How Do You Handle Social Isolation?

[MattyMoonTonight]

I’m not referring to situations where you have dozens of friends or hundreds of followers and none of them have responded to a post you made after a period of 24 hours and calling it socially isolated. I mean, how do you cope with having no community to immerse yourself in, no groups to join, nobody to talk to outside of coworkers, and nothing but the news and movies to pass the time? It’s easy to say “just move,” but for some it’s not as simple as that.

When this goes on long enough, everything becomes grey. Hobbies aren’t fun anymore, personal activities are less interesting than job work. You feel like you’re just marching to an end that doesn’t seem significant enough to be considered a positive thing. I always see the same crap that says “find your people” but they're not there, it's an unrealistic notion. How the hell does anybody get a handle on it?

I know there are a lot of folks who are truly happy and content being alone, but I’m just not one of them.

 

[BiBtm64]

I'm sorry you feel that way, and that you seem to be in a physically isolated rural location where it's hard to meet people (from your previous posts).

Try to be interested in things and interesting, get out and meet like minded people - it's not just about finding a potential partner or fuck buddy. You need to broaden your scope by just getting to know people in general. I feel for you, I really do, but I'm not sure what else to say that has not been said by me and others in your previous posts.

 

[MattyMoonTonight]

I'm sorry you feel that way, and that you seem to be in a physically isolated rural location where it's hard to meet people (from your previous posts).

Try to be interested in things and interesting, get out and meet like minded people - it's not just about finding a potential partner or fuck buddy. You need to broaden your scope by just getting to know people in general. I feel for you, I really do, but I'm not sure what else to say that has not been said by me and others in your previous posts.

Yeah, I've been beating this dead horse flat for a while now, I admit it. I'm no longer talking about sexual encounters or relationships. I'd love to meet actual gay people in real life and talk to them, to try to have some kind of friendship or have some kind of communication, just to talk, but there's no one around. In my situation, getting out and "broadening my scope" means spending a couple hours and too much fuel to go somewhere that has only angry self-concerned straight people, and they have no intention of talking to anybody, either. I know I'm pissing off everyone here by begging for different answers to the same question but I just don't know what else to do but bitch about it.

I'm just tired of seeing people smiling or laughing and thinking "Why the fuck aren't you miserable like the rest of us?" I'm tired of thinking that life isn't supposed to be exciting or fun. More than anything, I'm tired of thinking to myself "Stop it, you boring, talentless faggot" whenever I feel a tiny shred of motivation to change something.

 

[Rickrock]

I noticed that you said why are others happy and not miserable like the rest of us. Some of it is their attitude toward life. They joyfully willingly take things in stride. It is their attitude toward life and they willingly enjoy what life gives them. This is only a small part of it, but worth mentioning. Hope your life gets better.

 

[KaraBulut]

... try to have some kind of friendship or have some kind of communication, just to talk, but there's no one around. In my situation, getting out and "broadening my scope" means spending a couple hours and too much fuel to go somewhere that has only angry self-concerned straight people, and they have no intention of talking to anybody, either. I know I'm pissing off everyone here by begging for different answers to the same question but I just don't know what else to do but bitch about it.

I used to travel quite a bit for work. On one short-term assignment, I was in a the depths of the Bible Belt in a small town. I didn't have much optimism that I would meet gay people in this town because it was backwards and really rural. Boy was a wrong. They had a thriving but small gay community that had some really nice people. I had coffee with one of the locals and I joking asked them, "If you don't have a gay bar, where do you meet gay people in this town". His answer? "Barnes & Noble". I never went to the Barnes & Noble but it was a lesson to me that gay people are everywhere, but you have to be paying closer attention because they may be more closeted.

The other lesson that I learned is that gay communities are like threads. You pull one thread and it unravels more threads. Once you meet one or two gay people, if they like you, you'll meet their friends and then the friends of their friends. You just have to be willing to put yourself out there and express an interest in meeting people.

 

[VDPanGuy]

Whereabouts in MN are you? I'm in the hick shit hole on the other side of the line east of you.
I'll admit I had the advantage of being bi to open a few more social doors for me, but as someone that moved from Eden Prairie to Inver Grove Heights, then across the border to Hudson, then even farther to New Richmond, then father yet to around about an hour north of Eau Claire (if this shit keeps up on that heading I'll be a damn yooper in about ten more years)., I don't fit in with the backwards people out here. How I got here and why I'm stuck here is not really relevant, but when I lived in New Richmond my nearest friends of any type were over an hour away and I lived totally by myself for years. You literally end up in tears you get so lonely and the culture out here is difficult to break into because everyone knows everyone and is suspicious of anyone they don't know. Eventually I met someone (yes, it was a woman, sorry) through the activity of scuba diving that I ended up having two kids with. So it doesn't last forever.
I have extreme limits now to my social time due to life problems (family issues, not legal or anything) but if I wanted to socialize there are clubs for my UTV, clubs for astronomy, clubs for gun and bow related things, theres some table top gamer groups (RPG and the like) if you want geekier.

