Friendships with gay men vs Friendships with women

I will say that while my experience of gay men has been quite different my experience of straight men has been rather similar. It seems to me that the main way I come off to straight guys is that I just don't give a f#ck, and in my experience that's something straight men very much admire. I've always said that being gay wasn't for sissies but I never expected that I'd be known as the ballsy one in groups of guys. The funny thing is that I actually care a great deal what many people think about many things but they just for the most part aren't the things that straight guys worry about, so I come off as not giving a fuck. I think it's kind of hysterical but it works out pretty well as far as friendship with straight guys.

 

Didn't you use to not befriend guys that you didn't find attractive though?

Threads like this have me bouncing from 1) wanting to introduce you to all the wonderful and thoughtful gay men I know 2) knowing you wouldn't like them because you would probably push them away because they don't tick all of the boxes you require from people.

It all has to come from what @Filip said right? The trauma of wanting to be liked by "the gays" and being deadly afraid of being rejected by the community who is supposed to be there for you. But then if you all stay away and don't help us create the communities you want to see then you never get to meet the caring and thoughtful gays who have dealt with their trauma and can see past the bullshit.

And then most people have no idea how to make friends and confuse intimacy of connection with a love connection.

I guess my only advice is to stop seeing the majority of gay men as "them" who have a problem. We literally have so many guys on here with the same complaint as you that you would think you would all find each other already. So my guess is that if we all (me included obvi) accept our own fault of the toxicity we contribute to the community and then take it up on ourselves to create something better then I have hope more people will feel connected and the like.

Right? I mean there is no reason why I can't hang with straight guys, but trauma of it all just keeps me away from them for the most part. I can barely handle hanging out with my sisters husband. It would be ridiculous to say "yeah, all straight men suck" because clearly you all have had wonderful experiences.

It personally doesn't affect me though so its not something that I actively work to surpass. Creating safe and supportive queer spaces is where most of my time goes.

But if the same thing applies to how you experience gay men then maybe if you deal with that trauma you can escape that narrative that is clearly not helping you find joy.

I need to find some research on gay friendships.

 

Yeah, very much the same thing here.
After I came out, I just progressively stopped worrying about a ton of other things, too. To the point where I'll just generally hop into any situation I feel I can be remotely of use, and will voice any opinion that could add to the discussion.
I was fairly flabbergasted the first time I discovered someone asked for me specifically on a certain project because I was "willing to fearlessly do whatever it takes to ensure a team's success". I used to be the gray mouse in the back!

The caveat is, however, that I did need to come out to gain that ability. It really broke a dam in how much I care about what other people think of me.
Except, apparently, gay guys xD

It's interesting that you phrase it as "not giving a f#ck is something straight men very much admire". Would you say that's something different for gay men?

 

I think it is different. I think straight guys particularly admire the whole no f#cks to give thing. I think, at least in the States, straight men police their thoughts and feelings more than any other demographic (with the exception of closeted gay men) and I think that a lot of them just find it all exhausting projecting masculinity and not being gay all the time. So actually I do think it's particular to them. The other thing is that I don't think I come off that way to gay men. A good portion of the whole attitude that straight guys see in me is simply the fact of being openly gay--I pretty regularly just put out there everything that most straight guys are afraid people will think about them. Most of the gay guys I know are fully out so that's just par for that particular course. The other thing is that in straight contexts I really kind of don't give a f#ck. I mean I would like to be liked and respected but there's sort of a weird distance there--the fact of the matter is that my main friend group is gay men and I've kind of got enough friends. Friendships with straight men just kind of happen to me. Don't get me wrong--two of my best friends at the moment are straight guys but I really don't seek that out. So I'm kind of queued up to look like I don't care and then I really kind of don't care.

On the other hand, as a whole I really actually do like gay men so on some level I guess I do care. I also don't think gay men are generally looking for people who don't care but rather for people who actually can care. I think the communities end up valuing very different things. As luck would have it I think I come off the "right" way to both...

 

Okay, tons of thoughts now suddenly. Apologies for not seeing your excellent post earlier, @smurf

You know? This paragraph caused something of a breakthrough in my thinking.

I honestly think that, in my case at least, 1) would be highly desirable, and option 2) would be exceedingly unlikely.


Because “introducing me to”, is what would make the difference. I know you (well, from online, but we still go back a couple years, nay?). You know some of both mine and your friends’ hobbies, quirks and hangups.

