Patricia Redlich

Thursday, February 4, 2010

I'm Gay And Lonely

13th January 2008


Question
It's the day after Christmas, the time of the year when there's real pressure on family to come together. As a gay man I don't know what I'm celebrating anymore and I'd rather not be here, with my parents, brothers and sisters. I find the whole thing stifling and I just don't fit in. The trouble is that I'd be on my own if I tried to do something different. I consider myself to be independent, but come Christmas all that seems to change.

It's a time when other people take stock of their lives, and talk about the future. But I have no significant other in my life, so I'm very alone, and this shows at this time of year. My family are thoughtful and invite me around, but I have no real affinity with them. They seem to speak another language, one that revolves around their neighbours and their values. I feel like one of those poor old single uncles, an identity which is forced on me because I am gay.

It all seems so soulless, and because I'm now 40 years old I feel all washed up in terms of ever having anyone in my life. The cycles of loneliness I feel around Christmas are just getting worse as the years go by. I do see a counsellor. But at the end of the day, if you are alone on Christmas Day, even in a house full of people, what progress is that, when what you're really doing is crying out for a partner who truly knows you.

Answer
Yes, Christmas can be a time of reckoning. We are away from work, but are not away on holidays. We're with family, who love us but are not soul-mates. Since often all we have in common are family ties, we talk superficially, attempting to communicate across everyday banalities like bin collections. In the absence of articulating our innermost thoughts, we're lonely. And end up making false comparisons between our lives and those of the others. That's Christmas en famille - well very often anyway. The glue which holds families together is powerful, but not necessarily a question of emotionally intimacy - at least not until the chips are seriously down.

You do understand, don't you, that what you felt this Christmas had really nothing to do with you being gay. Your letter would have made just as much emotional sense if you'd been married with three children but unhappy about your job prospects, or your lack of an adequate sex life with your wife, or your eldest son who was beginning to be wayward. The point is, you had time on your hands, and your essential loneliness surfaced, compounded, of course, by the fact you had nobody you felt you could truly talk to.

We keep ourselves busy not just because we need to earn a living, look after our health, or conquer the daily chores of self-sufficiency. We do so to fill the gap in our sense of ourselves. We're busy in order to keep loneliness at bay.

Personally I've always hated that neatly packaged distinction between loneliness and being alone so beloved of psychologists, philosophers and poets. Yes I know that in an ideal world we'd all be mature enough to comfortably withstand the absence of others. We should also be able to confidently move through a crowd, be it family gathering, a friend's house party, or charity event - doing nothing more than some social nattering and with nobody special to smile at across the room. It's just hard to be that complete. People don't go seeking partners just for fun. Like you said, we need to be seen. And a significant other is most likely to do just that.

What I do believe strongly, however, is that we can engineer being seen, or truly known. And it starts within. You've to learn to be comfortable in your own skin. Or as one analyst once put it to me, you've to learn to truly occupy your couple of square meters of space. You need to be there, not solidly obstructive, but strongly present. In order to deal with emotional damage, we devise strategies of survival, which are immensely creative and should not be knocked. Unfortunately, such strategies are invariably about hiding our true selves in some shape or form. That's what fear does to a person.

Thus we live shadow lives, to a greater or lesser extent. And when in hiding, we cannot be known, or properly seen, by anyone. That's what makes us so lonely. The task therefore, is to shake off that shadow self, or to soften it at least. The funny man may then become serious, the straight-laced more daring, the shy more outgoing, the entertaining one more left of centre stage. It's not about going out to grab the limelight, but rather about having the courage to show yourself, in the process daring to make mistakes.

Yes, it's hard. Because first and foremost we have to look at ourselves with true compassion, heal the emotional hurt with that compassion, and slowly trust ourselves to emerge. And if all that sounds far too heavy for a cold January morning, you could start by saying what you think or feel - even just once a day. Just fail to pretend in one simple communication. If someone asks you how you are, for example, don't do your usual 'I'm fine'. Say you feel lousy, if that's the truth. You don't then have to elaborate, if they probe, just shrug. No, I'm not being flippant, just trying to lighten things as a way of letting you know it's possible to break the isolating silence. Take care.
 
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