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

Contents:

• HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY
• A GAY MAN AT MIDLIFE PONRS BEG LONELY AND ‘INVISIBLE’
• GAY, MIDDLE-AGED, AND LONELY AS HELL
• SAVAGE LOVE: I AM A LONELY, AGG GAY MAN; WHAT SHOULD I DO?
• DEPRSN IS KILLG 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.

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

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.

GAY, MIDDLE-AGED, AND LONELY AS HELL

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.

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

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 . “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’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.

DEPRSN IS KILLG GAY MEN

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. A two-year longudal study found that the longer gay men were out of the closet, the more likely they were to bee versatile or tops.