Hello I'm Rich Brown and this is my personal website and blog. I'm just your simple, average, down to earth, professional, out gay man and aspiring circuit boy, living in Phoenix, Arizona with a few things to say while trying to find my place among all the scary, conservative, religious nuts in this sick and twisted world.
Saturday, August 28, 2004
@HOME. Christ they are now adding Ad's to Blogs. Is nothing safe from corporate greed. I'm a little tired today even though I took a 3 hour nap after work. A group of us went out to the Elephant Bar last night for drinks and ended up staying out until 2 a.m. to celebrate the later bar hours law that went into effect on Tuesday. I woke up this morning with a nasty hangover. Another day of " ... I'm never drinking again ..."
I've been having so many thoughts about so many different things lately, I think my head is going to spin right off. I feel like I can't focus or concentrate on anything. Work, politics, family, friends, just life in general. I'll try not to be too ridiculously profound here as I can forsee me saying something stupid. I had a great conversation with my friend Dave today about relationships and just how fucked up we are in the gay community. In all honesty I think part of the reason we are so fucked up comes from our parents. Our whole lives we try so hard to mold ourselves and mirror our personal relationships after our parents. I think sometimes it works but more often then not it fails miserably. One person ends up cheating on the other or something else happens that forces a breakup and you're left wondering why it didn't work out again this time or what you did wrong yet again. I think the gay community is different and we cannot keep modeling ourselves after traditional heterosexual couples such as our parents. I believe it's more important to embrace life, experience it and go with your heart. In the end that can't be a bad way to live can it? We are our own people, we can make our own rules about life and relationships. Why does everything always have to be about social and moral values? From my perspective, a relationship is a union of two or more people for a matter of convenience. No more, no less. Now that convenience may be love, may be sex, may be business ... it may be anything. The bottom line is that there doesn't really have to be rules for the damn thing. You can make it up as you can and if it works then you're doing better then most. I'm always curious why do people find it necessary to impose judgment, rules and criticism upon others when they don't understand or agree. Everyone has their own right to make decisions in the best way they see fit for their own individual lives. I guess what I'm getting at is that as a gay community, we need to embrace life, love ourselves a whole lot more and create the relationships and friendships that help us grow and experience new things.
JUSTIN AND I. Ok, I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I question our relationship. I know that sounds bad but it's not. When I say question, I don't mean question in the sense of why are we together. I mean it more in the sense of are we doing the right thing ... are we both happy and getting from each other what we need? Mind you I think that it's important to separate the difference between "what we need' and 'what we want' when it comes to a relationship. I know if you were to ask Justin, I'm sure he would say that he's happy but doesn't get everything he wants from me. But does he get everything he needs? I can't answer that for him, but from my eyes I would probably say yes. As for me I can say that I'm pretty content. That doesn't sound great and maybe even a little pathetic or lack luster, but that's pretty much how I feel. I spent so much time with my previous relationships always wondering what if and questioning the love and the relationship in general that I always had myself convinced I was not happy. I don't feel that way with Justin. I think I may have questioned things in the beginning, but we are going on 4 years now and I just don't have those concerns anymore. I know we have our issues, our fights and those things we really hate about each other, but I just can't see myself without Justin in my life. As much as I love Justin I do see our relationship sometimes heading the route of more companionship then anything else, but I'm starting to thing that is the inevitable course of all relationships over time. In the beginning there was passion, lust, all of the good things. Over the years we become content, happy and it takes on a different dynamic. I sometimes feel like we are best friends who share every aspect of our lives. I couldn't imagine starting over with someone new and I just couldn't imagine what my life would be like without Justin. I would like to think that I'm a very emotionally available person and that Justin knows how I feel, but I'm sure that he questions my love and my sincerity. I guess the truth of that matter is that I know I can be a total bitch and that I too often shut myself off emotionally from everyone, especially Justin. I feel like I've been through so much over the last 10 years and I've give out so much of myself that I have to just shut off or I won't have any more to give. I don't know ... that's probably not true but it's just the way I feel. The way I've been headed. I know Justin hates it and wants more. I just don't know how to give him more right now. That's really shitty for him, but I just can't, I feel like I have to spend so much energy keeping things in and just keeping myself together that if I loosen up just a little emotionally that I will completely fall apart. I don't know that's my deal and I don't know that I'll ever be able to change that.
Sometimes I feel guilty about the whole open relationship issue. Guilty in the sense that I know deep down Justin really doesn't want an open relationship but that I've forced him to accept it if he wants to be in a relationship with me. I've had people say "How have you forced him ... he can make up his own mind?" Which is true, but in our last discussion I pretty much made it clear that it was an open relationship or no relationship. I don't know if he really doesn't want it or is just afraid that I'm searching for someone to replace him. I think all that comes back to my emotional unavailability. I just don't want sex to be a reason or factor for us to break up. I think there are so many challenges to maintaining a relationship that any barriers you can remove that might possibly break it down is a good thing. In the past I don't think I would have never gone for it myself, but over the years I have come to realize that a relationship is not about just sex, it's about the life you make together. How you both define your happiness. Having sex with someone else is sort of an adventure and fulfills some carnal needs for some of us. It just doesn't feel natural to be monogamous for life. If that were the case why are there always so many heterosexual and homosexual people cheating on their spouse/partner. I think if monogamy was really the social norm instead of an imposed religious moral value, we would not have the growing problem of cheating and ultimately separation and divorce. Just my thought. So anyway that has let me to believe if you take away the cheating aspect out of the relationship and allow each other to explore any desires they may have, it leads to a stronger personal relationship in the end because you have one less issue to worry about.
