advice on my gay relationship

[loganf24]

Basically im from NYC. i moved to ohio when i met this guy online... i came to visit him for a week. his family was nice to let me stay with them and they showed me around cincinatti. i had a great time. we did lot of things we went to kings island and coney island and my very first concerts etc... a week later i was set to move back home we agreed to stay together and for a whole month we kept in touch... we missed each other.... i was just out of college and no job but all i could think of was him and seeing him again. a month later we agreed to meet again ... i left my family back home in ny.. i moved in with him and his family. i got my first job. we went to may great places. won a decent amount of cash from a concert he took me... ive had such an amazing time.

once i was back i noticed he was talking to other other guys online. asking for nude pictures etc. i was angry and confronted him about it on multiple occasions. he did not say much. i told him i was leaving him but some how he managed to convince me to stay... i know deep down i shouldnt be with him after all that he has put me through... all the gay apps he used etc. but some how i find it difficult to leave him... he is adventurous, fun and caring he is the other half that i dont have. i am a bit more quiet and nervous around big crowds.

i am in love with him.... and he tells me he still loves me....

a couple of weeks ago he broke up with me. i learned that he is obsessed with a certain races and cant keep away from talking and checking out their pictures etc... i find this disturbing that he is thinking about other men in such manners.

he has fantasies about having us involved with a third person...... sure all this is find to some extent IF WE had discussed this at the beginning stages of our relationship.... 7 months in to our relationship i would think we would have something more meaningful and serious.. i want commitment and devotion and i just dont know if we are on the same page even though he says thats what he wants..... i told me him that love cant be forced and he shouldbt be with me if wanted to look for someone else.... yet we are still together. we have great times but evry now and then we continue to argue over this.

but what bothers me is why he said from the very beginning that he did not want me talking to other guys, that it should just be us. that is what i wanted... but when i moved back here to ohio he was just person. we have fought a lot over him looking at pictures....and chatting on dating apps. i dont have a desire to look at pics of other men or chat with them... we do look around when we see a hot guy walk by us but thats it why does he have to go to apps for i dont...

dont get me wrong there is nothing wrong with looking at pictures but because he has said to me that he wished i looked a bit more like this race and darker skinned, i find it hard to accept this. why did he change his mind. at the beginning it was all about us.. why did he ask me to come back to him if his feelings had changed. why does he all of a sudden want to look at other guys and have a threesome..

over time he was confused and told me that i was perfect for him and he was grateful for everything that i had done for him and he didnt want to keep hurting me. there are signs that he does care about me. i just dont know if its just as a friend? im confused why odes he say he loves me? why cant i believe him when he tells me he loves me. i try to leave back home but he cries and he cant let me go. we have been together for 8 months now. i moved to another state for him.

he said i looked cute but that he was loosing attraction for me..... i see him and he i s not a 100 percent mr perfect but i love him and i could see myself with hi in my future, starting a family... but i feel like he doesnt feel the same way despite that he says he loves me.......

i just want to hear someones opinion. should i believe him when he says he loves me.... should i stay with him? could we have a future together with him having these feelings of talking to others... can we have a relationship and him still looking at others. yes i am a bit insecure about myself.. i am 24 years old and he is 22.

[ddd]

It seems to me like there is a huge miscommunication between you and him. It will be good for you to seat and talk with your bf about your and his idea what a relationship should be. If at the end of this conversation you have realized that there is no future for you and him, better move on and try to forget him. If he is ready to reconsider his attitude towards you, maybe there is a chance to build a committed relationship. But don't forget, every relationship needs people with common goals in life. If there are serious differences between your and his vision of future, forcing this relationship could lead to a disaster....

[princealbertofb]

I would never advise to forget about a person, so I'm going to say that what ddd said was just a figure of speech. You don't forget about people, you may forget how bad or how good the experience was with time. It's like something died and you need a period to mourn it. What are you considering doing? Other than staying with him (which is one solution), are you thinking of moving out, moving in with other people (sharing accomodation can be risky but it's easier on the purse strings) or moving back to New York and your family? What solutions do you have, if you have to break this up officially?

It sounds like he's got a set or rules for himself and a set of rules for you. If he can get you to comply with those rules, then he's in control. But he doesn't seem to be in such control, since he can't control his lust or impulses. Maybe you stabilise him to some extent, and maybe that's what he likes in you. But it is a bit like having his cake and eating it, while you have to pick up the crumbs that are left over. You are entitled to feel cheated.

He sounds like less of a homemaker than you, but maybe it's also just a question of time. He's a bit younger than you. He feels he hasn't had time to sow all his wild oats and deserves to keep doing so, even though it might cost him his comfortable relationship with you. He's not thinking ahead unfortunately. You are both on a different page in your lives, as you mentioned. It also sounds like he's behaving a little spoilt or immaturely. Nothing surprising. After all, he's still enjoying his parents' house for a roof over his head (maybe he can't afford to leave for the moment, if he's still studying or hasn't got a good job yet).

