Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere;
they’re in each other all along.
 —Rumi

“He used to make me feel so good! Now he brings me too much grief!”

“With all this conflict, how do I know if I am with the right partner?”

"Before I get into a relationship, I’ll need to get my own act together.”

“Relationships shouldn’t be so much work!”

“Maybe I am not cut out for a LTR.”

“I’ve got to love myself before I can love someone else”

“Gay relationships— particularly male relationships—never last.”

I hear things like that from clients (even friends!) all the time. But usually I can’t agree. By itself, a relationship can help put your life in order. While you are in a relationship, loving yourself can happen even more quickly. 

This book can help you understand why, in your relationships past and present, you’ve been making the same mistakes over and over again. If you’re single, you’ll discover why you keep choosing Mr. Wrong or Mr. Right-Now, instead of Mr. Right. If you’re dating or in a committed relationship, you may be affected by issues that have emerged from childhood and thanks to this book, you can now become aware of them and stop them from interfering with your search for real love.

What kind of feedback—including the complaints and frustrations—do you hear from partners, boyfriends and partners? If you listen carefully, you’ll find something useful and helpful in whatever they say. What are your complaints and frustrations with your partners? These complaints say a lot about you too, if you listen closely enough.

Are you single? Before finding the right partner, you can do great deal to make yourself healthier individually and choose better partners. While searching for the right partner, you can work on being Mr. Right.  But you don’t need to wait to become a better man in order to find that perfect guy: You’ll become a better person—and partner— simply by being in a committed or dating relationship.

Are you already in a relationship and want it feel more comfortable and fulfilling? Then this book is for you and your partner too, because being in a relationship doesn’t mean you stop working on improving yourself. Continuously working on yourself can make a huge difference in making your relationship an enduring success.

Ideally, it’s best for both of you and your partner to work on yourselves together. But if your partner doesn’t want to go to couples therapy or engage in self-examination, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no hope for the relationship. Your partner may simply not be ready, or fear that doing work will stir up more problems. This book will help each of you to look at how you contribute to your relationship problems—and nightmares.

The book will show that any relationship, whether just dating or being committed, often forces you to know yourself more than you’d like, because it raises issues that other friendships and therapy may never do.  Any romantic relationship forces you to work more deeply on yourself, making you a stronger individual. (getting into the you/us confusion)

Did you buy into the "happily-ever-after” myth that assures you that once you meet Mr. Right, all your problems will vanish in a twinkling? Wrong! Instead, that's when all your real problems tend to begin—but ironically, that’s a good sign, a positive indicator that you are with the right partner. In essence you hire your partner to be your greatest teacher and then you go kicking and screaming into the classroom! Conflicts in relationships with a partner almost always help address issues you have not yet resolved within yourself. That is why you have picked this man. It is custom-made love!

Maintaining a good relationship is hard work. But is it ever worth it! Real love can’t happen unless you’re doing the work!

This book isn’t a how-to manual. Instead, use it to find the Mr. Right within you, your potential partner, or the man you’ve currently chosen. If you’re in a relationship, stop expecting your partner to make changes. Not that your partner or boyfriend is completely off the hook. Take a close look at your own strengths and weaknesses first, and learn to soothe yourself in the face of the difficulties which may surface in dating or a committed relationship.

Doing this relational work will help you achieve your own emotional health, and you may be surprised at the rewards that looking within yourself can bring.

The advice and insights in this book are derived from the works of Dr. Harville Hendrix’s Imago Relationship Therapy, Robert Bly, Terrance Real, John Lee, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung. These men’s work, and that of others I reference throughout this book, showed me how to teach men how to love other men. Independently, each of these male gurus had something different to offer men working on themselves and their relationships. Together, these pioneers create a relational model for gay men who are in romantic, affectionate, spiritual, mental, psychological and sexual relationships with other men. I have used the work of these men to show you how to get real, mature love based on consciousness, intentionality and maturity.

Harville Hendrix created Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT). This gender-neutral couple’s therapy has been the most useful model and communication tool I’ve found in working with any couples—gay, lesbian or straight. But it does not go far enough, particularly for gay male couples. Therefore, I introduce the folk tale of Iron John, as retold by Robert Bly, which is referred to throughout this book.

“Iron John” is a parable about boys becoming men, about going from immature masculine to mature masculine. It shows men how to access the masculinity deep within all of us, dramatizing the stages any boy must pass through to achieve mature masculinity.

All relationships call for its partners to evolve from children to adults: ours help us psychologically go from gay boys to gay men. Relationships are an initiation into manhood! When you commit to a partner, that journey into manhood continues and deepens. But it’s a long, and difficult journey that requires consciousness, intentionality and integrity from all three of you--you, your partner and your relationship--if you want a lasting gay male relationship.

Terrance Real’s work on patriarchy in his books “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” and “How Can I Get Through To You?” reflects the damage that patriarchy has inflicted on men through the lack of receiving affection. Given that we are socialized as men, this greatly influences our ability to give and receive real love as gay male couples.

