Courage Is A Lot Like Love

Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment. -Napoleon

Courage never operates in a vacuum; we can always try hard and see ourselves as courageous about something. We also need to believe that there will be some consequence to our acts of bravery. It seems we are all looking at the long term for some kind of deliverance for ourselves and others.

Love, too, needs a sense of future, time to develop and flower. It is only passion that lives for an instant and passion, like the red rose, doesn't last out the full year.

So I believe, love and courage are similar and work together for our own good and the good of others. By working on ourselves through a form of personal growth and development we treasure love and courage as we find ourselves with greater wisdom and more abundance of peace with ourselves and others. I believe that this is one of the ways we have faith in the long term and in things that endure. No one is suggesting we can change overnight, but with love and courage and the hope on which they depend, we can all work wonders! I believe in my courage to change day-by-day.

People always come into your life for a reason...

This text is from a love letter I received a while back from Christopher. He had been wanting to share with me this message and today felt like as good as any day to share it with you. This is also my opportunity to honor Christopher and express my joy for his love.

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People always come into your life for a reason, a season, and a lifetime. When you figure out which it is, you know exactly what to do. When someone is in your life for a Reason, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed outwardly or inwardly. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, or to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally, or even spiritually.

They may seem like a godsend to you, and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrong doing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they just walk away. Sometimes they act up or out and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done.

The prayer you sent up has been answered and it is now time to move on. When people come into your life for a Season, it is because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They may bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season. And like spring turns to summer and summer to fall, the season eventually ends.

Lifetime relationships teach you a lifetime of lessons; those things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person and the people regardless and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant. Thank you for being part of my life...

-Author Unknown-

About Love

"Loving v. Being In Love"

Christopher said to me this morning that he believes it to be true, that I love him; however, he feels that I’m not “in” love with him. Now this isn’t the first time in our relationship that he has stated his belief. So, I wanted to venture off to do some research of my own on this “Loving versus “Being in Love” concept. I would have said being in love is the single most wonderful and important thing. It’s an arbiter of chemistry.

However, I have found that like Christopher, some may argue being in love is a short-lived sensation that is not sustainable. Perhaps loving and respecting someone are more important.
Being in love is short-lived:

At times I wonder if the sensation of being in love is a chemical imprinting phenomenon perhaps even exclusive to heterosexuals. The coveting, jealousy and exclusiveness might stem from the nature driven side of sex for reproduction- the desire to perpetuate ones offspring at the exclusion of competitors.

In our society, the traditional heterosexual marriage model is the only socially supported model for establishing and maintaining long-term sexual and affectional relationships among gays and lesbians. This model has never been really appropriate or functional for same- sex relationships. Although many same-sex couples still try to adapt the marriage model in one form or another, most now avoid relationships that completely conform to it in favor of relationships in which roles are not so rigidly formulated on the basis of gender role stereotypes.

Naturally, this movement away from the marriage pattern, along with the realities of same-gender relationships, makes for differences between gay and nongay partnerships. There are also differences between kinds of relationship characteristics typical of gay male and lesbian couples because of differences between genders and the ways men and women are socialized. These differences create different problems and raise different issues. In spite of these differences, however, there are some general relationship issues that are common to both gay and nongay couples.

Same-sex relationships are similar to opposite-sex relationships in that they are both built on love, mutual caring, and trust, communication is an essential element to the continuing success of the relationship, and both must negotiate roles, rules, and expectations. One of the biggest differences between gay and nongay relationships, however, is that same-sex relationships lack roles models.

