Lonely gay men

I was desperate to feel wanted. A few years later I moved to a bigger city to study.

I made myself move because I knew it would force me to meet new people. I thought otherwise I'd end up stuck on my own. But again, I felt isolated because I was living in student accommodation with five straight guys I didn't identity with. So the behaviors I'd already displayed at home just continued in a different city, with much less parental supervision. I made one gay friend, who I'm actually close to now.

But back then, we didn't really talk about things. We didn't really have a proper friendship. We both liked the Spice Girls, and that was enough for me. We'd just go out to bars together and get so drunk that we couldn't remember how we got home. During this time, I had a brief dalliance with bulimia. All that happened was I would take a lot of laxatives, and then experience a great deal of pain.

But I just felt like I needed to feel something, and I needed to feel in control of how lonely I felt. For me, alcohol was always the biggest problem. When I was 21, my first boyfriend broke up with me and I didn't have any coping mechanisms other than drinking. I just drank myself into oblivion—to the point where I got sacked from my bar job and had to take time off from my studies.

I used alcohol for a number of reasons, but it was mainly so I could feel comfortable enough to go out and speak to people, and switch off everything going on in my head. I think I drank so I could switch off the loneliness. Things finally got better when I was in my late twenties. By this time I was living in London and meeting people from different backgrounds and different parts of the world. Moving to a bigger city has been the best thing for me.

For the first time I've been able to form a good group of gay friends and create my own support network. I always thought finding a boyfriend would be a life-changer for me, but it was actually finding people on the same level as me, people with common interests. Lots of them are couples, but I guess that's just the way it is when you get to your late twenties and early thirties. I really do feel much more comfortable now. But that underlying fear of being alone and lonely, and all the resentment that comes with that, is still very much there.

I don't think it ever really goes away. I'm dating someone now but I still have that fear of being left—of someone just walking away and leaving me on my own again.

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Even though I've got so many positive things in my life—a great career, great friends, a nice boyfriend—it's always at the back of my mind. The school where I teach has a partnership with an LGBT charity, so I've done work with kids and sexuality and equality. Some of the kids are like, "Why do we still need to do this? Those kids still have to work through the same issues, but there's more of a support network now, and more technology.

When I was a teenager, the Internet was still in its very early stages. I'd go on gay chatrooms but that was just a faceless conversation with someone who could have been anyone. Loneliness, Hobbes explained to me, is an evolutionary adaptation, a mechanism that prompts us humans—members of a highly social species—to seek contact and connection with others, the kind of connections that improve our odds of survival.

You don't have very many social contacts. Being lonely, on the other hand, is subjective: You feel alone, even when you're with other people. This is why advice like 'Join a club!

Dan Savage

The most effective way to address loneliness, according to Hobbes's research, is to confront it directly. This doesn't mean that his perceptions are unfounded—our society is terrible to its elders in general and its LGBTQ elders in particular—but there may be opportunities in his life for intimacy that he's not tapping into. Acquaintances LAG hasn't checked in on for a while. Random cool cousins LAG never got to know. Volunteering gigs you fell out of. It's easier to reanimate old friendships than to start from scratch.

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And if your therapist doesn't know of any good support groups—or if you don't feel comfortable telling your therapist how miserable you are, or if you've told your therapist everything and they haven't been able to help—find a new therapist. I'm a fortysomething gay male. I'm single and cannot get a date or even a hookup.

I'm short, overweight, average looking, and bald. I see others, gay and straight, having long-term relationships, getting engaged, getting married, and it makes me sad and jealous. Some of them are jerks—and if them, why not me? Here's the part that's hard to admit: I know something is wrong with me, but I don't know what it is or how to fix it. I'm alone and I'm lonely. I know your advice can be brutal, Dan, but what do I have to lose?

You might not ever meet anyone," said Hobbes. Maybe we're damaged, maybe we're all saving ourselves for a Hemsworth, but spending our adult lives and twilight years without a romantic partner is a real possibility. It just is. And it's not just gay men. In Going Solo: More than 50 percent of adult Americans are single and live alone, up from 22 percent in Some are unhappy about living alone, but it seemed that most—at least according to Klinenberg's research—are content.

Whether you allow your lack of a soul mate to make you bitter, desperate, or contemptuous is not. So be happy for the young jerks coupling up and settling down. Learn to take rejection gracefully—the way you want it from the dudes you're turning down—and when you go on a date, start with the specificity of the person sitting across from you, not what you need from him. He could be your Disney prince, sure.

But he could also be your museum buddy or your podcast cohost or your afternoon 69er or something you haven't even thought of yet. I am a year-old gay male.

I am hugely overweight and have not had much experience with men. I go on a variety of websites trying to make contact with people. However, if anyone says anything remotely complimentary about me, I panic and run. A compliment about my physical appearance? I shut down the profile.

I don't like being like this. I just believe in being honest.