Loneliness

On this page, you will find the most recently updated draft of my book on Queer Men and Loneliness, posted as I progress through the writing.
I am making this text available to everyone for free on my website while I am still in the process of working on it. I hope you enjoy the reading!

You can also follow Season 4 of Mental Health Much? to follow along as my friends McKenzie, Dale and myself are reading through the book chapter by chapter.

All rights reserved. Please respect the text as my intellectual property.

Introduction

Being a queer man, a psychotherapist and somebody who loves to write, I always had this narrative for myself that I would one day produce a book on gay men’s health. A series of irrelevant life events — which included the feeling that I now mastered English, my second language, enough to write dozens of pages — finally led me to believe that the time to start was now. When I sat down in front of my notepad for my initial brainstorming, however, I quickly realized that I did not know where to start. I had the sudden realization that “gay men’s health” was much too vast of a topic to be encompassed in one book. After all, bibliotherapy for straight people fills thousands and thousands of books. Nobody would ever imagine that one volume could contain the entirety of the complex (heterosexual, white, cisgender) human life experience. But when it is time for minorities to write about ourselves, there is this idea that our whole identities, stories and lives should be covered in one text. Hopefully a text not much longer than a few hundred pages, which will probably be filed in a different section of our libraries than “regular” self-help books. I have to admit that I immediately fell into this trap. I thought I needed to write about queer masculinity in its entirety, while not repeating the messages and stereotypes contributed by my predecessors. The enormity of the task froze me in my chair, and the book you are now consulting almost didn’t exist. I was so unsure of where to start. 

Then an idea came to me. What if I approached queer mental health the same way straight people have always approached mental health for themselves: one topic at the time? We are, after all, deserving of an abundance of literature on the topic of our well-being. And I am hoping that this tome will contribute to that wealth, alongside volumes already written and yet to come. 

The next question was, obviously, where should I start? Which topic would be relevant to my friends, to my queer family, and to my clients? For those who do not remember, in March of 2017, Michael Hobbes published a groundbreaking article on loneliness named Together Alone for the Huffington Post. Almost everyone I knew who worked in my field talked about it. Whether people agreed or disagreed with Hobbes regarding all the content of this piece, the word loneliness had entered the queer men’s minds. So many of us now wondered: “is it loneliness, this uncanny feeling I am constantly experiencing?” And I could see, as a therapist who worked mostly with queer masculine people, that the concept was on the top of the list of priorities for so many of my clients. For a few months, this article was shared online more than I had ever seen any gay text shared before. At the time, like everyone else, I avidly read the words of Hobbes. It put into words a new way of conceptualizing our lives and our feelings. “Loneliness” has since been at the heart of the conversations regarding gay men’s health. I even had the chance to put together a peer-support group on this very topic in the year following the publication of this article, and the second episode of my podcast on queerness and mental health addressed this very topic. The word just kept following me around, demanding that I keep giving it attention, seemingly resonating with so many of the people in my life. Both on the personal and the professional side of it. 

In the fall of 2021, I was asked to facilitate an online conversation on loneliness for a peer-lead group of gay men in Toronto. While preparing for this talk, I thought it would be fun to mimic one of my favourite Youtuber, Jenny Nicholson, and to create a numbered list. I came up with my “top 10 reasons why I think queer men are lonely,” accompanied by ten strategies to make changes. The talk was a huge success and lasted much longer than I anticipated. The next day, the participants asked if I could share my notes with them, so I put together a document with those ideas. As I sent it to the friend who had organized this event, I mentioned, as a joke: “This feels like the outlines of a really good book.” To which my friend enthusiastically replied: “I would read it, for sure.”

And just like that, I had my book. 

What to expect. And how to read. 

When it comes to reading about mental health, I find structure to be of the utmost importance. I like to know where I am and where the author is taking me. Since I had already created a draft version of this for my friend’s talk, I decided not to reinvent the wheel and to keep the exact same organization I had already produced. In the first part of this book, you will find ten reasons why I have seen queer men struggling with loneliness. And the second half will contain ten possible solutions to guide and support you through forging more meaningful connections. The whole book will be accompanied by examples inspired by my years as a therapist, following the journey of nine hypothetical group participants in the loneliness program I have created and facilitated through the years. 

