As gay men, we provide a great disservice to one another in the form of "dating." We are not a large community - it can feel like it sometimes, but compared to heterosexuals our dating pool is MUCH more limited. Also, in Hetero-World, the existence of two genders in the dating pool reduces the amount of "overlap" you experience - perhaps you have common exes with your friends, but you definitely don't have common exes with your partner. In gay world, it is pretty much impossible to find someone who hasn't dated at least one of your friends or exes (especially when you have "socially active" friends and exes like I do.)
So ostensibly, we trade around until we find the piece of the puzzle that "best fits" the space we have open. This guy was too skinny for Steve, but John likes skinny guys, so John can have him. I'll take the guy John didn't like because they were both bottoms (and I'm fine with either). No... wait, he can't stand my dog. Well Kyle is allergic to dogs anyway, so HE can have the powerbottom, I'll take the guy who lives too far away from Mike... et cetera, et cetera.
Since the vast majority of us had no directly relatable model for same-sex dating/mating (which is, in my opinion, irreconcilable to its heterosexual counterpart), we all learn on the fly. Which means, then, that we discover what is "attractive" and "unattractive" to the people we date based on how they react to us. So in essence, we vet potential partners for one another. As a cohesive group, we teach one another how to attract and treat a mate.
This is problematic. The larger the pool of experience and wisdom we're all sharing with one another, the wiser and more experienced we all become. Conversely, the smaller the community, the quicker this whole pattern jumps the tracks.
Add to this the fact that our community, perhaps more than others, worships its youth. The minute a 21-year-old shows up at the bar they are surrounded, regardless of the fact that they probably don't know what they want, how to be a good man, and how to treat a good man. By the time that 21 year old is 27, he is suddenly a LOT less interesting to the community as a whole, and has likely spent the last six years with people who don't care if he knows how to be or how to treat a good man. So in those six years, he has probably grown to appreciate his own bad habits and damaging behaviors as "REWARDING," because hey - he's never had a problem finding a mate before!
I may be more introspective than most, but I'm willing to admit that through much of my twenties I was not a good boyfriend. Mostly because - YES - I didn't understand what it took to be a "good man," nor did I know how to recognize one, and if I happened upon one, I didn't know how to treat him. I look back on the things my boyfriends through that time put up with and think to myself "he shouldn't have stayed as long as he did." And to be perfectly fair to me, too, I look back on the things I put up with from them and think to myself "I shouldn't have stayed as long as I did."
Note: NONE of this is to say my exes are bad men or bad people. A couple of them are very close friends now whom I still love very much. But we were not a good match, and in most cases one or both of us weren't in a state to be a good match to ANYONE at the time.
In the last five years or so, I've narrowed in on what I consider to be the qualities of a good man, and I've figured out how to recognize those in others, and make those behaviors a part of who I am. Just like everyone else, brutal, ongoing trial and error taught me much. I've been a bad date, I've had bad dates. I've been a bad boyfriend, I've had bad boyfriends. I've been a bad ex, I've had bad exes. Each step of the process has taught me more and more, and though I'm still far from perfect, compared to where I was five years ago I'd say I'm much further along in my understanding of the life cycle of romantic relationships.
Unfortunately, being able to RECOGNIZE the traits of a good man does not always translate to REQUIRING those traits to be present. The thing I struggle with the most is having enough respect for myself and my heart to listen to the little voices that pop up to warn me about red flags. And I frequently see it in my friends, too - I watch a situation that I am fairly certain will end badly, but nobody else seems to notice... or care. Men are also good at lying to get what they want, and we are all experts at hiding the bulk of our flaws until someone is too emotionally invested to simply walk away... even when they should.
The overall result of all this is that our romantic relationships, as a whole, do not appear to be as solid as those of our heterosexual peers. I said it, and I believe it, and I'm not sorry about it. Not to say there aren't ROCK-SOLID romances in our community, but I think those stories are so much rarer and more elusive to us than they are to the rest of society.
As a service to the rest of my community, I am pledging to start listening to that little voice that tells me "this isn't good. There is behavior here that is unacceptable." These are often termed "Dealbreakers," and there are some damn-near universal ones that I have no problem enforcing: rude to servers? No ass for you. You hit/punch/slap when you fight? No ass for you. You're elbow-deep in an addiction? No ass for you. But there are a few that I've managed to identify that are RAMPANT in our community, that we all need to commit to annihilating if we're ever going to strengthen the quality of our relationships, and have them be seen as equal to everyone else's.
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