Gay Dating in the City

Written by Zach Murray | Designed by Macy Wilbur | Photographed by Katey Cooney

Not Just An Experience, But A Lesson

It’s a tale all-too familiar: a gay boy lives in a peaceful, albeit boring, existence in his suburban hometown. Said boy knows he wants to go to a big city for college, one where he will be easily accepted, where there will be many others like him. So, he bides his time at home…or maybe he’ll have a prolonged experience with a closeted boy at home…maybe he just goes on dating apps in the hopes that he can explore his sexuality and figure it out before going off to school. The thought of that big city he’ll move to after graduation is what keeps him going when he sees all his friends get into relationships, meanwhile he can’t even get into a talking stage with anyone. If you’re anything like me, this story will hit close to home. Maybe you grew up in a more rural area, or maybe you grew up near a city, but either way, dating at home was nearly nonexistent for you.

Being one of two (out) gay men in my grade, there were nextto-no options for a romantic connection at school. So, at 16, I decided to try out dating apps (like many of my friends were doing). Immediately, I was flooded with compliments from men two or three times my age. The validation of being called handsome for the first time by someone other than my mom was enough to keep me on. Eventually, I started meeting up with these men. I figured, if I had to wait until college to experience a real romance, at least I could get some life experience and a few funny stories until my time came.

Now, flash forward to high school graduation. I knew my moment in the city was just on the horizon. Fresh off (finally) cutting out a toxic two-year “friendship,” I couldn’t wait to finally be able to date. I was going from an environment with one other gay man to a city and school that had what felt like an infinite amount. So, I arrived in Boston, filled with the hope that I could get a boyfriend whenever I wanted. But, as many have learned the hard way, it’s not quite that easy.

I had finally gotten to the promised land: a real city. My dating apps were filled with guys my age, and I was meeting new people offline too. But, the one thing that no one tells you when you leave your bubble of home: you aren’t going to magically find a boyfriend. Sure, you’ll have some easy hookups, and you’ll finally enter a talking stage with someone. But, if you’re like me, nothing’s really gonna stick. So, you start questioning things, like if you’re good enough. Even though this isn’t an exclusively gay experience, it’s one that no one had told me about. I had just assumed that because every 50-something year old man on Grindr found me attractive, people at school would think I was too. Sure, going onto dating apps for validation of how attractive you are is universally considered unhealthy, but it was what I had known. So, I would troll the dating apps in hope of finding someone that would want me. And, more times than not, it yielded a less than fruitful search.

In the end, I wasn’t having the experience every gay person dreams of in college, I was having the same one I had back home. Although I generally talked to more people my age, it would end up being the same thing as before: they complimented me, told me all the things I wanted to hear, then we would meet up. After a lackluster 20 minutes, we would part ways, generally not speaking again.

When it came to actually trying to plan dates with someone, the results were mediocre at best. Take, for instance, a boy that I had planned a sunset picnic with. It was my first Friday at BU, and I felt hopeful that even if the date was a bust, it was a sign of things to come. Unfortunately, it was a sign of things to come (just not good ones), because he texted me the afternoon of the date to let me know he was sick. An hour later, he was out at dinner on Snap Maps. Or, take the boy that unadded me after we had stayed up until 3:00 am texting the night before. Now, of course I am not completely innocent. I’ve had my fair share of times losing interest in people where I’ve stopped texting back, been flakey, and probably could have been more honest up front. Like the boy that I asked to a date party that I really liked. He said yes, and then said date party got canceled, but I never told him that. Instead, I had no thoughts about his feelings on the matter, and hoped he had just forgotten I’d asked. Although every lackluster relationship turned into a fun story, those stories get old after a while. It was a cycle I couldn’t figure out how I kept ending up in, until I finally found gay friends.

I had lived my life in a bubble before college, and that meant I had almost exclusively straight friends. I hadn’t thought it mattered, that dating was dating, and it didn’t matter what your sexuality was to understand boy troubles. But, once I finally found these friends, I realized my experience was one that many gay men have been through before. They understood the culture of gay dating apps because they had been on them themselves, and they knew what it was like to only know intimacy with men that are twice your age.

In being lucky enough to find some great friends that had similar experiences to me, I learned a few things: first, gay dating in a city isn’t the magical experience you’ve made it out to be in your head. For the most part, you’re not going to find the love of your life as soon as you move. You’ll still encounter many of the same issues as you did with dating at home, and if you aren’t confident with yourself, those issues are never going to be resolved. But, if you open up your mind to leave room for even greater experiences than you imagined, things are going to be alright. You’ll learn what type of guy you want, the types you don’t, you’ll learn the steps you need to take to be a secure enough person to even be ready for a relationship, and you’ll probably have a lot of stories along the way. So, while gay dating in the city may not be the cinematic experience you’ve always imagined, it will be an experience worth its while.