Email from a broken-hearted gay guy

A couple of weeks ago, a reader sent me the following email:

Dear GB,

I'm trying to get over a relationship I had with a guy that started in March this year. It will soon have been four months since we broke off, and while I've willed my flesh to move on, my spirit is still broken.

I've dated, watched movies and had meals with perfectly respectable men whom I find savagely attractive... only to find that beneath the physique there isn't anything that comes even close to the level of affinity I felt for him. I've went to 4 saunas in Hong Kong, 1 in Shanghai, 3 in Taipei and messed around in mass orgies in steamrooms, in hot water tubs and in open view in front of tons of other men... yet I still picture him over me and inside me when I'm getting fucked.

I've come to the realization of just how messed up I am right now. I'm still in love with a man who unceremoniously ended communication when his on-again-off-again ex called. I'm still in love with the man who swept me off my feet after two months of intense dating, phone calls and lovey dovey nicknames. I'm still imagining falling asleep in his arms when I am alone in bed. At night, I end up listening to sad Jay Chou songs over and over... the moment I hear Josh Groban sing "You Raise Me Up" I tear uncontrollably if I'm in private.

I've grown impatient and can't be bothered with others. I have friends in church, from school, from work. But when I'm out with them I find it so strange that I feel as if it's such hard work being friends and such a chore to make conversation. In some sick way I miss the effortlessness that we had, I miss the fluid flow of offhand remarks that just came out of thin air. The cheeky humor, the sarcastic one liners, the words that were dense with playful loaded meanings. It was a living sitcom and I relished it. I actually felt alive.

With him, everything changed. For the first time I felt a clear direction in finding what to do after graduation. For the first time I found the endurance to outperform my peers. For the first time I found myself being more detailed, being able to see things in multiple perspectives. For the first time I could wing presentations and still do well. For the first time I didn't care if strangers discovered our covert displays of affection. For the first time, I could lift more at the gym and actually upped my bear quotient. For the first time my relationship with my parents improved... and for the first time I could see real goals for myself five years down the road.

Suddenly the standards of which I used to judge if I clicked with people just changed, and in the absence of his presence in my life I have started to fling about wildly, unrealistically expecting to find the same level of synchronization with my friends. Bless them for their patience.

What do I do now? It's been nearly four months since he removed himself from my life. I've hardly seen him since, and he never calls. We say we'll meet up, yet it's always me calling him. I just want to move on now. I just want to forget and go back to being that guy I was. Yet I can never bring myself to delete him from my life. I'd never forgive myself if I did.

I guess I wish I could just find a way to see the world the way I used to see it before he came into my life. I feel as if I had on a veil of innocence that is now torn away.

Regards

This email arrived with the title "How do I go back seeing the world as it was?", and having thought about it a bit, I ended up sending a reply which included the following paragraph:

As a brief thought which you may find helpful, I think your desire to go back seeing the world as it was is misjudged. Your email describes lots of good things that happened to you while you were briefly with your boyfriend, in terms of your confidence, outlook, your relationship with your family etc. So I'm sure there are lots of valuable things you can learn from the experience, and perhaps even recapture some of the positive things even though you don't have that boyfriend any more, now that you know you have it in you to feel and behave that way.

A day later, I received his reply:

Thanks for taking the time to read through my email, I appreciate it that you take the effort to think through some of the issues that a random person like myself just emailed you out of the blue.

Certainly when we were together many good things happened in my life. Can I attribute these things to him being in my life at that point? No. Can I be sure that those good things happened because of my own efforts? No. Do I have it in me to behave and think in that same manner? Yes, I think I discovered untapped energies when we were together.

But am I happier? No. I want to just go back to being happy. Even though I didn't outperform my peers, I did well enough to sail through. Even though I didn't lift as much in the gym, I didn't feel any frustration. I'd give it up to be that happy goer again.

I'm kinda confused and frustrated at myself. Maybe I'm just too used to being miserable now. I want to move on, but I forcing myself to be positive is just so tiring and I'm honestly worn out after several months. I thought I'd slowly accept it and be able to move on naturally, but now it's soon going to be half a year that I've mellowed and cried over a two month relationship that just frankly makes me seem like an utter emotional wreck and basket case.

Please let me know what you think.

The passage of time is usually the cure for a broken heart. However I've heard of a rule of thumb that suggests that it typically takes about half the amount of time that you're involved with someone to get over the end of the relationship. This poor reader is clearly way past that amount of time, so he must have been very deeply in love with the guy, even though they were only together for a couple of months.

Apparently it was Nietzsche who said "That which does not kill us makes us stronger", and as I said in my original reply, it's important for the reader to learn from this experience and to build on the positive things that happened while he was together with this guy. The reader clearly has an amazing capacity to love, so it will be a lucky guy who ends up being this reader's boyfriend.

My guess is that when he met the guy, for some reason the reader was particularly susceptible to the situation that he now finds himself in. Perhaps he'd been looking for a boyfriend for a long time and had almost given up hope of ever finding one, perhaps he'd recently lost someone important in his life and subconsciously saw the guy as a replacement for whoever it was? It's hard to guess, but since his reaction to the end of the short relationship has been so severe, it might be a symptom of something else. If so, it would be worth trying to work out what that 'something else' is. A better understanding of why he feels like he does would be a big help for the reader in terms of moving forward in his life.

Whatever the cause, the reader must try and focus on the future rather than the past. Given the way he currently feels, I don't think he's ready to go looking for another boyfriend just yet. Instead, I reckon he should find other personal development goals to focus on, and work at appreciating himself as an individual.

However, when he is ready for a relationship he needs to proceed carefully. Fellow London blogger Kenski left an exceptionally useful comment on a recent post of mine, when he said:

Simple old truth: if you go out looking for love you'll never find it. The number of times I've seen people go out to 'find a boyfriend'... (almost) always ends in disaster. That kind of search is basically egocentric and selfish. You're out there looking because it's something *you* want to have or because you have so much love that *you* want to give to someone. It's rarely about the other person. It's all about you.

Given that the reader feels a big hole in his life without his ex-boyfriend, it strikes me that the reader might well be the kind of guy that this applies to. So he'll need to be careful to take any new relationship slowly, not to expect everything from the start, and not to be too clingy which is very unattractive.

One last thought is that it's the journey through life which needs to be enjoyable rather than the destination. When someone has reached their destination, i.e. fulfilled all their goals, then what next? So when the reader starts focusing on the future, he should understand that the path to achieving the goals that he sets himself is just as important as reaching them. The example that I'm thinking of here is the goal to find a boyfriend.

Perhaps some other readers have also had problems recovering from past relationships, in which case it would be good if they could leave comments describing what worked for them. But as usual, all comments and advice welcome :-).