The Velvet Rage (16 page)

Stage three is the time in a gay man's life when he begins to reflect on the relationship trauma he has experienced. As the research on trauma grows, there is an increasing awareness on the very real effects of relational trauma on a person. Two important facts, among others, have emerged from this body of research. First, there is growing evidence that emotional memories rarely fade. The well-known neuroscientist J.E. LeDoux has written “emotional memory may be forever.”
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Experiences that involve extreme and significant emotional responses are likely imprinted in our neurological pathways in significantly different ways. These pathways show great resiliency and maintain their potency regardless of age, thus allowing a person to remember
emotionally significant events from even early childhood for most, if not all, of one's life.

The second important fact about relationship trauma is that emotional memories dramatically affect the way in which we process similar stimuli after the trauma. For example, if you were a passenger during an almost fatal car accident, you will like respond differently to a car for the rest of your life. If the accident occurred as the result of an oncoming car swerving into your lane while driving at night, you are likely to respond with sudden anxiety to oncoming headlights that may appear to even slightly venture toward your lane.

These two facts bear important information for the gay man who experiences relationship trauma. First, the memories of that trauma remain fresh and active throughout his life, and second, he is likely to react to future relationships based on these traumatic memories.

Dean discovered that his boyfriend of seven years was having an affair with his best friend. Not only was he having an affair, but it had been going on for several years. Dean was devastated by the experience. Some time passed before he would consider
being in a relationship again, and when Dean did finally find another relationship, he was extremely suspicious of his new boyfriend whenever they weren't together. When his boyfriend's friends whom Dean had not met would call, Dean would become increasingly jealous and almost always end up in a fight with his boyfriend. Not only had his memories of the betrayal not faded, but he was entering his new relationship by carrying with him the response elicited by his past betrayal.

It is rare that a gay man makes it from young adulthood into middle age without suffering at least moderate relationship trauma. The odds are stacked wildly against the possibility that even the most well-adjusted gay man would choose to be in a relationship with another well-adjusted gay man. It rarely happens. And so, two wounded men come together in what starts as a loving union and often ends in a traumatic and heart-wounding separation.

By the time the gay man reaches stage three, he is keenly aware that he has some difficult problems handling relationships. For some gay men, this realization can become primary in their awareness, triggering feelings of depression and hopelessness about ever finding the love that they need. In stage three he accepts that he has experienced past relationship trauma, and sets about to find a way to diminish its effects on his life.

Over the past few decades there has been a lot of talk about psychological trauma, and for good reason. Much of it began shortly after the return of soldiers from the Vietnam War. Many of these men had seen horrendous acts of violence and had been terrified
for the safety of their lives on more than one occasion. After returning to the United States, they seemed to have great difficulty acclimating into normal society. Many couldn't seem to hold a job, others became chronic substance abusers, and still others seemed to fall into a tenacious depression that just wouldn't relent as depression normally does. In large part, it was the concern of these veterans that raised the awareness about the lasting effects of trauma.

Recent research into trauma has identified some specific biological effects of trauma. Several findings show that among patients who have experienced significant psychological trauma, the hippocampal region in the brain has as much as twelve percent less volume than those who have not experienced such trauma.
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Relationship trauma, however, is usually a significantly different experience from that of trauma caused by life-threatening events. What is curious about the connect between these two different types of trauma is the commonality in basic symptoms. The experience of psychological trauma, as is typically diagnosed (posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]), has at least some of the following symptoms:

Gay men who have experienced significant or repeated relationship trauma often exhibit many of these same symptoms in their relationships. For example, they often relive the trauma in their dreams or imagine that the trauma is happening again. They often report not being able to remember, for example, what the fight was really about or what happened after they discovered an infidelity. They very often anticipate the inevitable end of the relationship (foreshortened future) even when things have been going well or the trauma is from a previous relationship. They have a heightened awareness of relationship trauma and may overreact to events they imagine may lead to trauma, and depression of some degree is almost always present.

The presence of relationship trauma often makes it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for the sufferer to experience a satisfying relationship. He is constantly scanning the relationship environment for signs of betrayal or abuse, and this expenditure of energy alone transforms a relationship from a satisfying experience
into a very tiring job. And as you might imagine, it's no piece of cake to live with a man who interprets even small things as relationship-destroying or who privately assumes that the relationship will not exist in the future. Sadly, the relationship trauma victim often behaves in such as way as to elicit more rejection and even trauma from those around him.

There are as many twisted ways to be traumatized by a relationship as there are curses in mouths of men. However, there are some common patterns in the trauma experienced by gay men. What follows is a dictionary of the relationship traumas experienced by most gay men. Each type of trauma represents a different experience, and consequently, the ongoing symptoms of each are different. There are four primary types of relationship trauma experienced by gay men:

Without question, the most devastating form of relationship trauma is betrayal. More than pain of lost love and dreams, it almost always revolves around a deliberate act of one partner to undermine, deceive, or destroy the other partner. The devastation it leaves behind can take years, and in some cases, a lifetime, to heal.

