How to Cope When You're Gay and Lonely | GQ

Contents:

• HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY
• 5 TTHS ABOUT GAY LONELS
• IS LONELS THE GAY MAN’S CURSE, OR A PRODUCT OF 21ST CENTURY LIFE?
• 5 SYMPTOMS OF GAY LONELS
• LONELS AND SELF-RATED PHYSIL HEALTH AMONG GAY, BISEXUAL AND OTHER MEN WHO HAVE SEX WH MEN VANUVER, CANADA
• SO, YOU'RE LONELY AND GAY. WHAT'S NEXT?
• LONELS AND GAY MEN
• THE BTAL REALY OF ‘GAY LONELS’THE INVISIBLE BATTLE WH THE RABOWSNATHAN CHEN·FOLLOWPUBLISHED COUNTER ARTS·6 M READ·JUL 18--1SHAREPHOTO BY RON LACH OM PEXELSWHAT’S UP, FOLKS? NOW, DON’T GET FOOLED BY THE CHEEKY TONE, TODAY WE’RE DIVG EP. WE’RE TALKG ABOUT SOMETHG WAY TOO REAL AND ’S THE “BTAL REALY” OF GAY LONELS. SO, S BACK, GRAB A CUP OF FFEE OR A GLASS OF WE (I DON’T JUDGE), AND BUCKLE UP!NOW, LET ME START WH A TTH BOMB: BEG GAY IS NOT ALL RABOWS AND UNIRNS, NO PUN TEND. THERE’S A DARKER SI TO , A SI THAT’S OFTEN SWEPT UNR THE BETIFULLY WOVEN RPET OF PRI PARAS. THAT SI IS LONELS. AND MAN, N BE AS BTAL AS AN UNEXPECTED TAX BILL.1. THE MONIKER: ‘GAY LONELS’HERE’S THE THG: GAY LONELS ISN’T ABOUT NOT HAVG IENDS, OR ABOUT STG ALONE AT HOME ON A SATURDAY NIGHT WATCHG RENS OF “FRIENDS” (ALTHOUGH, I MEAN, WHO HASN’T?). NO, ’S THIS UNIQUE, GUT-WRENCHG FEELG OF ISOLATN AND DISNNECTN. IT’S THIS PSYCHOLOGIL STATE THAT N MAKE YOU FEEL ALONE EVEN A CROWD. CAN YOU IMAGE THE NUNDM? IT’S LIKE BEG STARVG WHILE STG AT AN ALL-YOU-N-EAT BUFFET, BUT YOU N’T BRG YOURSELF TO PICK UP THE FORK. CRAZY, RIGHT?BUT GETS MORE PLITED. SEE, GAY LONELS ISN’T JT ABOUT BEG PHYSILLY ALONE, ’S ALSO ABOUT FEELG DISNNECTED OM YOUR OWN MUNY. IMAGE ATTENDG A DRAG SHOW OR PRI EVENT, SURROUND BY YOUR FELLOW QUEER FOLK, BUT STILL FEELG THAT HNTG SENSE OF ISOLATN.2. THE UNFAIR SOCIETAL EXPECTATNSNOW, LET’S TALK ABOUT SOMETHG REALLY IMPORTANT. BEG GAY OFTEN WH CERTA EXPECTATNS. FROM SOCIETY, OM YOUR OWN MUNY, EVEN OM YOURSELF. IT’S LIKE WHEN MY MOM EXPECTS ME TO CHANGE THE LIGHTBULB BEE I’M TALL — NOT OL, RIGHT?GAY MEN ARE EXPECTED TO BE EXTROVERTED, WTY, FUN-LOVG, PARTY ANIMALS. WE’RE ALL SUPPOSED TO HAVE A FABULOLY RATED APARTMENT, AN ADORG JACK RSELL TERRIER, AND A ‘RI OR DIE’ GROUP OF IENDS, A LA “SEX AND THE CY.” AND IF WE DON’T MEET THE EXPECTATNS? WELL, N OFTEN LEAD TO SELF-DOUBT, TRATN, AND YOU GUSED , LONELS.3. THE DOUBLE WHAMMY: HOMOPHOBIA AND INTERNALIZED…

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. As a gay man experiencg lonels, your lonels is possibly the culmatn of events that happened to you and around you and the stori and beliefs that you’ve ma those events mean about yourself and all that, you need to own your lonels.

Prrise DOING nnectnTo know that you’re a betiful gay man experiencg lonels and to then not prrise the DOING of nnectn is to choose your lonels.

