All individuals involved in this story are 18+
This reply was taken down because I did mention time periods in my life I was not supposed to. However, I carefully went through the facts and made sure those dates and places were taken out without compromising the true account of the events.
It hurts reading each of these stories. I used to have a friend with whom I’d share the deepest intimate moments. We have been friends for two decades now.
We were always together, and the bond of our friendship never ceased to get stronger. We would always do everything together. It killed me so slowly and painfully seeing him everyday and everyday being part of that straight type of life where I had to see and pretend I was okay with him being with someone else. I had the upmost love and sexual desire for him. I sure did. I couldn’t scape that part. But I wanted him beyond that. And I was willing to sacrifice anything just to be close to him, just to continue to be the one who’d he would say he wished I was a girl because I was the only one who’d strangely completed him. I wouldn’t dare do anything that would jeopardize my chances to be close to him. I died and lived, I ached and it felt good, I wanted him for me alone, but wanted him to find someone. That consumed me for long and never ending years. One day then, I had enough and decided breaking that chain. I enlisted in the navy and was sent to the other side of the country. A month in and I almost died. I was coming back from one of my duties of the day and I see he walking in with the new recruits. I ran and I hid. I cried and I hated that feeling of hating him for being there. We never had the chance to be close to each other for a year in that camp. It was a very strict routine and we rarely saw each other because we were in different platoons. However, he’d never miss the chance to go find me wherever I was. I, in the other hand, was trying to do all I could to avoid being caught too close to him and find myself living that painfully sweet relation we had before. We never ceased being so close, don’t get me wrong. I just didn’t want to be so involved in his life observing something I knew was mine (that is just how I felt) being taken by someone else. Plus I was hoping to be completely free of that captivity once I’d have found someone else. Well I failed to find someone and never broke free from him.
He told me so many times he’d change anything if I said just a word. I never understood. That same year, he got involved with so many different girls. And when I found out, each time I’d run to some new friend I’d make sure I’d find and try new things with. I went once to a gay bar that was filled with navy guys. Straight guys, gay guys, feminine gays, masculine ones, the cross dressers who’d wear wigs and make up pretending no one knew who they were. All kinds of guys from the navy. One of them, supposedly straight, told my friend he had seen me. The next time he saw me he was so disappointed and so frustrated. I really thought it was the end of everything. I was outed and he hated me for finding out who I was. However I had done nothing at that point with a guy. I was pure and virgin in all ways possible with a guy. I was saving it all for him. However at that time I was hoping to be free and let it all be someone else’s, but not his. Anyway, he was not upset knowing or thinking I was gay. He began to to voice his fury because I didn’t go with him. And because I believe he thought I kissed or slept with someone. I really didn’t do anything. I went to that bar disguised as pure straight with another gay sailor in disguise ( a friend that only came out to me years later, but he was a girlie boy. Everyone knew). Anyway. He was angry. After that we were distant. I tried every now and then get closer but our schedules didn’t match while we were there. When we came back to our state, we were serving in the naval base and saw each other more than at the camp. We went on to live together and I thought we were going to be back were we were before. I was hopeful. But he had a girlfriend now. I found out years later he only had her because I told him, thinking that was what he wanted, that he should be true and treat her with respect and if he liked her he should invest in it and be with her. That was when he told me only one word I said would be able to change everything. That is what he meant. He would either be engaged to her or drop her completely when would go back home. Anyway we were living together, he was engaged and every other week he’d bring her there. At that point I was trying not to let it hurt me. And that is when I started getting close to another guy. I wrote about him in another thread here. I would spend more time with that guy than him, but specially because I was young and virgin and I wanted to love but also be loved completely with all the rights a potential spouse would have. When he noticed I was distant, he didn’t notice I was close to anyone that way, but he was mad I was spending time with someone else other than him.
It was hurting knowing he was feeling that way and it did hurt even more when he decided living with his fiancé. We were still neighbors. He wouldn’t live away from me. We were known by anyone as brothers. That is what anyone who knew us would think. And we still are. To this day, nothing ever changed. All that distance was more physical and about how much we were participating in each others decisions in life. But no matter how distant or mad or disappointed we were at each other, we would always make sure we were there to keep each other safe in every possible way.
That distance grew longer when he saw my then bf and I sleeping together. Yes, he’d enter my house with his own keys whenever. He saw us sleeping together with hands grabbing things and he only told me later that day what he saw and he looked so angry, but he told me he’d still be my brother. But he couldn’t believe I never told him. After that he moved away from me. I couldn’t understand why he would say he accepted me but he would be so angry to the point of not being able to stay close anymore.
