Relationship Gondolas (Part 2)

If you're reading this entry first, you should stop and scroll further down so that you can start at the beginning of this editorial nightmare.

Article: Here Is What's Missing From Gay Romance Today

Problem #2: Sensitivity Towards Love & Intimacy

Right from the start, I don't like how the author titled the first characteristic one should look for when embracing romance. Honestly, when you read it, it just sounds awkward because we're not physically moving toward something. Here is my rewrite:

Sensitivity To Love & Intimacy

What I believe the author was trying to say is that people need to be sensitive to feelings of love and intimacy intrinsically, as well as being sensitive to those same feelings exhibited by a potential partner.

It only gets worse from here, as evidenced below:

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

More than likely, the author of this article is not an authority on dating and relationships. The author probably spent hours researching legitimate articles on gay dating and relationships, then followed up with his friends to talk about their views on the gay dating scene (which more than likely became a reason to drown their emotions with alcohol and make vague promises of deleting the dating apps on their smartphones). Once finished with his research, the author made a valiant effort to sound authoritative, and in that process, he proceeded to abuse his word processor by writing. At this point, I can take neither the author nor the website seriously based on the poor writing and apparent lack of editorial standards. The message of the article, which is a good one to discuss, is lost in a thicket of incoherent babbling. If I had turned reading this article into a drinking game about bad writing, I would have been heavily buzzed by this point in the article.

In my view, a better way to write this opening would have read something like this:

Because sex can be easily found online, lust has become confused for love and intimacy. While sex with another person (or persons) is an intimate act, it is only skin-deep intimacy which is not a strong foundation upon which to build a lasting relationship. As lust wanes with the passage of time, relationships crumble under the weight of familiarity, causing partners to seek out someone different and exciting. Thus begins the seemingly never-ending cycle of lust-based relationship-hopping, which desensitizes people to the possibility of love and intimacy, turning them into emotional cynics. However, if people began to value themselves, and those around them, as more than genitalia to be used as a sexual commodity, it becomes possible to build a strong foundation for a lasting relationship, if meant to be.

While a longer rewrite than the original, this is a much clearer approach to what I believe the author was trying to say.

The next paragraph also has its own issues:

Unfinished thoughts really don't help one's cause.

Honestly, I'm not even going to attempt to rewrite this, as it would take far too much time and it is becoming difficult to see my screen because my palm is firmly attached to my face. This paragraph reads like a litany of unfinished thoughts that were machine gunned onto the page and deemed complete because the author added punctuation. This section ended with this train-wreck: 'Gay guys of this generation are used to starting out their newly out lives by experimenting on hookup apps, and by the time they meet a compatible person, unless they've been cautious of their feelings, they can desensitize themselves from intimacy and all its qualities'. At this point, I simply started to cry--tears of blood.

In the end, this was highly painful to read.