Forming Community

My rant for today is actually an edited version of a message I sent to my friend Anthony. Forming community as a single adult is difficult; forming community with other Christians is more difficult yet. Forming Christian community when you’re gay? Oftentimes it feels downright impossible . . .

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It’s been unbelievably difficult for me to form community as an adult. During my undergrad and master’s degree days, I had a wonderful network of close friends. Beyond that, I was actually kind of popular at my college! (Hard to believe, I know!) I then lived in a rural area for three years and had like four other people total who I could call friends but all were so surface-level that none of them even knew about my sexuality. Then I went back to school for my doctorate and again found an amazing support system of friends. After that, I worked again for a couple years in an extremely rural area and it was a sojourn in a social desert. Profoundly lonely years I got through only with the help of Lexapro!! Now I’m back in civilization but finding it’s still incredibly hard to make friends as an early-30s single guy. INCREDIBLY difficult. I’ve been so intentional about seeking out friendships beyond my workplace—even posting an ad on the “strictly platonic” section of Craigslist’s [now-defunct] personals!—but it’s VERY slow going.

Not only is it hard making the initial connections, but I also can’t seem to hold onto my existing connections, at least with men. I’ve experienced far more than my fair share of rejection and ghosting, from men I’ve called my “best friend” to more casual acquaintances with whom I nonetheless felt great potential for friendship. (They apparently did not.)

So it makes me feel that all the trouble I’ve had making friends isn’t because I’ve lived in the middle of nowhere far too often and isn’t because I attend churches with no single people and isn’t because of silly societal norms and stigmas . . . It’s because of . . .

Well, the problem is me.