Sex Addiction. . . More, more, more . . .

Posted on January 28, 2017 by urbanlifeclass

An addict will always get their fix, whatever obstacles are placed before them, and if your fix is sex then the internet is a dealers den. It’s not just immigration hoo-ha that is filling UK newspapers, but Prime Minister Cameron’s demand to block online porn, in ‘order to protect children’, bastard love-child of the so called ‘snoopers charter’.

We’ve heard this message before when homos were banged up in prison, before they were de-criminalised in 1967, in order to ‘protect children’ and that never worked as we weren’t peodophiles, but paid the price for ignorance. Nor will this, but that’s a different story, this blog is about sex addiction costing you more than money, and blocking porn isn’t the answer.

Since 60’s liberation, gay men have notoriously been labeled ‘promiscuous’, in much the same way that society called women that enjoyed sex ‘whores’. Neither viewpoints hold water, nor does a current study by the University of California, published last week, on the respected Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology site, pronouncing that “Sexual desire, not hypersexuality, is related to neurophysiological responses elicited by sexual images ( not sex addiction )”.

This small study of 53 people ( including 13 females ) with no indication of sexuality preferences, has been panned from all quarters as meaningless, even though it hit headlines : in short, it concludes that sex addiction is a fallacy and people are just plain horny. Partners of sex addicts would certainly disagree, with this conclusion.

However, the rise of the internet, has increased opportunity for sexual exploration and therefore sexual compulsive behaviour can become unchecked. My view is that the internet has offered space for sexual and emotional discovery, that encourages the notion that sexuality is not so black or white, that developing grey areas of ‘men who have sex with men’ and bi-curious, have enlightened those who in the past were simply suppressed or confused.

However, sex addiction IS real. You know at least one sexual compulsive who needs more, more more, and it may be you. So where do you begin to arrest this condition? Let’s start here :

Robert Weiss in his book CRUISE CONTROL / Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men, writes on the topic of seeking a cure :

” Many people who read books like this one enter 12 Step programs, seek therapy, and check into treatment centers are seeking ” the answer”. They want to solve all their problems and answer all their questions – as if their addiction were an equation in a maths quiz.

Some will drop out or give up when they find out that they aren’t going to be cured once they figure it out. The problem is that they don’t actually want or know how to solve the problem; somehow they think that having that “Ah-ha” moment of understanding will be enough.

No amount of information is going to stop a sex addict from repeating patterns of problem behavior. You can only meaningfully change your behavior by taking deliberate, ongoing, active, and committed steps toward change. While this and previous chapters have described and discussed understanding sexual addiction, upcoming chapters will focus on creating change. As we move forward, we’ll learn how to make this happen one day at a time. But first, let’s consider how party drugs and other addictive substances become intertwined with sex addiction”.

Change occurs through action not just understanding, and recovery stems from acting out the unfamiliar. Maybe you are in an open relationship where goal posts keep changing or one wants more than discussed when it comes to boundaries. Yet the perception of sex addicts fisting themselves in a selfie or sauna sex salivation is also a fallacy, as as many kinds of sex addicts abound as the range of fetishes on a porn site. Often sexual compulsives are serial relationship finders believing that regular relationship sex will keep them away from pursuing addictive habits, but it rarely works.

Most sex addicts hunt alone anonymously, while many are also romance addicts addicted to the chase, sexting, flirting, grooming, arranging and avoiding feelings of ‘being alone’ and seeking approval. Real approval comes from looking in your own mirror, not outside of it.

In recovery, healthily ‘being alone’ is essential in determining feelings of withdrawal, patterning and self valuation. Many support groups for sex addiction exist, check the net, or purchasing the book above, will at least acknowledge that sexual activity is getting out of hand and can be resolved.

Maybe some chems need to be dropped or reducing alcohol if you use frequently. We know that some things go together like apple pie and custard, but sex addiction also has it’s own companions : and you know what they are and where they lead.

Put a lid on it.