So that mere act of “introducing me to” would act like a sort of a bridge. You know how to prepare both parties, and you can give feedback or hints on how to approach the other person. And you can even do an after action report on “well, maybe you could have done this or that a bit differently”.


And if I’m honest, even if I can now, by myself, socially bulldoze my way in to all but the most resistant groups of straight men, honesty bids me to admit that I learned how to do that from a couple of more experienced people. They saw something in me and didn’t let up until I joined them for all sorts of occasions. First I was the guy they introduced to their friends. Then I was the friend they introduced their new friends to. And now I’m kind of a fixture in the relevant circles anyway, so I don’t need their intervention. I know all of the tips and tricks just fine.


And if I had even one gay mentor in my life, this would probably, by now, be true for groups of gay people as well.


I’m jealous of people who can just approach a group of people, but I’m not natively one of them. So interacting with gaggles of gays always felt like driving into a wall. But maybe I’ve been approaching it wrongly all along. Where to find such a singular gay mentor is a bit of an open question for now, but maybe it’s a more valid angle of approach.


(Also, I’m all too well aware of the irony where I was an advisor on this very website for years. One could say that to many people, I WAS the gay mentor. But apparently being one and having one aren’t the same. Much in the way that Moses didn’t make it into Israel himself either)

You know what’s weird, though? I DO feel part of the GLBT community. If a colleague talks smack to my face about anything involving it, I’ll launch into an impassioned defense. I may have never gone to Pride, but I have defended it in public (hell, even in places like the lunchroom at work) more often than I can count. I feel like I am consistently seeking out the role of minority voice. In straight groups, I am occasionally seen as radically queer in my opinions.

I try to be a great ambassador of the queers to the straights. Just not an ambassador who ever visits the home country xD

Word. It is painful to me to see how the Belgian LGBT community seems to be slowly dying and getting absorbed into other things. It seems like every time I do some online searching, less and less groups and places survive. Some with, I dare say, startlingly passive aggressive goodbye messages saying basically “well, we had a good thing, but no one cared enough to keep it going”.

And it does kill me inside to be part of the problem.


Also, I suppose it does prove that there’s a lot of other people like this out there. You wonder why we don’t find each other already, but the answer to that is fairly logical, in my view. The only place where to find each other is the very place we don’t go to.

Interesting way of putting it. I mean, I have the same, but in reverse? Every time I failed at interacting with gay people, my quite straight group of friends was there to help me through the trauma and make me feel normal again.

(I could tell a whole story about my last attempt at going to Pride, but suffice to say it ended with me in a foetal ball on my bed without even making it as far as the train station, and my friends then taking me to a bar and being all supportive of me)


So in a way, maybe I’ve been training, nay, even REWARDING myself by this cycle? In a twisted way, every time I’m traumatised by attempts at gay socialising, I can retreat to what is, by now, a perfectly safe space of support and care. To some extent, the crisis is welcome just because I already know the support will be awesome too.

Just in an ironic way, the gay/straight nature of the groups have become reversed for me vs you.

If you find any, please do share! It’s easy to find studies about the many benefits of minority social circles and how they alleviate minority stress, but somewhat harder to find out why in some cases or for some people it just fails to work as intended.

I’ve already read some great stuff by searching for topics like “GLBT community connectedness”, and also by looking for “intra-community stress”. Even if it wasn’t a cure for my issues, there’s some progress made in the field at least.



Anyways. Thanks. This thread has been more useful to me already than years of trying to brute force the issue.

 

Honestly, I have no idea how you are attracting so many negative people. Truly boggles my mind.

I have never met any person as toxic as you are describing. Like, in general. No wonder you hate it.

Have you ever asked these people why they are being so negative? Or did you sit through the whole date with them? I'm sorry that you have had to deal with such cruel people.

I guess my curioisty kicks in when you say things like that.

You say "gay guys seem" and not "we seem" which I think its interesting.

Do you see yourself as part of the gay community?

I mean, I think you got most of the answer which is trauma.

Being lgbt is traumatic. Most of us spend our 20s dealing with that trauma. So you have a bunch of people treating their own trauma trying to heal and at the same time trying to form connections.

My advice is to heal your own trauma and then find people who have deal with theirs or are trying. Only way truly.

 

You know, it DOES come to mind that what you're describing are two radically different social situations, with different goals.


Your friends are there to support you. To build you up. To give you confidence. So they're doing just that.

Does it mean that they secretly yell your name during sex with their boyfriends? Maybe not exactly. But that doesn't mean they're not honest. If matters were different, they really would consider dating you.
But the objective of hanging out with friends is making each other feel better, so that's what they're doing!


