Exciting: Peter Plate and Ulf Leo Sommer are a professional duo and their music has been in the charts for decades. They were also a private couple for a long time – known for their loud conflict management.
Barbara: Peter, Ulf, let’s be honest: are you fans of thunderstorms or are you one of those who get the creeps?
Peter: It’s great. This momentary discharge of an enormous tension, it’s something.
I agree. But then I always have a little anxiety.
Ulf: Fear?
Yes. I mean, it’s great when something explodes so violently, but you’re also very exposed to it.
Ulf: Sounds like you’re not just talking about the weather. Peter and I are big thunderstorm fans in other respects too. Discharge always brings purification, and it’s hard for me to live with stuffy air.
I assume you two have had a lot of trouble. After all, you’ve been a couple for 20 years.
Peter: I’m one of those people who can’t sleep until an argument is over. Which means I pretty much haven’t slept in 20 years.
Ulf: It was usually so loud in our house that the neighbors missed something when we weren’t arguing.
My goodness. Didn’t you also tell me that you fought so badly in the taxi that the driver threw you out?
Ulf: Yes, that’s right. And I was very often on the point of throwing myself out of moving taxis. That’s how it was with us.
But that’s great too. So: get out of the car, shout “Then do your shit alone”, slam the door and walk away. And then live with the consequences.
Peter: What did they look like to you?
I’ve exited relationships this way in hard-to-reach ski resorts. And then took a taxi from Vorarlberg to Munich. After that I had to take out a loan. But do you really need that? Do your partners have to be eruptable?
Peter: Lee, my current husband, is different. He just falls asleep when there’s a fight.
Ulf: I think that’s really bad.
Peter: I felt the same way at first. But I’ve been with him for eleven years now, I’ve gotten used to it. This also has advantages, because the next morning you look at things in a completely different and much more relaxed way. I had to learn that first. But it’s too late for Ulf and me, it doesn’t work then.
Ulf: Because freaking out was and is something that kept us together. Just yesterday we received annoying news in the presence of two women. It would have been normal for both of us to discharge loudly and frighteningly. Peter did just that. But I’ve decided for myself: I’ll just stay calm.
Interesting. What happened then?
Ulf: Peter was totally mad at me.
Peter: It felt like betrayal.
I can understand. Sometimes I also want to argue, I need to throw up, so to speak. And then my face gets ugly and I can’t control my spit.
Peter: Like Ulf!
Ulf: I’m foaming at the mouth. Quite literally.
But it’s crazy, what kind of anger one sometimes discovers in oneself. Like the other day when an elderly driver insulted me badly. And I just thought, how awesome, he’s just giving me permission to yell at him.
Ulf: What you did.
And how. And that felt so good! Sometimes I also want to throw things, although I know that they will be broken afterwards.
Ulf: Oh god.
Peter: Ulf is constantly smashing his mobile phones with anger. And gets angry afterwards. But at least he doesn’t throw them at people.
Me, yes. To my husband. Then the steam is out. And I have to say: when someone yells at me at the breakfast table, I start to ponder whether there could be something to the content of the allegations. But our relationship is not defined by arguments. Was that different for you?
Peter: No, really not that.
Ulf: What was always there with us and didn’t go away when the relationship ended was the soul mate relationship. We were like brothers from the start. And that helps when arguing: It was always at eye level.
Peter: That’s important. Screaming is okay at eye level, upwards too. It’s not okay downstairs.
You said you what. I definitely have a tendency towards undiplomatic behavior.
Peter: You don’t notice it at all.
Because that also builds up very slowly and then, there we are again with the discharge, breaks out in one fell swoop. That’s why I’m glad that I don’t work in such fixed structures, I don’t see most people for so long that it comes to that. But parent WhatsApp groups at school or in the children’s sports club – very difficult terrain for me.
Ulf: The hardest thing for me is dealing with people who avoid any arguments.
Yes, you are right. I recently had a case where I wanted to enter into a discussion because something no longer fitted. Friendly, matter-of-fact, loud, provocative – I didn’t leave anything out. And all that came back was passive aggressiveness. In the end I was empty and at a loss.
Peter: I know. That’s what happened to me with many during the pandemic. It put the characters in a totally different light.
Ulf: He means me.
whoops How come?
Ulf: My life is completely different from Peter’s. He’s married and very domesticated, I’m single, like to move around and fly to Barcelona every two weeks. That fell away. And because we live on the same floor, I was always invited to dinner. I felt like an old aunt who gets taken care of because nobody else does, and I hung around with Peter and Lee all the time. And passive-aggressive.
