Specifically, we'll have more articles and resources especially for gay and lesbian couples in long-term relationships & marriages of the heart and mind. Political marriages, too, if that's possible in your state or country. We do highly support gay marriage and support an end to marriage discrimination.
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Gay men and women partner up after – as most men and women do – falling in love. Falling in love is arguably as simple as falling off a log. No guidance is needed. There is nothing to learn, besides your own feelings, perhaps.
People can feel the fall; you meet someone whose physical characteristics and personality traits create enough electrical charge to fly you out over the precipice of your personal comfort zone where you get to know the other person, and these “together” experiences of “feeling each other out” increase in intensity until you find yourself saying, “I think I’m falling in love.”
When convinced it is the “real ting” we tell the other person, hoping this feeling is reciprocal. Perhaps we redouble our efforts to win the love of our beloved if the feeling is not shared. When it is reciprocal, then we launch into partnership, talking about making a commitment to each other because, despite what the socio-cultural mores are, everyone agrees that being “in love” is grounds on which to build a well-founded, committed relationship.
The euphoric chemical cascade of love mixes with all the myths that abound in our world; gay or straight, these erroneous beliefs are the powdered sugar frosting on the fairy tales we all want to live as our lives. We have been led to believe that “real” love lasts forever; nothing could ever come between us. Together, our love could never be overcome; our love is most wonderful, never to be bettered. We do see couples that seem to have lost that, but that will never happen to us.
Unfortunately, long-range research studies on the in-love phenomenon clearly show the eternality of our in-love experience to be fictitious. Reality lands on its feet. It intrudes upon our love. Down from cloud nine, we find our commitment to each other needs to hold out against Herculean odds.It remains a world mostly hostile towards homosexual love, relationships, gay-coupling or marriage – whatever you want to call it. The loving commitment queer people share is predominantly considered freaky.
A gay man or woman comes to disillusionment and discontent in their partnership. The partner they once loved, like every other well-adjusted person on this planet, isn't perfect and he or she then feels angry and resentful. After all, “I was deceived!” said one client to me, “It wasn’t the real deal.” I do not think this is it. The problem is he and his partner, and many gay couples around the world, falters under the weight of faulty information just as straight marriages and relationships do. This false information is the idea that in-love obsession is eternal. Surely we should all know better, particularly as gay men and women who are more likely to have experienced personal development through life as “iffy”, so to speak.
The fanciful thinking that erroneous information causes does not mean that we are insincere in what we are thinking and feeling. It just means we are unrealistic, particularly when it comes to commitment intimacy and learning lasting love for our beloved once we both get up from falling in love.
Until more recently, gay relationship resources were not to be had for love nor money. Just the other day a gay client made my heart ache during our first communications with, “…like marriage counselling? But we are not married. Would that kind of thing help us?”
Gay couples guidance, or, as I like to refer to it, “coupling” provides a learning environment where the couple can explore the reality of their relationship. There are never only two ways: couples resign themselves to a miserable life with their respective partners, or throw in the towel. As part of a rainbow people, gay men and women understand that they often have to find their own way, make their own way, and compromise. In the same way, there is a spectrum in which gay couples can work it: we can find our way to a companionable relationship; we can create the parameters of our partnerships; and we know we can fight for our love with resolve.
So gay couples want to improve their knowledgeability for a self-help approach. Say, together seek the guidance of a professional, or engage with other couples in social forums on relationship building and development.
The internet is on its way to becoming a veritable cornucopia of gay relationship resources. The information alone, available to the gay community via the web, should help us recognize the in-love experience for what it was – ephemeral. Pursuing “real love” with our partner and spouse requires us to pick up the towel. It involves an act of will, requires discipline, and it recognizes the need for personal development and growth.
The basic human need is not to fall in love with someone, but to be authentically loved by another. Love grows out of learning, reason, and choice, not physiology and instinct. You, and every straight person, needs to be loved by another who chooses to love you, who sees in you something worth loving.
The effort and discipline of learning love after the temporary emotional high of falling in-love is choosing to commit to expending energy in an effort to benefit your beloved. Knowing that his or her life is enriched by this will bring you satisfaction. The satisfaction of having genuinely loved another. High stakes, high reward. Gay couples often feel all this guidance-to-learning-love-business is straight work. It is not.
Your human need for love, love after the fall, must be met if you are to have emotional health. But having to learn to love, “It seems so academic”, one lesbian client complained, “What emotional security do I get…how do I know that I am number one in her mind?”
That is what coupling, or gay couples guidance is all about: learning to couple and be together for each other, learning to love, learning to meet each other’s deep, emotional need to feel loved for the long haul. If we can learn that and choose to do it, then the love we learn to share for each other will be exciting beyond anything we ever felt when we were infatuated.
GetLusty provides this opportunity to all couples, gay and straight. If you would like to know more, GetLusty resources are enriching the lives of people in committed relationships around the world, become one of the gay couples to GetLusty for one another and subscribe. http://getlusty.blogspot.com
I will bring more gay coupling information to you, and share the experiences my ‘husband’ of eight years and I brought to our life as a committed gay couple when we first sought out coupling guidance.
Get the lust on for your lover, and share the joy and learning from it with the lovers of the world.
Do It well; do It safe.
Jacsman
He studies & consults on ecstatic & intimate psycho-sexual health & development, promoting & improving male2male dialogue that furthers understanding of masculine sexuality and MSM relationships. A sex educator, JacoPhillip Crous studies about and consults around male psycho-sexual self-development phenomena, behaviours, experiences and knowledgeablity. Find out more about JacoPhillip at: http://about.me/Jacsman.
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