Meanwhile, date-guy is trying to assess compatibility for a longer-term relationship. Relationships rarely end over deep similarities, rather over differences. So it's only natural he's trying to probe these differences in outlook and experience, to see if they are or could become an issue.

That doesn't mean he went about it perfectly, but it strikes me as... not a weird topic for a date. It's definitely something my (at that point aspiring) boyfriend and I talked about before we got together. Not to find fault, but just because not ever having had a relationship is ever so slightly unique in your late twenties, and it was good to see how much of an issue it was.
If the other is unreasonably defensive about it, it could be a red flag, after all.


Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying they're right and you're wrong. But just that this sort of topic is, for better or worse, something to accept as a fact of life.
And in settings like dates, it might be more about how defensive (or not) you are, rather than the exact circumstances. As I learned, any drawback can be rephrased as a good thing in excess.


On another note, this thread has not been far from my mind in the last week or so. And I think I'm closer to narrowing down why I find straight guys easier than gay guys.

And it's mostly that with straight people, I know what they want from me. Which is mostly fun, cameraderie, and a feeling of "we're in this together". And that as long as I'm not coming on to them, they're OK with "gay topics" and even like having someone they can show some emotion to.
And over time, I have learned to provide that, and read their body language well enough to interpret exactly how to react.

Meanwhile, I just never developed that with my fellow gays. I don't know what they want from me, nor to read their often slightly different body language (well, not in gay-dominated spaces, at least). Which I am guessing leads to me coming across as weird to them, too.
I'm probably too disinterested at some points and weirdly awkward or defensive on others.
For now, I don't really have a way around that yet, except more trial and error to eventually get comfortable with it all. Once I manage to finally gather enough courage to try xD

 

This is a very compelling thread. My boyfriend has had mostly all straight women friends. I think I am the only non-straight guy who he consider a friend. And, I think our age difference is part of that. The judgement of other gay men his age, while imagined or real, seems to be an issue. With me, there just isn't any of that.

So, I have been introducing him to my gay friends and it is going really well. I think I may be a bit disarming because I am clueless about gay behavior. So, maybe the fear some of you have of not being accepted is preventing you from being available for friendship?

Having seen my friend begin to navigate gay and straight male friendships is encouraging.

In my case, no one expects me to know how to be a gay guy so they tease me but cut me some slack. I get the feeling that most of these guys would be the same with a younger guy.

The obnoxious ones just make a lot of noise but they can be ignored. It's the same with any demographic.

 

I honestly think you should be offended.

Its your date. What kind of questions do you want to have? What would make the dating thing stop feeling like an interrogation?

When I was single I hated dating the mainstream way. It doesn't work for me. My type of dating? I enjoy getting together, hooking up, and then start to talk to each other afterwards while we cuddle. Then continue the conversation as we cook dinner and then watch a movie. A lot of people would HATE that, but its what works for me. I don't date anyone who doesn't enjoy that dance because then we won't be compatible either way.

Some people highly disagree wit that, but that's how I met my husband. It was that interaction that made me fall madly in love with him and it allowed us to create our own script of how we want to get to know other people.

I would invite you to write your own script if what you are doing is not making you happy.

Ever considered group therapy? That might be a good thing to try.

I just highly doubt it that you apparently live in a city where EVERY SINGLE gay person sucks...except for you?

Its just not statistically possible.

I met a guy maybe a year ago for drinks and hooking up. We had an okay time, but getting to know him later on he was just so angry at the local gay community where I live. He had a horrible couple interactions with gays who made him feel like utter shit and ever since he just says Orlando sucks.

When I told him my experience he pretty much called me a liar, but then he also didn't show up to any of the events that I invited him too.

This is to say, I think this is a convenient story you are telling yourself so you don't have to try harder to find gay guys who you like. If you write off a whole city, then you get a free pass. Its all their fault, they all suck, and its better to just not interact with them. But I could be wrong. I mean, this is all based on this thread alone.

Okay, interesting take. Never thought about this before.

So a lot of straight guys struggle to befriend women because they have no idea how to interact with more feminine people. Straight guys usually keep it fairly light topics with a lot of jokes, etc while women tend to be socialized to be more expressive, talk way more about emotions, etc.

Would you say that rings some truth to you?

haha you crack me up. I still think that an annual EC gathering should have been a thing long ago. At least local chapters.

Just feels completely an utterly helpless just feeling like I pat you both in the back and say "that sucks" lol When I know for a fact that it could be SO FUCKING MAGICAL.