Posted on October 28, 2016 by urbanlifeclass

Do you resort to the silent treatment when you are upset with someone or go hell for leather in a latin way? Is your stance to seethe like a boiling kettle or perhaps one volcanic eruption and it’s over?

Either way anger pushes buttons like grindr on speed dial. Don’t you just love people who express ‘passive aggressive’ under their tongue while ‘mopping & muttering’ cleaning the floor? This is likely to indicate “YOU should have done it”. Inter-personal relationships huh, no wonder they call them a “laboratory of learning”.

Passive aggressive types who can’t express in words what they want, really pushes buttons in those who do the volcanic eruption and it’s over. Trying to decode ‘shoulder shrugging’, ‘don’t know’, ‘not sure,’ ‘I’ll have what you’re having laziness’ can blow the whistle off any kettle in reaction, and there you have it – reacting – rather than responding, never works. Living with others who cause you to blow your top, making you feel irritated, ignored or victimised is difficult, but it’s even more difficult to accept that those feelings are not “given’ to you, you simply choose to employ them, because often you couldn’t get your own way.

Learning to accept the behaviour of others, rather than wish they acted out differently, is the key to emotional balance, and maybe anger is a luxury you can’t afford anymore. It always leaves you short changed. 12 Step Programme material talks about being ‘powerless over people, places and things’ which means we can only change our response to others, not change them. When you accept this at heart, it’s easier not to take things personally, if anger is around you. This reminds me of The 4 Toltec Agreements with Self, but the two that stand out for the solution to other peoples anger toward you, are these :

Don’t take Anything PERSONALLY. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality. When you become immune to the actions and thoughts of others, you won’t be a victim of needless suffering.

Don’t Make ASSUMPTIONS. Find the courage to quietly ask questions and express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings and thrust anger.

Similarly another well read practiced tome, ‘A Course In Miracles (ACIM )’, states that “We are never upset for the reason we think”. This helped me a lot when in emotional turmoil about someone’s behaviour toward me. It stops me in my tracks to recall that what is happening in this moment, be it an angry client, or a late bus when I need it, is that getting angry is unlikely to make the bus arrive and that ACCEPTANCE is the answer to emotional wellness. This also means that when a client or friend is angry ‘they are never upset for the reason they think’ – it’s more about the unhealed back story. Whatever is unhealed in the past, like abandonment, abuse or guilt will resonate like a boiling kettle at some point. You just happened to be standing there. This does not mean that we avoid taking responsibility for our own actions, thoughts and behaviours – we are not exempt- but it does offer the facility to view the bigger picture of a quarrel or internalised angst.

Recovery from codependency also means creating boundaries in order to perceive a situation correctly. Checking out your role in someone’s anger toward you, means yes you might have responsibility here, so if you are wrong own it. If you feel ‘wronged’ question it, then recognise whether, this is ‘their stuff’ or ‘your stuff’. Getting defensive is not a solution but a fuller understanding of the bigger picture, including ‘you are never upset for the reason you think’, and not inviting debate, can end the game. Let feelings pass, see the facts and reconcile later.

There are occasions where anger has relevance. I remember a time in the AIDS years when Larry Kramer rattled gay cages when he said ” gay men weren’t angry ENOUGH” over AIDS and created ACT UP in 1987, a direct action protest organisation over apathy to the solutions of friends dying, with the slogan SILENCE=DEATH. 78 years young, he is still is a fiery, angry, wonderful, beast of passion. So yes there are times when anger has a purpose! Some say we are not vocal enough about rising HIV rates when we live in a world of information about the virus, and the current rise of social media and armchair activism, though often criticised, has at least lent fervour to our spirit of injustice on world events.

Perhaps we need more Larry Kramers’s to remind us of our silence, where it’s wise to express anger and if WE don’t do it – who will?

http://blogcritics.org/book-review-the-four-agreements-by/

http://acim.org in many languages.

