It’s Pride Month, and lately I’ve been thinking about attraction and compatibility.
Not attraction in the simple sense of who catches my eye.
Not who I think is handsome.
Not who I would swipe right on.
Something deeper.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself looking back at the men I’ve been attracted to throughout my life and noticing a pattern that I somehow missed for years.
At first, I thought I was attracted to certain physical features.
A particular look.
A particular style.
A particular body type.
But when I really sat with it, I realized the men who consistently caught my attention didn’t necessarily look alike at all.
What they shared was something much more powerful.
They were themselves.
Completely themselves.
There was an authenticity about them.
A confidence.
A sense of self-possession.
They moved through the world as if they had already made peace with who they were.
And as a Black gay man, I don’t think people always understand how attractive that can be.
Many of us spend years trying to become comfortable in our own skin.
Attraction and Compatibility Are Not the Same Thing
Understanding the difference between attraction and compatibility has been one of the most important lessons of my adult life.
We grow up navigating expectations from family, culture, religion, and society. We receive messages about how we should act, how we should dress, how masculine we should be, how feminine we shouldn’t be, and what parts of ourselves are acceptable to display publicly.
Some of us spend years trying to fit into boxes we never belonged in to begin with.
When I look back on my own life, I can see how those messages shaped me.
I experienced colorism within my own family.
I witnessed people being treated differently because of complexion, appearance, personality, and perceived value.
I saw people decide who was worthy of praise and who wasn’t.
Those lessons don’t simply disappear because we become adults.
They follow us.
Sometimes into friendships.
Sometimes into careers.
Sometimes into relationships.
And sometimes into the people we’re attracted to.
As I got older and became part of LGBTQ+ spaces, I noticed similar dynamics playing out there as well.
I saw people distancing themselves from Blackness.
I saw people embracing every possible identity except the one staring back at them in the mirror.
I saw men chasing validation from people who would never fully see them.
Most importantly, I saw how many of us were still trying to negotiate our worth.
The truth is that I understood it because I had spent years doing it myself.
That’s why this recent realization caught me off guard.
The men I’ve been attracted to weren’t simply attractive.
They represented something.
Freedom.
Confidence.
Authenticity.
The courage to exist without constantly explaining themselves.
When I started paying attention to that pattern, another realization followed.
Attraction and compatibility are not the same thing.
For a long time, I think I treated them as if they were.
If the chemistry was there, I assumed everything else would somehow work itself out.
Life has taught me differently.
Attraction might get your attention, but compatibility determines whether a connection can survive.
And compatibility requires something that doesn’t get discussed nearly enough.
Reciprocity.
The older I get, the more important that word becomes.
Reciprocity means both people matter.
Both people’s needs matter.
Both people’s desires matter.
Both people’s experiences matter.
It means nobody gets left out.
It means nobody spends their entire time accommodating the other person while quietly ignoring themselves.
What I’ve discovered about myself is that reciprocity matters deeply to me.
I don’t want relationships where one person is expected to carry all the responsibility.
I don’t want relationships where one person’s needs automatically outrank another’s.
And I don’t want connections built on assumptions.
The more I reflect on relationships, the more I realize that attraction and compatibility must work together if a connection is going to last.
Particularly as Black gay men, people often try to place us into roles before they ever get to know us.
They assume.
They categorize.
They project.
Sometimes they decide who we are before we’ve even spoken.
But real relationships require curiosity.
They require communication.
They require a willingness to understand another person instead of simply assigning them a role.
Pride Month has given me an opportunity to think honestly about attraction and compatibility, and how both have shaped my understanding of relationships.
Maybe that’s part of what I’ve been learning during this stage of my life.
The older I get, the less interested I become in fantasy and the more interested I become in reality.
I want authenticity.
I want honesty.
I want people who know themselves well enough to be honest about what they want and what they need.
I want people who understand that confidence isn’t about arrogance.
It’s about self-acceptance.
And perhaps that’s why Pride Month continues to matter.
Pride is often portrayed as celebration, and it certainly is that.
But I think Pride is also about liberation.
It’s about reaching a point where you no longer feel obligated to shrink yourself to make other people comfortable.
It’s about understanding that your worth is not determined by someone else’s approval.
It’s about becoming comfortable enough with yourself to stop apologizing for who you are.
When I look back now, I realize that attraction has taught me far more than who I desire.
It has taught me what I value.
Authenticity.
Confidence.
Reciprocity.
Self-awareness.
And perhaps most importantly, it has taught me that understanding ourselves is one of the greatest forms of freedom we can ever achieve.
Maybe that’s what I’ve really been attracted to all along.
Not perfection.
Not fantasy.
Not a specific type of man.
But people who have found the courage to become themselves.
And, little by little, I’m learning to do the same.
Ultimately, the journey toward understanding attraction and compatibility has become a journey toward understanding myself.
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