The Business of Love: Can Marketing and Business rules help us achieving success in dating?

A few days ago, I was talking to one of my housemates about love and dating when he explained to me his latest epiphany about love. According to him, this simple idea has revolutionized his dating life and I would like to share his wisdom with my readers. You can decide for yourself whether it is good or bad advice and perhaps, you could even try it for a while and see if it works for you or not. More than a story, this is a conversation that went as follows:

“I had it all wrong… I used to have a type and like certain guys but they never liked me back… I used to fall for men that were not interested and I have suffered a lot over the years” He said while taking the last slide of pizza from the kitchen table. 

This was true, I remember him chasing big gym rats at nightclubs that never looked at him twice or finding him sobbing in the living room over some guy that didn’t even know of his existence.

“… but one day I had an epiphany and everything started to change…” He continued looking throw the window to the endless sky as if he was about to reveal the biggest mystery of mankind. 

That was totally his style. He is a skinny tall drama queen with a mystic halo wrapped in low crotch yoga pants. But his confidence and the noises coming from his room over the past week (that confirmed that in fact, he had been receiving some night action) got me interested.

 “I realized that I needed to discover my market value and find my target audience,” He said in between pizza bites as if everything coming out of his mouth made perfect sense.

“Eh….??? What have you been smoking honey?” My very down-to-earth and slightly sceptical housemate replied.

“I’m telling you that if you want to be successful in dating, you need to find what you have that other people might value highly, what it is unique about you… That my friend is your market value!” He said placing his half-eaten pizza slide on the side and moving his hands around as if he was giving a business seminar in front of a large crowd.

“Then you need to find who it is interested in what you have to offer, who will value your uniqueness…  That is your target audience!” He continued very seriously without even blinking once.

His passion for communicating his ideas was contagious and I felt a strange impulse to clap when he paused. However, I repressed my clapping urge when I realized that, overall, I wasn’t sure that I understood what he meant. Then an unconformable silence invaded the kitchen and, for a minute or two, I kept on looking back and forth at both of my housemates with an eyebrow raised and in need of a further explanation.

Shop window in Bond Street,  Brighton. Picture taken January 2017.

“Just think about it for a minute… instead of looking for a partner that you like, find a pool of people that like you and then pick among them the closest match to what you like… Just reverse the problem” He added before taking a big sip of the cucumber water that he always carries around.

More silence followed his explanation. I guess that my housemate and I needed some time to process his latest words.

“I’m not sure that applying marketing and business rules to dating can work for finding true love” I finally said breaking my silence. 

I confess that in the back of my mind, I knew that his approach did make a lot of sense, but my inner hopeless romantic resisted the idea of applying an “optimizing outcomes” approach when it comes to emotions. However, his revelation has sowed doubt in my mind.

Could marketing and business rules help us to achieve success in love and dating? Is there such a thing as “emotional strategy”? Can we choose who we love or are love and emotions completely out of our control?

Maybe the key to finding love is to pay more attention to those who pay attention to us but we have not really considered them as “possible mating partners”. Perhaps we have been so blind trying to reach our own targets that we forgot to look around.

I look forward to hearing what my readers think, so please leave a comment below :)!

How to ruin a second chance with a girl: a narrated guide!

They say that there is never a second chance to give a first impression. But, after being granted a second shot by dreadlocks girl, I was feeling confident that I could change the misconstrued womanizer image she had of me after my unfortunate texting mistake (read past posts: Chatting up in the queue for the toilets & Chatting up from the distance). However, despite of the fact that we regained contact, I didn’t manage to arrange a face-to-face encounter with her to redeem my faux pass until…
 

One Friday night, I was going out for a drink with some friends, when I bumped into dreadlocks girl in the queue at a lesbian bar. She was standing in front of the bar in the smoking area with a few other people. When she saw that my friends and I joined the queue, she came straight to us.

“Hello Casanova…” She said to me.

“Hey!” I responded shortly hiding my excitement and expressing little emotion about her greetings. I was surprised by her sudden flattery as, after weeks of unsuccessful attempts from my side to grab her attention by text, I was ready to give up on my wooing.

