Got a question that would scandalize your group chat? That’s what this column is for. Go Ask Alex is an anonymous space for queer readers to ask the questions they’re afraid to ask anyone else — about sex, love, life, and everything in between. It’s judgment-free and completely anonymous.
My question is where is my husband? :/ lol
In all honesty, I wonder if it’s worth asking about the vicious push and pull of being single in a big gay mecca like NYC and the desire to find a lasting relationship. “Commitment waffling.” The plague of too many options.
I am just finding myself lately really listless and losing hope. And I’m told I’m one of the “catches.” I just feel I’ve gone from doe-eyed and full of hope to scorned and jaded.
There’s still a glimmer of hope because I’m still here, but I’m exhausted. It seems that even when you choose someone and finally commit, the world is still against you.
Hey cowboy.
Thanks for the honest message. You're still a catch. You sound like someone willing and ready to commit and give your heart to a guy who's truly worthy of it. Guys like you are, in my experience, quite rare, no matter the city or place. You're what many good men I know are looking for. Unfortunately, in big cities, we all have to work through a lot more failures (more than in small towns and villages) to find the good ones, the catches.
That’s the thing we agree to when we try to date in big cities: a lot more failures.
Your message sparked a long and healthy chat with my straight male coworker, Jonny. We share an office at a Berlin music label. He knows everything about rare electronic music, and I know everything about gay sex. At first glance, we have little in common, but we get along really well and enjoy talking with each other about dating, because we were both, in the past, dedicated fuckboys. Lots of sex, lots of dates, lots of ghosting.
We’ve both grown up a bit since then and learned something of the work and reward of commitment, and both experienced the awful loneliness of not getting it right.
For better or worse, he and I also live in Berlin, where no one seems to be looking for love, just a wild time. So I asked him: "Hey Jonny, is it harder for straight people to find serious, long-term partners in cities than in small towns and countryside?"
"Absolutely," he said. "It's a nightmare."
OK, why? Is it just because of the overabundance, too much competition, too many options?
Nope, not in his view. His argument for why wasn't about the numbers or even the cities themselves. It was about the kinds of people who move to a city. People who move to small towns and rural places, he said, generally want to settle down, slow down. People who move to cities want the opposite. They want the speed, the options, the hunger, the wildness, the casual sex and quick relationships. They want excitement.
I found that a fair, compelling point, and told him so. In that sense, gay city life and straight city life look quite similar.
But here's my counter: Even granting Jonny's point, a city, harder to date in as it may be, acts as a trial by fire. Sometimes the hard work of getting through so many failures is exactly what leads you to someone truly worth sticking around for. The downside, the thing we must accept, is that a lot of options means a lot more failed relationships to wade through before connecting with someone good. And even then, you'll likely go through many people who are good, or good enough, before finding someone great.
My dear, it sounds like you had a tough breakup, or a relationship that fizzled before it became what you hoped. If so, I'm sorry.
And, being honest, it sounds like the waffling (yours, his, or both) had less, really, to do with the sheer number of men in New York City and more to do with the relationship itself. Here's the funny thing about love: If it only works in a small town where there’s less competition and fewer alternatives, it's not very strong. Ask any Village gay man who's been dumped. If your partner wants a way out, he'll find one, with plenty of options or with none.
Choosing one person out of tens of thousands means something a choice among the handful of guys in a village doesn't. That's not a knock on small-town love stories. It's just my belief, however optimistic it may be, that a city is the big test: Give a man every alternative in the world and see if he stays. Most won't. The ones who do are worth keeping.
My parents have stayed married 40 years, mostly, I think, because they live in the middle of nowhere on a remote farm. I think many, many couples, especially queer ones, in smaller, more rural places stay together because it's the best option considering the alternatives. If you're one of the few gay couples in town and don't make things work with your partner, the alternatives don't look great: You may have to move, or you risk great loneliness.
That's a different kind of staying than what I mean when I talk about a partner passing the test of a city. One is a couple choosing each other against endless alternatives. The other is a couple staying because leaving costs too much. Both count as long-term relationships and can be beautiful, happy pairings. But one really says something about how strong the love is.
If they'd lived in a city, I doubt my parents would have lasted this long, and I say that with love. Cities show people how many other lives they could live and tease them endlessly with who else they could be and be with. Within the bizarre reality that the options for gay love in a city like New York are endless, to still go home to the same guy, night after night, means something is working.
A city shows a relationship's true colors faster than a farm does. With so much temptation at the door, a city shows how rare it is to find someone who feels precious, someone worth holding onto, and after enough misses, how good it feels to be rare and precious to someone else.
So, where is your husband? I don't know. But I don't think he's hiding from you because you're not a catch. I think he's still out there failing his way through the same gauntlet you are, getting a little jaded himself, feeling the same things you are. You said the world feels like it's against you even when you finally choose and commit. I'd push back on that. I don't think the world is against you. I think it's perhaps testing you, the way it tests everyone silly enough to look for real love in places like this.
You're tired because you're still in it. Stay listless a little longer if you must, then lick your wounds and get back in the game.
Hey there! I’m Alexander Cheves. I’m a sex writer and former sex worker—I worked in the business for over 12 years. You can read my sex-and-culture column Last Call in Out and my book My Love Is a Beast: Confessions, from Unbound Edition Press. But be warned: Kirkus Reviews says the book is "not for squeamish readers.”
Here, I’m offering sex and relationship advice to Out’s readers. Send your question to askbeastly@gmail.com.