 

I originally thought this type of thing would be super weird when I started dating, but honestly, it's a much more authentic way of doing it. The first 1-5ish dates doing it the normal way, both people are being fake to each other the entire time and trying to seem perfect, hiding all their flaws etc. hoping to win more dates. You never actually learn who they really are until dating them for over a month.

When the first date is a hookup, it seems to get all the awkwardness and fakeness out of the way really fast. At that point it's like, why bother being fake, we already had sex anyway so there's no point lying about ourselves or keeping secrets now.

As an out-of-towner who has interacted with the Orlando gay community a few times now...I can definitely see where that guy was coming from. The entire city doesn't suck obviously, but compared to other places the bad parts of the gay community there really jump right into your face immediately. For example when I first opened the apps there to see who was around, I was pretty surprised to instantly see that 30% of the people on the app were openly trying to sell, buy, or find people to use hard drugs with them in their profiles. We have drug people on the apps in Tallahassee too obviously, but it's nowhere near as prevalent and in-your-face as Orlando where profiles were using drug slang all over the place like "looking to get spun" "party and play" or the thing where they capitalize every T on their profile for no reason, which stands for Tina, aka crystal meth.

Due to it being a tourist area, a ton of the gay community there seem to be people on vacation too, and they seem a lot more willing to treat people like crap knowing they'll be gone in a week anyway. Those are the two groups of people that reach out to you instantly without having gay-friend connections to rely on in Orlando apparently, so I totally see how the guy had horrible interactions. It got a lot better once I dug around a while in person and found decent people to hang out with there, but if someone gives up after their bad experiences they'd never see that side of the community.

 

And this is fairly true. There are straight people EVERYWHERE unlike only 10% of the population being gay (and thats the generous number). So it makes sense why its easier.

You also get to invite straight people to events where you all feel safe and can be totally okay. Many of those events are not safe for many lgbt people.

And all that said, straight people try REALLY hard to create community.

Rotary International, Kiwanis club, American Legion, car themed clubs, country clubs etc are all created by straight people to find each other. They have meet ups, they try to find each other and they try really hard.

Talk to straight guys who have the hardest time having true friendship with girls. Some have the hardest time dating and there are thousands of them around. Its nuts.

This is just to encourage you that.... you might have some slight resentment to being gay and seeing the other side as greener?

Oh, yes. Its bad. Most people don't use that app here. 80% of my friends don't

But the actual local community is pretty freaking awesome. I mean, we survived Pulse like a fucking champ. Other communities would have struggled to react as swiftly as we did. Everything was coordinated by leaders on the ground and the local government relied on us and followed our lead.

It was our organizing for years that allowed to to rebound from Pulse so quickly. That shit comes from years of amazing activists creating the right environment. Its the shit that people that stay at home and don't get involved take for granted because they know someone else will take care of it.

But yeah, on the apps is fairly bleak. We are working on a project right now to try and change this though. Mainly inspired by threads on EC like this one. I will never be able to show you guys, but I think you would all have enjoyed it haha

 

I would tend to think that most places would look pretty bleak if you confused the apps for the community...

 

Whoa, this thread is like a blast from the past. I return to it after 24h and already so much more to think of!

Don't feel helpless or useless, here! I think you (and the other posters) are doing a great job!
It's a self-help website after all. You can't just fix people's problems for them, but you're doing a pretty good job at support and advice.
This is an issue I've been dealing with for about ten years, so fixing that in a couple weeks is a tall order.

But the best compliment I can give is that I feel like I'm at least closer to just giving the whole "going out and meeting other gay people" another shot. Closer than I have ever been in the last decade. Regular reminders that there are people out there that ARE having a great time is a definite help.

So it's going in the right direction. Don't lose hope for me, and I promise to amaze you one day!

Also, I lol'd at "you both". I DO feel like I kinda invaded this thread. It seems like I share an issue with @Devil Dave, but I am aware the specifics are different. Do let me know if I'm hogging your thread unduly, Dave!

An interesting question. And I suppose it is somewhat true, but also somewhat not.

It definitely isn't, in the way that I don't limit myself to the "light, jokey" topics. Not around women, but also not around men. I don't think I have any taboos for topics, and I can fairly easily adapt to whatever topic is on the table.
Sure, I can joke around in a sports bar or the company lunchroom with "the guys", but I have discussed deep topics with those same guys, like the anxieties they feel about having kids, how they all have secret fears about their relationships, and even topics like infidelity and depression (if coming out has taught me anything, it is that straight guys are generally gagging for another guy to open up to). I have no problem discussing a similar set of topics with female friends and colleagues.
And as I mentioned above, my very best friend is gay himself, and I think we know more of each other than even our respective boyfriends do.

