On Hope and Romance

When someone tells me that love is just out there, I can’t help but wonder if it’s just a cleaver ruse to mask the fact that while some people find it, others simply doesn’t.

If you are pretty much like me, a hopeless-romantic to the core, you tend to believe on the “sayings” about this feeling. Love is blind. Love is a mystery. Love comes when least expected. Love is … complicated. But on all my faith on this concept of L-O-V-E, I have reason to believe that my once hopeless-romantic self has now been jaded, shaken to its core. Yes, the old me is now being reborn to a more cynical-realistic-practical Noel. I have accepted the fact that I have changed and I welcome it.

For the longest time, I have forced myself to the idea that I need to be with one person to complete me --- as Jerry Maguire very dramatically delivered that infamous line… “You complete me!” But he was wrong; you don’t need someone to complete you because you weren’t even broken in half to begin with. Shame on Jerry for misleading everyone!

I was recently dating someone for almost a month. I had the best time with him. He was smart, funny, and kind, sweet, thoughtful and all those qualities I was looking for a partner to be with. Unfortunately, there was one very important factor missing. I wasn’t really sexually attracted to him. Sad, I know but it doesn’t make it any less true. I really don’t know why but I just was not. And this coming from a very sexual person actually disturbed some close friends when I told them about the problem. And so, we ended it. We both knew it was a problem and that we just had to face it sooner or later. It just happened sooner.

I then realized that there could really be no relationship beyond sex, at least not for gays and not on the onset of what could have been a relationship. You really have to test the waters before you even attempt to swim on it. You’ll never know how deep it could get and you might just drown. We might not survive, not all of us are mermaids after all.

Yes, love without sex cannot exist. Perhaps it could on the straight scene but definitely not in the gay world. It just doesn’t work that way.

And so, my near-epic search continues. Almost two years and while I may have lost the hopeless-romantic in me, my HOPE for a ROMANCE remains steadfast…

… at least for now.


Love letters and idealisms by Noel Abelardo