6 months on.......Where are you now?

[ednbarby]

My views on gay marriage were already well solidified before this movie.  I couldn't imagine ever telling someone that they cannot get married because they are the same sex.  Love is already so hard to find and hold on to, why on earth do people insist on making it even worse?  What BBM did for me however is really open my eyes to the ignorance of others around me.  I find myself becoming very irritated at the plethora of stupid BBM jokes out there, not to mention the millions of other comments you hear on a dailiy basis discriminating against homosexuals.  My boiling point seems to have lowered, and I have ZERO tolerance for that anymore.  I flat out tell people around me that I don't like when they use the word gay inappropriately or make jokes, whereas before I'd just keep my mouth shut.  I can't stand it anymore.

Excellent point about how ridiculous it is to tell people who they can and cannot love.  And I'm with you.  I have zero tolerance for bigotry in all its various forms as well.

[Bucky]

I too get angry when people make "gay" jokes or show their stupidity by saying stupid things about gays.  Most of us never thought about who we were going to be attracted to or in love with when we got older while we were still children.  I know I never gave it a second thought.  I was just busy being a child.  After I got older things just sort of took their course. 

I think Brokeback Mountain is very relevant today.  As long as there is bigotry and hate in the world Brokeback Mountain will always be relevant.  If my ex partner had been a girl instead of a guy when I was in college I would never allowed her to get away and we would be married now.  Instead because of bigotry and people saying that society would never understand about gay relationships and gay marriages my life couldn't have a happy ending neither could my ex partner.  Because of bigotry he feared what we would face after college so he married a girl that he didn't love to fit in with society.  I never married period.  How sad is it after forty three years on this earth I  am in love with my former gay lover who is now a married man with a seventeen year old son.  He hates his marriage but I believe he is loyal to his son.  I am put in a position of possibly being a "marriage wrecker" and the gay lover of a married man.  How hard is that to accpet about yourself when you have always tried to be a good person in your life?  I know that it would be hard for me to cause someone to abandon his son.  The wife should know about a lot of things so I don't feel that sorry for her. 

If it had not been for society's  refusal to accept the way a person loves someone else I wouldn't be in this mess right now.  I had an eight month love affair but it couldn't go any further than an "affair" because of society.  Bigotry only produces more bigotry and hatred and causes some people to feel superior to others because they love in a different way than I do.  Did I really make a mess of things or did society?  Was it my fault that I fell in love with someone who was a lot like myself but because we were both of the same gender society said no you can't do this?  Brokeback Mountain portrayed two very handsome and "normal" young men in a love affair that they didn't intend to happen but it did happen because of their human make up.  They were made to be attracted to members of the same sex.  I doubt that they even realized that they were different from much of society and I am convinced that Ennis didn't know.  Jack might have an idea but Jack was a loving person who didn't mean anyone any harm.  Brokeback Mountain will always be an important movie because it traces the life of two normal young men and traces their lives for twenty years and explains why they could never be happy.  Society said that their love affair was wrong and they couldn't be together and so they were doomed to a life of heartbreak.  It is so sad that things have to be that way.

[Katie77]

Hi Bucky.....the way you tell your story, I can feel the sadness,the frustration, and also the bitterness......I have never been in the same situation as you, so I could never know what I would have done in similar circumstances......

I do believe and have always believed that gay men, who marry, for the sake of "what is expected of them to do", is frought with danger and unhappiness...it is certainly not fair on the person who they marry, the children they might produce nor the gay person in question.....I wonder who has had a more difficult life...your gay ex-lover, living a lie, or you, being alone......probably both as difficult as the other.

When I know that many many people can form a partnership with the lover of their choice, regardless of sex, and go on to lead happy and contented lives, I find it frustrating to think, that some chose a different path, probably knowing that it is doomed before it even begins.

You blame society, for the way your life has turned out, and I agree, that society hasn't helped your cause, but I also think that, it has turned out the way it has, because of the choices that you and your ex-partner have made.....choices, no doubt, thought to be the correct ones at the time.

It is sad that you are still pining for someone after 43 years, whom you had an 8 month affair with...I find it difficult to comprehend that you couldn't or didn't find someone else to give such undying love to....I feel very sorry for you, and I dont say that in a condesending way, but in a sad and frustrating way....what a waste, and what a long time to stay bitter, when there possibly could have been a happier ending.