I think most people who come onto the site and ask that sort of question generally have figured out what they need to do already, it's just that airing the problem makes them see more clearly what their line of action or lines of action is / are.

Before you sit him down and have that necessary talk, maybe you need to do your own homework and write down the things that make you want to leave, and the things that make you want to stay and save the relationship. Be honest with yourself. Look at both columns and see which one outweighs the other. You may be surprised by what you find. Take a little distance, reconsider the list some time later and see if things have evolved one way or the other. You wouldn't want to act on impulse, would you?

In all events, I wish you to find a happy solution and one that doesn't leave you heartbroken for too long. Breaking up is hard to do, but probably easier if you know why you're doing it. Take care.

[princealbertofb]

To answer a couple of your other questions, I think he may be sincere when he says he loves you, but maybe it's not at the level that you expect. Try to get him to tell you why he loves you. And you could also think about him in the same way: why do you love him? If the only answer is: just because that's the way I feel, or because I love you, it's going to be rather shallow ground for the relationship to last. Apparently, you're more likely to stay in a long lasting relationship with someone whose qualities you really can spell out.

Like most people in their early twenties, I'm sure he had been longing for a relationship to happen and to be stable for a while. I don't know how many relationships he's had before, nor if he was mainly into one night stands, but it is possible that he didn't really know what he was getting into when you two initially hooked up. Maybe it all happened a bit too fast, and before you knew it, you were both in a close relationship, since you'd even moved in with him. He lost some of his liberty right there and then. If there's one thing that seems to be the case with males, it is that they love to have their freedom, or at least to believe that they've got it. No one adheres to rules that they don't believe in for very long, especially if and when the rules haven't been spelt out first. You obviously didn't spell those rules out and just assumed that you were on the same page.

Now's the time to set those rules and to think about them in depth. He would like to try threesomes, and it's not your thing. How are you going to solve that? He's into darker skinned men, and you're not going to fit that image. How are you going to deal with that?

Remember also that fantasies are just that -- fantasies. They never really need to become real, because once they do, they're no longer fantasies. They can fuel a relationship sometimes, if you can do something about it, but there are things we can't do much about, like changing height, skin colour, penis size (even though surgery can sometimes remedy some problems). If he feels that time is working against him, he might also think that he'd better pull those darker skinned guys now, while he still can. I don't know how he feels about ageism, but it might be a concern. But with the younger generations, I'm afraid it's often a case of wanting things and having instant gratification. Like expecting your text message to be read and answered within seconds. There is no more time for patience, which, I was told, is a virtue. There's a difference between having a long yearning quenched at last and needing a fix, right there, right then.

One other concern I have is how are you going to deal with his parents? Do you have a good relationship with them? Will you be sad to lose that? If you really love your boyfriend but he's not right for you, the best thing you could do is to let him find what IS right for him and find what is RIGHT for yourself. It doesn't mean you have to stop being friends or caring for eachother. You've got a history now, albeit brief, but it's not just going to disappear. You'll probably think fondly of this period in your later years. I hope you do. Good luck.

[EvenOlderButWiser]

The insecurity that your experiencing is completely understandable given everything you have described.

He has a clear picture in his mind of what his perfect guy looks like, and then he has you in real life. My concern would be whether your 'second best' while he's waiting on Mr Perfect coming along.

My advice would be for both of you to sit down and have a serious discussion about what each of you are looking for in the relationship. Remember all relationships have degrees of compromise, but if his behaviour is unacceptable, and he knows that, then you need to do what's right for you and that includes parting company.

No one will tell you splitting up is easy, everyone will tell you there are plenty more fish in the sea. I think you already know what's right in this case.....

Good luck.
ObW
X

[Cuddly]

He literally said he wished you could have had darker skin?
If you're not his type, what is he doing with you?

If I were to start a new relationship, I would demand that my partner-to-be deletes all such apps. Grindr, Growlr etc. has got to go. I will not tolerate being, as OBW put it, second best while they wait for Mr. Right to come along. That is not the kind of relationship I would want to dedicate my time to and it sounds like that is what you're doing loganf24.
You should sit down and talk about what you both honestly want and then either go your seperate ways or work out a compromize.

Good luck.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

One of the problems of the Internet Age is that there are too many definitions of 'cheating'.

Back in my day Cheating was a simple thing, if you had sex with another person it was cheating.

Now days there are apps, and chatting, and sex-texting and all other things which confuse the matter. After all its easy to reduce people to just an image or words on a screen - they lose a certain realness if they are just on a computer screen.

So this is something a couple really needs to discuss, get on the same page and share a definition of what cheating is exactly.

