I am in the bank, queuing at lunchtime. A young man is on the phone behind me.

“Did she get off to school ok?” His voice is the tenderest I’ve heard in a long time. I can’t hear his partner’s voice. “Was she very upset?” “I suppose we have to draw the line, don’t we?” A few moments later, there is a hushed, loving “bye”. I want to turn around and comment, even just catch his eye, but I thought better of it. That’s breaking mobile phone etiquette. (Who writes these rules?)
Responsibility makes men of us. It’s what brings us in from the edge, and helps to put youthful, perhaps reckless, adventuring behind us. After we’ve tested what’s possible, some of us choose to commit and become dependable for others. There are rich rewards to the shouldering of such burdens – a sense of pride, a sense of satisfaction, respect, contentment. When people look to us for support and constancy in a partnership, if we’re lucky enough, we dig inside and find that we are that reliable, we can be strong when it matters. While I’ve not had that sort of committed relationship to settle me down, to act as the incentive to cease sowing my wild oats, I’ve realised that five years of being a counsellor has brought out that more solid part in me. I’ve become stronger, because my clients expect me to be strong.
The process of having our rough edges polished, the taming of our testosterone-pumped restlessness, is something that doesn’t happen as much for gay men, compared to the rest. The overwhelming majority of same-sex marriage licences issued in Massachusetts are to women. The eternal playground beckons to us in all its fruitless immaturity, creativity, and short-term pleasure.
Moderation is a tough thing to champion. The middle road has few passionate advocates. In a hedonistic stimulus-orientated life, common sense seems restrictive, boring, worthy. We respond to zeal, to stimulation, to intensity - or at least I do. And the people in my world, self-selected, tend to mirror that in me.
It’s a profoundly undomestic, anti-family urge, to seek constant stimulation. Family life requires that stability and responsibility become the highest priorities. Women, fairly or unfairly, seem charged with carrying that responsibility in this culture, especially with regard to children.
But having listened to people’s stories about their relationships over the years, I realise that so much misunderstanding and friction comes from women taking for granted the fact that their men shoulder the responsibilities of fatherhood/monogamy/commitment, and raging when their men fail – what’s missing is the appreciation that when men make commitments emotionally it is enormous for them, a giant leap into the unknown – frightening and intimidating, a great fear of loss of freedom and individuality.
Even writing this I can hear some scornful women’s voices that I’ve heard, not wanting to accept this, saying it’s just making excuses for men’s philandering and commitment-phobia. The redoubtable Germaine Greer referred recently to the “solipsism” that is a man. But of course equally solipsistic is the woman who believes that men are just like them when it comes to relationships.
Men lack the emotional literacy to explain deep feelings and fears to women, in general, and so they don’t get honoured. But of course men feel just as deeply as women. And often without such language, we never get over the hurt of when our hearts are broken, and find it hard to trust again. Far easier to carry on playing the joker, the fool, the outsider.
I find it interesting that one of the most poetic of contemporary “gay” writers, Edmund White, reveals in his memoirs that the most stable, least promiscuous, oddly content period time of his life was when he was acting in loco parentis for a child, temporarily. He found the experience enriching and sobering, and he returned to his old ways afterwards.
Increasingly, more and more of us men are living on our own, single or divorced. We’ve no one but ourselves to be responsible for. It’s a blessing and a curse.