The following is intended to spark a few questions about gay relationships, or in fact any relationship. If you don’t want to have your ideas questioned then don’t read any further. It is pretty heavy stuff and you may not like some things you might find out about yourself or your current relationship.

I have been asked to write this by many guys and couples I have helped over the years in their relationships. I have no formal qualifications whatsoever, just many years of listening and talking to lots of gay guys and couples. I see a lot of guys for casual sex, 90% of them are cheating on their boyfriends. If you believe your partner is not or has not cheated on you, your probably wrong or maybe naive, or in the remaining 10%.

I will be asking some pretty serious questions designed to make you think about yourself and what you expect from a relationship, both monogamous and open. What you expect at the moment is probably a lie.

There is nothing wrong with either type of relationship provided you truly believe it is the one you and your partner want and is not a function of sociological conditioning.

As you should know by now most gay people are born that way, but we are all brought up in a strong heterosexual family environment. This environment sets sociological rules and ideas that have been brainwashed into us since birth and are exaggerated by jealously and possessiveness.

The first thing to note here is that you don’t own anyone, you have no right to inflict your will on anyone or to tell anyone who they will and will not see or have sex with for that matter. Sociologically we have been conditioned to believe that once someone is your partner you have the right to dictate whatever you like to him. I question this strongly.

Sociologically, we are also brought up to believe that sex and love are inseparably locked together and you can’t have one without the other. If you love your partner and he wants to have sex with someone else why does this mean he loves you less. Believe me it doesn’t.

If, after reading to this point you are now angry then you are probably a jealous or possessive person and I think will always have trouble in any relationship. Unless you can actually say to yourself what you are jealous of, you will never learn to deal with it and probably never have a longterm happy relationship. I suggest you are probably more into the control of you partner than making him happy.

Every one of us before getting into any gay relationship should decide exactly what we as individuals are looking for. It should have nothing to do with what you think is normal, there is no such thing as normal we are all individuals and want and need different things from a partner. If, when you are thinking about what you want, you come up with words like “not look or be interested in other guys” then stop and start again, because you will be expecting your partner to be abnormal. All people look and desire other people from time to time as it is a normal gay male function and to expect someone to stop because they are now your boyfriend is stupid, and doomed to fail.

The biggest and most difficult question involves sex, because once again we are conditioned to think that sex is some kind of sacred taboo only to take place between to people in love. Why is sex so sacred? Ask yourself this again and again. Exactly what is so wrong with you or your partner having sex with someone else? Is it the sex with you that makes him love you or your personality? You would probably allow your boyfriend to go and play tennis or squash with another guy so why not sex. Sex is simply an activity between two or more people enjoying the pleasures of each other’s body.

I am very serious here. Give it some very serious thought. Your future happiness depends 100% on the answer you give to yourself. Exactly what are you afraid of if he has sex with another guy? I suggest you are afraid of something that actually never happens.

If your partner is very happy with you, that being your personality and environment. If he goes to have sex with another guy I guarantee he will view this casual sex partner purely as a sex object nothing else. If a human being is happy in his current situation he will not fall in love with another person, it simply
doesn’t happen.

If you lose a partner to someone else it is because he was not completely happy with you in the first place. It had nothing to do with sex. That is just an excuse to make you feel better. Your partner may be the worst sex in the world but you love him for all the other aspects of his personality. Are you going to give it all up because you need to get good sex occasionally. If you do you’re fools. This is the hardest thing to accept but is 100% true.

If you put a bird in a cage and restrict its activities by making the cage smaller and smaller it will die, nothing surer. You should be in your relationship for the companionship, that is the most important thing. Something that was one said to me by a very happy long-term gay couple: “What better thing can you do for your partner than find him some casual sex”. Talk a serious no bullshit talk to your partner . Find out what he truly thinks, determine if he is telling the truth or just telling you what you want to hear because of social conditioning.

Most of us make this mistake the first time when we meet someone new. The topic of a relationship comes up and we almost always use words like “monogamous relationship” and “stop seeing other guys” when we are really saying without any thought whatsoever what we think the other wants to hear. Social conditioning once again. Think what would happen if you said “clearly we get on really well and I like you heaps but I am use to having some casual sex that I am not willing to stop”.

I suggest the reaction you will get is one of shock, something that will spark your opposite into thinking about his own needs, probably for the first time in his life. You will probably be very surprised at the reaction. He is maybe thinking the same as you but does not have the strength to admit it. Be sure about this, the breaking of these social conditionings is probably the hardest thing you will ever do. But, the rewards are worth it. You suddenly discover yourself, and your partner's true feelings about you and sex. I guarantee you will be much happier together. After all the biggest killer of relationships is sex and cheating, if you remove sex from the equation you remove most, if not all of the potential problems.

I bet you have never had this discussion, or if you did you lied. Imagine this scenario. You and your partner are a bit stressed from work or whatever, a bit grumpy toward each other. One or both of you goes out and has some great sex with someone completely new, you come home feeling great. Your partner sees this happy face the stress cycle is broken you both have a great night together.

I have to mention here that if you are a jealous person then you are going to have a really tough time with all that I have said. Jealously is your personality flaw that you need to learn to deal with. Keep asking yourself “What am I jealous of, what am I afraid is going to happen, what evidence do I have that my fears are going to come true.

Up to this point I have obviously spoken about open relationships. Any relationship is fine provided the rules or conditions are in complete agreement by both parties. It may be that you only play together. This is usually a cop out by the more jealous side of the couple. As it is very rare that you would both be turned on by the same casual sex partner. So it is a convenient excuse to always say no. Another arrangement might be that you can have as much casual sex as you like provided you don’t see the same guy more than once, this would be a good arrangement for a couple who want a bit of a safety net.

As you can see there are lots of possibilities including the full-on gay monogamous relationship, even though there is a wealth of research that shows that these usually fail. I am sure you have had one yourself or know of one that has failed because one was cheating on the other.

Another kind of relationship that is sometimes very sad is the 'tragic kind', it usually involves one party being in their late 30’s or early 40’s and the other being round 20. What happens is they are both very happy in the monogamous relationship for several years, then as the younger of the partnership suddenly realises that he has only ever had sex with his partner. This is very hard to cope with as he is getting older and feels he has missed out on the best sexual years of his life. This relationship tragically often ends bitterly.

The older of the couple I believe has a responsibility to ensure that his younger partner never faces this problem by ensuring the his partners possible diverse sexual needs are met. This may require him to go out an play with other guys. To restrict a young partner to a very limited number of sexual partners at that age is both cruel and often the cause of the break up.

The message I am trying to get across here is that as gay men we have spent our lives being brainwashed and living by heterosexual values. These values do not suit gay life and never have. We try to live by them and end up hurting ourselves and the people we love. It is time to set some new values for gay relationships. Talk to your partner and find out his true feelings (probably harder than you think) then adjust your lives to suit. If you can pull off this change, I am sure you will be together longer and happier.