Breaking Up Is Easy to Do. The Hard Work Is Keeping a Gay Relationship.
Staying together is hard even if you make a strong commitment to each other.
I have had two long-term gay relationships. The first was for five years, and the second was for eight years. Back then, we didn’t know whether to call ourselves lovers, partners, or spouses. We had no role models, and we were young and stupid.
I met my first partner Larry when we both were in our late 20’s and had completed our schooling, or so we thought. He had completed a law degree from SMU in Dallas, but then he decided to go back to Divinity School and to become a preacher. As he was completing his first year there, the bishop advised him not to continue because he would never be able to find a position in the United Methodist Church as an openly gay man.
He decided to go back in the closet and become a lawyer again. That’s when we met. He was born and raised in Dallas, and I had recently moved there. We met first at church, and then at the bar. We had an open relationship, which was one thing that eventually led to our break-up.
After a couple of years, I had a career change and moved to Oklahoma City. Larry followed me, but he couldn’t find a professional job and soon returned to Dallas. Six months later I followed him back. After a couple of years, I couldn’t find a professional job, so I went back to graduate school. That move meant that in likelihood I would not return to Dallas.
Larry announced that he would not follow me again, and we parted. We shed a few tears, and we remained friends for 50+ years. He quickly took up with a hairdresser, and that lasted for three years. Then he took up with a schoolteacher, and they were together for 30+ years.
I ended up in College Station, Texas and had lived alone for six years when a young man literally dropped on me. He was half my age (19 vs 44) and eight inches taller. We looked like Mutt & Jeff in the comics, and we were mismatched in just about every other way. A most improbable pair to last eight years. It was a tumultuous relationship, which is what you might expect from living with a drama queen. I realized later that Ron probably was bipolar.
My parents acted blind to all this even though it was readily apparent that I had been living in gay relationships. My parents seemed unwilling to discuss it, except that after the first Christmas my sister announced that I should never bring Ron again.
They didn’t have to deal with him for several years. In the meantime, my first partner Larry was still hurting, and he made a trip to North Carolina to tell my mother everything. She told me to never speak of him again, and he quickly went to the top of her enemies list. In fact, probably the only one on the list.
When I returned from my mother’s funeral in 1987, Ron met me at the airport and told me that he was moving back to Houston. And that was the end of that relationship.
I stayed in College Station another six years and dated women to have someone with whom to go to the concerts and theater. One had gone through a bitter divorce, and the other had recently gone through a traumatic relationship. They seemed content to hang out with a gay guy. The office staff at work were totally confused, and the gossip level jumped another notch. I hung out at the gay bars and brought home an occasional one-night stand, but I didn’t form anything lasting.
It’s been 36 years since I was in any kind of relationship, even for a short period of time. I wrote about my life in a self-published book several years ago. Folks have called it a “downer” because it doesn’t have a happy ending. Some people are content to live alone; some even prefer it. I do not. But I didn’t know how to do anything about it. In my later years, I was no longer “marketable.”
I’ve had both gay and straight friends long-term, but that was it — friends — and they provided my support network. I moved to Washington, DC. and then to Raleigh, NC. I belong to some old gay guys’ social groups on Meet-Up, and I’ve been in a Bible Study group at church for 17 years.
I have a couple of cousins left, but most of my gay friends are dying off. A straight friend invited me to join his family of 16 for Christmas. It was a stark reminder of how different my life could have been if I had just married that Dutch divorcee in Albuquerque 60 years ago.
Breaking up is easier to do if you’re gay. There were no vows or contracts until recently. Staying together is what’s hard even if you make a strong commitment to each other.
