Generations Across: Why Stop Love Ageism

As a wife with a husband 10 years my elder, I definitely hear this article--if from the hetero perspective. Even from the hetero perspective, there's already ageism. Well, I couldn't fall in love with that person because of their age. Our sexual and love choices include many factors, including age.

But what about gay couples where one partner is older? How do both hetero couples respond to that and how can the gay community be more accepting? How can we all be more accepting to couples that might be different to our own dynamics? JacoPhillip Crous reports.

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“The sex is more imaginative; 
 it feels more sensitive
 and this allows us to make love 
 with a greater degree of altruism.”

– James*, 32, 
 partner of twelve years to Mark*, 54.

Seen here, Juan Hidalgo’s photograph of two men kissing made a very controversial impression early in 2012. I was discussing it with a colleague when he brought to my attention the age difference between the two men in the photograph.

Suddenly many conversations rushed into my mind. I hurriedly had to nip our deliberation in the bud and proceeded to rifle through the narratives of couples who have crossed the generation divide, sharing with me so many of their experiences, viewpoints, and insights.

What is Ageism?

Ageism is prejudice and/or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age. In gay communities around the world, ageism is more than problematic.

It constrains mens' masculine development, is caustic to our shared identity in manhood, and more importantly, consumptive of our sense of gay community. Some gay couples' love and lust for one another bridge across their generation gap. Those couples have a very good vantage point to observe gay mens' prejudices and gay social discrimination around aging and generation cohorts.

Let's not be ageist with love

William*, as a young gay man of 24, now partner of five years to John* who caricatures himself “a mature child of 40”, recalls how, while he was still just dating John, gay friends would repeatedly refer to him as “the young boy”. William was once very upset at one of John’s peer friends referring to him as “some fresh young thing”. I remember John commenting while the two of them scooched closer together on the couch: “As if Will was going to go off by a certain date.” It may just be the way gay men talk, but a stereotype is at its best offensive, and even more so when we consider that in circumstances such as these it comes from those who are opposed to themselves being stereotyped in any way.

James, 32, and Mark, 54, have been committed to each other for more than twelve years, yet whenever they step out of their circle, the age gap in their relationship opens a Pandora’s box of prejudices. James once remarked that, “the majority of older gay men we meet, treat me as some vapid nymph only after an easy ride (no pun intended), while Mark receives patronizing, congratulatory pats on the back as if he has won me as first prize in a pissing contest . . . younger guys usually react with waves of incredulity and panic.” It saddens me to have to agree with Mark when he says that the majority of young gay men are not interested in what older gay generations have to contribute.

It is the older generations that fought, sweat, tears, and blood for the acceptance and rights many younger generations now take for granted. “My generation made a gay reality possible,” points out Paul, 62, now in the sixth year of partnership with Peter, 38. Everyone over forty now has lived before and during the AIDS epidemic. Older generations were, in that context, also the pioneers of safe sex. “Safe sex, in some ways, made us look for other sexual practices” says Paul, Peter following quick with, “I learned that from Paul . . . there is so much more we can do than just fuck.” Paul takes heart that there are still some young men who value the traditions that provided a community in the first place, that “there are still young men out there who appreciate our minds and our sex.”

The couples I have had the pleasure of knowing, as diverse as you can imagine, strike accord on one very pertinent characteristic. Sex is experienced by both partners to be more imaginative. It is felt to be more sensitive and given with a greater degree of altruism. I believe that this is a result of mentorship these sexual partners share and enjoy. It's driven by the emotional satisfaction we all gain from teaching our beloved and being taught by our lovers.

Let's consider the historical context

The tradition of mentors in homosocial communities reaches far back into ancient Hellenic and Roman cultures, and likely beyond. It shouldn’t be a surprise that this dynamic raises its head, so to speak, in contemporary homosexual culture.

Because many gay men leave home without having been taught the finer things, like which linen to buy, which crystal to have, how to arrange flowers, choose a colour scheme, or how to throw a dinner party, these things and more are considered community things to be learnt from gay communion.

