When It's Time to Leave Your Lover

A Guide for Gay Men

Neil Kaminsky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317790181
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: LGBT Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

When It's Time to Leave Your Lover: A Guide for Gay Men is for people who need help ending a gay male relationship that is no longer viable or for friends and family who want to support a gay man experiencing a breakup. This book provides tips on how to successfully cope with the post-breakup period and how to grow emotionally from the experience. You will discover how to tell a lover good-bye while learning about the psychological and social changes to be anticipated in this situation. When It's Time to Leave Your Lover gives you helpful, practical advice on how to cope with ending a relationship in a positive and constructive manner.

This unique book contains actual interviews with gay men and vignettes that clearly illustrate the topics. They provide you with a deeper understanding of all aspects of the break-up period. When It's Time to Leave Your Lover is a unique how-to book that gives you helpful and practical advice on such important issues as:

• making an assessment of your relationship to determine if it is no longer viable
  
• constructively leaving your partner and making it a positive experience
  
• coping with the uncoupling experience by using specific techniques to avoid common mistakes such as the rebound relationship
  
• growing from your uncoupling experience so you can enjoy more fulfilling relationships in the future
  
• managing the social and psychological effects of a breakup through use of your support system of family and friends
  
• seeking support through specific organizations available in several different cities that help gay men deal with breakups

Sincere and full of knowledgeable advice, When It's Time to Leave Your Lover offers proven suggestions that will help you revisit the mistakes you made during your relationship, preparing you for more satisfying relationships in the future that are based on compatibility, respect, and trust. A valuable and reader-friendly book, When It's Time to Leave Your Lover will enhance your understanding of the break-up experience and will help you understand, learn from, and get past the heartache of ending a relationship.

Chapter 1

Lovesick

Since the Stonewall riots in New York City in June 1969, the lesbian and gay communities in the United States have made significant strides in debunking prejudicial myths and stereotypes. The struggle is far from over, and antigay sentiment and oppression remain part of the American landscape. But our world is very different from that of previous generations. Like the massive technological changes of the past 100 years, there is no going back to invisibility and second-class citizenship.

As the millennium approaches, we are unafraid to put our energies, our dollars, and our lives on the line. We demand equality before the law. We demand the freedom to work and live where we choose. We will not settle for partial equality, for indeed the concept is an oxymoron.

I believe we will continue to survive and grow in the twenty-first century. We will raise children if we so desire. We will continue to develop loving, long-term relationships. Legalized gay and lesbian marriage will one day become a reality.

Being in love will profoundly enhance your life. It will render depth and color and joyousness to your existence that no other experience may ever provide. Finding a life partner with whom to experience such feelings is a dream spawned early in life. It becomes a procurable goal during adulthood. We, as gay men, share in this vision, despite pervasive homophobic beliefs that depict us as inherently flawed and incapable of mature love.

Leaving your partner is one of the most difficult and painful decisions you will ever have to make. It’s probably one of the most agonizing experiences you will ever have to endure.

Gay spousal relationships are gaining and will continue to gain legitimacy in the twenty-first century. Our well-merited delight, however, should not blind us to the fact that such relationships, like all relationships, remain complicated social systems. Sometimes these relationships cease to work, or never were able to in the first place. We bond at times for the worst of reasons—we want the parent we never had, we fear the world, we want to deny existential loneliness and death. Other times life simply gets in the way. He is not who he used to be and neither are you. What once made sense, sadly, no longer does. Often it’s a combination of many factors. But whatever the reasons, some gay relationships should not, and more to the point, cannot be “saved.”

Our legacy of living in a homophobic culture that says all such relationships cannot survive should not blind us to the fact that some really can’t. Resistance to breaking up for fear of “living out” the stereotype cannot make an unworkable relationship work. When we try to hold on to what is no longer there, we risk destroying ourselves.

The following story does not involve homophobia per se, but demonstrates a host of other reasons that impeded a much-needed parting of the ways for two gay men. The story of Anthony and Steven poignantly illustrates just how wrong something that once seemed “so right” can become.

Anthony is forty-five years old. He is a medical doctor and lives in Chicago. If you ask him what he remembers most about Steven, he begins to talk about the middle of the night.

