My Iranian lovers and friends

To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.(From the art of loving by Erich Fromm)

During the journey of dating, I learned a lot about myself, my history, and how my childhood experiences are affecting my adult behavior. In previous centuries, people used to go to monasteries to meditate in solitude to get in touch with their deeper self and get to know themselves. The modern version of that kind of self-discovery is going into a relationship, if you act consciously. Otherwise you will get in and out of relationships without knowing why you got involved and what really happened that brought the relationship to an end.

I am categorizing the different type of Iranian friends and lovers I had or still have.

The Waana-be Straight guy

This guy is somewhat effeminate, but he swears that he is not gay. He wants me just as a friend, just to hang out and have a good time. He gets upset if I refuse to go to a hetero-club to watch him hitting on women. He never has a steady girlfriend. I have never seen him with any girl more than once. To satisfy my curiosity I asked some of his ex-girlfriends, if he ever had sex with them. All of them denied it. This is the guy who is still mourning about his lost heterosexuality. He dreams of getting married, not to disappoint his family and friends. Waiting for this guy to come out, deal with his family issues, and become comfortable with his sexuality, might take many years of intensive psychotherapy. I decided, I don’t have the patience and might not live long enough to see him out of closet.

Practicing Bisexual

I am sure there are people who are really bisexual. But the large number of Iranian bisexual that I meet, makes me wonder if they really are bisexual or that their gay self-hatred is strong enough to prevent them from admitting that they are gay. I am assuming that my guy was really a bisexual and not a caught-in-the-middle-of-door-out-of-closet sort of guy. The practical problem with this guy was that he wanted to have me and a girlfriend at the same time. He didn’t want me to become jealous if he is out of town with the girl. He used to hit on some girl when he was out having dinner with me. Of course he never told his girl friend about me but I had to endure all the details of his interactions with her. Most boring part was listening to his wedding plans, or that he might grow out of his homosexual tendencies once he gets married. I had found myself mentally in a threesome, and I didn’t want to compete with a women.

The Closeted Guy

The practical problem with this guy was that we go could never go out, because somebody might recognize him and tell his parents or friends about it. I had to stay home alone during all major holidays, since he had to spend that time with his loving family of course without me being with him. I could never call him when he was at his parents house. He would show no sign of affection if somebody else was around, even if that somebody else was gay as well. I hardly remember any affection when the lights were on. Dating a closeted gay guy is more difficult than just practical problems I mentioned. Being in the closet means that the person wants to hide because he is ashamed of himself, he hates himself, consciously or unconsciously. Now and then he tends to project his gay self-hatred onto his lover and sabotage his relationship.

The Confused Guy

With this one I sometimes wondered if he had "bordeline personality disorder"(1). At times he was the sweetest guy on the earth, once telling me, he loved me more than his life, but at other times he was so mean and ugly that I hardly recognized him. He was confused about everything in life. His sexuality, his purpose in life, his family, his career. He used to swing between satisfying his mother by getting engaged with an Iranian girl, and deciding to move in with me and marring me. We once planned a trip to Hawaii, for a so called honeymoon. Instead of going to Hawaii with me he went to Cancun with a girl with whom later on he got engaged for a short period of time. He made my life for some time to a bad Mexican soap opera. Dating this sort of guys is the surest way of landing in a mental institute.

The Sexually Abused Guy

Large number of children become victims of sexual abuse. The gay child is often the victim of such offense especially in sexually restricted countries like Iran. Dating a person who was sexually abused is very challenging. He has difficulty in trusting everybody. He might at times project the image of his predator onto you and show you some of the anger he has been caring for so many years. A small mistake and he lost all of his trust, that probably he never had, in me. He wont forgive me. To build a relationship with this person you need a lot of patience and careful tact. I wasn’t that careful and was accused of violating his trust and that was end of it.
Physical, emotional and sexual abuse during childhood leaves deep wounds in the psyche of the victim. A large percentage (around 75%) of people with “Borderline Personally Disorder” have a history of child abuse. It is essential to get to know the person, you are dating a little better before developing emotional and physical attachment. Once the judgment is fogged by the hormones, you won't see the warning signs, until you have a emotional break down. If you suspect the person you are dating has the “Borderline Personality Disorder” and still want to be with him, you can seek some help by reading the below mentioned reference (2)

The Looking-for-Sugar-Daddy guy

This one was a young cute guy, with enormously inflated self-image conveying up his inferiority complex. Thinking that everybody has to be in love with him and run after him. He used to call me Friday nights at 9 PM on his way to a gay bar wanting me to drop everything and join him in 15 minutes, to enjoy his company and pay for his drinks. I knew another one whose most favorite hobby was taking me for shopping and showing me how much he loves that black leather jacket. The more you give in, the more he wants. Last thing he wanted from me was a BMW Convertible. This guys is still looking for the loving father he never had. Subconsciously I hated these guys because I had to pay them to get some affection. That meant that I was not good enough.