Are you a King, a Lover, a Warrior or a Magician? Archetypal myths and their imagery will help put into perspective the type of man you are—and what type of man you’re drawn to. Are you attracted to a King, Lover, Warrior or Magician?

A book about gay male couples cannot be anything less than a book for men, inspired by the male clients whose stories I recount. Being gay does not make you less of a man, even though there are plenty of messages out there contrary to this. In fact, coming out and being in a relationship with another male takes balls! Your bravery makes you even more of a man by being out and visible as a man who loves men! So if you’ve picked up this book and read this far, pat yourself on the back and commend yourself for moving forward on your personal journey and intention to be a better man—both in and out of your relationships.

Coming out and finding Mr. Right is truly the kind of hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell wrote about in “The Hero’s Journey”. While he was not speaking specifically about men—much less gay men --I am adapting his work to our experience. Each of us are heroes who have had to take our own individualized journey to find ourselves as men, as gay, and as a gay man in relationship to others.

And once in a relationship, your adventure continues. This adventure involves quite a bit of work, and I’ll spell out just what kind of work that is. I want to help you see dating and relationships as an adventure in which you evolve, and develop into someone you never could have dreamed that you could be.

After my first book, 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Improve Their Lives, was released in 2003, hundreds of gay men from all over the world e-mailed, telephoned, and came to see me to share that what touched them most were my last three chapters on relationships. One man wrote that he wept while reading it, adding that he might still be together with his former partner if he had this information while they were together. Others spoke of their newfound hope of finding a partner and that my book provided them with a pathway. Yet some gay men accused me of being “too focused on relationships,” of claiming that the route to a quality life was in finding Mr. Right.

True, I’m very relationship-focused both in my personal life and professional practice, but by no means do I believe that you can’t achieve a full life without Mr. Right. It can be very fulfilling having friends and family around you. But I believe that healing and growth can take place mostly—if not only—in the context of a committed relationship. That relationship can involve a partner, close friend, family member, or someone with whom you’ve made a strong mutual commitment.

Gay or straight, men haven’t been taught relational tools. Again, just because we are gay doesn’t make us any less male. We were socialized as males similar to our straight counterparts. When I use the word relational, I refer to the power of interacting, in a close and intimate way with both another person and yourself. Creating real self-affirmation doesn’t come easy, particularly for gay men, who were raised amidst rampant homophobia, homo-prejudice, homonegativity, homo-ignorance and heterosexism, while having to play at being straight when we were really gay boys.

Throughout this book, I make the assumption that we were gay from birth. At this time, no scientific findings have revealed whether this in fact the case However, we have no trouble thinking of children as born straight! No one wants to think of a child as gay. Why not? Because when homo-ignorant people hear the word gay, they hear the word “sex” not “gay” and think immediately of sexual images—adult sexual imagery. Therefore, thinking of a child as gay leads them to think of him engaged in adult sex, which of course is inappropriate! However, if we understand that straight people were once straight children, then we can understand that gay men began as gay boys and teenagers, and that our sexual and romantic orientation was no more or less about sex than as is the case with our straight counterparts.

Throughout this book, I use the term boyfriend to refer to someone you’re dating. I say partner to refer to someone with whom you’ve made a Long Term Relationship (LTR) commitment. I think of the term boyfriend as being Relationship Lite, and a partner as being someone with whom you’ve made a lifetime commitment. You can decide what works best for you. But for the sake of this book, I will use these terms accordingly.

This book will help support you if you’re single, arming you with the tools to improve your relationship skills. If you are already partnered or dating a guy and experiencing conflicts and having trouble getting more serious with him, you’ll typically find more encouragement to leave the relationship than to stick it out. Our society sees relationships as disposable: if it isn’t working just go get another one! However, you might be walking away from the relationship of your dreams and not even know it. With the exception of cases where a boyfriend or partner won’t get help to stop domestic violence or addictions, most other relationship concerns can be worked out if you both want to work them out.

In the following chapters, I’ve tried to address the dilemmas I see most often in my practice. Single men in the early stages of dating or the first stage of love - romantic love-are not a high percentage of my clinical practice, since they rarely seek therapy. No matter how much pain someone’s in, if he starts to date someone and “falls in love,” he either reduces the frequency of therapy or drops out. He gets “bitten by the love bug” as the Supremes sing about in “Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart”—and I’ll discuss exactly what that love drug is.

In entering a social or romantic relationship with gay men, you must leave heterosexuality behind and immerse yourselves in each other, just as we all were immersed in our religions, schooling, families, and neighborhoods. We must leave these familiar places and enter Iron John’s dark forest where other gay men are.

Joseph Campbell writes about how we feel a call for radical transformation and radical experience. He argues that this experience is not romantic, as popular myths, movies and stories portray, but a scary one. Holding this book means you’ve taken your first step toward the call.