The middle of the night during the good times. Magical times for Anthony. “Didn’t we take each other to a place where no one’s ever been?”¹ conveys Anthony’s feelings about that experience most distinctly. Anthony generally did not sleep well. When he’d awaken to find Steven next to him, a sublime sense of joy and well-being would overtake him. He would entangle himself around Steven, putting his face into the center of Steven’s back. He would feel warmth emanating from a special spot below Steven’s shoulder blades. He would also place his ear against Steven, and listen to the flow of oxygen surging through his lungs. He would even smell and lick Steven, laughing softly as his lover remained deeply asleep. During these times, in the dead of the night, Anthony felt as if no one else on earth existed, nor needed to.

He met Steven on a snowy December evening in the early 1980s, in a Chicago nightclub. Anthony felt depressed that evening. He had recently ended a brief affair and was feeling especially lonely and vulnerable. The holidays were coming, and his best friend Bryan was vacationing in Amsterdam. Holidays had always been difficult for Anthony, and the prospect of a lonely Christmas troubled him. His plan on this night was the same he had executed many times before when he was in this mood. First he would have a few drinks, just to get him a little high. Then he would talk to Michael, the coat check person. Michael made him laugh, especially when he critiqued the way some of the patrons looked. He did not know Michael outside of the bar, but he felt very comfortable with him nonetheless. After that, he would leave the club and call his favorite hustler, Chico. One hour of a massage/jerk-off session with Chico was all that he needed. Then it was home to sleep, and awake at seven, in plenty of time for his first patient.

After his second beer, he walked near the dance floor and immediately noticed Steven. Steven was watching the people dance. He appeared somewhat uncomfortable and innocent, almost as if he had never been to a club before. This, for some reason, turned Anthony on, and he had a fleeting urge to walk over to him. But he aborted the thought immediately. He didn’t feel he had the energy or the motivation to engage in small talk. “Probably a shithead anyway,” he told himself.

For the next hour, Anthony walked around the club, drinking more beers, passing the same people, feeling increasingly depressed and disgusted. He finally succeeded in giving himself an upset stomach. He then decided to leave. “No time to even talk to Michael,” he thought. As he approached the coat check booth to simply get his coat, he observed that Steven was talking to Michael. He watched the interaction for a while and found himself feeling attracted again to Steven. He mentally debated whether to break into the conversation. His debate did not last long. Rather abruptly, Steven stopped talking, turned in Anthony’s direction, and proceeded to walk toward him. Anthony felt mildly anxious, wondering if this stranger had been aware he was watching him. Steven positioned himself directly in front of Anthony. Instead of saying anything about staring, he asked Anthony why he liked to wear red bow ties. Anthony was confused, wondering what on earth this was about. Why would a stranger ask him a question like this? And besides, he never wore bow ties, red or otherwise. When he told Steven this, Steven responded that he had to make something up; he just wanted to talk with him! In fact, he had been telling Michael about how much he wanted to meet him. He had been following Anthony around the club for the past hour trying to get up the nerve to say something!

Anthony was impressed. His despondent emotions vaporized as he asked Steven to join him for a drink (7Up for Anthony) in a quiet, candlelit booth away from the crowd. Anthony soon learned that Steven was a criminal defense attorney, that he had moved to Chicago only a year previously, and that he was unattached. They sat in this booth sharing their life stories until the “ugly lights” came on, signaling that the club was closing. But they weren’t finished. They drove to an all-night diner and ate and talked for the next four hours. Anthony woke up his assistant and told him to cancel all of his appointments. It usually took illness to keep Anthony from his patients, and he was quite surprised at how easy it was for him to do this. When they finally parted with the morning sun illuminating the Chicago skyline, they had made a date to visit a museum on the weekend.

Anthony returned home and climbed into bed. But sleep was flat-out impossible. He was intensely excited. At first he thought he was experiencing an infatuation that would pass. But he knew, upon further reflection, that this was different. He realized that he had somehow crossed a threshold, that the feeling he had was materially different from any feeling he had ever experienced. Somehow he knew that life for him would never be the same.

It never was. He fell in love with Steven. They would be lovers for the next twelve years.

Within six months of that evening, Steven moved into Anthony’s apartment. A year later they purchased a home in a fashionable district of Chicago.

Friends joked with them about being the “model gay American couple.” They were young (Anthony was thirty, Steven twenty-eight), successful, in love, and apparently happy.

On one level, Anthony was very happy. Being with Steven, doing “nothing,” brought him immeasurable pleasure. He especially loved frigid Sunday afternoons, curled in front of their fireplace, reading The Chicago Times together.