I thought you’d rather be active-aggressive.
Ulf: That’s the contradiction in me. I like to break out, but actually I’m harmony-driven and I want everyone to understand each other.
I understand that good. I actually hate getting into conflicts.
Pete: I love that.
Ulf: Right. Peter is nasty.
Peter: Because harmony at any price is useless. You don’t learn anything without the argument. And I’m not afraid of not being liked, unlike Ulf.
Wait, a friend told me a really great story the other day…
Peter: Bring it on!
His wife has a friend who invited her and him to dinner. The woman’s husband, whom they didn’t know before, turned out to be a terrible guy during the conversation. So in the middle of the meal, my friend said, “You know what? I don’t like you. And you’re a waste of my time, so let’s go.”
Peter: Wow. Did they really go?
Yes. And then slept badly for two days because they were so out of shape at that moment.
Peter: I think that’s cool.
Ulf: Me too, but I couldn’t do it. That’s why I’m glad I have Peter by my side.
Peter: But I wouldn’t do what your friend did either. That only works with people I love.
How do you mean?
Pete: An example. I got my ear pierced before I came out. I then drove from my hometown of Goslar to my grandparents in Munich with the new earring. When I arrived, my grandfather said: either you take out the earring or you leave.
And you left
Peter: Exactly. My grandmother drove me to the train station in tears and begged me to stay. But I drove. And that changed the relationship with my grandfather so much.
And how?
Peter: It got deeper. He apologized to me, I cried. All of that made it easier for me to tell him later that I’m gay.
That’s actually interesting: was your culture of conflict, your way of dealing with conflicts, already laid out in your childhood?
Ulf: No. I was more of a system crasher kid.
Like Helena Zengel in this film?
Ulf: Something like that. I was pretty nice and normal during the day, I did well in school too, but at night I completely freaked out for three or four years.
How can I imagine that?
Ulf: I couldn’t sleep, and then I screamed for hours, foaming at the mouth. My sister and I slept in bunk beds, and every night she said, “Ulf, please don’t tonight.”
That’s horrible. Do you know where that came from?
Ulf: I was about nine years old when it started. My parents were having a major marital crisis, and my late-night freaks were probably a reaction to that. I wanted my mother to come to me. I loved her madly, and yet I wanted to hurt her. Probably because of that. It was bad for everyone. The doctors wanted to calm me down with sleeping pills, but my parents didn’t give me any. It just stopped on its own after a few years.
Were you able to clarify this with your mother later?
Ulf: No. I even think today that I wanted to hurt myself by driving my beloved mother mad. She knew that deep down, maybe that’s why we never had to talk about it again. But I’m glad I later met Peter. He’s got the same inexplicable anger inside him, which kinda helped with mine.
You mentioned earlier that you were lovers for 20 years. How did you actually manage to transform that into something else?
Ulf: In great pain. The moment when you said: It can’t go on like this, we have to change something in our relationship, that hurt extremely. And it took time.
Peter: A year at least. And lots and lots of tears.
Ulf: Oh yes. We traveled with the floodgates open. We flooded all the restaurants around Savignyplatz. We just couldn’t believe it, we never thought it was possible that we would break up. And neither did our friends, we caused nameless horror. We sat there, wept in silence, and people stared at us in bewilderment.
Peter: Back then we thought it was all over. We also learned that: If the relationship ends, that’s it for you with the other person. But in the meantime I hope for future generations that the subject can be dealt with differently. Because of course: Love can disappear. But she doesn’t do that very often, she stayed with us too.
Ulf: We just didn’t have sex anymore. And we’ve found that we’re also interested in other men.
Peter: And I felt so much better when I realized: I don’t have to lose Ulf because of that. What happened was exactly what you said before: We transformed this symbiotic, abysmal love into a different kind of relationship.
But Peter has a husband now – and you don’t, Ulf. Terrible?
Ulf: No. Great for him. And I have to find out for myself right now: What kind of relationship do I actually want? Do I need another snoring guy next to me? I am not sure.
You all sound so healthy.
Pete: Yes. But it’s kind of exhausting for me.
How so?
Peter: Because now I have two men to worry about. I have one of them around me all day, so I can keep an eye on things and oversee them. But I also need to know that Ulf is doing well in his single life, with his constant trips to Barcelona. Otherwise I can’t sleep at night.
That’s when you realize you don’t have kids.
Peter: I sometimes imagine I have five. What worries must that be! I would definitely go insane, that’s for sure.