As homosexuals, we have to recognise that there are traditions that hold our global gay community together. This recognition on the side of the elder is perhaps the one thing that most separates the generations in gay living today. This sense of mentorship in gay culture is most pronounced in couples were there is a pronounced age difference between partners.

Let's nurture all loving, consensual relationships

Nurturing a relationship across such a generational gap is no matter of course though. The double prejudice suffered by these gay couples is a near active dissuasion. Not only do these men have to overcome the hegemonic disdain for their commitment and relationships. They also face prejudgement from within the gay community over their partnerships. Aron, 45, has been in a relationship with Tom, 27, for little over two years now and says to me, “I see it, our relationship... as a mirror image of the same condescension suffered by interracial couples.” Now, before your mind opens a whole other can of worms, this statement sharply focuses the feeling of discrimination these gay couples experience.

We should not perpetuate terms of endearment. Our love for our partners, if not revered, should at least be respected. Union in partnership, our emotional commitment, our sense of gay community, is in the fact that we love and choose to partner with someone of the same sex. As valid and enriching as these exemplary relationships are to the men in them, so too they are to gay community.

GetLusty provides recognition and support to all couples. If you would like to know more on a specific topic or have a particular question in need of an answer, GetLusty resources are enriching the lives of people in committed relationships around the world and you are welcome to subscribe. Have your comments and queries tackled by the professional talent (like me!) contributing to GetLusty.

I will share more gay coupling experiences with you next week on Get Lusty. Coupling: Trust clouts Fear, will include my personal experiences when I engaged with the coupling guidance process together with my ‘husband’ of over eight years.

Get the lust on for your lover, and share the joy and learning from it with the lovers of the world.

Do It well; do It safe.
 Jacsman
*For ethical privacy all person names are given as nom de guerre

Though he's a new writer, we're already extremely excited about JacoPhillip. Our resident advisor on gay long-term relationships, JacoPhillip Crous is also known as Jacsman.

He studies & consults on ecstatic & intimate psycho-sexual health & development, promoting & improving male2male dialogue that furthers understanding of masculine sexuality and MSM relationships. A sex educator, JacoPhillip Crous studies about and consults around male psycho-sexual self-development phenomena, behaviours, experiences and knowledgeablity. Find out more about JacoPhillip at: http://about.me/Jacsman. Also subscribe on Facebook.

Coupling: Learning Love After the Fall

This a heartfelt guest post by one of GetLusty's first gay writers, who we're very excited to introduce. JacoPhillip Crous talks about gay coupling and introduces our series to showcase more for our diverse audience.

Specifically, we'll have more articles and resources especially for gay and lesbian couples in long-term relationships & marriages of the heart and mind. Political marriages, too, if that's possible in your state or country. We do highly support gay marriage and support an end to marriage discrimination.

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Gay men and women partner up after – as most men and women do – falling in love. Falling in love is arguably as simple as falling off a log. No guidance is needed. There is nothing to learn, besides your own feelings, perhaps.

People can feel the fall; you meet someone whose physical characteristics and personality traits create enough electrical charge to fly you out over the precipice of your personal comfort zone where you get to know the other person, and these “together” experiences of “feeling each other out” increase in intensity until you find yourself saying, “I think I’m falling in love.”

When convinced it is the “real ting” we tell the other person, hoping this feeling is reciprocal. Perhaps we redouble our efforts to win the love of our beloved if the feeling is not shared. When it is reciprocal, then we launch into partnership, talking about making a commitment to each other because, despite what the socio-cultural mores are, everyone agrees that being “in love” is grounds on which to build a well-founded, committed relationship.

The euphoric chemical cascade of love mixes with all the myths that abound in our world; gay or straight, these erroneous beliefs are the powdered sugar frosting on the fairy tales we all want to live as our lives. We have been led to believe that “real” love lasts forever; nothing could ever come between us. Together, our love could never be overcome; our love is most wonderful, never to be bettered. We do see couples that seem to have lost that, but that will never happen to us.

Unfortunately, long-range research studies on the in-love phenomenon clearly show the eternality of our in-love experience to be fictitious. Reality lands on its feet. It intrudes upon our love. Down from cloud nine, we find our commitment to each other needs to hold out against Herculean odds.