These two lists will, quite obviously, not cover everything that you might be feeling. Some of the solutions might not apply to you at all, whereas some of the things you already do successfully may not be included in this book. But hopefully, you will be able to find some of yourself in this publication. 

Although I encourage you to read this book in a linear way when possible, I think it will be quite possible to jump from section to section as you see fit. Especially after a first read through. If you are anything like me when it comes to self-help books and bibliotherapy, it is quite likely that you will never read this book from cover to cover. By numbering my thoughts and vision, I am hoping that this text will be easier to follow and to navigate. Nonetheless, I have numbered my list in a way that builds the knowledge linearly. Starting with the points that, according to my opinion, are larger concepts that might inform the rest of the book. I will also refer to concepts that have been explored earlier in the text. Especially in the second section, when I will discuss solutions. Therefore, jumping ahead to the solution section might make for challenging reading. All of this being said, this is your book and your experience, so I encourage you to interact with it the way you prefer. 

On top of my years of training, this book will also be informed by observations from my personal and professional life. However, no examples given in this book will be based on one person in particular, and any clear resemblance to any one person in particular will be due to chance. This book contains no identifiers from the clients I have worked with, and the lives of the nine personas that we will follow in this text are completely made up. I hope that readers will be able to recognize themselves in the themes addressed in this text, and even identify deeply with some of the stories, but be assured that the privacy and confidentiality of my friends, family and clients are of the utmost importance for me. 

About language. 

You may have already noticed that I use the words “gay men” and “queer men” in a way that is seemingly interchangeable. I, myself, identify both as a gay man, and as a queer man. And although these two identities have a lot in common, they are not quite exactly the same in my head. I am, at times, mindful of the way I use them. In my interpretation — which is not perfect nor has to be the world’s most absolute truth — I tend to use “queer men” to be more inclusive. The expressions “queer men” and “queer masculine people,” to me, include more than the experience of cisgender gay men (more on identity later). In this book, I will sometimes use “gay men” and “queer men” interchangeably, simply to diversify my language, while at other times, I will have a rationale for picking one over the other — maybe just a gut feeling, even.

Language is as powerful as it is important. I remember when I first came out, I met older men who were very categoric about being “homosexual,” but certainly not “gay.” Gayness, for them, was still too associated with a community and a way of being that didn’t feel like them. Probably connected with a slur that they did not want to identify with. For them, being homosexual meant having sex with other men, while the word gay was too effeminate, too easy to pick up on, too othered. This experience shaped my vision of these two words. Even to this day, although I have let go of the internalized femmephobia, male homosexuality to me refers to a man who has sexual and/or romantic encounters with other men. Whereas gay refers to someone who is part of the larger community, who identifies as gay and who is involved in the scene. You know, how a square is always a rectangle, but a rectangle is not always a square? (Although one does not have to be sexually active to identify as gay or queer.) I, myself, was always gay. I had grown up in a different time and I didn’t feel the need to distance myself from a community and a culture that I was ready to embrace. 

A bit later in life, I discovered the word “queer.” Word that had apparently been a terrible insult in a language that was never mine while growing up (don’t worry, I most certainly have reclaimed and identified as a “tapette”!) “Queer” first started to be reclaimed in the 1990s by some amazing writers like Teresa de Lauretis, Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler, and the concept has evolved a lot since. Today, I use “queer” in my language mostly as a way to describe otherness in terms of sexuality, gender expression and gender identity. In its simplest form, for me, a queer man could be any man who is not cisgender and heterosexual. This is mostly how I will use the term in my text.

Nonetheless, before we move one, let’s remember for a moment that identities are rarely to be taken “in their simplest form.” Many people who identify as queer and who are queer thinkers, theorists and activists would view queer versus gay not as a square and a rectangle (the way I see gay and homosexual) but as a Venn diagram where some individuals fall in both categories, and others only in one. Because language is so powerful, queerness has developed into its own identity, with communities and rules of its own. These theories about language and identities are not the theme of this book. Loneliness and connections are. For this reason, I will use the simplest form of “queer men” in the following pages; including cis and trans men, trans masculine non-binary people and Two-Spirit people, who do not identify as straight. Including men of all ethnicity, race, physical and mental abilities and HIV status. I hope that all these people will also feel included — at least partially — when I decide to use “gay” instead of “queer.” Trans men who are straight might, however, not recognize themselves as much in this book, since they would navigate different spaces, scenes and communities than the ones described in this volume. 

