I ask, would it be okay being single your whole life as a gay, bisexual, pansexual, demisexual or non binary man, would you be okay being single for the rest of your life living here in Reading? Not for six months, not until you meet someone, and not until you get your career sorted, lose weight, earn more money, become more confident, move to London or Manchester, download the right dating app, go to the right gay bar, attend enough Pride events, or finally become the version of yourself that you believe somebody else will want. I mean permanently. What if you never met your person? What if there was no husband, no wife, no boyfriend who eventually became your partner, no girlfriend who eventually became your spouse, and no person who moved into your house and left their toothbrush next to yours? What if you reached seventy and realised that you had lived your entire adult life without having a romantic partner? Would your life still be meaningful?
That is a frightening question for some men, and I think it is a question worth asking, not because I want men to give up on relationships, but quite the opposite. I think there is something psychologically liberating about being able to say: I would love to find someone, but I do not need another person to prove that my life has value. There is a very big difference between those two statements.
Alone Is Not the Same Thing as Lonely
Let’s begin with something deceptively simple: what is the difference between being alone and being lonely? They are not the same thing. You can be surrounded by people and feel desperately lonely. You can have hundreds of followers on Instagram and have nobody you feel you can call at two o’clock in the morning. You can go to Pride, go to the pub, have colleagues, brothers, sisters, cousins, parents, and friends, have sex, go on dates, and have a full calendar, and still feel lonely.
Loneliness is not simply the absence of people. Psychological research commonly conceptualises loneliness as a perceived gap between the relationships or connection we want and the connection we believe we actually have. That is an important distinction because it means loneliness is subjective; two people can live almost identical lives and experience them completely differently. One man can eat dinner alone in his flat in Reading and think, This is peaceful, while another can eat dinner alone in the same building and think, Nobody wants me. The external circumstances are almost identical, but the internal experience is completely different.
Paul Tillich captured something of this distinction when he wrote: “Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.” That distinction matters enormously when we talk about single men. Being single is a relationship status, loneliness is an emotional experience, and solitude can be a choice, none of those things automatically tells us whether somebody is psychologically healthy.
The £46,000 Question
I sometimes think about this through money. Imagine you earn £46,000 a year, but you would quite like to earn £100,000. You would probably enjoy having more money: you could travel more, buy a nicer house, eat in better restaurants, put more into your pension, help your family, invest, and make your life more comfortable. But if your £46,000 salary pays your mortgage or rent, feeds you, allows you to travel occasionally, gives you some disposable income, and provides you with a lifestyle that broadly reflects what you value, you might reasonably say: I would like more, but I am okay.
There is a difference between wanting something and believing you are incomplete without it. That distinction is incredibly important because modern Western culture has become obsessed with optimisation, optimise your body, career, income, productivity, dating profile, sex life, relationships, skin, sleep, morning routine, and happiness, until eventually you begin to wonder: When am I allowed simply to live?
I sometimes joke that I want to write a book called What’s Wrong With Being Average?, because there is nothing inherently wrong with being average. Most of life is average: most days are ordinary, most meals are not Michelin-starred, most holidays are not once-in-a-lifetime, most conversations are not profound, most achievements are not historic, and most relationships are not the stuff of cinema. Perhaps that is one of the great secrets of adulthood: a meaningful life is not necessarily an extraordinary life; sometimes it is simply a life that fits.
The Fantasy of “The One”
Many of us have been taught to believe in “the one”—the person, the soulmate, the missing half, the person who finally makes everything make sense. Disney has given us one version, romantic comedies have given us another, social media gives us another, and dating apps give us another. Underneath all of them sits the same psychological message: Your real life begins when you find someone.
But what happens if you don’t? What happens if you are thirty-five, forty-five, fifty-five, or sixty-five? What happens if you have dated, tried, and loved people who could not love you back? What happens if you have been ghosted, lied to, or repeatedly met men who wanted sex but not intimacy, or men who wanted intimacy but were already partnered? What happens if you keep discovering six months into a relationship that somebody has an open relationship when you believed you were building something monogamous?
What happens if you don’t want an open relationship, Grindr, or casual sex? What if sex is not particularly meaningful to you without emotional connection? What if you are demisexual? What if your gender identity means that conventional dating scripts do not feel like they were written for you? What if you are bisexual and feel as though you occupy a strange middle ground in both heterosexual and gay communities? What if you are pansexual and find that the language people use to describe relationships never quite captures your experience? What if you are a non-binary man and repeatedly encounter people whose understanding of gender is so rigid that you spend half the relationship educating them about your existence?
What if you are religious, or your family would struggle to accept your sexuality? What if you came out late, spent your twenties hiding, or spent your thirties trying to recover the years you believe you lost? And what happens if, after all of that, you simply don’t meet the person? These are real questions, and they deserve more than: “Don’t worry, you’ll find someone,” because we don’t actually know that.