This blog of mine was first published in HIM-MAG on October 1st 2013 : http://www.him-magazine.com/2013/10/01/put-a-lid-on-it/

Spit it Out!

Posted on September 20, 2016 by urbanlifeclass

Learning to Express Yourself is a Key to Success.

Many people can’t ask for what they want because they don’t know how to express it. I was one of them. Now look at the word ‘express-ing’, it means fast, speedy and direct. As a kid I had a stammer from god knows when till a teenager and dreaded queues in shops and ticket offices. By the time I was asked what I wanted nothing came out but splutter, shame, public humiliation and deep embarrassment, everything except fast, speedy and direct.

On top of this I had a nervous squint. I contracted meningitis on the spine when I was 6 months old and over the next 12 years was a frequent visitor to brain damage tests with a final conclusion that I will ‘grow out of it’. Well I did when I discovered alcohol & drugs. This masterful brew gave me confidence, a clear speedy voice, though often sharp and bitchy. In future therapy sessions, I was told it was an act of survival, an old pattern, thinking I could not be heard. Oh and I was ‘a red’, a ginger, an outsider and gay, way before fetish sites put red as a hot topic of sexual attraction. All in all, a teenage nightmare. No wonder I embraced getting ‘out of it’.

We had no knowledge about addictions, codependency or ‘finding yourself’ in self help books in the 70’s, it was all about sexual liberation, learning to express yourself through your body, so I soon got the hang of that. Less talking, less stammering, less nervousness, more action.

This inadvertently led to many years of sexual addiction until a virus took hold of my priorities, being forced to learn how to express myself ‘to serve myself first’, not heed to the demands of others. This aspect of codependency is rife in the gay community and often leads to unsafe sex as people-pleasing leading the way to a man’s zipper, but the desire to be connected, to belong, to seek approval as an act of expression, can leave you short-changed when it comes to emotional satisfaction. Clearing up the mess of others as fixer, or being entangled in a relationship with someone who cannot express themselves via depression, past abuses, alcohol dependency does not bode well in the healthy relationship stakes.

Assisting or understanding a partner with these issues, while detaching, in order not to get sucked in, is extremely difficult, but essential in order to manage your own sanity. Learning to say NO more often and ridding yourself of the belief that ‘when you get YOUR needs met, others lose’ is the key to emotional recovery. This may appear selfish in print, and to some unloving, but in reality the biggest aspect of relationship breakdown is ‘ not getting needs met’, because often those needs have failed to be expressed because of ‘harming’ the other person. Not wanting to rock the boat by telling the truth faster creates suppressed anger, game playing, dishonesty and fear. The opposite to love.

When I started a recovery process from active addiction over 30 years ago, I shockingly discovered I was shy. Quite the opposite from the persona I had created. Then I had to learn to communicate verbally & sexually without chemical support, and the stammer came back along with the nervous squint and it felt like I was back at square one, which I was. Back to being the emotional wreck of a teenager with the luggage of 17 years of using.

With self help groups and counselling I managed to explore the reasons, and the lessons of coping with and managing demons like ‘Not being good enough”, “feeling damaged” “not a real man” etc and turn these negative lies into positive statements of truth. In 1984 I began spending every night, for the next 3 years, going to sleep with Louise Hay affirmative tapes on a loop in order to find the real me buried beneath the shames. Then with yogic rebirthing breath work started to express my subconscious emotional fields, until I healed my body and released chronic active hep B from my body in 1996 without medication. That’s a whole story in itself.

Eventually the stammer and squint left me, confidence was acquired and I learn’t to ‘tell the truth faster’. For the past 10 years I have travelled the globe every 2 months leading seminars on personal development, holding a room of 30 -50 people for 3 days without a manual or script, just focussing on ‘the NOW’, and allowing things to occur organically. So perseverance paid off. The only way I could express myself in my using days was by being workaholic, by constantly thinking I needed to be in control, while my life was totally out of control. Today I am still clean, sober and Hep B free, long may it continue, a day at a time.