Additionally, throughout this text, I will alternate between masculine pronouns (he/him) and gender-neutral pronouns (they/them) when illustrating different points with examples. I will also alternate between gendered language and gender-neutral language, for example using the words “boyfriend” and “partner” in different contexts. If you are unfamiliar with the singular use of “they/them” or with gender-neutral language as a whole, this might be a great opportunity to practice this skill. 

About identity.

Writing this book as a cisgender white man, I am quite acutely aware of the position of privilege I am in. If I “wanted,” I could easily erase every trace of political claims around oppressive systems in my book, by stating that this is a text about mental health, and not a political essay. But people are navigating mental health in societies that are racist, classist and transphobic on all systemic levels; from casual interactions with other individuals, to the fabric of our laws, values and institutions. And while I may not be the best person to write on these topics — other writers have done it and will do it much better than myself — I cannot pretend that these systems do not exist. As a good friend once mentioned to me: saying “I am a white cis person who doesn’t know about racism and cissexism, therefore I will remain silent on these topics” is simply no longer acceptable. I say “no longer” as if it ever was acceptable. It was not. 

This book will not be an essay on race and gender. It will be a book on mental health, loneliness and healthy connections. These will remain the main themes I will focus on. I will, however, try my best to be inclusive, without pretending to know what it feels like to be someone who is not me. It would be ridiculous, anyway, to write a book on queer loneliness without taking into account the discrimination that can be seen and felt in our communities. I would be doing a disservice to my readers by pretending that socio-political context, identities and mental health are unrelated topics that can be discussed in a vacuum. 

To begin this complex conversation, I will say that if you are a queer man of colour experiencing racism in our communities, if you are living with disabilities and facing ableism, if you are a trans or non-binary person dealing with transphobia of any kind, or someone living with HIV confronted with serophobia, I hear you, you are valid and your experience of this discrimination is real. These issues may most certainly be additional obstacles when it will be time for you to create and maintain healthy connections. If your own life experiences are not reflected in this book, it is not because I am trying to erase your difference. It is most likely based on my own limitations, and I apologize. Especially if you have been made to feel this way regularly in the past. 

Loneliness. 

It is a typical day at the agency where I work and I am setting up the room for my evening group, accompanied by my co-facilitator Alejandro. Today is session number three, so the participants have already broken the ice and are getting a little bit more comfortable around each other. As per usual, Colin is the first participant to arrive. Colin is a man in his late sixties who has been living with HIV since the ’80s. In order not to feel too isolated, he tends to sign up for every program offered at my agency. I know he is no longer in contact with any member of his family, except one of his nieces — the daughter of the only sister who moved with him from the Philippines when they were teenagers — and that our group programs and volunteering opportunities are some of the few things that take him out of his apartment. On the first week of the program, when introducing himself, he mentioned, with a casualness that felt a little bit forced, that he had accepted his fate. That at his age he had given up on the idea of finding a sexual or romantic partner. Especially since he has not been the most interested in adapting to new technologies. While his warm demeanour and his genuine smile have quickly charmed everyone in the group, I wonder if he will manage to convince any of the other participants to start volunteering with him at the end of the 12-week program. 

Colin is quickly followed by Nick, a guy in his mid-thirties with a master in literature who has been rejected — and at times, fetishized — for his weight his whole life. As a fat man, he has developed a wall of anger towards our communities which at times leaves him with little of the social abilities I know he possesses under the hurt. Nick has arrived early enough to pick one of the chairs without armrests and to tuck himself in his usual corner, where I assume he is hoping fewer people will notice his body. I know that he will not leave his chair to grab food with the other participants during the break, or even move around to use the washroom until most of the other guys have left. I greet him, knowing that a 12-week group will not help reduce the stigma he faces every day in our community. The only time he has opened up about his size, so far, he was told by all the other participants that “he was beautiful,” and “he should not let others’ opinion drag him down.” During this disclosure, we both eyed Stephen—the third participant to enter the room—who seemed to have been half a heartbeat away from providing him with unsolicited “healthy lifestyle tips.”

