Reconnecting with Aliveness as a Gay Man
Many gay men don’t arrive at this work because something is “wrong.”
They arrive because life is working, and yet something essential feels muted.
Careers function. Relationships exist. Social lives are active. From the outside, things look fine, even successful. And underneath, there’s often a quieter sense of disconnection: a dulling of pleasure, a restlessness that doesn’t resolve, or a sense of living slightly ahead of—or apart from—oneself.
This isn’t a failure. It’s often the result of adaptation.
How aliveness gets quieted
Many gay men learn early—often intelligently—how to manage themselves in order to belong.
That can mean:
monitoring desire
moderating expression
separating what feels alive from what feels acceptable
learning to perform competence before safety is guaranteed
Over time, these adaptations can create distance from the body and from subtle inner signals. Aliveness doesn’t disappear, but it becomes harder to sense. Pleasure becomes complicated. Desire feels risky or confusing. Stillness can feel uncomfortable rather than nourishing.
What’s lost isn’t function—it’s self-contact.
Pleasure, shame, and self-censoring
For many gay men, pleasure carries mixed messages. It can be a source of vitality and connection, and also of shame, vigilance, or self-control. Rather than being listened to as information, pleasure is often:
chased
regulated
judged
managed
compartmentalized
In this work, pleasure isn’t treated as something to maximize or perform. It’s approached as information—a signal of aliveness that can be noticed, stayed with, and understood without being acted on or suppressed.
This simple shift often opens space where trust has been missing. (You might explore this further in Pleasure as a portal.)
Why “fixing” often backfires
Many gay men are fluent in self-improvement.
They’ve learned to work on themselves, optimize their lives, and manage complexity. While these skills are valuable, they can backfire when applied to inner life. Effort and pressure often create more distance from experience, not more contact with ourselves
Aliveness doesn’t respond well to force. It responds to attention, safety, and relationship. This is why the work doesn’t begin with goals or outcomes, but with noticing—what’s already happening, quietly, beneath the surface.
Reconnecting through presence and inner relationship
Reconnecting with aliveness doesn’t mean becoming more expressive, confident, or free in any prescribed way.
It means rebuilding a trustworthy relationship with your own experience:
noticing sensations without immediately interpreting them
staying with discomfort without needing to resolve it
sensing desire without obligation
allowing clarity to emerge rather than demanding it
Over time, this restores contact—not just with pleasure, but with choice. (You might find Noticing Without Identifying or Why inner relationship matters helpful entry points.)
A gentle invitation
If something in this reflection resonates, you don’t need to know what it means yet. You might begin with the Five Invitations Back Into Aliveness—a simple, experiential way of listening. Or you might explore other writing and notice what stirs.
And if it ever feels right to explore this work more directly, a conversation can be a natural next step. Sometimes recognition itself is the beginning of movement.
A small personal note: This work is shaped by my own experience as a gay man, as well as by accompanying many others through questions of aliveness, pleasure, and self-trust. You can read more about my approach here.
