Gay and loneliness
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So I thought those were my two options: this fairy-tale life I could never have, or this gay life where there was no romance.”
James remembers the exact moment he decided to go into the closet. I’ve also been in and out of therapy more times than I’ve downloaded and deleted Grindr.
“Marriage equality and the changes in legal status were an improvement for some gay men,” says Christopher Stults, a researcher at New York University who studies the differences in mental health between gay and straight men.
Taking time to identify and separate our internalized expectations from our authentic selves creates space for connection to emerge.
The journey inward is both practical and reflective—practical in noticing patterns and making choices to engage differently, reflective in observing the parts of ourselves that have been hidden and gradually integrating them into our lives.
The good news is that we can start small—saying what matters to us with people we trust, even if it feels awkward or uncomfortable at first.
The first, and the one I heard most frequently, is that gay men are shitty to each other because, basically, we’re men.
“The challenges of masculinity get magnified in a community of men,” Pachankis says. Our distance from the mainstream may be the source of some of what ails us, but it is also the source of our wit, our resilience, our empathy, our superior talents for dressing and dancing and karaoke.
If he went into art and still got bullied, could he tell his parents about it?
The trick, Heck says, is getting kids to ask these questions openly, because one of the hallmark symptoms of minority stress is avoidance. A lifetime, or a childhood, can pass without the chance to talk about feelings, desires, or interests—or, what’s more, without having those feelings mirrored or reflected back in any way.
A 2017 article about the epidemic of loneliness among gay men, though nearly a decade old, was a required read in graduate school and continues to strike a chord among gay men today.
The entire article explores a type of loneliness that many gay men continue to face.
A study published in 2015 found that rates of anxiety and depression were higher in men who had recently come out than in men who were still closeted.
“It’s like you emerge from the closet expecting to be this butterfly and the gay community just slaps the idealism out of you,” Adam says. “At the same time, I was watching a ton of gay porn, where everyone was super ripped and single and having sex all the time.
He is certified in HeartMath, Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP), and breathwork facilitation. If one scene isn’t for you, nothing is wrong with you. “I used to come home from work exhausted on a Friday night and it’s like, ‘Now what?’ So I would dial out to get some meth delivered and check the Internet to see if there were any parties happening.
So I thought those were my two options.”
Or, as Elder puts it, being in the closet is like someone having someone punch you lightly on the arm, over and over. But the real effect of the apps is quieter, less remarked-upon and, in a way, more profound: For many of us, they have become the primary way we interact with other gay people.
“It’s so much easier to meet someone for a hookup on Grindr than it is to go to a bar by yourself,” Adam says.
Though he grew up knowing his parents were friends with other queer people, he also still worried about coming out.
“I knew [coming out] was scary and I hated having that stress loom over me — I just needed it to go away,” Max explains to me.
“It is so distracting and nerve-wracking to go about your day with always a part of you feeling like you’re hiding something.
Gay people are now, depending on the study, between 2 and 10 times more likely than straight people to take their own lives. At least 70 percent of gay men now use hookup apps like Grindr and Scruff to meet each other. If you stand up to your boss, or fail to, are you playing into stereotypes of women in the workplace? We replay our social failures on a loop.
The weirdest thing about these symptoms, though, is that most of us don’t see them as symptoms at all.
Or, like a lot of the guys I talked to, they have unprotected sex with someone they’ve never met because they don’t know how to listen to their own trepidation.
Emotional detachment of this kind is pervasive, Pachankis says, and many of the men he works with go years without recognizing that the things they’re striving for—having a perfect body, doing more and better work than their colleagues, curating the ideal weeknight Grindr hookup—are reinforcing their own fear of rejection.
Simply pointing out these patterns yielded huge results: Pachankis’ patients showed reduced rates of anxiety, depression, drug use and condom-less sex in just three months.
Taylor is the founder of Inner Heart Therapy, where he provides online therapy across multiple states.
Last updated and reviewed for accuracy: September 29, 2025 by Taylor Garff, M.Coun, LCPC, CMHC, LPC