Stephen, pushing his gym bag under his chair and finishing the last sips of his protein shake, is happy to announce to the group that he has relapsed this week, making him four weeks sober from crystal meth. A substance he discovered about eight years ago, mere months after leaving the heterosexual marriage he had trapped himself in for more than a decade, hoping he could change his homosexuality. Handsome, in his mid-forties, and very effectively hiding any sign of aging, he will later disclose that he has downloaded dating apps on his phone again. Craving for a romantic connection, Stephen finds the loneliness of his evenings alone at home to be intolerable. Most of the time, he settles for sex. And crystal meth always comes back on his path at some point or another when he is unable to put the phone down to go to sleep. Although extremely conventionally attractive, Stephen takes rejection harder than anyone else in the group. 

Next to enter the room is our youngest participant, Kenneth. Mixed race black and white, Kenneth says a shy hello to the others and sits in the last empty corner. Quickly, he seeks the attention of Colin and Alejandro, my co-facilitator, to reassure himself that he is not the only person of colour in the room. Kenneth joined the group because he doesn’t feel connected with the gay community at all. He explained that he met his current partner when he was eighteen, and that he now spends his time between his job in an electronic store and smoking joints at home while watching the same old TV shows over and over again. He also mentioned being very nervous when around other gay people. I know he probably had to smoke weed before coming to the group tonight, and although I should remind him that it is better if participants come to the meeting sober, I let it slide for now. Kenneth had never second-guessed his use of marijuana before, but when I asked him what it brought to his life last week, he mentioned that it helped him calm his anxiety, and quiet the voices in the back of his head. The voices telling him he is not good enough. 

Kenneth doesn’t have to wait long for Sanjay and Ari, both South Asians, to enter the room together. Sanjay is a man in his forties, working in IT, who moved to Toronto from Delhi about six years ago. He has been living with his husband — his only support network — for four years. He disclosed in the first session that his partner and him haven’t had sex in more than two years, and that he didn’t care about sex, but was sad that they had also stopped cuddling. Sanjay has an easygoing personality with an easy laughter, but also has a hard time slowing down and listening to others. This often prevents him from being able to read the room, and gives him a tendency to talk at people, instead of talking with people. This, in addition to the clash with his culture of origin, led him to make a few clumsy comments about HIV and gender identity in the previous sessions. Ari, on the other hand, is a fairly quiet second-generation immigrant who lived his whole youth in the suburbs. He joined the group because although he knows a lot of people — from university, gay sports leagues and dating apps — he doesn’t feel like he really connects with anyone. He often notices through social media that his other friends hang out together without inviting him. Ari explains that he has a lot of individual connections, but doesn’t feel like he belongs to a group. He was the first to disclose his HIV status to the group, quickly followed by Colin and Stephen. 

While Kenneth and Nick engage in a polite conversation with Colin, Tan enters the room quietly and settles in one of the two remaining empty chairs. Although being the only trans guy in the group, Tan is connecting nicely with the other participants, generously offering their time and energy to correct and teach Sanjay and the other participants about the specific issues they are facing as a trans man. Always patient when being misgendered. Tan was interested in the group because of their shy personality and their discomfort in larger groups. They mentioned having a hard time fitting in and connecting with other people’s interests, making it difficult to know what to say when surrounded with quirky queer people, and leaving them feeling inadequate socially. Tan also connected with Ari on day one when they both referred to themselves as being huge people pleasers.  