This was my monthly piece in HIM-MAGAZINE : http://www.him-magazine.com/2013/09/01/spit-it-out/

Cory Monteith post ‘Glee’

Posted on July 23, 2013 by urbanlifeclass

There is always a back story. The sudden death of ‘Glee’ actor Cory Monteith, brings home the disease of addiction to the breakfast table. While you munch on muesli, someone is overdosing in an ambulance or comatose on meth, or in rehab truly believing they really have consumed their last drug. They haven’t. It’s a bit like a road accident, it always happens to someone else, until it happens to you. Not only do we think we are exempt from such precarious scenarios, but we expect rich, famous, talented people to be exempt too, after all money and fame solve everything don’t they?

Addiction has been referred to as ‘the disease that tells you, you haven’t got it’, and even being aware you have it, is no insurance. Born in 1982, the year Betty Ford opened her celebrity clinic, 31 years old Cory has now peacefully passed away from the accolades, the internal struggles and the sheer pain of not being able to stop using. In March this year he voluntarily entered rehab for substance addiction yet again, to delve through his back story, not a new exercise for Cory as his first rehab stint was age 19.

Leaving school at 16, the teenager with obvious drink and drug problems escalating at speed, coupled with kleptomania, compulsively stealing from family and friends until a family intervention occurred, to face his malaise. Stealing and getting away with it, has the same high as the compulsive gambler at the tables or city lawyers hoovering lines in a toilet at work, in order to cope with work pressures. Thinking no one knows or that you have got away with it is a buzz, but addiction is not choosy who it holds hostage, any age or social strata, as many will testify. Cory famously said in an interview, ” I was done fighting myself – I finally said, “I’m gonna start looking at my life and figure out why I’m doing this”.

Hands in the air, how many times have you heard someone say that? How many times have you sighed in frustration, like those close to Cory, the patient girlfriend, the family, the co-workers, the friends? WHEN will he get it? . . . perhaps, when will YOU get it? Maybe he did get it, maybe he had abstained for a period and relapsed his illness. We don’t know the back story.

Drugs and alcohol are not addictive, despite what governments tell us, multi millions consume daily without the need for attention, but those with an addictive personality need an alarm clock. WAKE UP! No point in explaining who they are, the risk-takers, boundary breakers, the chaos living clones who crash and burn, the secret silent users, and those who continue to act out compulsively with sex, workaholicism or food.

This is the illness of addiction, when self harm defies reason. They just can’t help themselves and push away anyone that judges. When I was bang at it I was oblivious to the harm I was causing. There was always an unspoken ‘incident’, another drama, or a repetitive pattern of low esteem with fix and rescue me escapades in motion. It becomes tedious to witness harm that people around addicts face daily, feeling helpless.

Many gay men remain heavy users of recreational drugs, including alcohol, but thankfully most never reach chronic addiction, they WAKE UP! and redress behaviours en route to avoid crisis. I didn’t. I worked the drug of denial until 1982, the year Cory was born, surrendering my addictions in that year, after my eighth relapse, on the cusp of death.

Then I got it : I could never safely use drugs & alcohol again, though I humbly acknowledge that it’s not been an easy road, but it was essential to begin the process of living a gay life without drink and drugs, or die a junkie. I’ve been miraculously clean for the whole of Cory’s lifetime, and seen hundreds of addicts die, it comes with the territory. I have not done it alone, and nor should you, but still remain vigilant, blessed and hopeful that recovery continues, for staying clean is not a given. Many addicts relapse after a clean period and overdose as the body can’t handle the new intake. My friend Tim, 26 years old, came out of treatment, got 4 months clean and did heroin. He was found by his brother slumped over the breakfast table dead after one hit. He took the gamble and lost, maybe Cory did the same?

My heartfelt thoughts go out to Cory’s partner, family, friends and inner circle while they absorb the shock. To value life, our friends, our GLEE and our inner strengths to carry this through, it’s wise to check your back story. Take stock often. Make changes. Seek help.

