WHAT GAY MEN FEAR THE MOST....

from ABenjaminIrby.com

What's the one thing every gay man is most afraid of?

Is it getting fat? Nope. But it's a good guess. Is it dying and going to hell? Nope. Well, I guess, for the church queens, but as a whole, no. Is it "the big disease with a little name"? Nope. Yes I said "nope," you heard me. Considering the statistics and our actions as a whole, as a community we obviously aren't all that afraid of it. Not to discount it at all but our collective actions toward it do not illustrate that we are all that fearful. So what is it you ask, what strikes fear in the hearts of all gay men? Growing old and alone.

A gay man once told me that the gay life is a lonely life. So many of us in this world, gay without our permission, born into this world, feeling flawed, look at straight people and all the opportunities they have to come together and start a family and at all the encouragement society as a whole gives them as opposed to all the discouragement and abuse society gives us.

Not to mention the way we fuck each other over. He fucked you over so you fuck over the next one and that next one fucks somebody over who you end up meeting at a club and ends up fucking you over and at the end of he day it's like what the fuck? When does it all fucking end? Can two man ever just fucking be together and be happy without all the fucking bullshit?

This is the thing, we're all wounded, wounded and scared. It's hard growing up gay in this world. More than likely our parents and other relatives don't understand us or were abusive to us. We were made fun of in school, we lived double lives, etc., etc. We all have our own emotional baggage to deal with. We put up defenses and walls to shield our all too oft broken hearts from more pain. We do it to protect ourselves but in the process we push anyone else away. As a result we're snappy, we're rude, we're fierce, we're cynical, we're jaded, 'we've created a fuck or be fucked, fuck that 'cuz I'ma get mine' world for ourselves and yet the better part of us still expects to be happy. Even if someone means us well we don't believe it because we're simply not used to it.

So what are we gonna do about it? Actually, I can't tell you what to do. As I haven't done it myself yet. The question is what am I gonna do about it? The last few weeks have been really introspective for me. I've been looking inside, seeing what makes me tick, seeing why my relationships don't work. Let's have a look at my patterns:

ADAM'S RELATIONSHIP PATTERN:
This is so fucking embarrassing by the way, but I think this is a good exercise you should do for yourself in the privacy of your own home and not necessarily for the whole world to see like I have here. Remember, we can rationalize our way out of thinking that we have a problem as long as we only let it live in our heads. But once we put it on paper it's not as easy to deny. Here we go:

- Adam meets a guy.
- Adam is attracted to the guy.
- Adam does whatever he can to sleep with the guy.
- Adam sleeps with the guy and if he doesn't get to sleep with the guy he usually becomes disinterested in the guy altogether.
- Now Adam has feelings for the guy.
- Adam as usual feels a little more for the guy than the guy feels for him.
- Adam is now scared. These are the things Adam is scared of:

- Adam is scared to show too much emotion to the guy because he's afraid that he won't get it back and that will make him feel invalidated.
- Adam is scared whenever he calls or texts and does not receive a call or text back within the hour that maybe he's doing too much and the guy is over him.
- Adam has a perpetual underlying fear that the guy will just stop calling or corresponding altogether out of the blue because it's happened to him a few times in the past and it hurt... A LOT!
- Adam knows that he has done some triflin' ass shyt in the past and is always waiting for the proverbial ax to fall.

- Adam as a result of Adam's fear of being abandoned again is torn between wanting to outpour the feelings he's feeling to the guy or to be guarded and aloof (which he's really not but only is now as a result of being hurt so many times before) in an attempt to ready himself just in case this guy abandons him.
- Adam wonders why can't he ever find a guy who likes him as equally as he likes the guy.
- Adam has actually found people like that in the past but somehow to him it just doesn't seem real so he doesn't trust it or it may actually be real but if Adam is not physically and sexually attracted to the guy then it doesn't matter to him anyway.
- Adam does more and more to get the guy to like him and validate him but the guy never really gives Adam the pat on the back that he craves.
- Adam starts to get annoyed at the fact the that he goes all out of the way for the guy and he's still not getting the validation he wants. Mind you the guy never asked for all of this sacrifice from Adam.
- Adam is frustrated, at the end of his rope and ready to break things off but he doesn't want to be alone.
- Adam passively seeks out someone else to get with as insurance as he feels that him and this guy are about to be over.
- Adam snaps and breaks things off because the guy committed a minor offense against him that most people probably would have just dealt with or ignored but not Adam, he's way too hypersensitive to invalidation and is hurt by even the smallest, most insignificant slight at this point.
- Adam is alone again and moves in closer on the new guy.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. This is my relationship cycle in black and white. Dayum I sound crazy as hell. I don't feel too bad though cuz most of y'all bitches is crazy too. I've dated some of you. Like I said I don't have an answer yet. I know that it's definitely me who needs work but then again with all my emotional baggage flung across my shoulder I could be attracting the wrong type of men as well. I will look at this and look at my current dating situation and figure out exactly where I am on the cycle and figure out the best way to break the chain because I'm so tired of going through the same shyt over and over again. And I sure as hell do not wanna end up old and alone.

Like I always say "knowing is half the battle." Now that I have admitted publicly that I don't have it all together I can take steps toward trying to put me together. Like I said before I'm wounded, so before I can be a part of a successful relationship I have to love myself enough to heal me first so I can have something to give to someone else. So cliche, but nevertheless so true.

THANKS TRE