The question of whether we can communicate with the dead has provoked endless speculation.  Ironically, this cultural preoccupation is often matched by our reluctance to speak about the dead.  This reveals not only fears concerning our own demise, but also our anxieties over losing someone else through death.

Fortunately, children and youth don’t typically encounter death.  Even when they do, they are often more resilient than we might suppose.  As Psychology Today magazine rightly notes, such resilience can be fostered by giving children opportunities to discuss the person who has died (and the feelings caused by that loss).  Because they are older, young adults are more likely to know somebody who has died, including a friend or peer.  Various resources are available for these individuals, including a recently formed grief support group on the campus where I teach, an encouraging and timely development.

For many adults, death is all too common.  One reason is that Baby Boomers—a huge percentage of the American population—have been dealing with their parents’ mortality for almost two decades.  At workplace lunch tables and water coolers, in car lines at elementary schools, at social, civic, and church gatherings, it’s not uncommon to hear a person discussing the death (or approaching death) of his/her parent.  These interactions, albeit sometimes painful, provide social and emotional solidarity—a glue of grief, empathy, and understanding that has helped millions of people confront life’s finitude.  If it takes a village to raise a child, then it also takes a village to bury the dead.

However, there’s an exception to these examples.  Almost everybody with whom I work or socialize has a spouse or partner, so their relationship with that person is often a topic of conversation.  This is natural and understandable: a spouse/partner is frequently the most significant individual in a person’s life.  Given that my own partner died seven years ago, my references to him are in the past, not present, tense.  Though I assumed this would go largely unnoticed (he was rather than he is), it nevertheless produces—more often than not—noticeable reactions: a hesitant pause, an ever-so-slight shift in body language, a break in eye contact.

I initially thought that these conversational cul-de-sacs resulted from the concern that I might become weepy (or—gasp—actually start sobbing!) if others encouraged me to discuss my deceased partner.  Or maybe it was just the awkwardness of mixing the living with the dead—the former are tangible, vibrant, and consequential, while the dead are, well, none of those things.  Or perhaps I gave the impression of being stuck in the past, unable to adopt a Hallmark attitude about the future.  As plausible as these explanations might be, I can’t help from thinking that something else might (also) be going on.  And here is where social psychology can provide some insights.

In 1967, two American psychiatrists, Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe, created a scale of life events (the Social Readjustment Rating Scale) that they hoped could be used to determine the likelihood that somebody would develop a stress-related illness.  To predict this likelihood, Homes and Rahe had to determine the relative amount of stress that various life events cause.  Among the 43 events they eventually listed, they concluded that the death of a spouse generates (by a large margin) the greatest amount of stress.  This is one of the most robust and consistent findings in modern psychology.  It varies little with age or by culture.  Little wonder that the Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in the so-called same-sex marriage case in 2015 (Obergefell v. Hodges), noted that committed relationships respond “to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one is there.”  Having a spouse or partner, Kennedy continued, offers two people “the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live, there will be someone to care for the other.”

Therefore, what had seemed mysterious to me, now seems less so.  When a person in the midst and middle of life brings up the subject of a deceased partner, it’s bound to make others—also in the midst and middle of life—think about the possibility of losing their own spouses/partners.  Admittedly, thinking about something is not the same as actually experiencing it.  But why even think about it—especially if it’s the most stressful thing that can happen to a person—if you don’t have to?  (A few friends who have thought about it have responded to me by saying “I’d go crazy” or “I’d kill myself.”)

Consequently, when some of us want to speak about the dead, we might need to limit our remarks to the dead.  The awkward pauses are far less frequent, though they are also considerably longer.

Seven years ago, my partner unexpectedly died. For the first time in almost 25 years, I was plunged back into the dating world. If you’re a middle-aged gay man, that can be a very tough task. Let me explain why.

The odds are bad from the start.  The most reliable surveys (including those conducted by the Williams Institute at UCLA) indicate that roughly 2% of the American population identifies as either gay or lesbian. If we assume an equal percentage for each, that means about 1% of the general population identifies as being a gay male. Although that figure is undeniably higher in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas, it seems like a fairly accurate percentage for Greenville/Upstate South Carolina (the region I call home).

How does that percentage translate into dating realities? Let’s say I walk into a room of 199 (single) men. That means that two of us in the room are gay. Because I’m one of those two men, that leaves me only one other dating option. And, all things being equal, in any group containing fewer than 199 men, I could potentially be the only gay man.

