The Sexual One-Step

September 25, 2005

I did something almost unheard of a couple of nights ago. I went out. Pick your jaw up off the ground and wipe that look off your face. Haha. I threw out all of the rules and accepted an invitation from someone at work to go bowling with a group of people (it’s the Ozarks… we still bowl here). It was a 50/50 group - meaning I knew half of the people who went… which obviously means the other half were strangers to me. After demonstrating my complete lack of skill with a bowling ball (and a few Rolling Rocks) I drove an ex-coworker, who I hadn’t seen in months, home.

We sat in the car and yacked for a while. The topics of conversation were varied and dynamically moved from one thing to the next. Eventually, we started talking about lesbians. I had probably just told her about my awesome lesbian club experience from the vacation. But I don’t remember exactly what led us to that topic. She told me about a girl she worked with at her new job who, she had recently discovered, was a lesbian. She said the two of them had discussed relationship issues and compared relationship drama. And then she told me she’d had an epiphany: lesbian relationships were just like their heterosexual counterparts! She seemed shocked that the girl she worked with genuinely loved her girlfriend. Shocking, I know.

The next day I was talking to someone else from work. We were talking about a guy who used to work with us who just happened to be gay. I said something about his boyfriend, and the guy I was talking to said, and I quote “I just don’t get the boyfriend thing”. I, of course, had to have clarification. He went on to explain to me that he didn’t understand how a gay relationship worked… he didn’t understand how two people of the same sex could have feelings for one another. When I responded that their feelings for one another were no different than the feelings that any other person has for someone else he just shook his head and said again “I just don’t understand it”.

Maybe I was mistaken, but I thought this was 2005. It is… right?

I thought the new generations weren’t quite as close-minded as our parent’s generation was. I mean… who doesn’t know someone who’s gay in 2005? Hell… who doesn’t know someone who just decided in 2005 that they were gay? Every time I talk to someone from high school I find out about yet another classmate who has “come out” since graduation. And it would take both of my hands to count the number of people I know who are in one type of relationship currently… but in the past were part of a different type. Maybe I’ve just had more exposure to different types of people because of the odd assortment of friends I’ve made over the years?

Do we need a refresher course on how “feelings” work?

You know the classic story: Boy meets girl… boy and girl fall for one another… boy and girl get married… boy and girl have family… boy and girl live happily ever after. It’s ok… I’m waiting for you to laugh about that one… cause how often does the story *really* go like that. Haha. But back to the point. Is it really that hard to substitute boy for girl or girl for boy in the classic story? The way I see it, relationships of “different” kinds really aren’t that different at all. Look at your set of relationships. You have people who are your friend and you have people who are more than that. What determines which group the people you know fall into?

I think it basically boils down to sexual possibility.

It’s a little more complex than that statement would have it sound. Let’s look at it from a traditional standpoint for the time being. In the above story, the first step is “boy meets girl”. The details are obviously left out of this story, but I think it goes a little something like this:

- Boy meets girl
- Boy and girl get to know each other
- Boy and girl develop some sort of opinion about one another
- If the opinion is good, boy and girl look for signs in one another that a similar good feeling has been established in the other person
- Boy and girl continue to spend time together and their good feelings for one another increase
- Enter sexual possibility

Ok… now reread the above story, but change it to “boy meets boy” or “girl meets girl” and remove the sexual possibility. Or reread the story and leave it “boy meets girl” while still removing the sexual possibility. The revised story should sound familiar to you. Hmm… why would that be? Do you know what you have there? A friend.

Everyone is a friend until the possibility of something sexual enters the picture. Once there is a possibility of something sexual, the relationship changes. Seriously stop and think about your closest friends. Is there *really* anything different about your relationship with your best friends and your relationship with your significant other besides the sexual aspect of your relationship with your lover? Honestly. Is there? There shouldn’t be.

So now reread the above story and make it same-sex… but leave in that tiny little statement about sexual possibility. While you may have a religious or political or personal distaste for the new story in same-sex format, you should at least be able to see how it’s not such a far stretch to go from friend to lover.

I could be wrong, but I think the idea is easier for women to digest. Guys usually have a harder time grasping the idea than women because of numerous societal stigmas that abound in Western culture. Guys… you may *never* be able to say it, but you care about your male friends. Don’t lie… you know you do. If you were on a boat that was sinking and you could only save one person, it’d be tough to choose between your best guy friend and your girlfriend, wouldn’t it (remember the saying… ‘bros before hoes’… LOL)? That’s because you care about them both equally… you just have sexual relations/expectations/possibilities with one and not the other. I can see the men in the crowd shifting uncomfortably in their seats at this very second… haha!

I suppose I was just caught a little off guard by the two similar conversations I had with two different people in such a short amount of time. But I really thought sexuality was much more understood these days. Of course there will always be people who can’t move past religious dogma or socially imposed stigma. No matter how much acceptance alternative lifestyles of any kind get, there will always be a group of people somewhere who think ill about another person’s way of life. My advice to those people is simple: worry about your own lifestyle. You don’t have to agree with anything that any other person does with their life, but don’t pretend you don’t ‘get it’. ‘Getting’ a gay relationship doesn’t make you gay… it makes you understanding.

But to say that you don’t understand something as basic and universal as a close personal relationship between two people simply because they are biologically the same sex is… well… gay.

Posted in Human Nature, Noteworthy, Relationships

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