But it is true in the sense that I have a very bad grasp of body language. Those myriad of signs people give to synchronise their conversations just pass me by unless I am with people I have extensive experience with.
So while I'm not afraid of any topic, any group that is not the one I have a lot of experience in, is going to be stressful. I'm constantly looking for signs telling me that the other party isn't getting bored, or that they want to hear more (or take over). And I definitely try to avoid uncomfortable silences. For whatever reason, those happen more frequently with women, and EVERY TIME I have talked to gay people (excepting my best friend. We're never not talking xD).



To give a very specific example: the last time I really made an attempt to join a gay group. It was a local sports group. After several months of obsessively stalking their website, stalking their member's facebook pages, learning all I could (hey what else was an isolated gay guy to do with his spare time), I decided to join up for the swimming tryouts.
Those went... pretty well, actually. They were prepared to put me in a much higher level than the typical newbie. Some of them were cute, all of them seemed friendly. So far so good, right?
Well, not exactly. I did well in the actual water, but the post-training conversations, I drowned.

It wasn't for lack of trying on both sides. A couple people really did make an effort to involve me in their conversations. They were interested in where I was coming from, what I was like, all of that. But the second the topic got to "being gay", things just got awkward.
I hadn't even come out to anyone but my brother, while most of them had been out for years. I didn't know anything about the local gay scene, so any story or question referenceing local gay celebrities tended to lose me partway through. I didn't know any of the local slang (one of the drawbacks of the internet: you learn English gay slang, but are still clueless about any of the terms in your own bloody language, lol). I wanted to switch to topics I was more used to, but I tried to also be mindful that to many of them this was clearly a rare place to be themselves, and so my "straight bro" approach was not going to win me any favors.

Awkward silences happened with alarming frequency. And all my mind was telling me was "This is your first impression and you're blowing it! These guys have their act together and just looking at their eyes, it's clear they all know how clueless you are and how much easier their evening would be if they didn't have to haul around your dead weight!". In short, the same feeling I had had three months before at a gay club where all of my conversations with locals fell flat. Or that gay bar where even the bartender wouldn't engage me in more than a "so what are you ordering?". Or that time a gay classmate took me to a club and then proceeded to leave me to my own devices while he was off flirting with other people.

So I pretended to have another appointment, professed loudly that I had a good time, and that I definitely would be back, and shut the door behind me forevermore. And I do hope they were the better for it.

Now, I know what you're going to say. That this is a ridiculous story and I am being dramatic and that I overreacted and that none of the above is bad. And intellectually, I know that.
But even eight years hence, just the thought of going out and giving a gay group another try, is filling me with a deep dread. That feeling of "You're going to mess up another first impression, Filip. These people are going there for a night of fun among friends and their evenings will be all the better for not having you interfere in them!". It's not rational, but that doesn't help. All it does is make it impervious to rational arguments.


I'm not even sure what it would take to snap me out of it, really. At this point, probably I'd need a chaperone. Someone who picks me up at my doorstep, acts as my social guide/facilitator for an entire evening, takes me back home, and then offers me about two hours worth of feedback on everything that happened. All the while ignoring my pleas about this being a horrible mistake and that I'd rather go home.
It's outrageously unreasonable to ask. Especially when there's other people out there with real problems and real trauma.
I have straight friends who did that for me when I was an awkward teen, but I don't even know where to find someone who could do that in the gay society. And I can't use my best friend because he lives in NYC. And my boyfriend is also from the US with no real knowledge of the gay community in Belgium. They're supportive, but not in a hands-on way.

So the only road left is to brute force it somehow. It is just hard overcoming a cultural barrier without an "inside agent"


And phew. That was a long thing to write. This might be the most brutally honest I have ever been on the topic. I probably didn't even answer your question. But any input would be highly welcome.

Well, I'm glad I never tried the apps, now. My phone is still a gold star virgin to them xD

Don't discount the option of ever showing me the solution. Orlando is on my list of places to see! I might hop by at some point on my way to Disney or Cape Canaveral!

But also, if you crack it, I would be highly interested to know how. Because as I said upthread, I am somewhat convinced that for every happy member of the scene, there's one or two sitting at home being hurt. Which is a chilling thought if ever there was any.