What is homosexual love? I think it is not only heterosexuals who may be intrigued, but even the homosexuals themselves do not necessarily understand precisely what their homosexual romantic and erotic relationships are about.
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Each one of us, man and woman alike, is driven by the power of romantic love. These infatuations gain their power from the unconscious drive to become a complete human being. In heterosexuals, it is the drive to bring together the male-female polarity through the longing for the other-than-me. But in homosexuals, it is the attempt to fulfill a deficit in wholeness of one’s original gender.
Two men can never take in each other, in the full and open way. Not only is there a natural anatomical well. Both partners are coming together with the same deficit. Each is symbolically and sexually attempting to find fulfillment of gender in the other person. But the other person is not whole in that way either, so the relationship ends in disillusionment.
The inherent unsuitability of same-sex relationships is seen in the form of fault-finding, irritability, feeling smothered; power struggles, possessiveness, and dominance; boredom, disillusionment, emotional withdrawal, and unfaithfulness. Although he desires men, the homosexual is afraid of them. As a result of this binding ambivalence, his same-sex relationships lack authentic intimacy.
Gay couplings are characteristically brief and very volatile, with much fighting, arguing, making-up again, and continual disappointments. They may take the form of intense romances, where the attraction remains primarily sexual, characterized by infatuation and never evolving into mature love; or else they settle into long-term friendships while maintaining outside affairs. Research, however, reveals that they almost never possess the mature elements of quiet consistency, trust, mutual dependency, and sexual fidelity characteristic of highly functioning heterosexual marriages.
This is not to dismiss same-sex friendships. To the extent that there is friendship, there is love; but it is love limited to friendship.
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The homosexual relationship is doubly burdened with both defensive detachment and the motivation to compensate for personal deficit. Therefore it will usually take the form of an unrealistic idealization of the person as an “image.” The pursuit of this image often means developing a self-denigrating dependency on the other man. This unrealistic perspective is based on the superficial aspects of the other person and leads to disappointment. Because of these unrealistic projections, the homosexual couple has difficulty moving beyond this “disillusionment” stage in a relationship.
As he did with his father, the homosexual fails to fully and accurately perceive his lover. His same-sex ambivalence and defensive detachment mitigate against trust and intimacy. Easily disillusioned in relationship, he often renews his hope by seeking another partner. Yet it is this disillusionment stage that offers the opening into a mature relationship. Here we are required to make a realistic, honest perception of the other person, including his faults. Based on that honest perception, we may then choose to love. It is this choice to love that marks the beginning of a mature relationship.
In seeking out and sexualizing relationships with other males, the homosexual is attempting to integrate a lost part of himself. Because this attraction emerges out of deficit, he is not completely free to love. He often perceives other men in terms of what they can do for him. Thus a giving of the self may seem like more of a diminishment than a self-enhancement.
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In spite of gay rhetoric about androgyny, masculinity remains the gay ideal. It is one’s own deficient masculinity that is sought out in sexual partners. Hooker (1965) observes the particular valuing of masculinity; Hoffman (1968) describes masculinity as “the single most desirable feature” and says that “effeminate men are held in much lower esteem than are masculine-looking homosexuals”. The following was observed by Barry Dank (1974):
"In the gay world masculinity is a valued commodity, an asset in the sexual marketplace …. If there is a consensus on any subject in the gay world, it is that masculinity is better than femininity. The norm in the gay world is that one should be masculine. One should “be a man” and not “a sissy.” Statements such as, “Those nellie queens make me sick” are typical. This preference for the masculine involves not only the area of sexual attraction …. in the friendship groupings and homophile organizations I have studied status differentiation … is highly related to masculinity-femininity, with the most masculine being nearest the top of the status hierarchy."
As one client explained:
"This week I made a list of all the guys I’ve ever had sex with. I wondered, what was I attracted to? I realized it had to do with exterior traits of masculinity and an appearance of self-assuredness. Some of the guys had this hypermasculinity–they were bodybuilders and so on. Looking back, I realize this attraction to masculinity had to do with my not being confident in myself. I also realize now that most of them were actually as insecure as I was…"
The heterosexual, on the other hand, is not as psychologically dependent upon finding the feminine ideal for gratification, since he has no unconscious need to fulfill a deficit in original gender…
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Cheers
So you are in agony that homosexual love exists?
Or homosexuals' existent
Originally posted by Lorry`:So you are in agony that homosexual love exists?
Or homosexuals' existent
Lorry
I have never thought about this, actually.
