This can apply to your lover, your parents, children and pets. You do not really love someone if they don’t come first.
Even if it balances out 51% and 49%, one of the two parties is giving more, the other is receiving more. It is always better to be the lover than the loved one. Because even if it works out badly, you are the one who has had the experience. You are the one who has felt something. The one who has lived. The loved one only has the feeling of being guilty for not loving as much.
Do not complain if you feel you love your partner more than he loves you. In every relationship this is inevitable. There is nothing unusual or irregular about it. On the other hand, Quentin Crisp once told me that if you have loved greatly, it’s only fair that you take your turn in the barrel and allow someone to love you. A person experienced in love can do this and appreciate the experience.
Is there any real difference between lust and love? I think it is very much the same thing. To love someone who does not arouse you sexually is a losing game. If a relationship turns sour, at least you know why you are there. You were crazy about them. If you were never crazy about them then you really have no excuse to be there.
Love always involves being infatuated with someone who fits an idea you already have in your head. You become unhappy with them to the degree that their reality comes into conflict with your fantasy. Understand this. Appreciate them for those qualities that allow you to live your fantasy. Forgive them for their reality that doesn’t fit.
Being in love with someone has its time limits. Hopefully the two of you will like being together a lot by the time it runs out.
And you can go on, enjoying the memory of the romance you once had. In Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” the central character Swann marries his mistress Odile when he no longer is in love with her. He could never marry her while he was very much in love because he knew jealousy would drive him crazy. But once he could see her clearly as a superficial, pretty woman who could love no one he married her, as a kind of memorial to the great love of his life. He knew he would never wish to experience it again. And he would live on with his memory of that great experience. That’s not a bad way to think about love.
Another way of thinking about it is this. Love is like an airplane voyage. Once launched and in the air everything is simpler, more focused. The lovers are upon a trajectory and love is their only concern. But finally the need for fuel and the impossibility of continued simplicity requires that there be a landing. One must return to earth. And as records show, most crashes occur upon landing.
A word about choosing a lover and falling in love in the homosexual world. I think there is a direct relationship between the glittering and available presentation of male beauty and the amount of baggage concealed behind that beauty. Those lost and lonely and burned-out souls somehow automatically create a façade of bravado and sexual expertise to lure in the unwary. If your new love interest has had many affairs, he may well be a love trap. You have been warned.
Some advice from people who knew what they were talking about:
In the matter of love, no one owes anyone anything. Particularly regular sexual attention. If you want sex, my dear, you must inspire it.
If you really place another person’s welfare before your own and they are your lover, then you are concerned whether they are having a good time in bed with you. Not only whether you are having a good time.
If your sex partner is only a fantasy figure or a symbol of masculinity, of course you aren’t interested in whether they are having good sex with you or not. For you, they are not really alive. They are just one step past one of those blow-up plastic dolls.
Gay men probably have no more of a problem with falling in love with fantasies than does the average high school cheerleader. But you should get over it. Those fantasies that are fed to us in the form of Brad Pitt or Taylor Lautner have to do with our genes being irresistibly attracted to the person who is our opposite. The philosopher Nietsche wrote about it, saying that genes know that breeding with our direct opposite creates the strongest offspring. He didn’t point out that it also leaves everyone with a partner who has no shared interests. Homosexuals have the same genetic attraction to those old- fashioned figures of big muscles and strong profiles. But after a couple of turns around the park you really should learn something.
Too many men put themselves together in big muscles and tight clothing to represent the sex symbol other gay men are looking for. But when they get together, what have they got? The same person, pretending to be someone else. It’s okay for kids. But a mature person must present himself as he actually is if anyone who really wants him is to find him.
So get this clear. A dream lover can only be a dream. And you need to get real if you are going to find sexual fulfillment. And if you can only have sex with a dream, changing the dream over and over and over, you are in mucho trouble. You have a big battle ahead of you tracking down reality.
a. On the positive side, nobody is that straight. And everybody loves having someone falling in love with them.
b. On the negative side, are you selling yourself on impossible dreams, just so you don’t have to really feel?
Some small rules once you’re in a relationship:
And finally, it’s all about intimacy. No matter how big or small the house, rich or poor your lover, good or bad your job, none of this figures in the long run. If you have intimacy with your lover/partner where you feel closer than with anyone else, that is what it is all about. If you feel it’s the two of you against the world, count yourself lucky. And don’t underestimate how important it is.