I am a gay man in my late 50s and have never been in a relationship. I am so lonely, and the painful emptiness I feel is becoming absolutely unbearable. In my early 20s, I hooked up off and on, but it never developed into anything. I have always told myself thatâs okay; Iâm not a people person or a relationship kind of guy. I have a few lesbian friends but no male friends. I have social anxiety and canât go to bars or clubs. When hookup apps were introduced, I used them infrequently. Now I go totally unnoticed or am quickly ghosted once I reveal my age. Most nonwork days, my only interactions are with people in the service industry. I am well-groomed, employed, a homeowner, and always nice to people. I go to a therapist and take antidepressants. However, this painful loneliness, depression, aging, and feeling unnoticed seem...
Lonely Aging Gay
âIn the very short term, LAG needs to tell his therapist about the suicidal ideation,â said Michael Hobbes. âIn the longer term, well, thatâs going to take a bit more to unpack.â
Hobbes is a reporter for HuffPost and recently wrote a mini-book-length piece titled âTogether Alone: The Epidemic of Gay Loneliness.â During his research, Hobbes found that, despite growing legal and social acceptance, a worrying percentage of gay men still struggle with depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.
Loneliness, Hobbes explained to me, is an evolutionary adaptation, a mechanism that prompts us humansâmembers of a highly social speciesâto seek contact and connection with others, the kind of connections that improve our odds of survival.
âBut thereâs a difference between being alone and being lonely,â said Hobbes. âBeing alone is an objective, measurable phenomenon: You donât have very many social contacts. Being lonely, on the other hand, is subjective: You feel alone, even when youâre with other people. This is why advice like âJoin a club!â or âChat with your waitress!â doesnât help lonely people.â
The most effective way to address loneliness, according to Hobbesâs research, is to confront it directly.
âLAG may just need to get more out of the relationships he already has,â said Hobbes. âHe has a job, friends, a therapist, a life. This doesnât mean that his perceptions are unfoundedâour society is terrible to its elders in general and its LGBTQ elders in particularâbut there may be opportunities in his life for intimacy that heâs not tapping into. Acquaintances LAG hasnât checked in on for a while. Random cool cousins LAG never got to know. Volunteering gigs you fell out of. Itâs easier to reanimate old friendships than to start from scratch.â
Another recommendation: Seek out other lonely guysâand there are lots of them out there.
âLAG isnât the only gay guy who has aged out of the bar sceneâso have Iâand struggles to find sex and companionship away from alcohol and right swipes,â said Hobbes. âHis therapist should know of some good support groups.â
And if your therapist doesnât know of any good support groupsâor if you donât feel comfortable telling your therapist how miserable you are, or if youâve told your therapist everything and they havenât been able to helpâfind a new therapist.
Iâm a fortysomething gay male. Iâm single and cannot get a date or even a hookup. Iâm 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 jerksâand if them, why not me? Hereâs the part thatâs hard to admit: I know something is wrong with me, but I donât know what it is or how to fix it. Iâm alone and Iâm lonely. I know your advice can be brutal, Dan, but what do I have to lose?
Alone And Fading
âAAF said to be brutal, so Iâm going to start there: You might not ever meet anyone,â said Hobbes. âAt every age, in every study, gay men are less likely to be partnered, cohabiting, or married than our straight and lesbian counterparts. Maybe weâre damaged, maybe weâre 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.â
And itâs not just gay men. In Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, sociologist Eric Klinenberg unpacked this remarkable statistic: More than 50 percent of adult Americans are single and live alone, up from 22 percent in 1950. Some are unhappy about living alone, but it seemed that mostâat least according to Klinenbergâs researchâare content.
âMaybe there is something wrong with AAF, but maybe heâs just on the unlucky side of the statistics,â said Hobbes. âFinding a soul mate is largely out of our control. 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 gracefullyâthe way you want it from the dudes youâre turning downâand 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 havenât even thought of yet.â
Follow Michael Hobbes on Twitter @RottenInDenmark and listen to his podcast Youâre Wrong About..., available on iTunes.
I am a 55-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 donât like being like this. I just believe in being honest. And if Iâm honest, Iâm ugly. The face, even behind a big-ass beard, is just not acceptable. I have tried therapy, and it does nothing. How do I get past being ugly and go out and get laid?
Unappealing Giant Loser Yearns
You say youâre ugly, UGLY, but there are some people who disagree with youâthe people who compliment you on your appearance, for instance.
âIâm not sure I even believe in the word âuglyâ anymore,â said Hobbes. âNo matter what you look like, some percentage of the population will be attracted to you. Maybe itâs 95 percent or maybe itâs 5 percent, but they are out there. When you find them, do two things: First, believe them. Second, shut up about it.â
In other words: Just because you wouldnât want to sleep with you, UGLY, that doesnât mean no one wants to sleep with you.
âI remember reading an interview with Stephen Fry, where he said that when he first started out as an actor, people would come up to him and say, âYou were so great in that play!â and his first response would be, âNo, I was terrible,ââ said Hobbes. âHe thought he was being modest, but what he was really doing, he realized later, was being argumentative. Eventually, he started to just say, âThank you.ââ
Hobbes thinks you should try to be like Fry, a big dude with a cute husband: âThe next time someone tells him theyâre into big dudes with beards, donât argue, donât panic, and donât hesitate. Just say âthank youâ and let the conversation move on.â