“I haven’t seen you in a while, you look very cute tonight” She continued.

Why she is so suddenly so into me? I am dreaming? Have I changed my deodorant brand or something? She is probably very drunk…

“You know… I think that you should get me that drink tonight” She said touching her dreadlocks.

After a few seconds of paralyzing silence, and a couple of nudges from my friend that helped my brain to land back into the situation, I finally reacted:

 “Sure! I’ll be happy to get you a drink, are you coming in?” I said walking forward in the quickly advancing queue.

“Yeah! I’m going to finish this up and I and my friends will be inside in a sec” She said lifting up her cigarette and pointing at her small group of friends that were standing on the side.

“Cool… what can I get you?” I said showing my ID to the bouncer at the same time.

“A beer will be nice. Thanks!” She said smiling and playing again with one of her front dreadlocks.

“See you inside” I said from the door.

My friends rapidly scattered between the bathroom queue and the dancing floor as soon as we got in, so I decided to make my way to the bar and order two beers. After wandering around with the drinks in my hands through the packed dance floor, I got worried about being missed by dreadlocks girl, so I made my way back to the safe and well-illuminated bar where I could also have a better view of the door.

I can’t believe that she approached me tonight! She was so direct and confident! What would she want from me… (apart from a free drink)? I’m confused…

I waited at the bar for a while, pretending to move along with the music, but she was not showing up.

It isn’t the right song for her to come through the crowd anyway… I kept on thinking as if her appearance had to match the reunion epic moment from a romantic Hollywood movie.

Tune after tune I kept on slowly drinking my beer but she was still not coming in.

Being alone in a social crowd always makes me uncomfortable. As I was drinking slowly, the feeling of being a stood-up loser started to emerge.

Was this some kind of revenge? Did she want to teach me a lesson or something?

Graffiti of dripping hearts found in Brighton (signed by Maleska). Picture taken August 2016.

 As I was finishing my beer, holding dreadlocks girl’s beer untouched one in my other hand, a tall blond girl approached me.

“It looks as if you have been stood up” She said looking at my two drinks and my very likely miserable facial expression.

“Yeah, thanks… I noticed that” I responded. Her words were the confirmation of my deepest fears: dreadlocks girl was just playing with me! I’m just a joke! I’m the looser girl that has been stood up tonight!

“It’s a pity because you are very cute!” She continued.

Her chatting up strategy consisting of making me feel vulnerable and lifting me up after with some praising seemed strange to me, but at least it lead her to grab my attention.

“Pretty girls should not be allowed to walk alone in a bar like these… there are many vultures around that might take advantage of an innocent girl like you” the Blond girl said while slowly approaching her way to me like a scavenger.

Her old-school straight-men-like compliments, although secretly appreciated, were not sinking very well with my current stomach knot.

“Thanks, but I’m not in the mood” I curtly responded.

But the blonde girl kept insisting, so I surrendered and engaged in a friendly conversation for a few minutes with her. I accepted the fact that, after probably more than an hour of waiting, dreadlocks girl was not going to show up and so, an innocent self-esteem booster talk with a stranger couldn’t not harm.

After a few seconds, I could see that the blonde girl and I were not a match. She was studying at the police academy to become a detective and talked and moved as straight a man that had grown up in the XIX century. But somehow, I found her strangely amusing.

“I support the right-wing you know…” She said at some point in an attempt to express the fact that she was a hetero-normative traditional lesbian by displaying her political interests.

“I think that I should find my friends…” I said moving my arm in the direction of the dance floor. I had no interest in chatting about politics with some blonde right-wing chick after being stood up by my dreadlocks dream girl, so I initiated my escape plan.

At that moment, and out of the blue, the tall blond Tory (republican) launched herself towards me landing with her lips on my lips. I froze for a few seconds before I pushed her away. The drink that I was holding for dreadlocks girl got spilt all over her white shirt with the manoeuvre.

“What are you doing?” I said pushing her away. I was utterly disoriented as I was not expecting a kissing attack from the old fashion future police agent.

“I thought that we were getting along, I’m sorry, I…!” She replied while shaking the beer off herself.

“I…. I’m sorry about the beer…” I said while passing her some napkins that I grabbed from the bar.

