Love In Its Many Forms
PLANETROMEO believes in love. We believe you deserve love in your life. If you don’t agree, then you need to read this. How you seek love out, what version you settle on: Polyamory, Monogamish, Open, closed, well, that’s up to you. But, we can offer some support and insight along the way. In this post, we’ll look at love in its many forms.
Is Love Hard To Define?
Whatever your journey, however you arrived here, you’ve had some experience of love in your life. The love of family, of friendship, gay love, self love, or even the love of a stranger. Love is something that’s hard to define neatly. And for some gay men, love can also be an embarrassing thing to admit you want from another man.
Gay Love
We’re exposed to a lot of stories and relationship models throughout our lifetime that center on the straight PoV. Almost every song you hear, every movie you watch, every book you read will feature love between a man and a woman. This means when we as gay men, desire a man. When we want to fall in love with a man and share a life with him, it goes against almost everything we’ve been shown about mainstream love. That can be confusing at the start.
Lots of gay people might think love is not for them, that it’s for straight people. Of course, that’s ridiculous. If the status quo promotes one dream for generations, it takes a lot of courage to stand up and change that narrative. In the past century things have changed. We’re finally starting to see complex gay characters in movies, we’re hearing more queer music, and we’re beginning to accept that gay love is possible, beautiful, and just as important as any other mainstream type of union.
Self Love
Many of us went through the experience of coming out. This process challenged the loved ones in our life. They were forced to see us as a sexual creature, and that was a big step, especially for parents. You chose who to tell, and more often than not, you decided to tell the people most important to you, the ones you trusted and loved. Some reactions were wonderful, appreciative, welcoming and loving. Some were less understanding, more difficult and perhaps hurtful. Any and all reactions were just different sides of love, but that’s a whole other story.
Coming out and being honest about your ‘Self’, shows that you love yourself, and that’s powerful. Telling your loved ones you’re gay is offering them a chance to be part of your brilliant and shining self love story. Some will accept the offer and add to your story, others may decline, and that’s their misguided right. It’s always hard to forgive and love the haters, but if you can do it, you empower yourself. Try to love the people who don’t understand you, because they need your love more, and in the end, hopefully love wins.
Lets Get Intimate
You share love with people in your life. Some enjoy the love of friendship and find intimacy and connection there. Intimacy can also be found through building trust with friends, and being part of a community. Love is touch, love is listening, love is hearing and love is sharing. It’s about appropriate acts of love which you share with the people around you; emotionally, mentally, physically, and verbally.
Family Love
For lots of gay people, our friends become our family. The majority of gay people were born to straight parents and raised in straight communities. Our parents had to learn about being gay as we grew up, and that’s a big challenge. They simply weren’t armed with the tools to raise gay children. As a result, they could have struggled to express parental love in a way that you may have needed. As soon as we meet other gay people, we finally feel a sense of belonging that may have been missing from our family life. For the lucky ones, meeting other gay people just made your family larger. Some straight families did a great job and loved their gay kids no matter what; some didn’t do so well. Family love is about accepting, evolving, learning and being there for the duration.
Friendship
A real friend tells you the truth even if it’s not good news, but they can also hold your hand and listen to anything you have to say. Being listened to, and heard are vital to having an intimate connection with your friends, and it’s a two-way street. If you can listen to each other and hear each other, then you have a reciprocal and equal relationship, that’s a healthy and loving one.
The toxic ones are harder to work with. Learn to identify toxic habits early on and find a way to fix them, or say goodbye to that friendship. The people you spend the most time with have an effect on you. It could be your colleagues at work, your family, but more often than not, it’s your friends. So choose carefully, as they will be a reflection of you.
Love In Its Many Forms
PLANETROMEO celebrates all kinds of love. We want to explore the different types of relationships, love, intimate connections, and adventures that life has in store for you. The possibilities are endless. There’s no right or wrong way; we’re all growing and learning together. In the queer community, we’re the authors of our own beautiful narrative. The best part about writing your own story is you’re the star, not just for today, but for the rest of your life.
Fall In Love With Us?
We’ve started the conversation by looking at open relationships, monogamish, polyamory, toxic-friends, and juggling. We’ll continue to look at even more forms of love and relationships like, celibacy, being single-by-choice, adoption, and family in future posts.
This moment, right here, right now, this is the beginning of a never-ending love story, and it starts with three words: PLANETROMEO loves you.
“If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an Amen” – RuPaul
Suggestions
We value YOU. If you want us to cover anything, send your suggestion to social@planetromeo.com. All ideas considered.
Enjoyed this story? Then check out our Toxic Friends and Juggling blog stories too.
We also feature gay people in their jobs, we call it Queer Careers.