I've been in San Diego Yeah, Belgium is very docile in comparison. My boyfriend's not here at the moment though, he's back in Nicaragua... I didn't back up an illegal stay. But he's preparing the papers he needs to make our partnership official. Most people treated him correctly, but of course said, we can hire you if you have work papers. The other guy hired him for a few days (well nights) a week, couple of hours a night, but then called him from daytime to do this or that for him... like a dog on a leach. I was fed up with it after a week already. And then the first week I heard he wasn't gonna pay my bf because he broke the microwave, and the next week it was something else (nothing even to do with work, poor excuse, but I couldn't officially do anythign against it... except that people abuser doesn't know I got my own connections, and social inspection will cost him more dearly than paying my bf... worse, the guy's a foreigner himself). My bf initially thought "hey, he even offers me an appartment" when he just got hired, and he didn't understand why that made me frown in forewarning and made me tell him "don't ever give that guy your passport!". My bf thought I was jealous or didn't allow him independence, until he experienced the truth.

And though socially there are plenty of people who react badly to gays here, they can marry or live together legally and adopt. And there might have been a bit of a hubbub about it before the living together legally was allowed to gays, afterwards nobody even cried foul when it became possible to marry. On a bigger social scale it's not an issue anymore.

And lastly, many gays from other cultures grow up feeling very guilty about their sexuality. My best friend who's gay doesn't believe in relationships with men from Northern African or Turkish background for that reason. In Mexico I think they've now allowed gay marriage I think. And I've been going there since 1998. In the past decade I've seen many Latin American countries go from a gay taboo to an outing country. A rapid leap to realizing that there are as many gays in Latin America as everywhere else in the world. While this is a good thing, on an individual level there is still a lot to overcome.

Pile all that together and no, that makes it quite hard to have a "normal" relationship.

Wish you two all the best!