“I probably should go now…” I said pushing my way through the crowd.

Plaster sculpture framed of different pussies displayed in Brighton. Picture taken in January 2013.

When I found my friends on the dance floor, I tapped one of them on the shoulder.

“I think that I’m going to go home… dreadlocks girl hasn’t shown up and I’m not feeling good and…” I started to feel very vulnerable. On one side, I was feeling played by dreadlocks girl and, on the other, I felt harassed by the conservative kissing attacker.

“What are you talking about? She was on her way to the bar but you were making out with that tall chick… so she turned around and left” My friend said.

“WHAT?  Are you serious? How can this happen?” I could not believe what my friend was describing.

The idea of my life following a Hollywood movie plot had come true in a very much unexpected way.

“What brand of deodorant you are wearing tonight? You seem to be on fire!” My friend commented.

I explained to my friend the no consented kiss at the bar and she rushed me to go outside to see if I could catch dreadlocks girl at the door. When I went outside she was gone. I tried to call her but she didn’t pick up. I send her a message explaining again another misunderstanding, but as expected, I got no answer….

However, I knew that sooner or later, we would bump into each other and I was ready to beg her for a third chance…

To be continued...

Chatting up from the distance: A sweet interlude before the final screwed up…

One lucky Friday night, I chatted up a dreadlocks goddess in the queue for the toilets. But of course, I ended up making a fool of myself by sending her a very misunderstanding message due to my natural ability to mix up names of newly introduced attractive girls (read the previous post). This is how the story followed:

I ended up grabbing a friendly drink that week with a young photography girl, the unintended receiver of a suggestive text meant for dreadlocks-girl. We mainly exchanged stories of common high school teachers and compared the time gap and different struggles of growing up in the same small (and slightly conservative) community as lesbians.

“There weren’t any openly gay people back home when I was a teenager,” I said from my born in the 80´s generational perspective. 

I was from the last cohort of students that went through high school without any social media. The only Internet-based social interactions at the time were done through Microsoft Messenger and, emojis were only being discovered as a new form of communication. However, photography-girl belonged to the iPod and Facebook generation that already grew up with openly gay Hollywood celebrities.

“In my year of graduation in that high school, there was a lesbian couple, a few openly gay guys and a transgender girl… I never really had to come out” She firmly said narrating her experience.

I was amazed at how much society had changed in a very short period of time. I, on the contrary, had to fight tooth and nail my way out of the closet. I had some internalized homophobia that I carried with me for a while due to the less gay-friendly society that I happened to be landed on. Nevertheless, she told me it was not all “rainbows and fairy lights” for her either, as she mentioned that she experienced some underlying stigma and subtle discrimination from some of her peers. However, at least there were people to look up to that were standing out for themselves as members of the LGBT community… and that was already a step forward from my own teenage experience.

Photography-girl and I became friends that day. I even acted briefly as her career mentor before I finally moved away from the marketing world. Looking back, I am glad that my message mixed up led me to gain a younger ally in the community.

BORN AND BRED Street Graffiti in Brighton. Picture taken in August 2016.

 But coming back to dreadlocks-girl and the other side of the story… Well, she never replied back to my apologetic message… But, somehow, I knew that in the small pool of lesbians, we were going to bump into each other sooner or later… And so we did…

On Thursday night, I was having my first awkward date in a gay-friendly bar with a not very “good match” from the online world, when I saw a dreadlocks-girl entering through the door. She was also with a female companion and, judging from the way they were interacting, I would have guessed that they were on a first online date as well.

I got excited when I saw her entering the bar. I wanted to run towards her, apologize for the “message screwed up” and explained that I was a long way from being a Casanova (I would say that I am more of a nerdy-socially-award lesbian with zero games). The image that she formed of me was completely mistaken and I desperately wanted to amend that. But I thought that she probably had already forgotten about me and so, I contained my impulse of jumping into her to win back her favour… However, I could not contain myself from checking on her discretely over the shoulder of my boring date every now and then during the course of the night. 

She was looking stunning all dressed in white and, moved and interacted with such great confidence. I was feeling quite jealous of her date… “That could have been me if I would have paid more attention before pressing sent...” I kept on thinking.