This blog of mine first appeared on GuySpy.com on July 15th 2013, 2 days after Cory’s death : http://www.guyspy.com/cory-monteith-post-glee/

Don’t treat me like a child

Posted on August 24, 2011 by urbanlifeclass

Spend a few minutes thinking how many times you acted like a child in a relationship, when you couldn’t get your own way. Maybe you still act like a child in a present relationship. Adult childishness occurs in many unconscious forms, getting treated like a child by a know-all partner, making you feel like a dog when they say ” FETCH “, and patting you on the head in a patronising way, is one way. It’s OK to be trained as a pup as a fetish set-up but tiresome to be controlled by a partner to the extent you feel inadequate or trapped. When it comes to acting out control, the reality is that a person who feels victimised often needs a controller, as much as control freaks seeks out other kids to bully. Many still believe that a good relationship consists of finding a babysitter lover or substitute parent which is why protection, safety and security are high on the emotional agenda disguised as ” Love” or” Being in Love “. I know of many gay men who wait to be ‘rescued’, the low esteemers who people please in order to be loved, but when you don’t love yourself it is also difficult to receive love when it comes your way. The core of co-dependency is fear of rejection or abandonment, so it’s no surprise that many internet profile addicts gain love and acceptance from how many messages they receive in the morning before work. Fewer messages means less attention, and while an adult accepts this situation for what it is, a codependent adult in a child’s mind sees it as total rejection of self. The sexual attention we got in our twenties wanes as we age, while the need to be noticed can increase as hair recedes and bellies expand. Such is gay life. Off course we have to thank the Bear Brigade for changing these viewpoints, but not every 45 year old wants to wear a tartan shirt, a beard and go TONKER till 2am.

________________________________________________________________________________

Melody Beattie’s take on the subject is this –

” Codependent’s experience quite a few intense emotions about current events that are not mature adult feelings but stem from other sources. For example, a codependent may easily pick up and carry feelings for others taking on board misguided responsibility. Codependents are also prone to harbour feelings picked up during childhood from parents and to project them onto others in adult life. In addition, codependents can quickly sink into a child ego state when current events trigger a child feeling reality that was not sufficiently dealt with during childhood. When we sink into the child ego state, we feel small, vulnerable, and often defensive. Even in recovery, however, these old feelings will continue to come up to a certain degree. The difference is that when they do come up, you can unload them with a therapist/counsellor or aftercare support or with friends who are mature enough to listen to them. This will prevent you from using these strong feelings from childhood to create intensity within your relationships. “

Recovery from codependent patterning means responding to your partner or situation, rather than re-acting or reacting like a child who can’t get their own way. This reaction seldom works long term in a relationship, because the partners mind and mouth clam up as an act of survival, in much the same way that a mother reacts to a crying child night and day. She switches off until she can’t stand anymore. Constant nagging of a partner just takes them back to childhood, to those previous times of emotional silence when they felt helpless, victimised and controlled. When one partner is in recovery from Love Addiction and the other is not, a re-written script gets acted out when patterns change and reality is faced. Partners often refrain from adhering to the new regime because it means growing up and taking responsibility for themselves, which defeats the object of the exercise in starting the relationship in the first place. This is why it takes courage to change. Just because you may be excited about a new way of thinking, working and expressing yourself, others may not, but the reality is that when WE make a stand of change others are challenged to follow. Without this level of challenge we dig deeper into our own emotional graves – and stay there.

Junkie Living & Dying

Posted on August 2, 2011 by urbanlifeclass

Amy dead at 27, the papers have been full of it, but is she any different from a G overdose at Fire or a middle aged gayer on a crack pipe?

It’s easy to sneer at scuzzy street junkies, scuttling off for their next drop while gayers fix themselves up in A&F Muscle Fit, a bump, a line and serial sex. This observation illustrates how we all have a scale of snobbery when it comes to junkie behavior. Someone else is always a benchmark for addiction. If someone is talented like Amy it seems wrong to cuss but if a junkie makes home under a cash machine on the street it’s easy to sound off, look down and snear.