This may sound unromantic but I think questioning the basis for behavior is at times important to evolve either into or beyond a state. All that you say resonates to be sure, yet too often have I seen madly passionate in-love individual’s burn out of their passions. “Quick to light, quickly to burn” I believe the old adage goes… And with it yes- the pain and fear…

Be assured I am not at all questioning our desire to feel in love; we all have this aspiration. I question only for myself, since my partner has communicated to me on several occasions that this kind of passion has changed for me and with it the feeling of being in love. I agree love and respect - are a given. Now rapture for someone must extend to a sense of great potential for that person as an individual and as a partner. Coveting and jealousy have evolved into deep feelings of contentment of knowing that you are watchful of and watched by someone. I can’t quite approximate the sensation with language but I am aware of the rare quality of a person from whom I seek to give and receive that type of attention; their vision and affection becomes integral to one’s evolution, not simply supportive of it. I recall the time when Christopher and I met, and those weeks and months in the beginning of our relationship that he and I were unable to make even simple eye contact with one another because the rapture, the overwhelming brilliance and joy seemed blinding. We could not look at each other without seeing a future- and yet, has that feeling not lasted? Was it meant to? Are all states of “being in love” eventually replaced by a deep mutual love, respect, affection, and (if lucky) persistent attraction.

Being in love is foundational:
Without a doubt, love and respect are centrally important. Without respect and trust you have nothing, maybe just some hormones.

However, there’s something Freud called ‘the over-valuation of the love object,’ and I think that’s essential. That’s the phenomenon of believing your love object is incredibly special, even if rationally you know that all people are imperfect. Your beloved’s eyes shine brighter, their remarks are cleverer, their smile is truer, their insights are more insightful, their comfort more comforting - generally that the world is a better place simply because they, apart from all others, are in it. Your life is a better and finer thing because that person is sharing it with you.

You have to feel that no substitute is possible because of the ineffable uniqueness and specialness of your loved one. And that feeling of eminence is partly delusional, and partly based on the lock-and-key-like fit of two unique yet compatible personalities coming together as they deepen their mutual understanding over time. To me, that set of feelings is “being-in-love,” and I believe no relationship can survive without. Without that feeling, you’re constantly aware that the world is full of adequate substitutes. I also believe that this sort of being-in-love is not short-lived but foundational, even if it goes through fluctuations and phases.

Love, on the other hand, is by comparison a relatively non-relational way of caring for someone: it means that you care about and are committed to someone else’s happiness and wellbeing around equally to your own, and are willing to put in work toward achieving that. This sort of love is altruistic and relatively selfless but it doesn’t draw you to someone and make you want to inhabit some kind of private or exclusive sphere. That love you could have for a mother and a brother and humanity in general. It’s non-possessory. Does that make it a ‘better’ sort of love, higher, more virtuous? Perhaps, but also more tepid & impersonal, and lacking in any compelling sense of why you give love and effort to one person and not another.

In-love love is exclusionary, jealous, protective, devoted, involved, inspiring, and covetous (among other things). The flip side of being in love is the potential for real hurt and loss. And nearly everyone becomes more loss-averse and risk averse over time, as well as - more detrimentally - more self-protective and resilient. There are benefits, yet it means one build walls on all sides. So over time there’s a gap between one’s conceptual view of being-in-love and one’s ability to do it - or, really, to allow it.

The fact that it becomes harder or rarer doesn’t make it less real or less important.

Conclusion

As I get more experienced I find myself willing to compromise less and less. I know what works for me and even more so what does not. As for love, I have never been as hurt as when I have been in love. Similarly, I have never unintentionally hurt someone as much as when that person was in love with me and I was not (despite wanting to be). For that, I cannot apologize enough. In spite of my outward rationality and coldness, I am a romantic at heart. And, as an eternal optimist, I continue to believe in the archetypal importance of being in love.

Coupling

My brother Scott and his fiance Amy will be marrying this month. Their beautiful engagement photos have recently been posted by their photographer on Blogger (http://frphoto.blogspot.com/2008/05/amy-scott.html). I blog often about relationships; primarily from the gay perspective, but much of what I have learned can be shared by straight, gay lesbian or bi couples.

I am 46 years old, and since coming out at the age of 18 in 1979, I have been in three significant relationships. The first ended after 16 ½ years, the second lasted 10 years and I am now nearly 2 years into my third relationship. My two previous relationships ended for the same basic reasons; my inability to be honest, my inability to be monogamous, and a pattern of dishonesty throughout the relationship. I am fortunate that I have been able to have some degree of ongoing, present day relationship with both of my former partners; however the hurts and the resultant emotional damage linger and prove to be a barrier to any deep or lasting friendship. In retrospect, there are many things I could have chosen to do differently in both relationships, though that is no guarantee that the outcome would have been different. In both prior relationships, my partner and I attended couples counseling which ultimately served as the platform for dissolution of the relationship.