Since he is looking for a specific race another issue crops up. If he seeks or is attracted to a different race than his own, he may be suffering the same issues that many who prefer interracial have. Finding or initiating a potential interracial relationship.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/72633/...the-racism reveals a few interesting trends. While many are open to the idea, few initiate.

Unfortunately the interracial bias/bigotry leads to a general fear of rejection. So while say a white guy may want to date black men exclusively, its most likely going to turn out that he will not initiate a potential relationship with a black guy he likes, nor is it likely he will be approached by a black guy.

The negative aspect of being a 'dusk-queen' or 'rice burner' or beaner-eater or all of the other negative words and phrases out there keeps the walls between the races up all the times.

So what does a guy in that situation do? He settles for what he can get and finds other ways to satisfy that need. Porn, amongst many other things, is a safe outlet of expression to get what we really want or satisfy certain itches which society frowns upon.

This isn't to say he can't or doesn't love you less... its only to say that he has certain needs which is wants/needs fulfilled and is using a relatively safe method to fill that need.

Most men love novelty in bed. Many secretly fantasize they are with someone else with their partner. It is perfectly normal and actually one of those 'safe' ways to meet hardwired needs.

See humans are not naturally monogamous. Monogamy is contrary to the very physiology, the penis is shaped to 'pump out' potential competing semen, the size of the testes and how much semen is produced at climax tells us that earlier in human evolution there was a lot of competition (non-monogamous competition).

You already admit to looking at cute guys on the street. This actually applies to most men - its only natural to seek out and look at 'cute'. Used to be we had to wait to fill this need, now we have the internet which gives us instant access and provides us with the privacy to actually stare, drool and other things over 'cute'. Its hard wired, a part of human evolution that society loves to lie about.

Thus having a rich fantasy life, being able to see yourself with someone else while with your long term partner is allowing a person to meet the needs of their biology without actually acting out on those needs.

I can't stress this enough - most men you will partner with will (secretly or otherwise) put a different face on you during sex. This does not mean they love you less, it only means that they have needs they are trying to meet.

Monogamy while possible, isn't easy. Unfortunately our 'until death do us part' programing is contrary to human nature, thus we seek a 'safe' way to meet that other need to maintain a monogamous relationship.

Open relationships (sex outside of the partnership) attempt to meet both needs. So two the 'three way couple' the couple that occasionally gets involved with a third party. Various couples tend to have 'this is ours only' situations, such as your partner is the only one who gets to penetrate your ass. Or we only bareback with each other. This sort of thing attempts to make something exclusive, thus keeping something special as a symbol of monogamy.

Another aspect to your relationship is that love is terribly misunderstood. For one thing, lust (animal attraction) often feels like love. Another thing is that infatuation can run strong and feel like love.

Infatuation for most people is a matter of 20/20 hindsight. We clearly see that what we had with a person was only infatuation after the fact. In the process, while we are exploring that relationship infatuation is confused with 'real love' because it certainly feels like real love.

Then the nature of love changes with time. All couples start off with hot passionate 'I need to be with you constantly' love which is a bridge to the deeper, more mellow forms of love that result in long term relationships.

Sadly, few people understand the stages of love and assume that once that hot passion cools that the love has died. It hasn't, its transforming but our society and myths surrounding the subject paint an impossible situation that many strive to find, but can't or won't.

So all of what I have written above is an attempt to explain how stuff works. I might be slightly off when it comes to your partners motivations but I'm willing to place bets that all of that is the underlying motivation.

What to do now?

I do not know how much damage has taken place here. I do not know if you and he can move on from this and build a life.

If you can get over the emotional damage, you might be able to explore all of this and find 'safe' ways for both of you to get what you want.

Compromise is needed. Say allow him to have his porn and find an understanding that this does not detract from the love he feels for you.

I would strongly suggest you two learn more about what real love is about. Not the fantasy of happily ever after, but the stages of love, how love changes over time.

If done together chances are high that both of you can work through this and find better understanding of 'self' as well as how relationships work.

In any case (if this relationship works out or not) I strongly suggest you study the psychology of love, and learn what monogamy is all about and how most men can't do it forever.

[EpicTravis]

I am going to keep this short and simple. This is NOT a keeper relationship. It's a relationship for a little bit of fun. This relationship is an experience, an experience for you to learn what it feels like to be played with, and what love feels like. The real thing (a keeper relationship) doesn't have problems like that.

So if I were you I would Enjoy it. Drain it dry. Go to concerts, movies, plays and make him pay for his own tickets. Enjoy the sex. Not everyone could grab a 22 year old.

When he says he loves you just repeat in your head "yea right, this is not a keeper relationship"

Best of luck

[Cuddly]

When he says he loves you just repeat in your head "yea right, this is not a keeper relationship"

Ouch. Do people really do that?

[gaycraig]

Wish I experienced loving a man, it is something on my to do list now after giving up being straight