Photo by David Lytle.

What If Straight People Can Experience Gay Love?

The science of romantic fluidity

How should we interpret stories of falling in love with someone of a surprising gender? Stories like this:

…I found myself in unfamiliar territory when I – the open guy, the “figured out” guy, the unquestionably straight guy – realized that I was in love with my best friend, a man. A man I had known for seven years. A man I had never before even thought of in a romantic way. But, there I was, in love.

One possible explanation is that the person was gay or bi or pan all along, and they just didn’t know it. But many people report feeling no previous attraction to men and then falling in love with a man, or feeling no previous attraction to women and then falling in love with a woman. When a person comes out to themselves as gay, bi, or pan, often in retrospect they can find gay attraction in their past. This is a different kind of story.

Our typical assumption is that the gendered aspect of romantic attraction is fixed. If you are attracted to men, it means you always were, and you always will be. But what if romantic love is, in fact, fluid?

Lisa Diamond, a psychology researcher, has a theory of attraction. We all come equipped with the biological machinery for romantic love: the pair-bonding system that evolved in mammals. Some biologists believe that the pair-bonding system evolved from the infant-caregiver attachment system that bonds parents to their young and vice versa. The infant-caregiver attachment system has no restrictions based on gender. Parents can become attached to male or female infants, and infants can become attached to male or female caregivers. Diamond argues that since the pair-bonding system evolved out of the infant-caregiver attachment system, the pair-bonding system also has no restrictions based on gender.

So, what is sexual orientation? Sexual orientation determines sexual attraction, up to a point. An otherwise straight man who experiences romantic love for another man for the first time might also develop a sexual attraction to him. The pair-bonding system and sexual attraction are linked, such that one can activate the other. But prior to that first gay romantic attraction, his sexual orientation meant that he was only sexually attracted to women.

Diamond posits that the reason that straight men so frequently fall in love with women (and gay men with men, and so on) is that sexual attraction so often leads to affectionate physical touch and to spending time together in close proximity. These conditions are fertile soil for what would otherwise be friendship to grow into a romantic connection.

Sometimes the same conditions happen between two straight men, or two straight women, or a straight man and a gay man, or a straight woman and a gay woman. A new or old friendship turns into romantic love in the fertile soil of touch, togetherness, and time (as Diamond puts it).

The elements of touch, togetherness, and time are present in the story I quoted from above. The author, Mike Iamele, describes falling severely ill. That led to a period of heightened emotional and physical intimacy between him and his longtime friend, another straight man:

And my roommate, Garrett, one of my best friends at the time, took pity on me. He took care of me. He picked up my prescriptions from the pharmacy. He cooked me dinner. He stayed in on Friday nights to watch movies. He’d even rub my back when I was in pain.

If Diamond is right, then romantic love is inherently fluid. Straight men can fall in love with men, and straight women can fall in love with women. The borderlines of gender and sexual orientation are not absolute and impassable. Sometimes a romantic connection forms across them. The alchemical process that gives rise to romantic love continues to surprise us.