At some point, as I was sighing on my chair looking at her while my date was in the ladies, our gaze crossed… And of course, I panicked!

Is it possible that she might remember me? What do I do now?

I innocently waved and waited for her to reply. She waved back. Her date had gone to the bar and so we were both sitting alone looking at each other across the room.

I move my head and raised my eyebrows in a clumsy attempt to say “Hey! How do you do?” from a distance. She smiled and repeated my gesture reciprocating my greetings but she moved her head to the direction of the bar pointing at her date as a way of communicating that she wasn’t alone. I made a resignation gesture and pointed at the empty chair in front of me with my date’s jacket to inform her that I also had company.

I wanted to ask her if they were “a thing” or not, so I pointed at the girl in the bar and then to her a few times back and forth. I’m not sure if my incomprehensible battery of gestures attempting to ask her about their “relationship status” was understood. But she shocked her head with determination. Then, she mimicked my air signs pointing at the empty chair in front of me and then at me several times.

Does she really want to know if I’m available? I’m I dreaming right now…?

I frenetically shocked my head trying to make it as clear as possible that my tame date and I were not “a thing”. 

At that moment, I saw her date coming back to her table, so I made a quick sign of a phone with my hand followed by a thumb up.

“Is it OK if I call you?” I meant to say.

She made a “later” sign while nodding and smiling before shifting her attention back to her date.

WHAT?!? Did gorgeous dreadlocks-girl just give me permission to contact her again…???!!!!???

I kept looking at her table with a stupid smile on my face until my date came back. I was already utterly not interested in my online date before dreadlocks-girl walked into the bar, but now, I was even more eager to wrap up with my uncomfortable unmatched date and go home.

On the night bus, I contacted dreadlocks-girl and this time I checked a few times the message before pressing sent... A few minutes later she replied back and we kept on texting for a while.

After that night, we chatted every now and then, but we never arranged a formal date until one night…

Graffiti of a girl found in Brighton (signed by Maleska). Picture taken August 2016.

 

To be continued…

My coming out story...

In my last post, I took a stroll down memory lane and recalled my first online date. In this post, I would like to share my very long coming out story... 

I usually like to hear other people's coming out stories. They tend to have the ingredients of self-empowerment and pride that make a good story. However, not everyone has one, some people grew up in an environment in where they didn't need to come out as gays or lesbians... Hopefully, in the future, coming out will be a curious anecdote mentioned in sociology and history books, but for now, the society has not fully accepted same-sex love. Some coming out stories are really painful, but they all found the happy ending that standing up with courage and willingness to live truthfully to yourself and being who you already are brings.

Picture taken in an Art Gallery in L.A. September 2014.

My coming out story has two parts.... first I had to accept who I was and then, I had to lose the fear of what other people would think of me for being who I was. Both parts were a struggle with my own self and both parts of the story are closely connected.

The first part of my coming out story, discovering who I was, happened between age of 16 to about 21. When I look back, everything makes sense now, I was gay but I didn't know what gay was: "The dots only connect looking backwards, not looking forward..." (Steve Jobs, 'How to live before I die')... 

I was in denial of my sexuality because I thought that being gay was being a fat short-hair butchy woman. The society told me that gay was being an outlier runaway and I didn't see myself reflected in that stereotype.

I didn't know many gay people... the only lesbian that I knew was a walking stereotype. This is like the chicken and the egg.... Do lesbians create the stereotype or is the stereotype who creates them?. 

Slowly, I started to understand that a lesbian perhaps was not defined by her clothes and hair style, but by her love for another woman. Then, I started to allow myself to contemplate the possibility that I was maybe experiencing feelings for some women.... However, I tended to block those thoughts in my mind.... I was not supposed to be gay, I was supposed to be normal. 

Now looking back, I can see how I might have had some feelings for women in the past, but didn't really put them into context.... I blocked them and I didn't allow them to grow....

My final Aha-moment happened in my year abroad. I met a girl for whom I was starting to developed those feelings..... It was one of those strange connections that I was not able to label before, but this time it was more intense. Perhaps because I was far from home, or perhaps because I was also slightly older than before and ready to acknowledge my feelings... 