Very few of us gays and lesbians have been fortunate enough to have had homosexual parents who could model for us the ideal gay or lesbian relationship - caring, growing, fun, mutually supportive – all within the context of a burgeoning gay culture. Most of us were stuck with parents of the heterosexual variety - good, bad, or indifferent as mates to each other and parents to us, but no help at all in fashioning our gay love life. Lacking marriage manuals, parental guidance and models of conjugal bliss on film and television, we've had to “wing it” when it came to putting together workable love and life partnerships. Intimate relationships are a tricky business at best. Without the sanctions and supports of society's institutions (no positive messages at all), same-sex coupling presents a special challenge to the courage and ingenuity of lovers trying to build a life together.

At times, that challenge involves the same hassles that bewilder every couple trying to make a go of it. At other times, it involves bedevilments seemingly reserved only for gay lovers in an uptight and intransigent straight world. Same-sex couples?

“Unnatural”,
“Unsanctionable”,
“Unconscionable”,
“Immoral”,
“Sick”
“Immature”,
“Can't work”,
“Won't last”,
“Doesn't count”.

These are the negative messages that I believe undermine, subvert and scare us into pale versions of our dream of love. Sometimes, I know from my own life experience, I internalize these types of messages and once the tapes of these messages begin to play in my mind, they work against me from inside.

"I'm immoral”,
“I'm sick”,
“I'm immature”,
“My relationship can't work, won't last, and doesn’t count."

I find myself undermining my own efforts by echoing society's baseless pronouncements about us. Too often I allow these clichés to become self-fulfilling prophecies. The prophecy of doom comes true, in turn; reinforcing the clichés and making them appear as truth. I have swallowed these nontruths and the cycle becomes complete. If I, along with my fellow gay and lesbian peers are ever going to bring order, reason and sense to our lives as gay people, we must learn to interrupt that cycle. We must learn to identify our own homophobic messages. We must become alert to their presence in our thinking, to the ways in which we incorporate them into our view of ourselves and other gay people.

"It was so gay of him," I heard someone say recently when describing the inconsiderate behavior of a peer. I believe we must catch each other at this, work together to break the vicious cycle. Only then will we be able to really honor our deeply felt need to love and affiliate with persons of the same sex. Only then can we learn to believe in the rightness of gay love relationships because they are, for us, the morally correct, emotionally healthy and socially responsible ways to live our lives. Many nongay people would argue with this statement I have just made. Some gay people would probably even argue with it. Going against prevailing beliefs is always threatening, even when doing so is ultimately to our advantage.

Why Couple?
What is the motivation to be in a coupled relationship in the first place? Why do it? When my last relationship ended in June of 2005, I promised myself that I would wait two years before considering a committed relationship. But on October 15, 2005, just four months after making that vow to myself, I met and fell in love with Christopher, my present partner. I met Christopher on a gay men’s hookup site called Manhunt (http://www.manhunt.net/). Is it that subconsciously I believe variety to be the spice of life and satisfy that need through hookups? Courtship is exciting. But the freedom and independence of being single for the first time in my adult life felt good too. So why couple up? Am I just afraid of being alone?

The reasons I feel for coupling are very much the same in the gay and nongay communities and they produce the same problems. Being alone has never been a valued condition in American society, being paired is, and the pressure to do so is almost as great in the gay world as in the nongay. So, people seek coupling because:

It's important to find a partner so others (and you) will know that you can do it
Searching is boring - all that small talk game playing, insincerity, superficiality.
Searching is risky. You can get set up, ripped off, done in by strangers who don't know or care about you.
Searching is time consuming. I could be building, earning, learning, planting, painting ...doing.
Searching is nerve-wracking. You can be put down, found out, written off.
Singles are socially out of it - unsafe to have around a carefully homogenized couple’s scene.
Loneliness feels bad.

