Gay and lonely
Gay Loneliness and What To Do About It
Gay men are more lonely than straight men.
It pains me to inscribe that. Gay men need positive inspiration and role models, not more negative statements.
However, I am highlighting this truth because I comprehend it is easier to make modify when we recognize painful truths.
Let’s initiate by reviewing some of the analyze on gay people. Academic journals can be incredibly tedious so let me give you the brief highlights:
Research shows:
Why are we statistically worse off on these measures of mental health? Is it something we ate?
You probably can guess the address. It’s called “growing up gay.”
Even in today’s more enlightened times we exposure more rejection as kids. And that’s especially true for gay men who embrace a more feminine gender presentation gay men who embrace a more feminine gender presentation than other boys.
Many of us flourish up expecting rejection and we stay on high sharp for it in social situations. Even if you personally have never received blatant rejection, the negative culture has an impact on you. No one has to dial you a fag for you to still fear creature seen as a fag.
We don’t just experience this dread of reje
Gay Loneliness Is Real—but “Bitchy, Toxic” Society Isn’t the Packed Story
If you are gay or comprehend many gays, chances are you saw “Together Alone,” Michael Hobbes’ longform essay on what he calls an “epidemic of gay loneliness,” show up in your feeds delayed last week. After seeing the article shared approvingly by many friends, I skimmed and dutifully posted it myself. It’s unsettling, packed of resonant descriptions of isolation, drug addiction, and self-hatred among gay men; and it’s ambitious in its seek to name, outline the contours of, and prescribe solutions for what it argues is a cultural and social crisis among male lover men hovering between youth and middle age. But later, as I decipher the article more closely, I began to feel uneasy.
Something in Hobbes’ portrait—more specifically, in the words of the group of homosexual men he chose to interview—reminded me of a compassionate of conversation that I encountered when I’ve worked in offices with big gay populations. The conversation happened frequently enough that I began to be able to predict how it might unfold. An older gay male colleague, typically white and trim and achieving, would set off on a lament about the doomed meanness and pet
Q: I am a gay man in my late 50s and own never been in a relationship. I am so lonely, and the painful emptiness I feel is becoming absolutely unbearable. In my early 20s, I hooked up off and on, but it never developed into anything. I have always told myself that’s OK; I’m not a people person or a relationship kind of guy. I have a few lesbian friends but no male friends. I have social anxiety and can’t go to bars or clubs. When fling apps were introduced, I used them infrequently. Now I go totally unnoticed or am quickly ghosted once I reveal my age. Most nonwork days, my only interactions are with people in the service industry. I am well groomed, employed, a homeowner, and always friendly to people. I proceed to a therapist and take antidepressants. However, this painful loneliness, depression, aging, and feeling unnoticed appear to be getting the best of me. I cry often and would really like it all to end. Any advice? —Lonely Aging Gay
A: “In the very fleeting term, LAG needs to tell his therapist about the suicidal ideation,” said Michael Hobbes. “In the longer term, well, that’s going to take a bit more to unpack.”
Hobbes is a