Working and living with two gay men; advice?

[QwertyGirl]

You seem to think but I don’t understand what real love is. I completely believe in the Church’s definition of what love is. “Willing the good of the other” is the definition we were all taught in good Catholic schools. I am not sure what the argument is here.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

You seem to think but I don’t understand what real love is. I completely believe in the Church’s definition of what love is. “Willing the good of the other” is the definition we were all taught in good Catholic schools. I am not sure what the argument is here.

But since you don’t agree with basic Catholic teachings on human sexuality than you simply won’t agree with a lot of other things. Basic Catholic teaching is going to say that homosexual relationships are sinful, so using the word “love” to describe them is going to clash with the Church’s teaching, because being with someone in a sinful relationship is not “willing the good of the other”.

 

[QwertyGirl]

Do you know I have never read or heard anything from Church teaching that says love is wrong. True love. You know, the kind where one person genuinely wills the best for the other person.

I have heard a whole lot about what body parts aren’t supposed to go where, and why that is taught.

But I haven’t heard that genuine love is ever a bad thing.

My suggestion was that we don’t conflate the two. That is what i like to do. Keep them separate for the purpose of discussing them. But that is just me. And I realize not everyone believes the things I do.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

We know the Church’s definition of love - - what’s yours?

How is having a sinful relationship, genuinely willing the best for the other person? How is it willing the good of the other to encourage them on a path in mortal sin?

I know you don’t believe in this stuff as an agnostic theist, so why bother arguing here?

 

[QwertyGirl]

My post #63 has already covered whatever definition of love I use.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

I’d love to see you answer my specific questions in #66.
Because your post #63 glosses over them.

 

[QwertyGirl]

How is having a sinful relationship, genuinely willing the best for the other person? How is it willing the good of the other to encourage them on a path in mortal sin?

I know you don’t believe in this stuff as an agnostic theist, so why bother arguing here?

First of all, debate isn’t arguing.

Most homosexuals who practice homosexual sex don’t believe it is sinful. It takes that aspect out of the equation. So of course they can will the best for the other person while they have a physically intimate relationship with them.

I am sorry you feel I don’t belong here. You know, I was raised Catholic and my understanding is that the Church teaches once-a-Catholic-always-a-Catholic. I am surprised whenever a practicing Catholic expresses that they feel I don’t belong here.

I try to always be respectful. I like to learn how practicing Catholics take Church teachings and apply them in their lives. It helps me understand the Catholics in my life who I am close to. As an agnostic, I have to figure things out for myself. Learning about other people helps me do that. I have had my mind changed on several issues (in the Catholic direction) through conversations I have participated in here. I am always open to learning.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

Do you know I have never read or heard anything from Church teaching that says love is wrong. True love. You know, the kind where one person genuinely wills the best for the other person.
I have heard a whole lot about what body parts aren’t supposed to go where, and why that is taught.

But I haven’t heard that genuine love is ever a bad thing.

My suggestion was that we don’t conflate the two. That is what i like to do. Keep them separate for the purpose of discussing them. But that is just me. And I realize not everyone believes the things I do.

Most homosexuals who practice homosexual sex don’t believe it is sinful. It takes that aspect out of the equation. So of course they can will the best for the other person while they have a physically intimate relationship with them.

It seems to me that you are making two different points here - - one point is that emotional love is one thing, and "where body parts" go, are two separate things. Then your second point seems to be that many homosexual men don't believe that what they are doing is sinful. Probably not, I don't know, but I thought we were discussing Church teaching.
Did I say that I don’t feel you belong here? I just think it is confusing when non-Catholics post here (a lot) and don’t clearly identify themselves as non-Catholics.
You do seem to spend a lot of time and energy posting here, and I just wondered why. Thank you for answering.

 

[QwertyGirl]

I have a lot of Catholics in my life, so I need a lot of help with that.

As an agnostic, I am always searching. I search in the Catholic faith, as well as numerous other faiths.

 

[angel12]

But is it true love? The Catechism and the Holy Father say no.

Christ said no. Such a relationship is intrinsically flawed.

Which does not mean there is no genuine affection, which was the claim made.

 

[Eliza10]

I have a personal story that I think might be offer insight.

Years ago, we lived on the other side-by-side half of our landlord’s house - he (I’ll call him Billy") lived there. We were all very friendly and we liked him, though, there was this little nagging mystery - something seemed “off”, something left a feeling of something unsaid in some conversations.

