A man ten years my senior is new to the gay community and totally out and about ten times what I have ever managed to accomplish. I commented on how much more active he is he had this to say:

I figure the more I do, the more likely I am to meet the man of my dreams. :)

I started speaking to him online a while back as he was beginning to reach out online to talk to and meet other gay men. He is a father and has led his life until now as a straight married man. After just months of being totally out more or less, he has started going out multiple nights a week and making friends and meeting people like mad.

At first I chalked the comment up to the normal naiveté which people have to a degree when getting started in the gay world. I was like that to a degree when I first got started because everyone is friendly and honest and nice because we are all gay and are finding shelter and camaraderie together, right? Right?? Wrong. Turns out people in the gay world are just people like everyone else. There are beautiful, brilliant individuals who shine and there are others who are very not good and a great deal of people all over the spectrum in-between.

Statistically, a comment like the one he made is perfectly true. For a person like myself who does not generally enjoy going to the bar, bars are the last place I would go looking for someone to hang out with. But assuming I do go on the off chance there is someone there, there just may be someone like me who is there too. There may also be someone who is not like me and loves bars who is an awesome match that I may find there.

It all comes back to comfortability and drive. How driven am I to find the man of my dreams? Not very. Therefore there is very little drive for me to leave my comfort zone to find someone to share my life with. However, there are people in this world like my friend who are driven and excited by the idea of finding someone and they will go out and search out new places and groups and interactions which may lead them to “the one”. This is no less valid than my own choice to explore my own inner realm and to take life slowly.

I will openly admit that part of me is jealous of those people who are able to get up and go out to the bar and have fun with that experience. I love meeting new people and the bar is definitely one way of doing so. The problem is that I really just do not enjoy the bar. Now if only there were a way to get a lot of gay men together to eat… A food bar of sorts. Then I would be in heaven.