Are you qutng your sexualy? Fd out if you’re gay, straight, bisexual, or asexual. Learn what the terms mean and if they apply to you.
Contents:
- HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY
- HOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GAY
- A GAY MAN AT MIDLIFE PONRS BEG LONELY AND ‘INVISIBLE’
- HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
- AM I GAY?
- GAY, MIDDLE-AGED, AND LONELY AS HELL
HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY
Advice on how to nont ageism the gay muny spe earlier loss and how to avoid beg alone. * i'm gay and alone *
Part of realizg you're gay, or bi, or trans, or non-bary, or anythg other than cisgenr and heterosexual is acceptg you’re different—and somewhat separated—om the majory. Here he shar his journey to overe the sense of isolatn he felt growg up gay a small U.
HOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GAY
At the time, there were no real gay role mols except for Graham Norton and Jack om Dawson's Creek—and I certaly didn't intify wh him bee I wasn't a football player.
I felt like I was pletely on my rried on until I was 16, when I started gog out to gay bars my hometown. For the first time I've been able to form a good group of gay iends and create my own support work. I'd go on gay chatrooms but that was jt a facels nversatn wh someone who uld have been anyone.
A GAY MAN AT MIDLIFE PONRS BEG LONELY AND ‘INVISIBLE’
I thk if I'd had iends who were gay when I was growg up, my life would have been so different. I now know there were other kids at my school who were gay, but they didn't e out till much later.
It's hard to acknowledge this bee my parents always thought gay men were lonely people.
Signed, Lonely Los AngelDear Lonely Los Angel, Gay men are more lonely than straight pas me to wre that. However, I am highlightg this fact bee I know is easier to make change when we acknowledge paful 's start by reviewg some of the rearch on gay people. Amic journals n be credibly borg so let me give you the brief highlights:Rearch shows: Gay men have fewer close iends than straight people or gay women.
HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE GAY
Gay people are a lot more likely to m suici than straight are we statistilly worse off on the measur of mental health? Like, for example, when we are 10 or 11 years old and velop a csh on our male gym you fally do e out as an adult and fd other gay men, you may notice that that the gay bar scene or the gay datg app experience isn't always so warm, iendly, and acceptg. That's a further recipe for lonels and men do not show up at my office sayg "I feel bad about myself bee I have been margalized as gay person growg up my fay and muny.
AM I GAY?
Validatg this fairly universal experience of growg up gay is an important first step the healg Path om LonelsSo what do we do about gay adult lonels? There's a lot we n 's the very bt tip to overe gay lonels once you ci you are ready to tackle this challenge:I want to ask you to jo a gay group that meets once per week. BLUM, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist and the founr of the Gay Therapy Center, which specializ relatnship and self-teem issu for LGBTQ people.
In our lifetime, the gay muny has ma more progrs on legal and social acceptance than any other mographic group history. As recently as my own adolcence, gay marriage was a distant aspiratn, somethg newspapers still put sre quot. Still, even as we celebrate the sle and speed of this change, the rat of prsn, lonels and substance abe the gay muny rema stuck the same place they’ve been for s.
GAY, MIDDLE-AGED, AND LONELY AS HELL
Gay people are now, pendg on the study, between 2 and 10 tim more likely than straight people to take their own liv. In a survey of gay men who recently arrived New York Cy, three-quarters suffered om anxiety or prsn, abed dgs or alhol or were havg risky sex—or some batn of the three. Dpe all the talk of our “chosen fai, ” gay men have fewer close iends than straight people or gay women.
“Marriage equaly and the chang legal stat were an improvement for some gay men, ” says Christopher Stults, a rearcher at New York Universy who studi the differenc mental health between gay and straight men. In the Netherlands, where gay marriage has been legal sce 2001, gay men rema three tim more likely to suffer om a mood disorr than straight men, and 10 tim more likely to engage “suicidal self-harm. TTravis Salway, a rearcher wh the BC Centre for Disease Control Vanuver, has spent the last five years tryg to figure out why gay men keep killg themselv.
“But now you’ve got lns of gay men who have e out of the closet and they still feel the same isolatn. By the late 2000s, he was a social worker and epimlogist and, like me, was stck by the growg distance between his straight and gay iends. He started to wonr if the story he had always heard about gay men and mental health was plete.