One day I was home (I had a weekday off), and I heard Billy rambling about next door and needed to ask him something so I knocked on the door. Quite unexpectedly a long-haired, effeminate young man, with an earring, answered the door, and no, our landlord wasn’t there, but I was agape in surprise because it now dawned on me what the “hidden” thing was.

I enjoyed our amicable relations with Billy, and I naively thought getting this on the table would compliment those good relations. Silly me. (“Transparency is a good thing”, I used to think, but now, life experience has taught me “not always”). And when the opportunity arose, I told him I knew the “secret”. He wanted to know if I was okay with it, which surprised me, because I didn’t consider he was any different now - still the nice guy he was, but just the mystery was answered. It was an unexpected bonus that he was so happy I was okay with it.

But three things happened that made me realize transparency is not always a bonus. The first two weren’t too serious.

The first was once we went on a bicycle ride (we both liked biking, my husband didn’t and he was always off hunting, and there was a great Frederick Olmsted park nearby with bike paths, but it was not the best neighborhood to ride alone in). Billy was telling me about guys he dated (there was an enthusiasm there, I think, that he could now be totally open) and some intimate detail came out and I suddenly got real uncomfortable. My own reaction surprised me. But it was only just a little odd and didn’t have real impact. Billy caught my dampened reaction, and I could see he felt disappointed he could not be as open as he hoped he could be. And I felt bad I disappointed him.

The second was once in a conversation he mentioned my husband and immediately did an imitation of his walk, laughing about the sashay he thought was cute. Hmm, that was awkward, a man seeing my husband that way.

(see next post for the rest of the story)

 

[Eliza10]

(continued from previous post)

The third thing was a game-changer. The master bedrooms of this side-by-side period home shared a wall, and now I learned for the first time - we were there two years I think, and this was towards the end of that - that the walls were not so sound proof. One night at bedtime it was clear a man-visitor was with Billy on the other side of the wall, and they were having some no-holds-barred sodomy, with very explicit expressions, that was loud, and went on and on. This had never happened before - perhaps previous sessions involved being quiet so we wouldn’t know? But now we knew?

My own reaction was unexpected. I was disgusted. I feel if it had been a normal couple I would have been annoyed, but for this I was annoyed and sickened. It was bad, and made me shudder. It was a surprise to me to learn that while before, my hypothetical awareness of sodomy made me shrug it off as someone else’s different business, actually getting exposure to it made me realize how repellant it is. It really is a very bad thing.

The fact that we were house-hunting at the time was a great consolation. This would soon be over.

So if you don’t know what your reaction is going to be to hearing explicit sodomy happening, you may be about to find out.

I certainly learned that in this situation, transparency put a damper on relations. Some mysteries are better left unsolved. Or at the very least, left hidden.

So if you are going to try-out this arrangement, you may want to be sure you have a plan B, whether it is somewhere else to live, or to able to quit and move back to where you are now if you find the situation is not something you can live with.

If there were some separateness to the quarters, that might help it. Farm work is long hours and hard work, so I can see how living on the premises would be a bonus.

---

P.S. I want to add that I did not like Bily any less after this. It was just sodomy itself that I realized I didn’t like. We moved, because we had the choice to. If we had no choice, and had to stay, we would have invested in sound-proofing the wall. Noise canceling machines. Ear plugs. Also having a polite but frank conversation with Billy about noise, and had we been able to solve that, I assume we would have continued to enjoy relations with Billy.

 

[QwertyGirl]

I wonder how Billy felt if he ever overheard you and your husband having relations. I guess insulation, and lots of it, is never a bad thing!

My mom used to always say "If we can hear them, they can hear us. ". So true.

 

[Londoner]

For many ss male “arrangements”, their meaning of fidelity is radically different from the Christian fidelity called for in marriage

This view is held by a disproportionately vocal minority among gay men. The vast majority of gay men in long-term relationships understand fidelity to mean exactly the same as everybody else understands it. It is myth that open relationships are the norm for gay men.

This may be a “grooming” of you, step one.

Absolutely ridiculous. You are simply peddling the old myth that gay men set out to recruit or convert straight men, which simply isn’t possible. Do we even know that the OP is male? I did see your later post on this thread, which does not really clarify matters.

It’s organic gardening/farming.

For some reason I had an inkling that it was going to involve farming. Living on site is, of course, pretty normal in farming. Had you said that you were interning at a law firm and the partners wanted you to live with them I’d think that was pretty weird, but living in the farmhouse while interning on a farm sounds quite normal.