It remains a world mostly hostile towards homosexual love, relationships, gay-coupling or marriage – whatever you want to call it. The loving commitment queer people share is predominantly considered freaky.

A gay man or woman comes to disillusionment and discontent in their partnership. The partner they once loved, like every other well-adjusted person on this planet, isn't perfect and he or she then feels angry and resentful. After all, “I was deceived!” said one client to me, “It wasn’t the real deal.” I do not think this is it. The problem is he and his partner, and many gay couples around the world, falters under the weight of faulty information just as straight marriages and relationships do. This false information is the idea that in-love obsession is eternal. Surely we should all know better, particularly as gay men and women who are more likely to have experienced personal development through life as “iffy”, so to speak.

The fanciful thinking that erroneous information causes does not mean that we are insincere in what we are thinking and feeling. It just means we are unrealistic, particularly when it comes to commitment intimacy and learning lasting love for our beloved once we both get up from falling in love.

Until more recently, gay relationship resources were not to be had for love nor money. Just the other day a gay client made my heart ache during our first communications with, “…like marriage counselling? But we are not married. Would that kind of thing help us?”

Gay couples guidance, or, as I like to refer to it, “coupling” provides a learning environment where the couple can explore the reality of their relationship. There are never only two ways: couples resign themselves to a miserable life with their respective partners, or throw in the towel. As part of a rainbow people, gay men and women understand that they often have to find their own way, make their own way, and compromise. In the same way, there is a spectrum in which gay couples can work it: we can find our way to a companionable relationship; we can create the parameters of our partnerships; and we know we can fight for our love with resolve.

So gay couples want to improve their knowledgeability for a self-help approach. Say, together seek the guidance of a professional, or engage with other couples in social forums on relationship building and development.

The internet is on its way to becoming a veritable cornucopia of gay relationship resources. The information alone, available to the gay community via the web, should help us recognize the in-love experience for what it was – ephemeral. Pursuing “real love” with our partner and spouse requires us to pick up the towel. It involves an act of will, requires discipline, and it recognizes the need for personal development and growth.

The basic human need is not to fall in love with someone, but to be authentically loved by another. Love grows out of learning, reason, and choice, not physiology and instinct. You, and every straight person, needs to be loved by another who chooses to love you, who sees in you something worth loving.

The effort and discipline of learning love after the temporary emotional high of falling in-love is choosing to commit to expending energy in an effort to benefit your beloved. Knowing that his or her life is enriched by this will bring you satisfaction. The satisfaction of having genuinely loved another. High stakes, high reward. Gay couples often feel all this guidance-to-learning-love-business is straight work. It is not.

Your human need for love, love after the fall, must be met if you are to have emotional health. But having to learn to love, “It seems so academic”, one lesbian client complained, “What emotional security do I get…how do I know that I am number one in her mind?”

That is what coupling, or gay couples guidance is all about: learning to couple and be together for each other, learning to love, learning to meet each other’s deep, emotional need to feel loved for the long haul. If we can learn that and choose to do it, then the love we learn to share for each other will be exciting beyond anything we ever felt when we were infatuated.

GetLusty provides this opportunity to all couples, gay and straight. If you would like to know more, GetLusty resources are enriching the lives of people in committed relationships around the world, become one of the gay couples to GetLusty for one another and subscribe. http://getlusty.blogspot.com

I will bring more gay coupling information to you, and share the experiences my ‘husband’ of eight years and I brought to our life as a committed gay couple when we first sought out coupling guidance.

Get the lust on for your lover, and share the joy and learning from it with the lovers of the world.

Do It well; do It safe.

Jacsman

He just started writing, but we're already so excited about JacoPhillip. Our resident advisor on gay long-term relationships, JacoPhillip Crous is also known as Jacsman.

He studies & consults on ecstatic & intimate psycho-sexual health & development, promoting & improving male2male dialogue that furthers understanding of masculine sexuality and MSM relationships. A sex educator, JacoPhillip Crous studies about and consults around male psycho-sexual self-development phenomena, behaviours, experiences and knowledgeablity. Find out more about JacoPhillip at: http://about.me/Jacsman.