Fast forward. Years later, he got drunk and was right before he got married. He was barging everywhere and by then I had made peace with my own heart we were just brothers. I had to transform that much love into a fraternal love. But I was taking care of him while we were riding back home. And he had his head on my lap in the car. I was caressing his hair feeling so bad he was feeling that way. I had no sexual desire on him at that moment. I just deeply loved him and he was my brother. My own family. The closest everything I had. I took him to my house, gave him a bath, he was completely naked and that was the first time I saw him naked, and the only. I didn’t feel anything. I just wanted to make sure he was okay and he would go to bed feeling good. I cleaned him up, dried him up, dressed him up and put him in bed. Checked him every now and then. Later he got up better and called me for a walk. He took me to a deserted place in a park under a gazebo because it was raining. He was stern and serious. He couldn’t look me in the eye. But he asked me to answer with all honesty. And it didn’t matter what I said he’d never be angry at me because he saw that day how much I truly cared and loved him and he felt completely safe with me. He asked me if I had ever wanted to be with him romantically or any other way that was not like a brother or a friend. Before I answered he said he did. I literally lost my balance and fell because of the shock. He helped me up and asked again this time looking at me. I told him how much I loved him from the very beginning but how much it did hurt me. How much killed me seeing him with someone else and being forced to be there because that is what best friends and close brothers are for. It didn’t matter how far I’d run away from him, our mutual love and intimacy would bring us together and each time it did, because we had progressed in so many ways in our own and personal lives, I would hurt more and more because he would be deeper and deeper in a life with someone else that would never be me. So I told him I had to turn that love into some other kind of love and I made him my own brother and I forced my self to see him that way. So at least it would not hurt when we were together and I saw that. I came to learn that he also had done the same thing for the same exact reason. However, at that time we were both deep in other relationships and for both of us ir had been so long to have reached that point where we were finally able to be okay with each others lives being the way they were that was not worth it turning that back to what it was so that would not work and we’d be hurting even more and maybe loose all that closeness we had. We both agreed with it. Inside of me I hated myself for having gone through so much pain to have found out he also wanted me. I still blame him because I was always hinting and willing to try. But he had to be a mirror of what a man has to be for his blood siblings. So he couldn’t risk that image and treated me the way he did, also got into the relationship he was the way he did. He was actually asking me to stop him from saying yes to her and be with me if I only said a word. I had no idea. How could I. We were both stupid and afraid of losing each other and even when everything was so blindly clear about what we felt for each other we’d still find an extra layer of fear and come up with a reason to excuse the obvious.
The end of the story is that we were both married. We both have kids and we live in different continents now. We may not speak to each other for months and almost years at the time, but every time we do we remind each other and can genuinely feel from each other how important and still deeply loved each other is. It also hurts to this day knowing that he may forever be the only person I have ever truly deeply loved and also the only one I would never have been with and will never be. I know the same is true for him.
We don’t ever dare speaking of these feelings. We live like they are buried and dead, but the truth is they are still burning and alive.
I miss him so very much and I wish we’d would at least have a chance to at least be closer spatially. We may never be able to. We may just keep this distance and longer the time between calls so this feeling aches less. I also feel so good and so happy, maybe complete and in peace when he talks to me and he surely feels the same because he has said in it in different ways.
I feel your pain guys. It is never the same story, but the platonic relationship between two men is the worst and best feeling one can be blessed and cursed at the same time with.
He will always be my first and true love, but will also be nothing more than my only best and closest friend.
Anyways. There’s not an easy answer to how to solve or what to do. Each person is different and having in mind were taking about a pair, it makes it even more difficult to predict what outcome each set of relationships will have after one has let out all the true feelings. The common thing is that deepest and most meaningful relationship you will ever have is this. Even when you get married and also love your spouse more than you love anything else.
I wish each of you, going through a different version of the same thing, the best of luck, and that you may at least find a way to fill that void with someone else who also desire and loves you deeply. May none of you ever feel alone. My love and sympathy goes to each of you.
I understand the sweet and beautiful pain it causes. A sweet person in this thread made me see I was not alone. And I want to let you all know, you’re not alone either. All these feelings are valid and I wish none of you may hold hard feelings and self judgment over yourselves.
My lesson taken from my own story is that it is possible, but sometimes the so close relationship between two men is caused exactly by the inability one has to tell the other about his own feelings. And maybe because one of the worlds is built up on pressure. Pressure that makes “men act like men”, even tho deep inside they don’t even know what they are or want to be. The only certainty they have is which who they want to be. And that forbidden who is you.
Anyway, again, my deepest love and admiration goes to each of you. Allow yourself to break free and to be fully loved!