One day, after a trip to the supermarket, I saw her in an intimate situation with a guy, he was whispering in her ear in the corridor of our student accommodation and I was walking by....  Suddenly, I started to feel very bad and I rushed into my room, I closed the door and collapsed on the floor by the intensity of the emotion with all of the bags from the supermarket in my hands... that was my aha-moment. 

It was not just that I was jealous, that I was, it was more about the confirmation that I was gay and had romantic feelings for another woman... (by the way it tuned out that she was not interested in that guy at all....). This was a confirmation more than a revelation, I was in love and it was a girl.... I was gay!.... and now what?

The second part, telling other people, was actually harder. I was afraid of  being disconnected, of being rejected and being labelled as the media stereotype of a lesbian woman... 

I saw my sexuality as a weakness, as something to be a shame of and I was not ready to tell the world. When I saw Brené Brown TedTalk on 'the power of vulnerability', I identified myself with it. She defined shame as "the fear of disconnection... it is something about me, that if other people see I won't be worthy of connection." I could see how for me, being gay was something shameful, something to be afraid of... I was a shame of a part of myself and scared of being rejected.... 

Also, since I labelled myself as gay but I was still in the closet, I started to notice that my friendships were not growing and my connection with my family was getting weaker. This was because, as Brené explains, "In other for connection to happen, we need to allow ourselves to be seen". By not disclosing my sexuality to other people, I was not able to make real connections. By omitting myself, I was creating meaningless moments and that was hurting me and undermining my self-esteem. 

That feeling of isolation is reflected in what my friend calls the 'sad eyes' of closeted people. My friend said that if you look at pictures from before he came out, he was always looking small, fearful, shy and unsecured, he had 'sad eyes'. 

I needed to start slowly to come out to my friends, but it seemed that it was never the right time.... Facing death is how I finally overcame my fear of rejection and I stopped caring about what other people might think of me.

In my year abroad in Canada, I had a moment when all turned white, I was suddenly embracing a peaceful feeling and there was only one thought in my mind: 

"This is it...".

I was hit by a car in a rainy day in the corner of Nicholas Street and MacKenzie King Bridge in Ottawa... Luckily, it wasn't it.... but I had a head concussion and was taken in an ambulance to the nearest Hospital. 

When I was release from the emergency room, in where they kept me lying down with my full back and neck immobilised by the stretcher for hours, I was given a leaflet that it said something like: "You have had a severe head concussion, please don't fall sleep and be monitored as in the next 24h you can die.... "

I had a whole day to process that I could faint and die due to the head concussion or perhaps I might not wake up the next morning..... 

I thought about my life, how I was living it and what it was missing... in this case, love, real connections and honesty were missing in my life. That day, I understood that only YOU live YOUR life, and what others might think, at the end it doesn't matter. You need to collect moments of happiness without worrying about other people's judgements... 

The next morning when I woke up, I thought that I was given a second chance and so I decided to start living my life differently. The first thing to do was coming out of the closet. Luckily, I was 4,000 miles away from home, away from my friends and family, from all of the ties with the society where I grew up. I was in a country where no one knew me... and where being judge didn't matter. 

Picture taken from my room in Ottawa (2006-2007)

One night, after I recovered from my head concussion, my dizziness and some sleepless nights after my accident, I went to a Halloween Party and I met a Spanish guy. He was dressed as a zombie M&M with an adapted costume that he bought at the dollar shop at the Rideau Shopping Center and had decorated it with some fake blood. 

He was funny, I thought that he was gay and that perhaps, I could talked to him about my sexuality. Few days after, I bumped into him in the hall of the Student Residence, he was smoking a cigarette outside and I invited him up for lunch. We talked about the experience of being away, my accident and we made plans to go to a house party together later that week. 

When we met up for buying beer at the liquor store that following night, I decided that carrying 24 bottles of Molson Canadian was the right time to come out. I needed to talk to someone about my feelings and since it seem to never be the right time, I just jumped into it, so I asked him:

"You are gay, right?" I attributed the condition of being gay to my companion first. Classic psychological mechanism of dissociation with the condition until the other party confirms on its part for the fear of displaying their own sexuality first and being perhaps socially rejected.

