When the milestones are all blank

I'm sure I'm not the first person to wonder what effect the lack of romantic milestones in gay life has on gay people.

This has come to my mind because of the Kinda Cute Guy mentioned in the last post. He recently broke up with his partner of two years and, as a result, had to move out of his ex's house. There's no messy divorce because there wasn't a marriage to begin with. Unlike a married couple, with their shared bank accounts and shared ownership of everything, the breakup appears to have been no more complicated than a couple of housemates going their separate ways.

I'm full of questions that are not, at this stage, appropriate to ask. How did he decide when it was right to move in? What was the goal? How did it even work? Was he just some sort of sexual houseguest? But it never occurs to me to ask these questions of my straight married friends, because it's perfectly obvious how it will all work. They are following a clear and ancient script.

Consider the milestones in straight romance. First date, first kiss, first girlfriend, school balls, meeting the parents, engagement and engagement rings, wedding, marriage, anniversaries, pregnancy, first child. Cuddling up in the cinema. Sending flowers to her workplace. The lazy or unimaginative man can virtually sleepwalk through the whole thing and still have a pretty good idea of where he stands.

Now consider the milestones in gay romance. There aren't many. Instead there's an ongoing, amorphous sense of something contrary to social expectation. There are no engagement rings and no pregnancies. Things like anniversaries are arbitrary, and "weddings" are hollow. School balls are sociopolitical minefields. Meeting the parents or cuddling in the cinema could end in a beatdown. If a girl flirts with a hot guy on the bus the worst she can expect is rejection: if a guy does it, he could get the shit kicked out of him. Even the language rebels against gay romance: the equivalents of "wife" or "fiance" sound trite and feeble. "Hello, I'm Dale, and this is my life partner Sean." Ugh.

Even in these enlightened times, there isn't the sheer weight of historical tradition, or the vast numbers of participants, to guide gay men through romantic activities. If there are gay rites of passage, they remain underground, largely ignored by mainstream culture. Gay boys don't learn the romantic rites of passage from their parents, or TV, or pop songs, or advertising, or architecture, or cliches, or greeting cards, or (ironically) fairy stories. If they are lead (rather than finding their own way), it'll be at the instruction of an older gay man whose intentions probably aren't entirely altruisitic.

This lack of deep, old, unspoken example makes life difficult. For example, there's a difference between telling your mother that you're enagaged to a wonderful girl and telling her that you've decided to commit to your boyfriend. One fits perfectly with the accepted narrative. The other is a forced fit: a gear that doesn't quite mesh. Even the most accepting mother in the world will find her delight muted, if only because she has to mentally rein herself in before sharing the good news with her friends and colleagues. However happy she is, somewhere underneath, it's not quite the RIGHT thing to happen.

It seems that gay men travel a road with few signposts, and have few shared understandings other than those based in sexual attraction. Simple things like taking your date a bouquet of flowers aren't a given as they are in the straight world. EVERY SINGLE THING needs to be appraised, negotiated, assessed... not just once, but every time you encounter someone new.

It's exhausting, but it appears to be unavoidable.