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Contents:

• HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY
• A GAY MAN AT MIDLIFE PONRS BEG LONELY AND ‘INVISIBLE’
• SAVAGE LOVE: I AM A LONELY, AGG GAY MAN; WHAT SHOULD I DO?
• GAY, MIDDLE-AGED, AND LONELY AS HELL
• ON BEG OLR, GAY, SGLE, MALE AND LONELY: PART 2
• GAY PEOPLE 'AT RISK OF A LONELIER OLD AGE'
• SO GAY = OLD AND LONELY?

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. 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.

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

(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. 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?

Hobb is a reporter for HuffPost and recently wrote a mi-book-length piece tled “Together Alone: The Epimic of Gay Lonels. ” Durg his rearch, Hobb found that, spe growg legal and social acceptance, a worryg percentage of gay men still stggle wh prsn, anxiety and suicidal iatn. “LAG isn’t the only gay guy who has aged out of the bar scene—so have I—and stggl to fd sex and pannship away om alhol and right swip, ” said Hobb.

I see others, gay and straight, havg long-term relatnships, gettg engaged, gettg married, and mak me sad and jealo. “At every age, every study, gay men are ls likely to be partnered, habg or married than our straight and lbian unterparts. In our lifetime, the gay muny has ma more progrs on legal and social acceptance than any other mographic group history.

SAVAGE LOVE: I AM A LONELY, AGG GAY MAN; WHAT SHOULD I DO?

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 people are now, pendg on the study, between 2 and 10 tim more likely than straight people to take their own liv.

GAY, MIDDLE-AGED, AND LONELY AS HELL

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.

ON BEG OLR, GAY, SGLE, MALE AND LONELY: PART 2

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.

” As the gay rights movement gaed steam, though, homosexualy disappeared om the DSM and the explanatn shifted to trma.

“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.

GAY PEOPLE 'AT RISK OF A LONELIER OLD AGE'

“When you ask them why they tried to kill themselv, ” he says, “most of them don’t mentn anythg at all about beg gay. “The trma for gay men is the prolonged nature of , ” says William Elr, a sexual trma rearcher and psychologist.

By the time he got to high school, Adam had learned to manage his mannerisms so well that no one spected him of beg gay. 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’s like you emerge om the closet expectg to be this butterfly and the gay muny jt slaps the ialism out of you, ” Adam says. 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. Every gay man I know rri around a mental portfol of all the shty thgs other gay men have said and done to him.

SO GAY = OLD AND LONELY?

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. A 2009 study suggted that gay men who were more lked to the gay muny were ls satisfied wh their own romantic relatnships.