He smiled at me and nodded

"I think that I'm gay too...." I said. That was the first time that I used the word gay referring to myself out loud.

He smiled again and said:

"You think but, you don't know?"

He had a point. I had not kiss a girl in my life and, of course, I had no previous experience of any kind of intimate contact with the female gender.... It was then when I realised that I needed not just to acknowledge my label in front of other people, I needed to act on it... I needed to explore my sexuality. Being in a foreign country was going to help... 

That night, I also told to a group of people that were friends with the zombie M&M that I was gay. It turned out that one of them was also gay, and another one was bisexual. They were completely OK with me being gay, and for the first time in a while I was connecting with people, I was being myself and it felt good.

The learning from my conversation with the gay zombie M&M was that I need to explore my sexuality.... and in a pool full of international open-minded students in their early twenties, there were a lot of opportunities... 

House parties, sports events and lots of gatherings organized by the University..... However, the girl that I had feelings for was gone... She only stayed for a semester in Canada. I send her an email saying that I liked her after accepting her Facebook friendship request and finding out that she was also interested in women.

She answered back saying that she also liked me but that it was too late.... she has back in Europe and carrying on with her life... fair enough.... you need to take the opportunities when they come along.... and now it was too late.... I was a bit heart broken, but it was my fault, so I accepted my part and moved on....  

One night a lesbian looking girl approached me in a party.  She was actually a friend of the girl I liked before, but she was not my type.....She was short and very intimidating, you could smell that she was gay a mile away due to her tough way of walking around campus and her masculine body language. However, she had an intense deep purple-violet-blue eyes that could easily catch someone eye..... 

She kept on approaching me in parties and one night, I was drunk and I decided that well..., she was not going to be the love of my life, but she was nice and funny and.... available..... So on a drunken night out she became my first girl experiment. 

It wasn't bad, but I just didn't have feelings for her...  This experience confused me more than bringing any clarity about my sexuality.... It was not the intense experience that I was waiting for.... It was more like the experiences that I had in the past with guys....

Therefore, I thought that perhaps, I was not gay after all... I wanted to not to be gay so much.... I could see now how my mind was already trying to justifying my experience: You tried with a girl and didn't really feel anything different that with guys.... therefore, I'm not gay after all.... so maybe I should go back to guys and my life will be easier..... 

A week later from that first girl-experiment night, I was in a party again. I had a few cocktails and got a bit drunk..... My temporal alcoholism probably was due to the fact that I was having a bad month: the girl that I liked said that she liked me too, but she it was too late now.... I was feeling like an idiot for not acting on my feelings at the right time.... then, I tried to explore my sexuality with a girl but didn't go as expected.... so, I was very confused and anxious about my sexuality and love life in general.... 

I started dancing with this French boy. He was cute and tall, with lovely hair and nerdy glasses, a bit like the French version of a mix between Clark Kent and Harry Potter..... 

The night ended up in my room, I needed to see if I wasn't gay after all.... But what were the odds that it turned out that the French guy was in the completely same situation. He was also gay and was trying to see if he definitely didn't like women at all.... as you can imagine the night was not very promising... 

After he left my room, I decided that ending up with a gay guy was perhaps a confirmation sign that I was gay... from all of the available boys at the party, I chose the closeted gay... also, having feelings for a girl before was definitely a sign that I shouldn't ignore.... just because my experiment with a girl didn't work out, it didn't mean that I was not going to develop feelings for another girl in the future.... 

At the end of the day the 'feeling it or not' it is a matter of having feelings for the person, and I have to confess that I did not have feelings for my first girl experiment... I guess we all made mistakes... The moral of the story this time was that I needed to experiment with a girl that I had actual feelings for and stop messing around....

For a while, I was doing my thing without getting involved with anyone.... I started to go swimming.... and then, when I was doing my thing... without any plan I met a French girl.... 