The last person to join is Greg. Oblivious to other participants, Greg takes the last chair and looks directly at me. I know that he will stare in my direction until the group starts and that he has deliberately been waiting until the very last minute before entering the room. Greg is not interested in small talk and no longer sees a reason to make an effort in this group; now that he has decided that none of the other participants could be a potential romantic partner. Greg has joined the group for one reason and one reason alone: he thinks that all of his issues will be fixed once he has found a boyfriend. He is hoping the group will provide him with tools to find a partner, because he “has tried everything.” Since his social skills are not the strongest, he seems to simply copy the behaviours of others around him. For example, when a man on Grindr mentioned that he had met his partner through the gay hockey league, Greg had joined the league as well. In the group, it is hard to make Greg connect with other participants and he doesn’t seem interested in the experience of other group members. Especially if they cannot help him find a boyfriend. Not one for quitting, however, he still joins each session with the hope that he will finally learn the magic recipe to finding love. 

Once the meeting is over, I stay behind with Alejandro, my co-facilitator, who is in his first year of a Master of Social Work. I invite him to sit down and he immediately expresses that he is overwhelmed by the group. He explains that he keeps repressing his instinct to offer “easy” solutions to them, like joining a sports group or updating their Grindr profile. I remind him that Ari and Greg are both in gay sports leagues and are still joining our meetings. Alejandro sighs and confesses that he is actually overwhelmed because, somehow, he relates to everyone and that he wishes he could just help them. He explains that he feels like a fraud in the role of a facilitator while he also grapples with his own loneliness and spends too much time scrolling social media for validation, especially since breaking up with his boyfriend only a month ago. I reassure him that he is doing a great job, and that he does not need to be perfect to become a great social worker. Once he leaves — feeling slightly more cheerful,— I instinctively look at my own phone, getting hit by a small pang of sadness when I see that nobody has texted me in the past two hours. Trying to remind myself that I am seeing friends the next day, I head home. Too socially exhausted to be around people, anyway. 

Whether it is perceived or real, loneliness seems to be afflicting many queer men. However, it is not only of loneliness that I truly want to write about in these pages. To me, as a psychotherapist, “loneliness” is not concrete enough to work with. In my practice, I quickly learned that working directly on someone’s loneliness did not adequately develop in tangible results. That it is actually quite challenging to do. Like Alejandro, my instinct is often to suggest basic solutions. “Have you tried making more friends? Or going out more?”, “You could volunteer or use dating apps on your phone to help you connect with people socially?”, “Have you considered that being alone and feeling lonely are two distinct things?” and some other clichés would immediately come to my mind. But if somebody is feeling deeply and profoundly lonely, the solution hardly seems to throw more bodies their way. It might actually be that this person is having a hard time forging connection with others. Connections that fit their social needs. Connections that are meaningful and varied. Or, even more astonishingly, connections that are healthy. 

Healthy connections come in many shapes and forms. You can have as healthy of a connection with your best friend of several years than with a stranger met on a dating app for a stolen afternoon of casual sex. Obviously, these connections will not serve the same purpose in your life. But this is not to say that they cannot both be healthy, satisfying, and responding to a need you have at the moment. Dr. Alan Downs, in his book The Velvet Rage, described gay men as being highly socially intelligent people. For the most part, I tend to agree with him. We sure create a lot of social structures around our lives (“which party should I go to if I’m an otter? Oh, I thought this one was for gym queens”). Why could it be, then, that so many of us resonate with the word “loneliness” on such a visceral level? Even those of us who are surrounded by friends and partner(s)? Could it be that something in the male queerness experience prevents us from connecting meaningfully and healthily with others? According to Dr. Down, shame, leading to avoidance and self-defeating behaviours, prevents gay men from living to their full potential. This shame is a powerful force in the lives of gay men, and it is often rooted in a sense of feeling different or not belonging. It can affect loneliness in a variety of ways, from a fear of being rejected or ridiculed to a belief that one is inherently flawed or unworthy of love. I concur with Dr. Downs that shame and internalized stigma are definitely part of the puzzle when it comes to loneliness. And I use this explanation as a stepping stone to explore other avenues that may affect queer men and loneliness, on top of shame. The participants in my support group, for example, are most certainly not all facing the same type of challenges, and do not all need the same type of support. This is why, in this book, I decided to explore ten different reasons why loneliness is affecting people from our communities. And how we can make changes to try and connect better with others.

Chapter 1:
The different types of loneliness