Acceptatie
Actually, the only crucial component for a successful MOM is fully accepting each other. This seems very simple but also the crux of the matter!. This also applies to how people view a MOM. Those who are not in a MOM. Those who offer advice or opinions. Along the line like: There can't be no prospect of a fulfilling relationship. A heterosexual and gay person, like opposing magnets, repel each other.
The different emotional values in sexuality and intimacy are the barrier between fully understanding and knowing each other.
Gay Partner: If I choose a MOM, then in my sexuality, I miss that part of myself that I need to truly be who I am. Thus, there is always a no man's land, a void, an unfulfilled desire, and I don't feel completely who I am supposed to be. What I feel and am is like a door that won't open. Therefore, I can't fully give myself to my partner. Being intimate, giving sexuality feels so contradictory with my partner because what I would like to feel and experience is not what I truly am, desire, or can find in myself. It doesn't feel complete. I feel like a lie to my partner. I don't want that.
It even feels as if I'm doing it with one of my siblings. My sexuality and feeling are incompatible with my partner in that regard.
Hetero Partner: If I choose a MOM, I know that my partner desires something else, something I'm not. In other words, I am not enough. I don't feel understood in who I am. In fact... I feel rejected, unattractive, and unloved. At the same time, there's always this confrontation, like a conflict within myself, with the thought that I'm depriving my partner of something they deserve and should experience, in order to fulfill who my partner is. Because that's who they are and can't help it. It's very painful that I can't be that for my partner.
Both are left empty-handed and with a sense of loss in who they want to be.
Both with an unfulfilled desire that remains.
Often, this mutual lack creates the insurmountable barrier to (truly) being intimate and enjoying sexuality with each other.
But...what if full acceptance means something different?
Something that goes beyond your own sense of lack, being, and accepting.
Is the premise of acceptance: just dealing with your sense of loss and unfulfilled desire to painstakingly try to extract what's within your capabilities?
Or is the very first premise of acceptance: esteeming the other as highly as yourself...?
In other words: your emotional life, intimacy, and sexuality are not only just as important as mine...
but also my inner intention to take care of them and be responsible.
And therein, I also find myself.
I don't love you FOR your sexuality, but I love you FOR who you are in totality and therein want to give myself because you also seek that in me.
This doesn't entail disregarding or ignoring oneself. But also not clinging to a sense of lack.
Because that would mean you can't see beyond yourself. Both for the heterosexual and the gay, these are logical values aimed at a partnership.
That is love and acceptance that seeks the other and genuinely gives and receives.
Is that a utopia?? No!
That's a choice you can make if you want to remain true to each other in a MOM.
Well... acceptance, how do you give that meaning...
Monogaam zijn = trouw zijn aan de belofte die je (ooit) gemaakt hebt aan je partner en als enkel en enige grondbeginsel van je huwelijk hanteren en er niet van afwijken. Ook niet als een andere seksuele voorkeur een onderdeel gaan vormen van deze relatie.
NA de keuze van 'gaan we samen verder'of 'moeten we de keuze maken om te scheiden', omdat één van beide partners niet instaat is om gevolg te geven aan die keus. Dat kan! Ook dat is serieus zaken bezien.
Het huwelijk is geen gevangenis door een willoos slachtoffer zijn van je gevoel of het willoos slachtoffer worden van de ontbrekende gevoelens van de ander. En dus jezelf ontkennen (hetero EN gay) in wie je bent en zoekt in je partner. Je hoeft niet achter de tralies te gaan zitten en je leven te slijten in voortmodderen en je eigenwaarde te schenden door ontrouw te zijn aan wie je wil zijn.
Even God, nor the Bible, want those bars and walls that you or the other imposes, which would slowly destroy a marriage or yourself. Not even from the most beautiful and devout religious intentions.
Love, not even God's, is not a formal institution of self-pity and self-destruction.
Funny isn't it... that precisely this love is part of fully accepting yourself and gives freedom.
And the most beautiful step that looks beyond limitations toward freedom of choice to be who you truly want to be and believe in. That love knows itself but aims with vision to value and understand the other as He Himself wants to be fully known.
I started this page with the words: fully accepting each other.
And then it's important to know what you're choosing: spouse and marriage.
So you're NOT going on alone or each going their separate ways. But it's about a MOM. A bond, a marital bond!
That means nothing else than: the choice to accept your sexual preference doesn't take precedence (mind you...I'm not saying ignore or conceal here) BUT that the importance shifts elsewhere.
It takes on a different approach: giving shape to what the choice "continuing together" entails and what the other means to you.
What the value is that you attribute to seeing and giving to your partner's significance and inner self. For both!
If my sexual preference doesn't primarily define my entire identity, then it shouldn't be the core of my marriage either.
If my sexual preference isn't the only element of my identity, then it shouldn't be the only component that receives preferential treatment in my marriage.
If my sexuality is important, then it's equally important for my partner.
Feeling isn't directive, but your heart, and moral truths are. How you want to approach life.
This means that if you keep the above in mind together (and yes... it takes time and ingenuity and a lot of honest and open conversation together) not only to give shape to it but also to get to know each other as deeply as possible. No secrets. No loose ends...
But all from the complete conviction that your partner is just as valuable as you are.
It's the determining mindset that you control.
Your partner hasn't changed, but you, yourself. You have to recognize and acknowledge and accept within the new situation in which you want to continue what is not only important to you but also to your partner.
If you don't do that, you'll hurt the other.
The choice and freedom to fully accept someone, to love and touch them, is not in your feeling but in your heart.
The choice and freedom to invest in your marriage and to want to go for it is not in your impossibilities and lack but in your willingness and consideration to fulfill your promise to continue together.
That choice and that freedom don't restrict, but rather, they give space not to shut yourself off from the other, from the necessity, or from your own self.
Or what's imposed from a mindset that you can't do otherwise.
Which, at its core, is a refusal because you actually prefer to give priority to what you don't have ((= which is simply holding onto a sense of lack).
Your feeling does not determine what you do. Your sexuality also does not determine what you do, are, and live.
But rather your heart, your mind, your norms, and your values.
Feeling is a consequence. It follows from your own considerations and choices and the freedom you find in prioritizing and organizing your life. So, in essence, inner peace and joy are found in what you have and not in what you don't have.
Actually, it means consciously and confidently pursuing what you have chosen.
For myself, this means that the whole world can say, "Yes, but you're gay…!"
Well, let them! And Yes I am.
But that whole world can't tell me what I should do with that sexual preference!
From my sexual preference, I can choose that I no longer want or can be intimate with my husband, or even be averse to touching him.
BUT, if that's the case, I can just as easily decide to love my husband, to touch him, and to want to feel him. My inner self belongs to me. My choice belongs to me. My will belongs to me. I can determine what is important. Not because I HAVE TO but because I WANT TO. That's what I believe and what I find important: my values and total identity. Because that's who I want to be.
Because all the other elements that form my identity tell me: "He's worth it. He was and still is the most important choice in my life." If I find the other important and just as important as I want to be known, it also doesn't take any effort to give him that love and that space. It provides and has exactly the connection you need to make that crossing and give meaning to your fulfillment of what and who you want to be.