There May Be No Person Coming
This is perhaps one of the hardest things a therapist can say: there is no guarantee. Nobody can promise you that you will find your husband, meet your wife, that there is a soulmate waiting around the corner, or that the next man you meet will be different. Strangely, accepting that uncertainty can sometimes make dating healthier. When you believe this has to work, every date becomes an audition, every text becomes evidence, every delayed reply becomes a crisis, every rejection becomes a referendum on your worth, and every attractive man becomes a potential future. Suddenly, you are not meeting another human being; you are interviewing them for the role of The Person Who Will Save Me From Being Alone. That is a hell of a job to give somebody.
The Gay Dating Paradox
There is a particular complexity for gay and bisexual men because the dating pool is structurally smaller than the heterosexual dating pool. That does not mean that gay men cannot have extraordinary relationships, they clearly can. Same-sex couples marry, cohabit, raise children, build businesses, buy houses, care for one another through illness, and grow old together. In England and Wales, the number of people in same-sex marriages has increased substantially since same-sex marriage was introduced, with an estimated 206,087 people in same-sex marriages in 2024 (men accounting for around 59.5% of those individuals). So this is not an argument that gay men cannot find lasting love; they absolutely can.
However, ONS data shows that 2.1% of adults identified as gay or lesbian and 1.6% identified as bisexual in 2024, and people identifying outside heterosexuality were statistically more likely to have never married or entered a civil partnership. Statistics cannot tell us whether an individual man will find love, but they help explain why somebody might experience the dating pool differently. You are not necessarily failing because dating feels difficult; sometimes the pool really is smaller.
Then add geography. A man living in central London has a very different dating environment from a man living in a small village. A man living in Reading is not living in rural Cornwall, but neither is he living in Soho. Reading has a visible LGBTQIA+ community, an established Pride organisation, and local health services that actively participate in community events. But even in a town or city with a visible community, visibility does not automatically translate into intimacy. You can live somewhere with a community and still not find your people; that distinction matters.
The Bisexual, Demisexual, and Ace Spectrum Experience
Bisexual men can experience another layer of complexity. Assumptions that bisexuality means indecision, promiscuity, being secretly gay or heterosexual, or eventually “picking a side” can complicate relationships before they even begin. Research into bisexual-specific minority stress has found that bisexual people can experience stressors from both heterosexual and sexual minority communities, and a study of 503 bisexual adults found that loneliness helped explain the relationship between these stressors and psychological distress or suicidality. That finding matters because loneliness is not simply a consequence of having no partner; sometimes loneliness is created by feeling that there is nowhere you completely belong.
Then there is demisexuality. Imagine living in a culture where dating often begins with: Do you fancy him? Is he hot? Would you sleep with him? Swipe right. But imagine that your sexual attraction does not work like that, it develops only after an emotional connection, trust, or friendship is built. Someone can be objectively beautiful and you still feel nothing sexually, yet people tell you: “You’re too picky,” or “Just sleep with people, you’ll get used to it.”
Research involving more than 1,000 people on the asexual spectrum found that emotional connection was the most frequently reported reason associated with future sexual activity among demisexual participants (69.3%). Another large study of people identifying as asexual, greysexual, or demisexual found substantial differences in sexual desire, behaviour, romantic attraction, and relationship experiences. A demisexual man is not necessarily an asexual man, and an asexual man is not necessarily aromantic. Someone can want romantic attraction without sexual attraction, companionship without marriage, intimacy without sex, or sex without a conventional romantic relationship. Human beings are much more complicated than the relationship categories we have invented.
What Happens If You Never Find “The One”?
This is where therapy becomes interesting. Therapy does not need to convince you that you will find somebody; it can help you build a life in which finding somebody is allowed to be a desire rather than a requirement for your existence. The question shifts from How do I make somebody love me? to If love arrives, what kind of love do I want? The first question creates desperation; the second creates agency.
Sometimes a man tells me, “I just want a boyfriend,” but after exploration, we discover the sentence underneath it is: I want somebody to prove that I am desirable, normal, or lovable, or so I don’t have to go home to myself. A man can desperately want a relationship while simultaneously being terrified of intimacy, craving affection yet rejecting it when it arrives, complaining that nobody wants him while pursuing only emotionally unavailable men, or saying he wants monogamy while repeatedly pursuing men who do not want it. None of this means he is stupid; it means something psychologically meaningful is happening underneath.
Attachment, CBT, and Humanistic Insights
Attachment work asks: what did love mean in your original family? Was it consistent, freely expressed, or performance-based? Were you praised for being useful, rejected, or punished for being vulnerable? Did you learn to leave before somebody could leave you, become sexually available while emotionally unavailable, or chase people who could not give you what you wanted? These patterns follow us into adulthood, shifting the question from Why can’t I find somebody? to Why do I repeatedly choose relationships that recreate something I already know?
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) asks: what are you telling yourself about being single? Thoughts like “Nobody will ever love me,” “I’m getting too old,” “Gay men only want sex,” or “I’m non-binary, so nobody will want me” feel like facts, but therapy examines the evidence. Rejection is not necessarily evidence that you are unlovable; it may simply be evidence that this particular person did not want this particular relationship with you.
Humanistic therapy asks: can you learn to experience yourself as worthy before somebody else validates you? We need people, friendship, intimacy, affection, community, touch, and to be witnessed—human beings are not designed for complete emotional self-sufficiency. But there is a difference between needing human connection and needing one particular type of relationship to legitimise your existence. Your partner is not your certificate of worth, and being single is not evidence that you failed.