Dunno what's around you, but everything social is based around activities. Boring people "hang out" together. If you wanna meet people put gay second and common interest first. Once you have some people to keep you social you can look for a gay connection. The last two gay hookups I had were a friend of a female coworker and the guy who cut my hair. If you are trying to be generally social and are rather overly flamboyant you might want to turn the burner down a bit when you hang out with the straights. You might be surprised, but even in hick shit hole gay guys are pretty generally accepted these days. I have an almost comically straight rural man type coworker that always jokes about how the gay friend in the group of otherwise straight guys who go hunting together is always driving him crazy by teasingly flirting with him.
I think the cute guy at the coffee shop might be gay. Maybe check those out if you have one.
I guess im curious as to what's around where you are?

I kinda got a chuckle out of the Barnes and Noble thing in the above post. If it has one of those its not backwards and small enough.

 

[MattyMoonTonight]

Whereabouts in MN are you? I'm in the hick shit hole on the other side of the line east of you.
I'll admit I had the advantage of being bi to open a few more social doors for me, but as someone that moved from Eden Prairie to Inver Grove Heights, then across the border to Hudson, then even farther to New Richmond, then father yet to around about an hour north of Eau Claire (if this shit keeps up on that heading I'll be a damn yooper in about ten more years)., I don't fit in with the backwards people out here. How I got here and why I'm stuck here is not really relevant, but when I lived in New Richmond my nearest friends of any type were over an hour away and I lived totally by myself for years. You literally end up in tears you get so lonely and the culture out here is difficult to break into because everyone knows everyone and is suspicious of anyone they don't know. Eventually I met someone (yes, it was a woman, sorry) through the activity of scuba diving that I ended up having two kids with. So it doesn't last forever.
I have extreme limits now to my social time due to life problems (family issues, not legal or anything) but if I wanted to socialize there are clubs for my UTV, clubs for astronomy, clubs for gun and bow related things, theres some table top gamer groups (RPG and the like) if you want geekier.

Dunno what's around you, but everything social is based around activities. Boring people "hang out" together. If you wanna meet people put gay second and common interest first. Once you have some people to keep you social you can look for a gay connection. The last two gay hookups I had were a friend of a female coworker and the guy who cut my hair. If you are trying to be generally social and are rather overly flamboyant you might want to turn the burner down a bit when you hang out with the straights. You might be surprised, but even in hick shit hole gay guys are pretty generally accepted these days. I have an almost comically straight rural man type coworker that always jokes about how the gay friend in the group of otherwise straight guys who go hunting together is always driving him crazy by teasingly flirting with him.
I think the cute guy at the coffee shop might be gay. Maybe check those out if you have one.
I guess im curious as to what's around where you are?

I kinda got a chuckle out of the Barnes and Noble thing in the above post. If it has one of those its not backwards and small enough.

Central Minnesota, I'll say. Carlton County; orange jacket and shotgun territory. I've been through Wisconsin on a trip to Michigan, and I understand how lonely it can be there, as well. I have to hop across the state border to go to the nearest gay bar, but negative experiences have kept me reticent from going there in recent months. I'm glad that you've found someone, and through an activity I wouldn't have expected. I wanted to get into scuba diving for a couple years, but the interest fell apart for me for some reason. I do go to a Barnes & Noble, but it's over an hour away in Duluth and I almost always clean out my wallet when I do, so I can't make it a consistent haunt.

I know that I can't and shouldn't locate LGBT communities for the reason of finding relationships (I'll use the word relationships because I mean all interactions, not just romantic or sexual relationships), that I should just try to make friends, but there really are no social groups or clubs to meet people. What makes it worse is that the majority of my interests are solitary by nature, like fiction writing, wood burning, geology, and watching movies. There are plenty of online groups for these but I've already run through the gambit I feel, and online groups don't have the same feel as being in an actual group. The town where I live has a gas station, a discount chain store, and a medical clinic. These are the places adults are most likely to gather.

I'm not extroverted, and I'm not at all flamboyant; as far as I know, nobody in the real world knows that I'm anything but straight. I just can't believe that anybody outside of larger cities are accepting of LGBTQ people, and I'm suspecting the current changing political climate is just going to make things worse. I know I'm too damn old now to be scared of shit like this, of just being myself and being accepting of myself, but the idea of someone knowing scares the ever-loving shit out of me.