The Only-Top guy

I know a lot of my countrymen who claim to be only-top, meaning from all sexual practices they like only insertive anal sex and nothing else. I guess they are stating their manhood. They are looking only for an object with a hole. If this is not acting out of gay self-hatred, then it is male chauvinism. As long as they are fucking that is fine. If you like or love somebody you should be willing to please him in ways that he likes and of course mutually. I have never gone with the only-top guy for a second date and I don’t advise it unless you like to get physically and emotionally abused.

The “Looks” fetishist

This guy is obsessed with the physical appearance of his date. He wants a specific age, height, weight, hair color, profession, hobbies and of course Farsi speaking. So many restrictions that nobody on this planet meets them all. One way of making sure that he will never find anybody. Instead of his mother preventing him from having a boyfriend, it is his own covered-up self-hatred preventing him from finding somebody who might not be physically fit for a semi-nude picture on the cover page of the GQ magazine, but might offer other values, e.g. some authenticity, some meaning and understanding. Once I went out only for a drink with such a guy, all the conversation was about why I don’t meet some his physical requirements. I felt I am an endless disappointment for him.

The Patriarch

This person knows everything perfectly well and everybody else has to follow his instructions. If it is about ordering a meal at a restaurant, getting dressed for a party, a place to go on a Saturday night, he has to have the final word. The modern version of this type calls himself “ Mentally top”. He is behaving like his fathers and grand fathers were raised in the old patriarchal ( Mard Saalary) Iranian society. Everything should be according to his needs and wishes. He doesn’t recognize his partner as an equal person with probably different needs and desires. He doesn’t know the words “compromise” and “reciprocity”. He thinks a relationship can work only if one person is in command and that has to be him. What this guy really want is a combination of a sex-slave, a maid and a secretary and all them together in one person free of charge, of course. If you are mentally challenged and need somebody to make your decisions for you this person is a perfect husband for you, go for it.

The Ambivalent guy

Once I expressed my interest in getting to know this guy, his answer was, “Ya Lets go out together”. That was around Iranian Norooz. He called me even to tell me, he is looking forward to see me in the Norooz party. Then in the party he totally ignores me. A few month passes, I see him again with a couple of friends. During our conversation he makes a nice comment about my eyes, that he likes them. A few days later, I called him again, no response. A few weeks passes and I see him again. I ask him why he is not answering his calls. He apologizes and kisses me on the cheeks. The best way of dealing with this type of guys are to confront them with their ambivalence or just ignore them.

The Obsessive lover
I personally qualify for this category. I am writing a separate assay about this topic.

All the above mentioned guys seem so different, but they have something in common “ a deep sitting gay self-hatred". Growing up as a gay child in the violently homophobic Iranian society, has damaged us for life. Being ridiculed from early ages of childhood, not being recognized and appreciated as special, had created a wound deep inside of all of us that can start to heal only after we realize the hurt, we had to suffer and develop compassion for the rejected lonely child we once were. When a young gay child gets rejected, he doesn’t have the option of choosing another parents. He has to live with the emotional neglect and abuse. He can only do that if he becomes numb to the abuse. He learns early on to suppress his feelings. As an adult he continuities the same behavior, being numb to physical or emotional abuse. That is why we see so many abusive gay relationships lasting for a long time. Because those partners don’t know anything but an abusive relationship. That rejected, ridiculed child still lives in all of us. The love that he needed and never received when he was a boy, nobody will ever give it to him. Making our lover responsible to fill all that void will put an enormous burden on him that he can’t carry, and will lead to our disappointment. All that damage won’t heal with the enthusiasm of coming out or marching in gay parades or hanging out with friends in gay clubs, consuming alcohol and becoming even more numb to our pain and hurt. If we want to take care of our life, and stop acting out unconscious childhood hurt, we have to take the first step of acknowledging our past. We have to start parenting the abused child, we once were and have compassion for him. Otherwise our lives would be an endless cycles of acting out hurt-rage or fear of abandonment that we once felt.

You might ask, if all of us are so much damaged, why bother and start an affair or relationship, which is doomed from beginning. Everybody has his own issues. The question is what are we doing about them. Are we facing them? Are we working on our issues and baggage. A perfect lover is somebody who helps us on our path of self-discovery and growth, at times challenges us, somebody who is willing to struggle with our demons without rejecting us, somebody who puts light on our dark spots. That is true love and acceptance, in a way that nobody has ever offered us.



1; The common symptoms of this disorder are: A shaky sense of identity; brief, turbulent love affairs; frequent periods of intense depression; eating disorders, drug abuse; sudden violent outbursts; oversensivity to real or imagined rejection; an irrational fear of abandonment and an inabiliy to be alone.
To read more about this disorder, refer to " I hate you- don't leave me. by Jerold J. Kreisman

2; Stop walking on eggshells by Paul T. Mason and Kandi Kreger
http://www.PBDCentral.com

© This article is copyrighted by Ali, August 31, 2003.

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