Why I Love My Straight Boyfriend, from Thought Catalog

From Why I Love My Straight Boyfriend, on Thought Catalog:

So what exactly does a contemporary relationship between a gay man and a straight man look like? I don’t know. This is a love affair and it looks like this. Every day we email and text back and forth about who we’re sleeping with, how we’re sleeping with them, and if we should continue to do so (in his case it’s just one girl in Paris who he’s in love with). We email poems to one another (this is less gay than it sounds since we’re both poets, which is more gay than it sounds), we have event nights, non-event nights, and date nights where we get together for really expensive drinks we can’t afford and remix Chrissie Hynde with Camus and (oh my god) our feelings.

It’s really worth reading the whole thing.

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4 Responses to Why I Love My Straight Boyfriend, from Thought Catalog

  1. 1
    RonF says:

    I read the title and then I read the posting. It made me think a bit about the title. What I’d like to know from all of you is whether what I’m about to say is a thought process unique to me, representative of a large group but still a minority, or a majority opinion.

    When a woman refers to another woman (or a girl to another girl) as her “girlfriend”, sex does not automatically come to mind. Your first assumption outside any foreknowledge of the speaker’s sexual preference is that they are best friends, not lovers.

    But one man does not commonly refer to his best male friend as his “boyfriend” unless the speaker is homosexual. In this case the speaker, who identifies himself to us as gay, feels constrained to put the modifier “straight” in front of the word “boyfriend” so that we understand that there is nothing sexual going on between them. I suggest that if he did not so identify himself we would still have the first impression (before we read the body of the text, anyway) that both he and the man he was referring to were homosexual lovers. I don’t think people in general would make that presumption if both people were women. And I’d be willing to bet serious money that the straight side of this pairing doesn’t refer to the gay guy as his “boyfriend” or “my gay boyfriend”.

    Now, the lack of presumption that two women were lovers if they used the term “girlfriend” to refer to each other may not hold true in communities where there are a lot of open gays or lesbians. But overall, it seems to me that the two words, though similar, have different connotations in general. What do you think? And if you think I’m right, what do you think is the reason?

  2. 2
    nolifeinabox says:

    RonF- I do think you’re right in that assessment, and I’ve noticed the same thing myself. One, really over-simplified explanation that comes to mind is that the difference in connotations between “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” can be chalked up to restrictive ‘common sense’ constructions of masculine and feminine sexuality.

    By that I mean, popular culture tends to view guys sexuality as more central, and more driven, making guys more sexual creatures all around. Girls tend to be viewed and presented as more emotional, and possessing a more passive, nebulous sexuality which isn’t central to their lives. So, while “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” both obviously communicate intimacy, it seems like between two guys there’s an assumption that the intimacy must be sexually driven, because guys are sexually, where as between girls it must be emotional because girls are emotional. I think most people would have similar assumptions hearing the terms “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” between mixed-sex peoples, in part because of the ‘common sense’ understanding that guys and girls can’t relate to each other emotionally without sex getting involved somehow.

    Obviously none of those representations are actually representative of they myriad of real life lived experiences, but it still seems to be what people think they know about other people, when they haven’t really thought about it much. At least, that’s how it seems to me.

  3. 3
    nobody.really says:

    Oh, this is fun:

    D [the straight boyfriend] basically talked me through my last relationship and break-up (the perks of having a straight boyfriend is that you get to cheat on him…a lot). I get something really different from him than my gay boy-friends (who I’m friends with) and my gay boyfriends (who I’m sleeping with), and god it’s so hard writing about life today—so many parentheses and dashes.

    * * *

    D is really into being brief and to the point, like straight men tend to be, without having any “off limits” subjects like gay sex or shoes….

    * * *

    I kind of knew things were serious with D when he sent me a love poem he wrote for me some months ago. I think it may have originally been a kind of, I wrote this for you what do you think of it thing, but I wasn’t about to give him any edits. Please. Send that shit to The New Yorker stat. I can’t remember a time when a man wrote a poem for me and called it a Love poem, capital L. And it better be capitalized twice because I like those kind of typos.

  4. 4
    MisterMephisto says:

    RonF said:

    And I’d be willing to bet serious money that the straight side of this pairing doesn’t refer to the gay guy as his “boyfriend” or “my gay boyfriend”.

    If I had a gay boyfriend, I’d totally call him “my gay boyfriend”.

    Unfortunately, me being my own anecdotal data doesn’t actually invalidate the larger observation you’re making here, Ron.