“I think we should dial this back a little.” 

My experience with dialing things back told me such measures are useless. But since he wasn’t asking me to leave, which had happened once before, I humored him by seeming open to suggestion.

“Dial it back how?”

“I dunno, this feels too intense. I feel all this pressure on me. I don’t want to be involved with you like this—not you or anyone else. I want to go back to just seeing you. Or dating, or whatever.”

In the couple months that Bipolar Dougie and I had been acquainted, we’d spent 85 percent of our time lolling in bed, fooling around and watching movies on his ridiculously large TV. It was a metal poster bed and thus provided excellent leverage. It had been exorbitantly expensive—more money than I’d ever dream of spending on a bed. So I considered myself lucky to be able to spend time in, on, and (under?) around it. That was mistake number umpteen: I was not lucky to meet Doug, not lucky to spend time in his bed, not lucky to be having this conversation. I was vaguely aware of all that, but I was too busy listening to his voice, rather than to my own annoying inner one. His was a seductive, native New Orleans drawl. It was painfully difficult to focus on anything else. 

Somehow I managed to eke out something reasonably truthful.

“Really, Doug? You want to get dressed up and meet me for nice dinners that you’ll end up paying for? After work when you’re cranky and exhausted? You want to attend lectures with me, or maybe go to concerts where you’ll hear all those shrill songwriters I love? You want to bring me out to your work-related events? Because, I have to tell you: I can’t picture it. That’s just not the type of guy you are, and it’s not the type of thing we have going on here.”

For the moment, I’d beaten him into submission. He had no response ready, so the debate petered out in favor of another cult horror flick and some poster bed leverage. Crisis averted. For a variety of reasons, I wanted things to stay the same: the bed, the gluttonous snacks, the sexy Southern accent, the movies. Life in pajamas. I was miserable, and this was a good distraction.

Dougie wanted to dial back to something that never existed. We’d never dated. We’d gone from being introduced at a holiday meal straight to the poster bed with nothing much in between. We got to know each other while rolling around, holed up in his lair for three days at a time. How could we become less than the not much we were to begin with? 

Dating was so much more than what we were doing, he was ill prepared to deal with it. Perhaps we both were. In his defense, there was an intensity to our involvement that was mutually confusing and left me much sadder about its eventual demise than I ever would’ve suspected. What we were up to was something like serial sex with a dollop of friendship. But we weren’t really friends. There was something too terribly selfish at play on both sides. 

Men I’ve known along the way have reacted badly to intensity. (Sorry, guys, sex is intense.) Add in a little domesticity and they really freak out. After he’d spent the night at my place once, I made dinner for an AA friend at his place and spent the night there a week later. But the Netflix-and-chill model was too much for him, despite our having known each other for at least a year. In the morning, he sent me off with the news that spending time with me like that made him feel as if we were married. Now he is married. Go figure.

One of the hardest lessons I learned about my sexuality in my early 20s was that gay men didn’t feel beholden to their partners the way heterosexuals seemed to. Most of us didn’t commit, had myriad intimacy issues, and would rather spend our time searching for the next hot, meaningless encounter. It seemed so unfair, nasty, and unfeeling to me—but that’s what I was presented with, so I made do. Now, the status quo is about finding “the one.” Family life. Joint pension plans. It’s turned us about-face. And yet we have no models for gay dating,  only heterosexual ones: a shared malted at the pharmacy counter, a movie, some petting in the car if you’re lucky.

Many of us are stuck between these two worlds—the old fuck-and-run routine of yore vs. the go-steady-and-shack-up trend of today. Too many gay men seem not to understand what dating really is, what it entails. I don’t mean to imply that there’s anything wrong, necessarily, with not doing it. Making a simple dinner for someone at home always seemed like a nice compromise between a proper date and something less anxiety-producing to me, but it apparently felt too intimate to others. 

Frequently, I find that perceptions differ between men as to what it is they’re doing together. Are you fuck buddies? Are you seeing each other? Dating? Is he your boyfriend? Your lover? Are you two in a relationship? Does that mean you’re monogamous? How does the third guy play into this? Oh, that’s not a guy?

In 2006, I joined Facebook. In the decade since, I’d never once felt it necessary to change my relationship status. But after a few months of recent date nights and sleepovers with the same person, the issue came up. It made me instantly uncomfortable, mainly because of these confusing perceptions—one man’s relationship is another man’s meaningless fling. It seemed easier to avoid making any sort of public declaration, but the other party (who I now call my boyfriend) was insistent. 

“Why don’t we go with ‘it’s complicated’ since it doesn’t reveal very much?”

“No, that has a negative connotation,” he told me. 

We settled on “in an open relationship” because that best fits the actual circumstances, but none of the options seemed 100 percent correct, which is frustrating, especially given that you can customize your gender identity. Seems like customizing your relationship status on Facebook would also be a worthwhile concession, but apparently not. Maybe there’s a concern about stalkers declaring unwanted love to cowering recipients. 

This question of what terms are appropriate to describe different types of liaisons puts the personality disorders of certain men into high relief. You’ve probably known someone who thinks he’s dating when he’s doing a Dougie—inviting someone over to watch TV and fool around. After the third or fourth time, an argument breaks out over the difference in perception, thus ending the tryst altogether, and he’s left all butt-hurt because he thinks he got dumped. Thing is, it’s not really dating if you never leave the house, and you can’t get dumped if you were never really together. 

Not that long ago, I had an on-again, off-again text volley going with a man in New England. We’d been cyber acquaintances for about six years. When I noticed communication had died off for an unusual amount of time, I sent a more pressing note. 

“U ok?”

“I was away over the weekend with my new partner, got back last night.”

About a month earlier I’d inquired if he was seeing anyone and he’d said no. So, a new partner had emerged, fully realized, in about three weeks. You might have a new partner in business, but you don’t just find a new partner in romance. Partner denotes something very serious, something that takes time to develop and has a solid foundation, not something that happens in three weeks. 

“That was fast.”

He seemed not to understand what I meant, thinking I was referring to the length of time he’d been single this go-round, not the magical Grow a New Partner kit he’d ordered from China in the couple weeks since we’d last corresponded. 

Over the next hour, I got accused of all sorts of awful things—whining, patronizing, sending mixed signals, coming across hot and cold, not knowing what I want, forcing my ideas on other people, not knowing what love is, and so on. One thing he couldn’t accuse me of, however, was not knowing how to contextualize our interaction. That, apparently, was his issue. 

“We just had our first lover’s quarrel and we haven’t even heard each other’s voices or met.”

Pardon? Are you completely psychotic? Didn’t you say you’re in mental health? How had I not seen your crazy so clearly before?

Then he told me he’d keep reading my columns, “cuz you’re good, Kid.” 

Is that my door prize, my consolation for our big fallout? Dude, I’d rather have the lifetime supply of Turtle Wax.