Now let’s imagine that a straight man walks into a room of 199 (single) women. On average, two of these women are going to be lesbians (well, technically 1.99, but let’s round up). That would give the straight guy 197 women to choose from. As a gay man, I would need to walk into a room of 19,700 other men to have that many options. That’s a lot of chairs.

Location, location, location.  Historically, the only social institutions for LGBT individuals have been bars (John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities). However imperfect bars might be as places to meet potential partners (bars have typically catered to young gay men who are looking for sexual hook-ups), many communities still lack even this resource. (The only bona fide gay bar in Greenville closed several years ago.) In large cities there are growing numbers of LGBT support/social networks, but they are the exception, not the rule, throughout the rest of the country (including Greenville).

Unfortunately, almost all of the venues that assist heterosexuals in finding partners—workplaces, churches, civic groups, and community organizations—are far more difficult, if not impossible, for gays and lesbians to utilize for the same purpose. In such settings, gays and lesbians are not only vastly outnumbered by heterosexuals (see previous section), but they also (almost always) have to guess or rely on their “gaydar” to figure out who else might be like them. Imagine if the other 98% of the population were forced to meet potential dates/partners under the same circumstances?

As documented in a recent New York Times article, there are whole swaths of the country that are considered unfriendly to gays and lesbians (South Carolina is one of them). This means that gays and lesbians tend to avoid or leave certain areas, making those areas even more challenging for the (single) gays and lesbians who have to remain behind (usually because of job or family considerations).  In my own case, a personal matchmaking service indicated that at least six men have refused to contact me because they couldn’t stomach the idea of living in South Carolina. I wonder what straight people would think if they received a similar message: “I’m sorry, we can’t find heterosexuals who are willing to live in South Carolina.”  So much for Southern charm.

The good fits are already taken.  Most of us have heard the saying, “The good ones are already taken.” Well, maybe. But in my experience, it’s more a matter of the good fits having already been taken. And there’s some logic to that proposition. Most (though not all) people who want a partner spend their 20s and 30s finding one. Consequently, if you look for a partner (within your own age cohort) later in life, there will be fewer eligible individuals to choose from. Sure, some people re-enter the eligibility pool in midlife (as I did), but there sure seems to have been more good fits for me when I was in my 20s than there are now that I’m in my 50s.

And that brings me to the unavoidable topic of online dating sites. Among the oh-so-many disappointments I’ve encountered with seven such services (fake photos, fake ages, hucksters, hustlers), one of the biggest is that the vast majority of other members aren’t good fits for me, even if I were enthusiastic about attempting long-distance relationships (they aren’t easy). Again, this doesn’t make me any better than any other lonely heart. Nevertheless, two people are either compatible, or they aren’t.

I’ve also deputized more than thirty local and far-flung friends to be on the lookout for me. They usually respond by saying, “I know this guy who’d be a great fit for you, but he already has a partner” or “The only other gay man I know wouldn’t be a good fit.” As for the match-making service I mentioned earlier? After paying them a very large non-refundable sum, the best they’ve been able to do in almost four years is to set me up with a dead guy. That’s not a typo. Call me picky, but I declined that date.

Age, age, age.  Over the decades, one of the most consistent characteristics of the male gay community is the premium that’s placed on beauty and youth, especially the latter. It can even result in something referred to as “internalized gay ageism.” During the past seven years, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been told, “You’re too old.” To make matters worse—and against my repeated protests—the online dating services constantly match me with guys who have indicated that someone my age is too old for them. Mind you, these are guys in their 40s and 50s, but unadulterated youth (pun intended) is what they want. Sadly, verbal (and often physical) shunning can do a real number on your self-image. This makes Freud’s notion of narcissistic injury pale by comparison.

There’s another group for whom aging is also a great liability: middle-aged straight women. They face equal—sometimes worse—disdain from middle-aged men. In other words, both gay and straight middle-aged (single) men seem to place a huge emphasis on having young(er) partners. I think that that’s one reason that middle-aged straight women are more attracted to me than middle-aged gay men are; they (the women) see my other qualities as being far more important than the fact that I’m no longer 25 years old. Admittedly, some gay and straight men are attracted to older partners. All I can say is that the older men to whom they’re attracted must have something I don’t.

Musical chairs.  We’ve all played musical chairs. We know that when the music stops, the players must run to an empty chair. Anybody left standing is out of the game. That’s certainly the feeling a gay middle-aged man can experience when he tries to find a kindred spirit to share his life or—at the very least—an occasional date. Naturally, if it were a real game of musical chairs, nobody would feel anything but a transient sting of disappointment. Alas, the games of childhood are not the realities of adulthood.