Is lonels the gay man’s curse, or a product of 21st century life?

Contents:

• GAY, MIDDLE-AGED, AND LONELY AS HELL
• GAY LONELS IS THE SILENT EPIMIC FACG THE QUEER COMMUNY
• WHERE ARE ALL THE LONELY GAY MEN?
• IS LONELS THE GAY MAN’S CURSE, OR A PRODUCT OF 21ST CENTURY LIFE?
• A GAY MAN AT MIDLIFE PONRS BEG LONELY AND ‘INVISIBLE’
• MANY UNTRI DON'T ACCEPT OUR RIGHT TO EXIST: LIFE AS A GAY TRAVELER
• THE SHY GAY GUY

GAY, MIDDLE-AGED, AND LONELY AS HELL

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.

GAY LONELS IS THE SILENT EPIMIC FACG THE QUEER COMMUNY

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. 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.

WHERE ARE ALL THE LONELY GAY MEN?

BLUM, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist and the founr of the Gay Therapy Center, which specializ relatnship and self-teem issu for LGBTQ people. 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. 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.

IS LONELS THE GAY MAN’S CURSE, OR A PRODUCT OF 21ST CENTURY LIFE?

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. “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 .

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

“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.

MANY UNTRI DON'T ACCEPT OUR RIGHT TO EXIST: LIFE AS A GAY TRAVELER

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.

THE SHY GAY GUY

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. 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. “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. 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.