Bears often add to their profiles ‘No druggies’ while they sup 10 pints of Newcastle Brown a night without heeding that alcohol is the oldest known drug. When I was bang at it, junkies were smack-heads, horse dealers, scat boys, skaggies or simply “on the brown”. The lowest of the low after meth drinkers. Now heroin addicts are almost respectable living on benefits, methadone and 6 packs of Special Brew. What a turnaround, well at least it helps the crime figures. Thankfully most gay men don’t go round snatching bags and mainlining in parks but in some quarters gayers at home on the crack pipe is the new hubble bubble of fashion.

Glamorous addiction never lasts, the cheeks soon turn pale. It’s easy to think that gay men just do ‘hands in the air’ club drugs, that they never have to resort to dogs on string, but the reality is that many are out there using to oblivion, nicking to survive, just like a street junkie. Stealing from banks by maxing a credit card and moving on with no forwarding address is no different, the courts would say. We are all junkies on some level but the extra luggage of shame and low esteem that homos bring to the table reflect the present day consumption of goodies that we use to escape fearful feelings, realities of life and viral intervention. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Look where SILENCE has led us – the world of illusions.

The illusion that tight tops and big Muscle Bears are somehow different from the manic street junkie is an epidemic of denial. Whether you score from a phone box or have it delivered by Addison Lee is off no consequence when you use a drug every day. Daily drugs users are not always addicts but they are junkies. Using dry cleaning fluid as a stabilizer is junk. Drug and alcohol dependency is so insidious that no one knows where the magic line is that gets you hooked.

I have seen drug fucks use for 10 years and be able to cut back or cut out within a week while others become addicted to a drug of choice within weeks and can’t stop (and never stop till they OD). Most gayers sit in the middle of social using and heavy using without becoming addicts, but heavy using can still destroy what’s left of your relationships, bank accounts and sanity. Rehabs will tell you that you don’t have to hit bottom with a habit, you can get off at the 2nd Floor, so wise up while you can, the body will only take so much.Think how many times you have gone out without a drink or drug inside you. When was the last time? When did you last have sex without stimulants? ( . . and I’m not talking Viagra). When was the last time you pigged out on comfort food and went on a binge? The propensity for JUNK is everywhere and our lifestyle of no dependents can lead us to junkie thinking of instant gratification, I want, I must have, I WILL have – the illness of self obsession. Tempering our needs and knocking out the wants leads to balanced thinking, balanced lives and less emotional comedowns – which some of you may desire but have no idea about obtaining.

Amy had help thrown at her from all directions but the illness of addiction, blocked her ears. Addiction is not choosy, it hits up the super sexy and the mundane and it’s the illness that tells you you haven’t got it. Recovery starts with ownership, awareness and surrender.

Focus this week on your own junkie behavior, it’s easy to knock someone else’s (especially a partner), try recognizing where you relapse into junkie thinking, acting out and progressive denial. Then consider a game plan for reversal toward more conscious using, for as I’ve said many times before, chems are not the problem, the problem lies in the vessel that consumes them. It’s not what you take, it’s how chems make you feel, and at some point the romance ends and you flat line into oblivion.

Living with a partner with a habit is exhausting, even more so if you join them. They may not die in body but the brain and spirit is gone, taking logic and time with them. It’s easy to think you can help, assist or fix someone, you can’t. Amy is an example of this, for until the junkie shows the white flag the battle sadly continues for all, until death.

Sadly I doubt whether Amy’s death will allow LGBT users to think twice about their own using habits, since using Amy as a benchmark for what ‘real’ addiction is, is a game well played. It’s easy to blame fame as a co-conspirator, or talents beyond management, when the reality is we all believe this stuff happens to other people, not us.