What makes betrayal so searingly hurtful is that it involves planned deception between two men who ostensibly trust each other. It goes beyond destroying the relationship—it calls into
question one's ability to perceive reality correctly and to judge the character of another person. Once one man has been seriously betrayed by another man—a man with whom he also shares a bed, food, money, and life—all men become fundamentally unsafe. If he cannot protect himself from someone whom he knows so well, then who can be trusted? If another man proclaims to love me and simultaneously plots to deceive me, what is the meaning of love? Does it exist or is it just a cruel fantasy?

Betrayals rarely develop overnight. A betrayal is often the product of a long series of small deceptions, pretexts, and omissions that eventually add up to something much larger. The betrayer slowly acclimates to small white lies, and then progresses on to larger, more deceptive schemes.

The betrayer always has a handy rationalization. Oftentimes, his rationalization is based on something that is true. In his frustration and anger, he uses this fact as a license to do something he perceives to be of equal harm. As the betrayal grows, it spins beyond the initiating circumstance, eventually achieving a life and energy of its own.

The most common form of betrayal is that of infidelity in a monogamous relationship between men. It takes, however, more than just a sexual indiscretion to make for betrayal. Betrayal may start as such, but it eventually becomes sexual and emotional duplicity.

Peter was about twenty-eight when he first visited South Beach. He and his lover had saved their money for months and planned the trip carefully. They had researched the latest hot spots for gay men in South Florida and arrived with both a determination and excitement to have a knock-out time.

On the first day, Peter was laying on the beach by 9 a.m. His lover had a brief business appointment that morning and
agreed to join him around lunchtime. Not long after Peter settled into his rectangle of sun in the middle of the gay section beach, he met Ignacio, a dark-haired, slightly overweight, friendly man of about thirty-five. Peter and Ignacio struck up a conversation that soon led to the two of them heading off to Ignacio's Lincoln Avenue condo.

The late-morning rendezvous had been a very welcome release for Peter, since the sex between him and his lover had lately become somewhat routine and perfunctory. He felt twinges of guilt over the fling, but decided that he would return to the beach by lunch and keep the whole affair to himself.

Over the week in Miami, Peter and Ignacio found several excuses to get together. When Peter's lover wanted to go shopping at the local Saks Fifth Avenue, Peter said that he was too relaxed and wanted to stay at the hotel and nap. No sooner had his lover exited the terrazzo steps of the boutique hotel in which they were staying, than Peter had Ignacio on his cell phone. Half an hour later, he was back in Ignacio's apartment.

Not only had Peter found Ignacio to be a great lover, he was also a physician at the local hospital, and from what Peter could surmise, did quite well. The two of them had really hit it off, and as the week drew to a close, it became clear that both Peter and Ignacio were quite taken with each other.

On the plane ride home to Dallas, Peter found himself sinking into a hopeless depression and desperately wanting to see Ignacio again. Once back at home, he called Ignacio and was delighted and relieved to hear his voice on the other end.

That night at dinner, less than four hours after stepping off the airplane, Peter told his lover everything. After he admitted to the affair of the past week, he dropped another bombshell. He was leaving tomorrow to return to Miami and live with Ignacio.

At times of great surprise, we often grow numb and begin to see things with a clarity of purpose that we haven't seen before. Peter's lover, feeling just such numbness, was upset but told Peter that he would help him pack. The next morning, he gave Peter a few thousand dollars and dropped him off at the airport.

It took weeks before the enormity of the betrayal really hit Peter's lover. He could hardly grasp the reality. One day he was embarking on a much anticipated vacation with the man he loved, and seven days later he was bidding him good-bye and into the arms of another man. In a mere week, everything he had built his life around seemed to collapse. He could have understood, although it would have hurt him, that Peter had had a “roll in the hay” with a handsome Cuban doctor, but what he couldn't understand now was that Peter had actually allowed himself to fall in love with another man. He thought back to the dinners he and Peter had enjoyed in the sidewalk cafés of South Beach. All the while, he was having a great vacation, and Peter was falling in love with another man. Peter had acted as if he were having a wonderful vacation, and he had been stupid enough to think that it was because the two of them were together in wonderful, sunny paradise.

Was it that the doctor has more money? Was it because he wasn't attractive to Peter anymore? Had their whole relationship been just one big charade?

It's always surprising to me how many gay men come to therapy reporting just this kind of blatant and cutting betrayal that they experienced at the hands of a former lover. Of course, betrayal is not unique to gay men by any means, but it does seem to be a serious problem in most gay relationships. One gay therapist I know says, “Second only to HIV, betrayal is the most devastating
gay epidemic.” One hallmark symptom of a gay man who has experienced betrayal is
relationship hopelessness
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Relationship hopelessness is present when a gay man no longer believes that a relationship can be a fulfilling endeavor. He may have crushes, infatuations, and flings, but he never allows them to develop into a long-term relationship. A week, a month, or six months at most are all he will give to another man. The gay man suffering from relationship hopelessness looks cynically at his friends who are in a long-term relationship and imagines all of the torture and pain they must be enduring. He prides himself on having achieved something of a more rational stance by not seeking a relationship.