 

[VDPanGuy]

The political climate is on crack at the moment, but thankfully its clear that things have been pushed too far and it going to cause a ton of backlash. So expect that to sort itself out.
As far as the social climate, the rural areas are exactly one generation behind the urban and suburban areas socially and culturally. I have found that with the internet becoming mainstream everywhere the isolated culture is getting diluted down faster than ever and people are listening to other opinions than their little local communities.
There is a ton of backlash towards the trans community because quite honestly they wanted too much too fast and it bit them in the ass. Look at the amount of time it took between stonewall and maybe the 90's or so before being gay was something you could confidently do walking down the street in civilized areas. Being gay by comparison is almost trendy now and I wouldn't be afraid to be gay even in rural areas.
I don't know how old you actually are or what you lived through gay history wise, but I'm 44 and things really are better than even when I was young.
Another thing I would actually suggest is finding female friends as odd as that might sound. Being their gay friend tends to mellow out any men in the extended social group that might have issues and they will stick up for you. Basically it disarms the guys homophobia and you become an amusing oddity at worst.
Duluth is a bit weird from what little I've experienced compared to some other similar sized cities, but I can't image they are so culturally backwards as to have no gay culture at all.
I mean, you have trains. Even a museum full of them. How horrible can a city that has that many trains be.
I have jack and/or shit for free time in my life due to significant life problems, but if you find yourself at the point of mental breakdown send me a message, It's about 1.5 hours north on 53 for me to get to Duluth and I wouldn't mind hanging out so you at least have a friendly face visit in person. I could skip a day of work or something if need be. I love photography and its pretty photogenic up there, so I'll drag my shit up there and we can wander around town if nothing else better comes up.

 

[KaraBulut]

Central Minnesota, I'll say. Carlton County; orange jacket and shotgun territory. I've been through Wisconsin on a trip to Michigan, and I understand how lonely it can be there, as well. I have to hop across the state border to go to the nearest gay bar, but negative experiences have kept me reticent from going there in recent months.

Out of curiosity, what is keeping you living where you currently live (i.e. work, family ties)?

I'm glad that you've found someone, and through an activity I wouldn't have expected. I wanted to get into scuba diving for a couple years, but the interest fell apart for me for some reason. I do go to a Barnes & Noble, but it's over an hour away in Duluth and I almost always clean out my wallet when I do, so I can't make it a consistent haunt.

I didn't mean Barnes & Noble to be a literal place to find other gay people but more of an example of how people in rural areas without a gay bar adapt to find each other. Even in modern times when a lot of the gay community exists online, there are still places where gay people congregate. It can be a coffee bar, it can be a diner, it can be on a college campus or it can be a public space, such a park or a section of a lake/beach.

For example, a quick look at Duluth shows that there's a gayborhood with gay-friendly businesses:

Duluth, Minnesota: A Gay Guide to this Superior City

Duluth, Minnesota is located on Lake Superior, the largest fresh body of water by surface area on the planet! Duluth is known for its endless outdoor activities, thriving local restaurants and award-winning craft beer scene.

www.gayrealestate.com

I know that I can't and shouldn't locate LGBT communities for the reason of finding relationships

Why not?

 

[MattyMoonTonight]

The political climate is on crack at the moment, but thankfully its clear that things have been pushed too far and it going to cause a ton of backlash. So expect that to sort itself out.
As far as the social climate, the rural areas are exactly one generation behind the urban and suburban areas socially and culturally. I have found that with the internet becoming mainstream everywhere the isolated culture is getting diluted down faster than ever and people are listening to other opinions than their little local communities.
There is a ton of backlash towards the trans community because quite honestly they wanted too much too fast and it bit them in the ass. Look at the amount of time it took between stonewall and maybe the 90's or so before being gay was something you could confidently do walking down the street in civilized areas. Being gay by comparison is almost trendy now and I wouldn't be afraid to be gay even in rural areas.
I don't know how old you actually are or what you lived through gay history wise, but I'm 44 and things really are better than even when I was young.
Another thing I would actually suggest is finding female friends as odd as that might sound. Being their gay friend tends to mellow out any men in the extended social group that might have issues and they will stick up for you. Basically it disarms the guys homophobia and you become an amusing oddity at worst.
Duluth is a bit weird from what little I've experienced compared to some other similar sized cities, but I can't image they are so culturally backwards as to have no gay culture at all.
I mean, you have trains. Even a museum full of them. How horrible can a city that has that many trains be.
I have jack and/or shit for free time in my life due to significant life problems, but if you find yourself at the point of mental breakdown send me a message, It's about 1.5 hours north on 53 for me to get to Duluth and I wouldn't mind hanging out so you at least have a friendly face visit in person. I could skip a day of work or something if need be. I love photography and its pretty photogenic up there, so I'll drag my shit up there and we can wander around town if nothing else better comes up.