We bummed into each other at house parties and at the poll quite a lot... She was very nice and had a nice conversation. We always ended up the swimming session chatting at the sauna.... or we were in a house party we would talked for a very long time.... she had the gay vibe and few of my friends confirmed it too.... 
I wanted to make a move.... Once I tried to shift the conversation to the gay zone, but she brought up her boyfriend... So, finally, I decided that perhaps, she was not gay and she was just friendly and that I was not going to make a move and ruin a nice friendship....

However, in my last night in Canada, she knocked on my door at about 4 am, I was still packing.... she had been wandering around my building since we said goodbye at the bar around midnight. She looked at me and hug me.... it was her way of telling me that she also had feelings for me.... 

At that moment.... I understood how the girl from the first semester felt when I send her the email telling her that I loved her.... it was too late... It was too late to see where this could have gone.... we were both coming back to Europe and we both had lives back home... 

We said goodbye and pretended to keep in touch for a while.... Thanks to Facebook, I know that she is now married..... to a GIRL!!!! I am very happy that she finally came out of the closet and left her boyfriend....

The lesson from this event was that we always regret what it didn't happen, and one more time, once the opportunity is gone.... it is gone...!!!

My year abroad was over and coming back home was going to be another story.... I had to face the people that I grew up with and tell them that I was now gay....  Well, I was gay before, but I was now ready to BE gay. This was going to be tough, so I started slowly with my school friends... Most of them were very understanding, however, they asked me the typical questions that we all get when we come out.... 

I remember that one of my friends said to me: 

"How can you be gay if you are way more feminine that I am?"  

To what I answered:

"Sexuality is not a matter of femininity or masculinity... gender identity and the conformity with the traditional gender roles in society is different from being gay or straight".

After given few speeches similar to the one quoted above among my friends, I told a few of my university friends too... But I don't think I told all of them. Sexual orientation among early-twenties university students tend to be often a topic of conversation so, I knew that any gay gossip would spread quickly. With some people I just acted as if it was assumed that I was gay and didn't do an official statement. 

Since then, I've been telling people when I meet them only if the occasion comes up, but I usually try not to make a big deal out of it... Brighton is actually a great place to live, most people is gay or gay friendly and no one judges you...

Regarding my family, I didn't tell my parents straight away. I was waiting to have a stable relationship to introduce it as something normal, but unfortunately, I didn't have too much luck in love during my first years of being gay. So, decided to put myself a deadline to come up to my parents: My 25th birthday!

Every Sunday before my deadline, when I was driving to my parents' house for lunch, I found myself going through my coming out plan in my head.... thinking that "today is the day, I'm going to finally tell them"... But whenever I opened the door and started to chat with them parents, it never seem to be the right time, it was never the right conversation nor the right moment...

One Sunday afternoon, when I was about to leave, I told my mum. 

She was sitting in front of her computer and I said that I was gay as if I was telling her that I was planing to have pasta for dinner.... without making any kind of speech or changing my voice.... as it was something very normal and did not deserve a special moment.... 

She lifted her gaze and said:

"Does this mean that you are not going to have children?"

She was worried more about not having grandsons than my actual partner.... I replied that one thing didn't mean the other and left...

I gave her a whole week to process and the Sunday after we had a lovely conversation over tea. I ended up crying but she was very supportive. I didn't tell my dad directly, but I know that my mum did that for me. 

My parents tell each other this kind of stuff, and he seems supportive. We watch movies whenever I go to visit and he lately keep insisting on watching gay theme movies. I guess that it is his way of saying that it is OK. 

At the end of the day, love for children is unconditional and if they love you, they will love you no matter what.

Finally, after my year in  Canada, and due to the fact the I didn't know that many gay people in my home town, I turned to the online dating world... so, here we go back to my previous post: "My first online date". 

I have had some off-line dating experiences too and I have being out on the scene, usually with the zombie M&M that I met in Canada.... and sometimes with other gay men too.... it wasn't until recently that I started to have lesbians friends... so the online world has been a big part of my dating life, possibly due to my insecurities in approaching girls out of a gay context... Maybe when I run out of online dating stories I will start with my off-line ones... but for the moment, I still have a bunch of stories on my pocket yet to be told... and the ones that are happening now...

Apologize for the long post...  but coming out was a long process for me...