“I can’t help what I’m attracted to,” is a phrase I hear a lot. Frankly, I don’t know if heterosexuals or lesbians use that phrase, but gay men certainly do. You see it on the Internet, hear it on the phone and even hear it in person. It’s a plea for understanding the foibles of human nature and sexual attraction. Did it ever strike you as probably the most back-handed, sorry apology ever for being visually-oriented to the point of absurdity? When you hear that statement, do you think, “Wow! Thanks for being so honest about being so shallow!”
You might roll your eyes, you might think to yourself “Well, I guess that’s okay as long as he says it out front.” But what if that “type” that they list isn’t anything close to resembling you? Do you feel great that they filtered you out before even really getting to know you? That you’re not young enough, thin enough, fat enough, blond enough, old enough, have enough or too much body hair or whatever artificial visual standard is applied? Notice it’s actually never anything that would fit into an emotional or mental category.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m listening to the Queer as Folk season 1 soundtrack. The song right now is “You think you’re a man.” I actually like that song a lot. I usually try to pretend that I’m actually really grateful about the filter. It saves me from dealing with people that I view as doomed to endless disappointment as their partners age into ugliness and they have to shop around for the replacement. Which is probably the source of the joke, “What does a gay man bring to his second date? His new boyfriend.” Gay relationships are measured like dog years for their fleeting, ephemeral value.
So chemistry comes first, compatibility in at distant second. What if the order were reversed? A colleague of mine during a temporary placement allowed me the privilege of asking about arranged marriages in his culture. It’s still a large part of the family dynamic – he estimated that about 60%-80% of his generation probably adhered to the arranged marriage dynamic. He told me of a friend who said “I fell in love with my wife the second year of our marriage.” A gay male would’ve moved on by week 2 after he realized that the only thing he and his new beau had in common was they wore the same sweater size.
Guided arrangements seem to work because families specifically select partners for their children based on similarities in their frame of reference. Aside from that golden era where “no one understands me – I’m a teenager,” close relatives often know more about you then you do. Please check the section on the Johari Window for more detail. Did they go to the same type of school? Did they have about the same socio-economic background? Did they have friends that were similar? Do they have compatible goals? You know, all those things that get decided after-the-fact. Many Americans find this a horribly limited concept. I admit that I would probably be utterly petrified if my somewhat eccentric parents had decided to match me up, probably because they’d start with the wrong gender. And yet, for many, it works. They know that the mechanics of the relationship will work, they have realistic expectations coming into their marriages and then can concentrate on a more personal courtship.
Websites like eHarmony try to provide a compromise process that balances the two sides of the equation. Knock-off gay sites try the same – but allow people to filter by so many physical attributes that the process becomes an inane exercise. I hope that when I finally meet “my prince,” that I had the sense to see that it would work before I decided that chemistry was the most important thing. I used to tell my students “Love gets you into the relationship, logic gets you to stay.” I think I’m going to look for my Yenta.
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