That's very kind of you to offer. I don't want to get in the way of anything, or make things difficult for anyone.

I didn't start paying attention to LGBT-related news until I started to understand myself, around my early to mid-twenties, but I distinctly remember hearing about what happened to Matthew Shepard when I was young. And I remember watching the news when they gave John Wayne Gacy the needle (this wouldn't be significant until junior year of high school when I became interested in criminal psychology), although I think this was a ten-year special, since I was only two years old when it actually happened. And I'd overhear snippets of awful things that happened while George "Dubya" Bush's presidency coursed through history. Poor moments to remember, I know. I'm sure things have changed for queer people at large, but my perspective is still stuck in those 90s. Outside of these forum websites, I've never been around other people or in situations that would have changed it. Now that I want to, I'm scared as hell. Part of me thinks I've become addicted to being stuck in a rut.

I think that's why I like writing fiction set in the 1990s. It's not just a convenient excuse to avoid having handheld technology eliminating 85% of the conflict, it's so I can go through those times and try to see things differently, and be a part of something without having to feel like I wasted so much time.

I'll admit, I like going to the aquarium, but again, the funds and the distance can't make it as regular an activity as I'd like.

Out of curiosity, what is keeping you living where you currently live (i.e. work, family ties)?


I didn't mean Barnes & Noble to be a literal place to find other gay people but more of an example of how people in rural areas without a gay bar adapt to find each other. Even in modern times when a lot of the gay community exists online, there are still places where gay people congregate. It can be a coffee bar, it can be a diner, it can be on a college campus or it can be a public space, such a park or a section of a lake/beach.

For example, a quick look at Duluth shows that there's a gayborhood with gay-friendly businesses:

Duluth, Minnesota: A Gay Guide to this Superior City

Duluth, Minnesota is located on Lake Superior, the largest fresh body of water by surface area on the planet! Duluth is known for its endless outdoor activities, thriving local restaurants and award-winning craft beer scene.

www.gayrealestate.com

It's mostly a mixture of both family- and work-related. I just never completely left my hometown, so I'm often around family members even though we don't live together anymore, and what I'm currently making at my job isn't enough to make moving to a more ideal location feasible. I can't really do much for a little while, as I'm trying to get back into college to turn my Bachelor's into a Master's, even though I'm not convinced either one really means anything like they used to. It would be a nice personal accomplishment, it would hopefully open doors to a career I'd prefer, and it would be a nice thing to have on a resume.

Sorry for misinterpreting your post. I know there are places that people in rural communities can gather, but it seems to me that people want nothing to do with each other at all. You say Hello to someone and they'll look at you like they're about to pop you in the mouth. Or, you hold the door open for someone and they'll pyschoanalyze you for doing something so stupid. Maybe the internet really has existed so long that the same mannerisms and "etiquette" have lapsed over into reality, but regardless, people can only see each other now as potential serial killers; not as other people, but as sources of intimidation and distrust. Something to be feared and avoided. Who the hell can make friends in this kind of climate?

Some of the locations on the page you sent no longer exist anymore. BLUSH closed down quite a few years back, and even though I'm sure The Flame started as a gay bar, it's been a college bar with rainbow decor for quite some time. Same thing happened with a few coffee shops. And I'm sure Downtown used to be welcoming when the page was created, but it sure hasn't looked like it the last few times I drove through there. Superior in Wisconsin is the next best option.

Why not?

I saw that I tripped over my own words in my post. I meant specifically for finding romantic or intimate relationships.

 

[VDPanGuy]

Somehow despite loving diving and marine life I’ve never been to the aquarium in Duluth. I’d actually be happy to ditch work (plus it’s slow right now) if you get days off during the week and wanna go. Weekends are are rather less reliable and more time crunched for me but I could probably make a Saturday work. I’d meet you at one of the nicer looking coffee shops and it’s not a hookup or anything so you don’t need to be all stressed out about meeting someone or making good impressions. Maybe we can figure things out for you a little better with time to chat in person.
I’ll even give you a no stress hug. It sounds like you need that more than anything right now.

Honestly I’m a fixer. People sometimes get frustrated with me because they just want to vent, but as soon as they tell me their problems I start working on solutions to fix them.

Either way don’t feel pressured by me. If we can help best by just chatting with you on here then that’s fine too.