Birthdays, during their early years together, were also very joyful. They would take each other out for dinner, and “surprise” each other by secretly telling the waiters to sing “Happy Birthday” when the dessert came. (The waiters would come out singing with a lit candle in a piece of cake.) Anthony started the tradition, and before long it became a running joke. Steven would make it difficult for Anthony by saying he didn’t want a dessert, even though he loved sweets and was known to put sugar in soft drinks. So one year Anthony got very creative. He arranged for a cabaret performer to sing “Happy Birthday” to Steven. No dinner, no dessert, and even more important, it was a month before Steven’s birthday! Steven conceded that he owed him one, as he planted a kiss on Anthony’s mouth. The crowd broke out in applause.

Steven and Anthony also traveled the world, having extraordinary, but sometimes frightening, experiences.

Greece, in the summer of 1984, topped their list.

Their visit to the island of Naxos (which they later renamed “Obnoxious”) began as fun. On their second day, they rented scooters early in the morning to tour the island. They were enjoying their view of the Aegean Sea when Anthony’s scooter unexpectedly ran out of gas. The gauge was broken, indicating half a tank when the machine came to a stop. “No problem,” thought Anthony. He pulled the lever labeled “emergency supply” but was then surprised to discover a very big problem. The emergency supply was empty! Anthony borrowed Steven’s scooter, located a gas station about a mile away, and filled a plastic container with gasoline. On the ride back to Steven, he nearly had a very serious accident. For reasons unknown to this day, his scooter literally split into two pieces as he was traveling about twenty miles per hour! Anthony was thrown head first onto the road. The container of gasoline flew out of his hand and rolled along the ground ahead of him. Miraculously, Anthony sustained only minor bruises. The container of gasoline came to a stop at the base of a tree.

Anthony was dazed and sat on the ground until Steven found him. Steven had become worried when Anthony did not return, and walked the disabled scooter along the road until he reached Anthony. A passerby in a pickup truck brought them and what was left of the scooters back to town.

When they told the merchant what happened, instead of an apology, he screamed at them. Although he was screaming in Greek, it didn’t take long for them to figure out what he was saying. They destroyed his property and he wanted 500 American dollars for the scooter. He was in possession of Steven’s passport, and was not returning it until he received the money. Steven, the tough young criminal defense attorney everyone in Chicago feared, meekly asked Anthony if he could “do something.” Seeing Steven in such fear energized Anthony. Without hesitation he told the merchant that if he wanted to avoid an international incident, and the wrath of his father, a high official in the U.S. State Department (actually a bus driver for the City of Los Angeles), he had better hand over the passport. The merchant didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about and kept screaming in Greek. And Anthony continued the international incident angle, eventually implying that he was going to call President Reagan. This caused Steven to burst out laughing. Which made the merchant even louder and more angry. But then, unexpectedly, the merchant stopped yelling. He pulled the passport out of a drawer and flung it at Anthony. In perfect English he added, “filthy American swine.”

Anthony and Steven tried to leave the store without laughing, but did not succeed. In fact, they began laughing hysterically, which caused the merchant to pick up a large stick and come at them. Which caused them to run out of the store at light speed! They didn’t stop until they reached their hotel three blocks away. The merchant actually stopped a few yards from his store. They were still laughing when they reached their hotel room.

This kind of joy and treasured memories that Anthony experienced with Steven contributed, ironically, to denial of what came later on. Insidiously, over many years, their relationship deteriorated. Eventually, Steven would emotionally abuse Anthony. What was once very beautiful transformed into a living nightmare. Throughout, Anthony held on to images of Greece and other happy times like frozen visions that could somehow obliterate his day-to-day torment. He did not want to accept that things had changed, and that life with Steven had become impossible. Part of his resistance was appropriate. He did not want to let go of someone he loved. Anthony remained in love with Steven up to and even after the bitter end. The other part was quite disturbing. He believed on a very deep level that he had to be with Steven to survive. The image of the relationship ending created a feeling of ghastly, intolerable, overwhelming pain for him.

Before I illustrate what happened, I want to describe Anthony’s background. We will also explore Steven’s past in a more limited way. Their backgrounds hold clues to why they created the kind of relationship they did. It also explains to large degree why Anthony remained long after he should have left.

Steven and Anthony are both white men, who were raised in the Midwest. Steven grew up in South Bend, Indiana, and Anthony in Kansas City, Missouri. Anthony was raised in a middle-class family. Steven’s parents were wealthy.

