Gay, middle-aged, and lonely as hell - Chigo Rear

Contents:

• HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY
• A GAY MAN AT MIDLIFE PONRS BEG LONELY AND ‘INVISIBLE’
• 5 REASONS IT’S GOOD TO BE GAY AND SGLE
• 20 HONT REASONS GAY MEN STAY SGLE (ON PURPOSE)
• WHY THIS GAY MAN PREFERS TO TRAVEL SOLO
• COMG OUT GAY STEP-BY-STEP
• HOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GAY
• GAY, MIDDLE-AGED, AND LONELY AS HELL
• GAY PEOPLE 'AT RISK OF A LONELIER OLD AGE'
• SGLE FOREVER: STORI AND INSIGHTS OM GAY MEN

HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY

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. 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. 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.

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. “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.

A GAY MAN AT MIDLIFE PONRS BEG LONELY AND ‘INVISIBLE’

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. 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.

When the dispary first me to light the ’50s and ’60s, doctors thought was a symptom of homosexualy self, jt one of many maniftatns of what was, at the time, known as “sexual versn.

5 REASONS IT’S GOOD TO BE GAY AND SGLE

“That was the ia I had, too, ” Salway says, “that gay suici was a product of a bygone era, or was ncentrated among adolcents who didn’t see any other way out. He found that gay men everywhere, at every age, have higher rat of rdvascular disease, ncer, ntence, erectile dysfunctn, ⁠ allergi and asthma—you name , we got . “We see gay men who have never been sexually or physilly asslted wh siar post-trmatic strs symptoms to people who have been bat suatns or who have been raped, ” says Alex Kroghlian, a psychiatrist at the Fenway Instute’s Center for Populatn Rearch LGBT Health.

And I kept nyg was a problem bee I had always told myself, ‘I’ve e out, I moved to San Francis, I’m done, I did what I had to do as a gay person. For s, this is what psychologists thought, too: that the key stag inty formatn for gay men all led up to g out, that once we were fally fortable wh ourselv, we uld beg buildg a life wh a muny of people who’d gone through the same thg.

It got so bad that I ed to go to the grocery store that was 40 mut away stead of the one that was 10 mut away jt bee I was so aaid to walk down the gay street. Several studi have found that livg gay neighborhoods predicts higher rat of risky sex and meth e and ls time spent on other muny activi like volunteerg or playg sports. Acrdg to Dane Whicker, a clil psychologist and rearcher at De, most gay men report that they want to date someone mascule, and that they wished they acted more mascule themselv.

20 HONT REASONS GAY MEN STAY SGLE (ON PURPOSE)

Rearchers say this kd of trag, liberately tryg to appear more mascule and takg on a different sex role, is jt one of the ways gay men prsure each other to atta “sexual pal, ” the equivalent of gog to the gym or pluckg our eyebrows.

So, his sophomore year, he started watchg his male teachers for their flt posns, liberately standg wh his feet wi, his arms at his sis.

Usually when you hear about the shockg primacy of hookup apps gay life—Grdr, the most popular, says s average er spends 90 mut per day on —’s some panicked media story about murrers or homophob trawlg them for victims, or about the troublg “chemsex” scen that have spng up London and New York. But the real effect of the apps is quieter, ls remarked-upon and, a way, more profound: For many of , they have bee the primary way we teract wh other gay people.

WHY THIS GAY MAN PREFERS TO TRAVEL SOLO

The worst thg about the apps, though, and why they’re relevant to the health dispary between gay and straight men, is not jt that we e them a lot. In terviews that Elr, the post-trmatic strs rearcher, nducted wh gay men 2015, he found that 90 percent said they wanted a partner who was tall, young, whe, mcular and mascule.

Walt Ots, a psychologist who’s been wrg about social isolatn sce the 1980s, says that gay men ed to be troubled by the bathho the same way they are troubled by Grdr now.

The gay men I terviewed talked about the datg apps the same way straight people talk about Comst: It sucks, but what are you gonna do?

COMG OUT GAY STEP-BY-STEP

“We often live our liv through the ey of others, ” says Alan Downs, a psychologist and the thor of The Velvet Rage, a book about gay men’s stggle wh shame and social validatn. One of the most strikg studi I found scribed the spike anxiety and prsn among gay men 2004 and 2005, the years when 14 stat passed nstutnal amendments fg marriage as beg between a man and a woman. Gay men those stat showed a 37 percent crease mood disorrs, a 42 percent crease alholism and a 248 percent crease generalized anxiety disorr.

HOW TO ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GAY

Now square that wh the fact that our untry recently elected a bright orange Demogon whose admistratn is publicly, eagerly attemptg to reverse every sgle ga the gay muny has ma the last 20 years. Only around 30 percent of school districts the untry have anti-bullyg polici that specifilly mentn LGBTQ kids, and thoands of other districts have polici that prevent teachers om speakg about homosexualy a posive way.

GAY, MIDDLE-AGED, AND LONELY AS HELL

His parents meant well—they were jt tryg to enurage him to a field where he would enunter fewer homophob—but he was already anx: If he gave up on fance, was that surrenrg to stigma? In the last five years, as evince of this ternnectedns has piled up, a few psychologists and epimlogists have started to treat alienatn among gay men as a “synmic”: A clter of health problems, none of which n be fixed on their own. There will always be more straight kids than gay kids, we will always be isolated among them, and we will always, on some level, grow up alone our fai and our schools and our towns.

GAY PEOPLE 'AT RISK OF A LONELIER OLD AGE'

I keep thkg of somethg Pl, the software veloper, told me: “For gay people, we’ve always told ourselv that when the AIDS epimic was over we’d be fe. AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTCivil Shenlman/Queer Lens PhotographyMarch 19, 2013Every other Tuday, Steven Petrow, the thor of “Steven Petrow’s Complete Gay & Lbian Manners, ” (Workman, 2011), addrs qutns about gay and straight etiquette for a boomer-age dience. Send qutns for Civil Behavr to Dear Civil Behavr: Your ment a recent lumn about gays at midlife fdg themselv “sudnly visible — aged out by the young, rtls and betiful” ronated loudly wh me.

” The abily to lgh — and lgh at ourselv — is key to our, there are some unual and disproportnate challeng to agg wh the gay muny that your experienc highlight. (This might also help expla why the suatn is more difficult for gay men than is for lbians: The study I noted prevly showed that lbians “tend to have works that were more rilient and showed ls fluctuatn rponse to chang wh agg, ” probably bee their support works were not nearly as vastated by H. As a 30-year-old posted on my Facebook page rponse to your qutn, “I fd havg iends who are gay and olr helps me learn about the gay muny’s past stggl and tly unrstand where we have e om, where we are now, and where we’re gog as a society.

SGLE FOREVER: STORI AND INSIGHTS OM GAY MEN

Above all, try to remember we’re lucky we’ve gotten to see and live through our middle years; so many of our loved on did different do you thk agg our society is for gays vers straights? 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.

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.