Life is made up of choices, we all make bad ones, and have to live with them, we really cant go on blaming society, or anyone else for the choices we make about our personal life......it would have been far less painful, to stand up to society and everyone else, and say "like it or lump it".....

Once again, let me repeat, that I am not in any way attempting to offend you, I am well aware of the bigotry, and lack of understanding that is thrust on gay people, and the torments and frustrations, that it forces on your lives, and I wish that this world was more appreciative of the fact that people, like you, are good people, and not label you with an anti-social tag......I just hope that you find some peace in your life, and hopefully some happiness.

[Bucky]

Hi Bucky.....the way you tell your story, I can feel the sadness,the frustration, and also the bitterness......I have never been in the same situation as you, so I could never know what I would have done in similar circumstances......

I do believe and have always believed that gay men, who marry, for the sake of "what is expected of them to do", is frought with danger and unhappiness...it is certainly not fair on the person who they marry, the children they might produce nor the gay person in question.....I wonder who has had a more difficult life...your gay ex-lover, living a lie, or you, being alone......probably both as difficult as the other.

When I know that many many people can form a partnership with the lover of their choice, regardless of sex, and go on to lead happy and contented lives, I find it frustrating to think, that some chose a different path, probably knowing that it is doomed before it even begins.

You blame society, for the way your life has turned out, and I agree, that society hasn't helped your cause, but I also think that, it has turned out the way it has, because of the choices that you and your ex-partner have made.....choices, no doubt, thought to be the correct ones at the time.

It is sad that you are still pining for someone after 43 years, whom you had an 8 month affair with...I find it difficult to comprehend that you couldn't or didn't find someone else to give such undying love to....I feel very sorry for you, and I dont say that in a condesending way, but in a sad and frustrating way....what a waste, and what a long time to stay bitter, when there possibly could have been a happier ending.

Actually I am 43 years old now and have been in love with the same person for only 22 years which is still a very long time.  I suppose I should have found someone else years ago but somehow I couldn't make other relationships work.  I dated mostly women for a period of years but although I liked many of the women that I dated I could never fall in love with them.  It may have been because I couldn't help but subconsciously compare them to my ex-partner in college.  I did try to have a relationship with a guy that I worked with one summer.  He was four years younger than me and after several dates or meetings I could not love him.  I only kissed him once and it didn't do a thing for me.  I guess that I was still subconciously involved with what seemed to me at the time as the "sweetest person on earth."  I really think Jack Twist said it best.  I really didn't know how to quit him.  Even when I was bitter and I thought I hated him because he deserted me and married subconciously I couldn't get him out of my head.


Life is made up of choices, we all make bad ones, and have to live with them, we really cant go on blaming society, or anyone else for the choices we make about our personal life......it would have been far less painful, to stand up to society and everyone else, and say "like it or lump it".....

Once again, let me repeat, that I am not in any way attempting to offend you, I am well aware of the bigotry, and lack of understanding that is thrust on gay people, and the torments and frustrations, that it forces on your lives, and I wish that this world was more appreciative of the fact that people, like you, are good people, and not label you with an anti-social tag......I just hope that you find some peace in your life, and hopefully some happiness.

I wish we had both lived in a different place and a different time.  Our relationship started not long after AIDS became a big issue worldwide and I remember many people and many religious leaders calling AIDS "the gay plague."  I think that contributed to the hatred of gays at the time.  I don't know if I can find happiness because I have only loved one person in my entire life in a romantic way and I did try to find someone else both females and males.  I never could get past that one relationship.  I wish I could.  For better or worse I have renewed  contact with him.  Now according to what he has told me in his emails he wants to "rekindle" our relationship.  In his emails he seems exactly like the person I fell in love with twenty two years ago.  I haven't talked with him by phone or in person.  I am sure he has aged a lot and I know I have aged a lot. I am 43 now and he is 44.  I think his wife knew about our relationship before she married him but she married him anyway.  His son I am sure has absolutely no idea.  I have promised myself that I won't do anything until after his son graduates from high school.  I want his son to be totally grown up before he finds out anything at all. 