The thoughts and feelgs of lonels n make you believe that you’re the only person around you, but chanc are that a signifint proportn of the people - gay or otherwise - you enunter every day are also experiencg lonels that moment. I’m here for you when you’re ready to take a step beyond the lonels you’re experiencg as a gay man towards the type of soul-nourishg nnectn you need and serve. Jo me for a ffee and a chat the upg episo of my podst for gay men ‘Connectn over Coffee wh The Lonels Guy’ om Thursday 7 July THE MAILING LISTBUY ME A COFFEE TO SAY THANKSREAD ANOTHER BLOGLISTEN TO THE PODCASTGET IN CONTACTHOMEImportant notice: All views exprsed above are my own/the thors and are tend to support, challenge and spire gay men to nsir the issue of lonels and crease awarens of the need for thentic nnectn wh themselv, wh others and their muni as an antidote to chronic lonels.

5 TTHS ABOUT GAY LONELS

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. 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.

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

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.

5 SYMPTOMS OF GAY LONELS

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.

LONELS AND SELF-RATED PHYSIL HEALTH AMONG GAY, BISEXUAL AND OTHER MEN WHO HAVE SEX WH MEN VANUVER, CANADA

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. 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. 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.

SO, YOU'RE LONELY AND GAY. WHAT'S NEXT?

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.

LONELS AND GAY MEN

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. 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.

THE BTAL REALY OF ‘GAY LONELS’THE INVISIBLE BATTLE WH THE RABOWSNATHAN CHEN·FOLLOWPUBLISHED COUNTER ARTS·6 M READ·JUL 18--1SHAREPHOTO BY RON LACH OM PEXELSWHAT’S UP, FOLKS? NOW, DON’T GET FOOLED BY THE CHEEKY TONE, TODAY WE’RE DIVG EP. WE’RE TALKG ABOUT SOMETHG WAY TOO REAL AND ’S THE “BTAL REALY” OF GAY LONELS. SO, S BACK, GRAB A CUP OF FFEE OR A GLASS OF WE (I DON’T JUDGE), AND BUCKLE UP!NOW, LET ME START WH A TTH BOMB: BEG GAY IS NOT ALL RABOWS AND UNIRNS, NO PUN TEND. THERE’S A DARKER SI TO , A SI THAT’S OFTEN SWEPT UNR THE BETIFULLY WOVEN RPET OF PRI PARAS. THAT SI IS LONELS. AND MAN, N BE AS BTAL AS AN UNEXPECTED TAX BILL.1. THE MONIKER: ‘GAY LONELS’HERE’S THE THG: GAY LONELS ISN’T ABOUT NOT HAVG IENDS, OR ABOUT STG ALONE AT HOME ON A SATURDAY NIGHT WATCHG RENS OF “FRIENDS” (ALTHOUGH, I MEAN, WHO HASN’T?). NO, ’S THIS UNIQUE, GUT-WRENCHG FEELG OF ISOLATN AND DISNNECTN. IT’S THIS PSYCHOLOGIL STATE THAT N MAKE YOU FEEL ALONE EVEN A CROWD. CAN YOU IMAGE THE NUNDM? IT’S LIKE BEG STARVG WHILE STG AT AN ALL-YOU-N-EAT BUFFET, BUT YOU N’T BRG YOURSELF TO PICK UP THE FORK. CRAZY, RIGHT?BUT GETS MORE PLITED. SEE, GAY LONELS ISN’T JT ABOUT BEG PHYSILLY ALONE, ’S ALSO ABOUT FEELG DISNNECTED OM YOUR OWN MUNY. IMAGE ATTENDG A DRAG SHOW OR PRI EVENT, SURROUND BY YOUR FELLOW QUEER FOLK, BUT STILL FEELG THAT HNTG SENSE OF ISOLATN.2. THE UNFAIR SOCIETAL EXPECTATNSNOW, LET’S TALK ABOUT SOMETHG REALLY IMPORTANT. BEG GAY OFTEN WH CERTA EXPECTATNS. FROM SOCIETY, OM YOUR OWN MUNY, EVEN OM YOURSELF. IT’S LIKE WHEN MY MOM EXPECTS ME TO CHANGE THE LIGHTBULB BEE I’M TALL — NOT OL, RIGHT?GAY MEN ARE EXPECTED TO BE EXTROVERTED, WTY, FUN-LOVG, PARTY ANIMALS. WE’RE ALL SUPPOSED TO HAVE A FABULOLY RATED APARTMENT, AN ADORG JACK RSELL TERRIER, AND A ‘RI OR DIE’ GROUP OF IENDS, A LA “SEX AND THE CY.” AND IF WE DON’T MEET THE EXPECTATNS? WELL, N OFTEN LEAD TO SELF-DOUBT, TRATN, AND YOU GUSED , LONELS.3. THE DOUBLE WHAMMY: HOMOPHOBIA AND INTERNALIZED…

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.