Queer Ageing

Posted on February 22, 2011 by urbanlifeclass

Back in the days of ’50/60’s homo criminalisation they used to sing ” Nobody loves a Fairy when she’s Forty ” but now the internet is awash with Daddies, Bears and Spanking GrandDads – thankfully nobody needs to look like Cher anymore to still be in the game.

A report came out in 2010 about the upward trend of older users of recreational drugs suggesting on evidence that people over fifty just ain’t gonna give it up for health concerns or abstain which is why the government stance on harm reduction is one of last resort. We also know that many gayers well over 40 sit at home on Gaydar with tina or chemical friends for companion. One wonders when Addison Lee will get a STONEWALL Award for services to the community, delivering all that gear, but the majority of older gayers just wanna have fun or the fun to continue sanely.

However, myths and negative stereotypes concerning older gayers still exist but the old chestnut of being depressed, isolated, desperate, sexless and predatory is fading fast. We have the internet to thank for that. Most research confirms that growing older as gay or str8 is not much different, embracing or ignoring life changes, but noting that any person who hasn’t adjusted well to other aspects of life won’t adjust well to ageing either. I think that by nature of the beast, gayers are better prepared for ageing having lived independently, are in the habit of socialising with many more different strands of society and are not dependent on grandchildren in later years to provide distraction from retirement. Being lonely in old age was always the fear thrust upon us by society when in reality it is older str8s that now realise that access to grandchildren are not a given anymore, with family break-ups, divorce and low marriage statistics in the mix.

In 1978 Bell & Weinberg ( Homosexualities : A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women ) found that lesbians and gay men were more likely to have a network of close friends than heterosexuals. They postulate that heterosexuals are more likely to be involved in family interactions as opposed to outside friendships. Integration into a homosexual community is an important factor in the adaptation of older male homosexuals, as the community of friendships is important to the gay and lesbian throughout the lifespan, it continues, they are not dependent on family for their emotional support and needs. This is important for several reasons. First, gays and lesbians are much less likely to experience an ” empty nest syndrome” as support already comes from outside the home. Second, the community affords older gays and lesbians the opportunity to meet new people and socialise. As the homosexual community is usually noted for its diversity, older individuals have the opportunity to socialise with a wide range of individuals, young and old. In addition, work relations usually do not make up the majority of personal contacts outside the home, thus, upon retirement, the network of friends remains relatively unchanged. The establishment of friendship networks appears to make the ageing process EASIER for gays and lesbians”.

Now if this was the conclusion in 1978, before Gay Pride, before the reduction in Age of Consent, before the Internet and before Elton came out, post marriage as a gayer, then we are streets ahead in senior age management in the new century. Civil Partnership will not have much effect on ageing, except that men no longer need to stay in a dysfunctional relationship to avoid loneliness in later years. The rush in the first year of being able to ” marry ” was mostly existing long term relationships in mature years already. Thankfully, couples will chose to marry for reasons, other than fear of ageing. Middle age gayers now have other options, not so widely available in 1978, worshiping the post-clubbing Gay Holy Trinity – Travel, Therapy & Interior Design to fill those autumn years.

When AIDS took the Daddies away in the 80’s/90’s, an emotional wound remained until time took it’s course after combo’s in 1996. Rarely then did young gay men freely admit they fancied Dads, hairy bodies or leadership in direction, yet it was obvious that once the fad for smooth bods lessened and gay men shopped around a bit on fetish sites or XTube, older suddenly became wiser. Now the rise of big muscle bears, silverdaddies.com and even mature escorts prove that the hunger for wisdom is being satisfied. Not all guys want a hot bod, many just want to be held in silence by older hands. But it is our minds and thought patterns that remain the biggest enemy, when projecting fear with procrastination on greying hair, if any remains of course. On asking a client whether he had many older friends he replied ” I don’t know anyone gay over 35 because I don’t sleep with anyone over 35 “.

So there you have it, and I doubt whether he is the only one.

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