I Understand Why You Stopped Talking To Me
A Letter
This is Sitting Queerly, a newsletter about the late blooming queer experience and the lofty goal of opening up conversations and celebrating those who embrace their full selves.
Hey man, I just want to let you know, I get it.
Your situation is not easy. And unfortunately not uncommon. One need only look at all the faceless profiles in any gay dating app in our community to know that there are a lot of guys who know they need something but aren’t prepared to be open about it.
This is not to say I wasn’t let down when I went back to see why you didn’t respond to that last DM where I was complaining about the weather and saw all your responses in our thread gone. One half of a whole conversation. Just gone.
What kills me is we weren’t even being salacious. We talked about where we came from, what we did for a living, the joys and frustrations of parenthood. We skirted the edge of that part of ourselves, especially you. I could tell you wanted to wade deeper but I could also tell you were convinced each step would send you sinking to the bottom.
Given what you told me, I suspected your disappearance was because you were afraid of being discovered and the subsequent suspicions and accusations followed by the crushing feelings that can only be felt between intimate partners. And I know that those impositions are not without understanding, without precedent. The very fact of our interaction, no matter how benign, was enough implication to assume wrongdoing because they led to wrongdoing on your part in the past.
That doesn’t mean what you are going through is right. Or healthy. Or sustainable.
You know exactly what you are missing because, unlike myself, you knew who you were before you settled down. Maybe not precisely or confidently, but you felt things decades ago that I’ve only just begun to feel in the past year or two. I can’t imagine the person I would be today if I could have admitted to myself in my younger days that I wanted to be with a man, much less acted on it and had that feeling reciprocated, even if in a clumsy, hamfisted way that young adults are prone to. And you aren’t even wanting to feel the most intense aspects of that part of yourself. You just want it to get some air, some sun, go for a stroll every now and then.
As I told you, I know how lucky I am to be in a marriage where any fears of disgust or rejection by my partner upon learning of my full self ended up being unfounded. And thank goodness because I can’t imagine a life without her in it. But I also can no longer imagine a life without me—my full self—being in it.
You deserve nothing less.
Perhaps its melodramatic for me to write this. After all, you did eventually reconnect, albeit via an anonymous profile and our conversation is far more stilted, far more terse, far more infrequent, than before.
But I hope you realize the validity of who you are and what you need. I hope she realizes those things, too. I hope for the day you no longer have to delete, to hide whole parts of yourself to feel loved.
Beautifully written and heartfelt as ever, Ty. Wish I could say I've never been through a similar experience...and yet, most of us have. If we're being honest. And you do that so well. Cheers, my friend.