. As those vows were taken I was of course examining my own vows. It wasn't always pretty.
So to this day I am a sceptic at a wedding. Statistically 50% of all weddings end in divorce. As LBGs (Late Breaking Gays) my partner and I have both been divorced. Certainly we could ask :Why would anyone want to get married?" Of course the answer is Love!
When my partner and I got married (the one wedding I felt completely right at) we did it so that our friends and family knew how much we loved each other. Other than that nothing explains getting married.
When my partner told me about the invitation to the wedding I was a little conflicted. The happy couple was the daughter and fiance of his assistant at work. I had never met any of them and my partner is not out at work and I didn't want to get him outed at work.
Despite that I love to be with him and so, being as we are gay, three weeks before the happy event we stood in the closet to pick out our outfits. We choose light color suits for a summer wedding and on we went to what color shirts and ties we would wear.
There in the closet it suddenly it occurred to me that we might be the token gays at the wedding. If that was the case how modern and inclusive of them.
We should have worn matching pearls.
But that isn't our thing.
Showing posts with label straight marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label straight marriage. Show all posts
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Cheating
What does it mean to cheat, to be a cheater?
According to Webster's dictionary cheating means:
1 : to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud
2 : to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice
3 : to elude or thwart by or as if by outwitting
intransitive verb
1 a : to practice fraud or trickery b : to violate rules dishonestly
2 : to be sexually unfaithful —usually used with on
So I was a cheater: I violated rules (a promise) and I was sexually unfaithful.
Yes, all of that. I made a promise to be faithful and I wasn't.
But if it is any consolation I guess my crime is intransitive, (Webster goes on to say that intransitive means: not transitive; especially : characterized by not having or containing a direct object). For me there was no object. I didn't care who I was unfaithful with.
Does that make a difference? Not in the narrow world that I married into when I was 20. But the world, at least my world was different then.
I want to make this very clear: I made a promise and I didn't keep it. Bad on me!
I think that is pretty important. I believe that if I make a promise I should keep it. I didn't! I felt very bad about that. Not bad enough to not do it again, just bad. As I have said before it came and went in waves. I would cheat, feel bad about myself, behave for some period and then repeat the process.
I am reminded that if you keep on repeating something and expecting the outcome to be different - that is the definition of insanity. So I guess I was insane.
It wasn't that I was trying to hurt or even cheat my wife. I was trying to find myself.
What was this passion, this desire? What was this feeling that I had that could get in the way of all the plans and hopes that I had for my life?
I loved men! They were hot! They had wonderful bodies and I wanted to see them naked. They were hung! I wanted to see their cocks! I wanted to see their balls! I wanted to see their asses! This was primal. This desire was at the very core of my being! All the civilized promises that I made could not damp the heat that burned in my loins. I wanted to be with men that wanted me.
This is not an attempt to excuse myself. If I had been a better person I would have understood what was going on in me and gotten a divorce and then moved on. But I wasn't a better person. I was weak and afraid and I denied what I was feeling. I will note, to my credit, I was trying to somehow make it all go away - or at least be manageable. I could not deal with the guilt. I could not deal with the lie.
After I came out my ex's sister emailed me. She wanted to know why I had cheated on my wife. One of the things I wrote back was that "it is better that I am honest about who I am than to live a lie." I don't think she or my ex got that.
That brings me back to where my partner and I are at: when we play with other men we are honest about it. We came into this relationship knowing that we both wanted men. Lots of men. We just happened to fall head over heals in love with one another.
To start a relationship like both had been in before would have only set us up for failure.
Bottom line is this: a relationship does not have to be built on the traditions that we are all use to. We decided that we could be partners, even married husbands, and still create our own rules.
Don't get me wrong, we don't have many rules: be safe and be honest. That's pretty much it.
Love takes care of the rest.
According to Webster's dictionary cheating means:
1 : to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud
2 : to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice
3 : to elude or thwart by or as if by outwitting
intransitive verb
1 a : to practice fraud or trickery b : to violate rules dishonestly
2 : to be sexually unfaithful —usually used with on
So I was a cheater: I violated rules (a promise) and I was sexually unfaithful.
Yes, all of that. I made a promise to be faithful and I wasn't.
But if it is any consolation I guess my crime is intransitive, (Webster goes on to say that intransitive means: not transitive; especially : characterized by not having or containing a direct object). For me there was no object. I didn't care who I was unfaithful with.
Does that make a difference? Not in the narrow world that I married into when I was 20. But the world, at least my world was different then.
I want to make this very clear: I made a promise and I didn't keep it. Bad on me!
I think that is pretty important. I believe that if I make a promise I should keep it. I didn't! I felt very bad about that. Not bad enough to not do it again, just bad. As I have said before it came and went in waves. I would cheat, feel bad about myself, behave for some period and then repeat the process.
I am reminded that if you keep on repeating something and expecting the outcome to be different - that is the definition of insanity. So I guess I was insane.
It wasn't that I was trying to hurt or even cheat my wife. I was trying to find myself.
What was this passion, this desire? What was this feeling that I had that could get in the way of all the plans and hopes that I had for my life?
I loved men! They were hot! They had wonderful bodies and I wanted to see them naked. They were hung! I wanted to see their cocks! I wanted to see their balls! I wanted to see their asses! This was primal. This desire was at the very core of my being! All the civilized promises that I made could not damp the heat that burned in my loins. I wanted to be with men that wanted me.
This is not an attempt to excuse myself. If I had been a better person I would have understood what was going on in me and gotten a divorce and then moved on. But I wasn't a better person. I was weak and afraid and I denied what I was feeling. I will note, to my credit, I was trying to somehow make it all go away - or at least be manageable. I could not deal with the guilt. I could not deal with the lie.
After I came out my ex's sister emailed me. She wanted to know why I had cheated on my wife. One of the things I wrote back was that "it is better that I am honest about who I am than to live a lie." I don't think she or my ex got that.
That brings me back to where my partner and I are at: when we play with other men we are honest about it. We came into this relationship knowing that we both wanted men. Lots of men. We just happened to fall head over heals in love with one another.
To start a relationship like both had been in before would have only set us up for failure.
Bottom line is this: a relationship does not have to be built on the traditions that we are all use to. We decided that we could be partners, even married husbands, and still create our own rules.
Don't get me wrong, we don't have many rules: be safe and be honest. That's pretty much it.
Love takes care of the rest.
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