Right now I don't know what to do to be quite honest.  I don't want to start up anything with him again but I am afraid that "old time feeling" will resurface.  That is why I want to avoid meeting with him and talking about old times because I saw what happened with Jack and Ennis at their reunion after four years.  That is too scarey to think about and I don't trust myself. I keep hoping he is bald headed but then again I didn't fall in love with his looks to begin with but his personality.  We make our own choices I know that but our choices are heavily influenced by our emotions.  It is the emotion part that really scares me.  If he is being honest with me he feels the exact same way that he felt about me twenty two years ago.  I am going to ask him why he bailed out on me and left me alone and tried to live a straight life but I already have a pretty good idea of what he will say.  I know he was scared but I was scared too and I know he was being pressured by his dad to go to another college but he was 21 years old so things are still very "iffy" with me. 

[ednbarby]

I think AIDS has definitely contributed to society's hatred of gays - especially during the 80s when most people were so ignorant about how it could be contracted, and I think that distrust/anxiety is still prevalent today though not as much so.

I can only imagine what you must have gone through then and are still going through.  I can relate to it to some extent in my own life - just in the sense that I have been in love - really in love, really connected on a spiritual level - with two men in my life.  But the man I am married to is not one of those men.  The two men I loved each broke my heart in different ways.  I was passionately in love with both of them.  When I met my husband, what I thought I needed was a friend.  I was tired of the kind of anguish these two had put me through.  And I got what I needed.  But now I look at my life and wonder if I've missed something.  If, in making that very conscious choice, my life has been much calmer but with much less joy.

I don't blame you for making the choices you did.  You not only had yourself to answer to, but society.  And I think we can blame society to some extent for that.  And should.  Because it needs to be fixed.  It's a crying shame that people who would consciously choose to be together do not only because of the pressures of society.  As someone else here so aptly said, true love is hard enough to come by to begin with.  To deny two people that who'd make no other choice but to be together without that denial is what's really the abomination.

[Katie77]

I think AIDS has definitely contributed to society's hatred of gays - especially during the 80s when most people were so ignorant about how it could be contracted, and I think that distrust/anxiety is still prevalent today though not as much so.

I do agree with you here ednbarby, the revelation of AIDS and the terms used about it, "curse of the gay community", was a HUGE backward step in the progress of acceptance towards the gay community.....I have never been homophobic, but I must admit, that back then for a while, I too had my doubts and a few thoughts on whether  "gayness"...(gees I hate that word)  was the cause of this terrible epidemic that was sweeping the world.

There is no doubt, and I am not aware of any statistics, that during the 80's and the headlines of AIDS, many "closet" doors would have shut tight, and many gay people, were extremely afraid of "coming out" for fear of being treated as lepers....Unfortunately,we as a society, human nature, and our plight for immortality, became uppermost in most of our minds, and it undoubtedly preceeded our thoughts of understanding and compassion.

I still to this day, dont have a full understanding of AIDS, or how it became epidemic in the gay community, but the affects of it on the gay men at the time, had not really come into my thoughts, until I read what Bucky has just written, about the effect it had on his own relationship.

I have been a little bit too offhand, maybe, in saying to some of you out there, "if you dont like it, change it"....but in thinking about me saying that now, I am very apologetic, because I really did not take everything into account, that has threatened the   possibility, of you  just "changing it" and "getting on with it".

I always say, "life is a journey, along a road of bumps, hills, mountains, smooth sailing, pot holes, beauty and hurdles"....society sure has put their share of "pot holes" on that  "gay"  road........

[Shakesthecoffecan]

It has been nine months for me now and I feel wonderful. I finally feel like I have an understanding of the story and its effect on me. I feel prouder of who I am than I ever have before. I feel safer than I ever have before. I love the friends I have made and the adventures I continue to have as a result of my involvement with you all.

Brokeback helped me face some of the unknown grey area in my life, helped me be strong to find the answers, helped me slow down and appreciate with gifts of life more. The only thing I can fix is me.

[Katie77]

It has been nine months for me now and I feel wonderful. I finally feel like I have an understanding of the story and its effect on me. I feel prouder of who I am than I ever have before. I feel safer than I ever have before. I love the friends I have made and the adventures I continue to have as a result of my involvement with you all.

Brokeback helped me face some of the unknown grey area in my life, helped me be strong to find the answers, helped me slow down and appreciate with gifts of life more. The only thing I can fix is me.

Yes shakes, I think you said it all here....and I have no doubt your thoughts and feelings are the same as most of us here....