Anthony was the youngest of four boys. His mother was chronically depressed and withdrawn. Essentially, she was emotionally unavailable. His father took on the “mothering” role and was especially protective of his youngest. Too protective. He was infantilizing and would “take over” in a manner that prevented Anthony from experiencing his own strengths and skills.

He approached children who did not want to be Anthony’s friends and tried to change their minds. If Anthony had a minor problem with a teacher, he was visiting the school. If Anthony forgot to return a library book his father would bring it back. His father even made his doctor appointments until Anthony was twenty, and visited the doctor with him. The doctor finally told his father in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want him to accompany Anthony any longer.

His intentions were truly good. The effect on Anthony’s self-esteem was very bad. Anthony often rebelled against this control and psychological engulfment. That was the healthy part of him “talking.” Although he was unable to articulate this, he very much wanted to confront his own challenges and see himself through on his own steam. But with his anger came guilt and distortion of his own judgment. He was unable to see that his rebellion was a healthy attempt to develop his individuality. He was, in his own eyes, a bad boy for being so angry with his father. After all, look at how much his father was doing for him. How could he bite the hand that literally fed him? What was even more psychologically destructive was that he developed the belief that he could not rely on himself. Fundamentally, he considered as given that he had little internal strength. If his father had to do so many things for him, obviously he could not do them himself. Compounding this was his father’s view of the world as a dangerous, unpredictable environment that no one could easily negotiate. Anthony internalized, or in the psychological vernacular “introjected,” that view. These conditions were ideal for the development of a host of very significant and dangerous psychological problems that would plague him as an adult. They were: (1) inappropriate dependency; (2) an aberrant fear of abandonment; (3) inappropriate guilt, especially related to anger; (4) severely impoverished self-esteem; and (5) distrust of self-judgment.

The above were also the fundamental dynamics of the relationship between Anthony and his father. As Anthony matured, the relationship also became “internalized.” It served as a blueprint of sorts for the way he would form an intimate relationship with another adult. Anthony’s father was never intentionally malevolent, as Steven would later become. However, Anthony’s dependency, fear of abandonment, invalidation and guilt related to anger, and questioning his own judgment in relation to Steven were similar to what he experienced with his father.

Despite his self-esteem difficulties, Anthony was extremely intelligent and excelled academically. He was ahead as early as elementary school, and became valedictorian in high school. He was accepted by a good college on a full scholarship, and later had no trouble getting into an excellent medical school. He became a family practitioner and was a very good doctor. He cared about his patients and they knew it. He was also a plainly superior physician; he was very bright and knew what he was doing. His private practice skyrocketed early in his career, and he was highly regarded by colleagues and patients alike. None of this, unfortunately, made a dent in his poor self-esteem. Inside he still viewed himself as a tiny, powerless, terrified, bad boy. His only gift, as he saw it, was an ability to fool everyone.

Steven grew up in a very different environment. Both of his parents neglected him. As they were wealthy, they often traveled and hired others to care for Steven and his mentally retarded brother. They truly regretted that they had ever had children. Steven essentially raised himself and his brother. He learned to trust no one and depend on himself for everything. Because he felt so dependent upon himself for his survival, he had supreme difficulty admitting, even to himself, that he was ever needy. This did not change when he became an adult. He could still never be wrong or “unable”; that would be too threatening to his sense of safety.

He also felt unloved by his parents, and as a result he was unable to feel love from others (even though Anthony did love him). He had a profound distrust of others (he did not trust his parents’ proclamations of concern for him, which was accurate), and he grew up learning to behave dishonestly toward others.

When Anthony and Steven first coupled, their childhood roles fit together perfectly. Dysfunctional complementary roles often feel comfortable in the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Lovesick
• Chapter 2. Reinventing Your Life: Making the Decision to Leave Him
• Chapter 3. How to Break Up Like a Grown-Up: Healthy Ways of Saying Good-Bye
• Chapter 4. A Time of Pain: Dealing with the Emotional Aftermath of a Gay Divorce
• Chapter 5. You No Longer Live Here: Social and Other Life Changes of Breaking Up
• Chapter 6. Creating the Ex-Relationship: Developing the Kind of Contact You Want
• Chapter 7. Remembering the Misery: Why You Shouldn’t Go Back
• Chapter 8. Alone Again: Facing the Difficulties, Appreciating the Benefits
• Chapter 9. How to Say No to the Rebound Trap: Taking a Relationship Vacation
• Chapter 10. Learning the Lessons of Your Ex-Relationship
• Chapter 11. Starting Over: Loving a Man
• Appendix: Gay Community Resources
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index