(Image) stock.xchng/Mokra

What grounds you?  What keeps you rooted and centered?  What is that place of strength from which you move outward?

This was actually asked of me and my mat mates this past Saturday at the beginning of a yoga class.  What came to my mind first was my love of men, my capacity to love other men fully and intimately.

This is so because my love for men has been hard won and therefore something I value all the more.  I’ve had to work on it intensely because while society will always support relationships between women and men, however difficult they may be, it will often try to undermine intimate relationships between men.

In addition, if you are a man who loves other men you have to work on accepting yourself first.  This means not only dealing with the bi- and homophobia that exist outside you but with the bi- and homophobia on the inside.  We all know what a battle that is.  We also know how much harder that makes building a relationship between two men.

Add to that the ludicrous fantasy of what men are supposed to be: unemotional, self-contained, wealthy, aggressive, full of swagger, in charge.  And remember this craziness affects both of you.

Could there be any more roadblocks to two men getting together?

What I have learned from my relationships with men is that it eventually dawns on you that neither you nor the fellow on the other side of the bed can live up to the standards the two of you have been indoctrinated both to adhere to and expect.  You have to work past them into new ways of being together.

If you don’t know them, you have to learn dialog, compassion and cooperation.  You also have to learn to see someone as he really is, with all his faults and virtues.

In the end money, power and prestige can’t buy you love.  Being emotionally unavailable is antithetical to relationships.  And no one wants to be pushed around by a tough guy.  Besides, Prince Charming is a narcissist.

Eventually you have to learn to talk it out, work together and accept that you can either build a life with someone who helps to pay the bills or someone who spends all day in the gym working on six-pack abs.

In other words building a relationship between two men requires consciousness, dedication and effort above and beyond what opposite-sex couples have to put in.

For me this is what the late poet Paul Monette means when he writes in “Committing to Memory,” “No point/in having so much rope unless you can/tie a knot.  It has to hold.”  And that which holds will keep you grounded in what at the end of the same stanza Monette refers to as “the difficult house of joy.”