I would not say I am in agony over the fact that homosexuals may have a distorted idea of love and how it manifests itself, and neither do I agonise over the fact that homosexuals exist.
I just believe that homosexuals, like every other person, need and want love. Homosexuals are certainly capable of great, noble love. Perhaps, just perhaps, some homosexuals may even be able to love much more than heterosexuals.
But having said that, this article "The Limitations of Homosexual Love" seeks to address exactly what its title promises. The premise is that homosexuals themselves are incomplete beings, in terms of gender affirmation. And when a homosexual "loves" other homosexuals, we have to bear in mind that this love is one which is born out of his lack of gender affirmation, and therefore it serves to complete what is lacking or incomplete.
And because it is a "needy" kind of love, it cannot be true love.
Two emancipatory homosexuals, a psychologist and a psychiatrist, David McWhirter and Andrew Mattison (1984), studied 156 male couples, the most partner-stable segment of the homosexual population. They concluded: “Though most gay couples begin their relationship with an implicit or explicit commitment to sexual exclusivity, only seven couples in this study had been consistently sexually monogamous.” That is 4 percent. But notice what is meant with “consistently sexually monogamous”: these men said they had had no other partners for a period of less than five years. Notice the authors’ distorted use of language: “commitment to sexual exclusivity” is morally neutral and, in fact, a poor substitute for “fidelity”. As for the 4 percent, we may safely predict that, even if they did not lie, the consistency of their behavior ended sometime soon afterward. Because that is the fixed rule. Homosexual restlessness cannot be appeased, much less so by having one partner, because these persons are propelled by an insatiable pining for the unattainable fantasy figure. Essentially, the homosexual is a yearning child, not a satisfied one.
The term neurotic describes such relationships well. It suggests the ego-centeredness of the relationship; the attention-seeking instead of loving; the continuous tensions, generally stemming from the recurrent complaint, “You don’t love me”; the jealousy which so often suspects, “He is more interested in someone else.” Neurotic, in short, suggests all kinds of drama and childish conflicts as well as the basic disinterestedness in the partner, notwithstanding the shallow pretensions of “love”. Nowhere is there more self-deception in the homosexual than in his representation of himself as a lover. One partner is important to the other only insofar as he satisfies the other’s needs. Real, unselfish love for a desired partner, would, in fact, end up destroying homosexual “love”! Homosexual “unions” are clinging relationships of two essentially self-absorbed “poor me’s”.
waa..too chim for me. >.<
EvolutionPIG
The idea is that there are some psychiatrists and psychoanalysts who say that homosexuals are homosexuals because when they were young, maybe during their childhood years through adolescence, they were not nurtured to be masculine.
This does not mean that these homosexuals turn out to be effeminate or sissy. When psychiatrists and psychoanalysts say that these homosexuals are not nurtured to be masculine, they refer to homosexuals who may feel inferior in terms of their masculinity as compared to others, or that the homosexuals perceive their masculinity in a negative light.
The prehomosexual boy may feel differently from other boys his age because he has different personality and temperament from his peers, and perhaps he also does not share the same interests as other boys do, such as sports. Somehow, as he grows up, the prehomosexual boy feels that he does not "belong" or that he is often "left out". This contributes to the development of his homosexuality --- during and after puberty, the homosexual's desires for affection and gender affirmation become eroticised. This is how the homosexual becomes sexually attracted to males, yet sex is not what they really need and want, but affection and gender affirmation they sorely missed and longed for when they were young.
The prehomosexual boy may also be made ashamed of his masculinity, perhaps by his mother during childhood. When both parents quarrel, often the boy has to take sides and choose which parent to "support". If the mother is discontented with the father, she may influence the boy to see the flaws of his father and emotionally "manipulate" him to be on her side. This helps to influence the prehomosexual boy to be ashamed of his masculinity which he sees in his father and in himself, because of the discontentment of the mother.
Of course, things may not necessarily be as simplistic as described above. Indeed, there are many factors to be taken into consideration --- such as environmental, social-interactional, psychological, genetic etc. But these are only prediposing factors, they do not ultimately cause homosexuality but may contribute to its development.
So why is homosexual love limited or "distorted"? It is essentially because homosexuals are incomplete in their gender affirmation and when they love another male, it is actually a subconscious pursuit for masculine affection which they lacked when they were young. This desire for gender affirmation becomes eroticised after puberty and therefore when homosexuals speak of adult romantic relationships, they are actually making gender affirmation a sexual affair and this complicates matters.
+1 for wall of text
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