I am a gay man my late 50s and have never been a relatnship. I am so lonely, and the paful empts I feel is beg absolutely unbearable.
Contents:
- HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY
- WHERE ARE ALL THE LONELY GAY MEN?
- SAVAGE LOVE: I AM A LONELY, AGG GAY MAN; WHAT SHOULD I DO?
- GAY, MIDDLE-AGED, AND LONELY AS HELL
- THE LONELS OF BEG GAY A STRAIGHT MARRIAGE
- IS LONELS THE GAY MAN’S CURSE, OR A PRODUCT OF 21ST CENTURY LIFE?
- A GAY MAN AT MIDLIFE PONRS BEG LONELY AND ‘INVISIBLE’
HOW TO COPE WHEN YOU'RE GAY AND LONELY
If male lonels is a morn epimic, where are all the lonely gay men? * a lonely gay *
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.
Here he shar his journey to overe the sense of isolatn he felt growg up gay a small U. 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. I felt like I was pletely on my rried on until I was 16, when I started gog out to gay bars my hometown.
For the first time I've been able to form a good group of gay iends and create my own support work.
WHERE ARE ALL THE LONELY GAY MEN?
* a lonely gay *
I'd go on gay chatrooms but that was jt a facels nversatn wh someone who uld have been anyone. I thk if I'd had iends who were gay when I was growg up, my life would have been so different.
I now know there were other kids at my school who were gay, but they didn't e out till much later. For years I’ve noticed the divergence between my straight iends and my gay iends.
In our lifetime, the gay muny has ma more progrs on legal and social acceptance than any other mographic group history. As recently as my own adolcence, gay marriage was a distant aspiratn, somethg newspapers still put sre quot.
SAVAGE LOVE: I AM A LONELY, AGG GAY MAN; WHAT SHOULD I DO?
To be a gay man a straight marriage is to be disnnected om self. Let's read my iend Andrew Reid's story. * a lonely gay *
Public support for gay marriage has climbed om 27 percent 1996 to 61 percent 2016.
GAY, MIDDLE-AGED, AND LONELY AS HELL
I know ’s not jt our muny, but ’s creasgly mon for gay men to feel isolated and alone. * a lonely gay *
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. 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. Dpe all the talk of our “chosen fai, ” gay men have fewer close iends than straight people or gay women.
I’m a perpetually sgle gay guy who was raised a bright blue cy by PFLAG parents. “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.
THE LONELS OF BEG GAY A STRAIGHT MARRIAGE
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. “But now you’ve got lns of gay men who have e out of the closet and they still feel the same isolatn. 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?
He started to wonr if the story he had always heard about gay men and mental health was plete. 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. The problem wasn’t jt suici, wasn’t jt afflictg teenagers and wasn’t jt happeng areas staed by homophobia. 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 .
In Canada, Salway eventually disvered, more gay men were dyg om suici than om AIDS, and had been for years.
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.