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Relationship Guide
Breathing Space
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.
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Dating Advice
You Again
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.
By Jack Mauro
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Quick Tips
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Did You Know?
In a poll asked of 2000 single gay men between the ages 25 - 50 on the longest relationship they have been in:
35% said they had been in a long term committed relationship for at least 5 years.
Then 22% of the guys said they have never dated someone longer than 1 year. 15% said between 1 - 2 years, 12% said between 2 - 3 years, while the remaining 16% said their longest relationship with another man was between 3 - 5 years.
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