The new year always seems to find me half reflecting back on the year that has past and half looking forward, wondering what the next 12 months will bring. I start asking myself those big Carrie Bradshaw style questions about life, love and what it all means.

I have become very disillusioned with gay men and gay relationships. I am a hopeless romantic and proud of it. My parents were school sweethearts and are still together to this day and are often very romantic with each other, this has led me to believe that a grand sweeping relationship is bound to be on the cards for me some day.

Are gay men capable of having and sustaining a monogamous relationship? I have gay male friends that are in relationships but very few of them are monogamous, most of these relationships are smothered in rules that cover where to have sex, who to have sex with etc. I think on one hand it is really positive that gay men are open enough to negotiate the kind of relationship they want but for me personally i just find it all a bit sad, as Carrie Bradshaw says in the last episode of "Sex and the City" - "i am a person who is looking for love, ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't live without each other love". Maybe i am deluded but that is what i am looking for too, i just dont know if it is looking for me.

I get sick of guys that say men are sexual beings and it is too much to expect us to stick to one person, that is a pathetic excuse for being a slut, i dont believe that men are any more or less sexual than women, yes we are put together quite differently but our hearts and minds are far too alike to seperate from our sexuality. I am a hypocrite as in the past i have been to gay saunas for the sole purpose of having sex but this has never been a positive experience and i have always left feeling dirty and used. There are some gay men who live for sex clubs and saunas, going from one anonymous encounter to the next, surely this must chip away at their self esteem and worth. I think there must be a point where it all has to stop,where you take stock and wonder what your life will become, who will be there to catch you when you fall?, to be the shoulder you need to cry on?.

Having been single for a long time i have to admit to worrying that i am going to end up old and alone like some tragic version of Quentin Crisp. I do have hope that my guy is out there, who shares the same ideas and romantic outlook as i do and will be there through the rotten and the bliss. Someone who makes me laugh til my stomach hurts, someone who i can say anything to, someone who will protect me and someone that i can give all this back to. So i am going to hold onto my hopeless romantic ideals, its always going to be a better option than being simply hopeless.

xx