When the partner search is motivated by such pressures, chances are the selection process will be short and probably short-sighted. That's not a disaster, since the willingness to work on a relationship can overcome such a beginning. The real problem is that short-circuited partner selection too often results in the fallacy of "if only I had a partner, then . . ." turning into the follow of, "now that I have a partner, I will . . . ": be loved, involved, safe, using my time constructively, emotionally supported, socially sought after and lonely no more. And then you aren't. At least not enough, not often enough.

Each time I have entered into a committed relationship, I have invested my partner with enormous, usually unwanted power over my life. Few of us hold up under such a burden. If it has to be because of my partner that I feel adequately loved, meaningfully engaged, safe from the cruelties and crudities of boors and evil-doers; if it because of him that I will be enabled to meet the intellectual and creative challenges of my own potential, feel comfortable in your dealings with the world, invited to the most desirable parties and freed of the pain of aloneness, well, I don't think anyone can handle all that responsibility. If all of this is happening in the underground of a relationship, we don't have a chance to deal with it, to become aware of it, to understand it, to express how we feel about it, to divest ourselves of the awful responsibilities of it. So, we have to find a way to make these implicit expectations we may have of one another explicit.

What I have learned I must do is open up awareness of my own and my partner's expectations and learn to communicate about them. This is particularly important for gay and lesbian couples whose relationships have to be made strong from within, since the culture without contributes so little to our stability. So how do we get to our fantasies and illusions about each other? Here's one approach that I have begun to consider:

Every human relationship is flawed. Each individual brings to the relationship a plethora of accumulated behaviors, good and bad. Also brought into the relationship are tools and coping mechanisms that may be current or, outdated. In my present relationship each of us has brought major health challenges as well as mental illness. In all of my relationships, past and present, I found it frightening to fight. In my mind, discord might be signaling the end of the relationship. The tape in my head plays, “Can't work. Won't last. Doesn't count. And we're dancing to their tune again!” But turning away from conflict is turning away from reality.

Denying anger, until it explodes unexpectedly at a later date, is bewildering and potentially very damaging to a relationship. Dealing with it as directly as possible, when it is happening, is strengthening though it may be painful and frightening to do so. Fighting is a necessity in a thriving relationship. Fighting fairly and to the finish is essential to the continuing growth of any partnership.

Unfinished fights are usually aborted because of fear of losing or fear of exposing hurt feelings or concern over letting go of one's emotions totally. Most of us have experienced all of these fears at one time or another. But unfinished fights leave the participants tense and anxious. If I may share with you what I have found to be true in my life, if you feel tense and anxious when you stop fighting, your fight is probably unfinished. You should continue trying to work through to the finish - that is, until the real, underlying issues are confronted.

When my partner and I experience a good fight, we as partners are aware that we are risking ourselves and we are willing to experience the discomfort that brings resolve to the conflict. In a good fight, we trust each other enough to be honest about our feelings, about our grievances and what we want to be different in the future. The good fight ends in negotiation, with both of us being clear about what is being asked for in terms of change. There is accommodation on both sides. Nobody loses. Everybody wins.

We must be willing to fight with each other to discharge the tensions that relationship building inevitably brings. We must be willing to fight in order to work through the control issues that are part of every partnership. The more openly these issues are dealt with, the better chance my partner and I have for a lively, satisfying, and enduring life together.

Much of what I have written about so far is applicable to both male and female couples, for that matter, to nongay as well as gay couples. There are some ways, however, in which liaisons between two women and between two men are unique. I believe these differences are, primarily, outcomes of the ways women and men are differently socialized in this society.

With only three primary love relationships in my history, two of which ended in very negative ways, I have been able to come away from those relationships with some new knowledge of myself, and the intricacies of being in relationship. In the minds of my former partners, I will never be able to get out from under the thoughts they may have of me, or their reactions triggered from their past experience with me. However, I know that people can and will change. I have. And along with this change comes my own perception of how to make a relationship work and that is what I am happy to share openly with you.

Congratulations to my dear brother and his fiance - to Scott and Amy!