The meanings that lie within the “Iron John” story are very powerful and lay the groundwork for what you are about to read. I’ll explore how your lost sense of belonging as a gay boy and a gay teen makes it more difficult and more challenging to find other gay men to date and partner with, based on the fact that you received no guidance from your parents or society: you had to go it alone. What gay rituals and initiations did you have to celebrate and embrace, if any? Which “gay myths” and stereotypes are positive and promote health, and which do not? Where are the elders who can teach you to establish healthy relationships and find real love?

Not being able to be out and open about being gay, we learn to be out of integrity with ourselves— and others. This severely impacts our ability to be responsible and accountable—which is very difficult if you were taught not to be honest and forthright in terms of who you are and the face you show to the world. Learning to be accountable and responsible and striving to be in integrity, are the very ingredients necessary for a solid, authentic loving relationship. And you can do it! We all can if we want to.

Gay males were wounded from the birth and throughout childhood , punished for being the “wrong kind of male.” Whether you were a sissy or butch, unconsciously you knew—and often consciously— that this part of you, the part attracted to other males, wasn’t acceptable. Therefore, your sense of masculinity was vandalized, and too often, gay men bring that trauma into adult love relationships.

No one prepared us for manhood. We had to prepare ourselves, but we did it. In later chapters, I’ll explore male archetypes:

*The King—that part of you who can bless yourself and others, has vision and boundaries;

*The Lover—the part of you that is emotional, sexual and spiritual;

*The Magician—the thinker, your inner voice, the trickster, manipulator and intellectual; and

*The Warrior—the part of you that does the footwork, enforces your boundaries, and ensures that your mental health work gets done.

All of these archetypes apply to your relationships. Which archetype is your strongest? Your weakest? And what about the men you choose—what archetypes are they?

To enter into an intimate relationship with another man, you must know what to expect. To get through the stages of love, you must find your authentic self who’s been caged up for most of your life. In relationships, you will find the key to discovering your authentic self. I’ll explore with you the Shadows, which represent the darker sides of love, and how they can sabotage any relationship if you don’t understand them.

Also important is deciding if you want to be in a short-term or long-term relationship. Be aware that real love is only for the LTR crowd. But short-term is fine, as long as you understand that real love will not await you there.

In a healthy relationship, unresolved issues with your parent(s) will inevitably surface. We all “return to the scene of the crime”—repeatedly—until it’s solved. Relationships help us solve (and resolve) those crimes. Whether your childhood was healthy and easy, or abusive and dysfunctional, there is always a need to clear up those issues that weren’t resolved at the time. In the “Iron John” metaphor, gay men must steal our self-determination and independence from our mother—and know what issues we have with her. The type of mother you have, and/or how you perceive her, dictates how you go about the theft.

And every man—gay or straight—must progress from boy to man with his father. What special issues do gay men have with their fathers? And how do they impact our ability to enjoy real love? Understanding this is vital to being a man in your adult love relationships.

How does sex play a part in your relationships and self-discovery? Your sexual Shadows can help you to understand the type of man you are really looking for, both within yourself and in the one you want as a partner. What coded information is embedded in your sexual fantasies, sexual desires and sexual attractions? Why are some men attracted to hairy bears, smooth twinks, punks, daddy or preppy types? What does this information say about you? Knowing this can only add to loving yourself and others more fully. The more you know yourself sexually and emotionally, the more you can fulfill yourself as a man—and a man in a relationship.

What if there’s the complication of you—and/or the other man—being heterosexually married? How does a married gay man return to integrity with himself, his wife and perhaps, his children? For the heterosexually married man, specific dynamics play out: loss of heterosexual privileges, stages of coming out as a mixed orientation couple, and the extreme amount of guilt the heterosexually married gay man lives with before, during and after coming out!

Communication is hard to achieve, particularly when conflicts arise. How do you express yourself when you’re angry with a partner, who you feel has gone from friend to enemy? I’ll provide a helpful model for communicating more effectively, honestly, and safely with your partner—and others in your life. The various parts of your mind work differently when you’re being reactive, but you can get through even the most difficult fight by using this model. You will also learn communication styles that will help you get through even the worst argument with your partner.

After you try all of this and do your best to work things out, what if it just can’t be done? Breaking up can feel like death—a torturous time of feeling rejected and abandoned, isolated and unloved. How you get through it depends on the support you’ve built around you, and how safe you feel about what others know or you want them to know. Here, your inner Warrior is important to help march you through the unpleasant feelings and emotions that will surface, particularly those of feeling like a failure.

And finally, after dating many guys, having been in or witnessed other relationships, perhaps you’ve come to know that you’re not interested in having a relationship? Is that an acceptable decision? That is only for you to decide. We live in a culture where couples are valued, but being single isn’t. Are you not invited to parties because you are single? How do you react when others feel you should have a partner, and that something’s wrong with you because you don’t? Here lies the importance of friends and family and a strong sense of self. I’ll help you to hold onto your inner King’s vision of being out of a relationship, and not cave in to what others want from you, while continuing to relate closely with friends and family.

Now, go forward to Chapter One, and let your initiation begin!

Joe's book 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Find Real Love is now bookstores, or you can order it at www.amazon.com.