Community and Addition vs. Rescue
If your entire emotional life is built around finding a partner, singlehood becomes terrifying. But imagine building a life with several different forms of connection: a best friend, a group of friends, a sibling, a neighbour, a professional community, a gym, a creative or faith group, an LGBTQ+ community, or a colleague you can have coffee with. That is not a consolation prize; that is community. A 2024 meta-analysis examining 167 studies involving over 157,000 participants found that connection to LGBTQ+ communities was consistently associated with positive health-related outcomes across the literature. This is why I would never tell a lonely man simply “You need to find a partner”—perhaps you also need to find your people.
A relationship should be addition rather than rescue: not You complete me, but You join me. A relationship is not necessarily fireworks; sometimes it is somebody asking “Have you eaten?”, putting the kettle on, remembering that you don’t like coriander, sitting beside you after a terrible day, or simply sharing an ordinary Tuesday evening. Boring is not necessarily bad.
Learning to accept singlehood should not become another psychological defence. There is a difference between I am okay if I remain single (acceptance) and I don’t need anyone anyway (armour). There is a difference between solitude and avoidance, independence and emotional isolation, and being content alone versus convincing yourself that you never wanted love because it became too painful to pursue.
Grieving the Life You Imagined
If you never find “the one,” the task is not to convince yourself that you never wanted them, but to grieve the life you imagined. There may be a fantasy you have carried since childhood, the wedding, the house, the dog, the children, the Sunday mornings, the Christmases, and the person sitting beside you when you become old. If that life does not happen, you may need to grieve it. Grieving futures that never happened is a part of adulthood, allowing you to ask: What future can I build from here?
You may build friendships that become family, mentor younger men, build a business, create art, travel, volunteer, foster, build a home where people are welcome, or meet somebody at thirty-seven, fifty-seven, or next Tuesday. We simply don’t know, and that uncertainty is part of being human.
Writer bell hooks described choosing love as moving towards freedom and away from domination, love as something active rather than merely something that happens to us. Love is not simply about being chosen; it is about learning how to choose: choosing people capable of reciprocity, honesty, boundaries, and kindness, and choosing yourself.
So, would you be okay? If you never find a partner, can you still build a life that you respect? Can you have mornings you enjoy, friends who know you, a home that feels like yours, and grow old without believing that you somehow failed? The goal of therapy is not to teach a man how to become somebody’s perfect partner, but to help him become comfortable being himself, separate desire from desperation, distinguish solitude from loneliness, and build community.
You can want love without worshipping it, want partnership without making it your proof of worth, enjoy solitude without pretending you don’t need anyone, be single without being lonely, and be deeply loved without having a romantic partner at all. If you never find “the one,” what kind of life do you want to have lived? That is a life you can begin building today.
Counselling for Gay, Bisexual, Pansexual, Demisexual and Non Binary Men in Reading
Are you a gay, bisexual, pansexual, demisexual or non binary man in Reading struggling with loneliness, dating, relationships or being single? Explore self worth, intimacy and connection through counselling.
If you are a gay, bisexual, pansexual, demisexual or non binary man in Reading and you are struggling with loneliness, dating, relationships, intimacy, rejection or being single, counselling can provide a confidential space to explore what is happening beneath the surface.
At Male Minds Counselling, I work with boys and men across Reading, Wokingham, Woodley, Earley, Lower Earley, Caversham, Tilehurst, Shinfield, Theale and surrounding Berkshire areas. Counselling can be particularly helpful if you find yourself repeatedly asking questions such as:
Why am I still single?
Why does dating feel so difficult?
Why do I keep choosing emotionally unavailable men?
Why do I desperately want a relationship but become uncomfortable when someone gets close?
Why does rejection affect me so much?
Am I lonely, or am I actually happy being alone?
Why do I feel as though everyone else has found someone except me?
Can I be happy without a romantic partner?
How do I build a meaningful life when I am single?
How do I feel confident in my sexuality or gender while dating?
Therapy can provide an opportunity to explore self esteem, attachment, loneliness, dating anxiety, relationship patterns, rejection, intimacy, sexuality, identity, emotional connection and fear of being alone without assuming that you need to find a partner to be happy.
For some men, the work may involve understanding patterns in previous relationships. For others, it may involve developing greater confidence, learning to tolerate vulnerability, processing rejection, exploring sexuality, building friendships and community, or understanding why being single feels frightening.
You do not need to decide that you want to remain single forever. You also do not need to convince yourself that you should be in a relationship. The therapeutic question can simply be:
What kind of life do I want to build, whether I am single or partnered?
If you are a gay, bisexual, pansexual, demisexual or non binary man in Reading or Berkshire and you would like somewhere to explore relationships, loneliness, sexuality, dating or self worth, Male Minds Counselling offers a confidential and non judgemental space to talk.
LGBTQ+ Counselling in Reading
Male Minds Counselling provides LGBTQ+ informed counselling for men experiencing difficulties around relationships, identity, loneliness, sexuality, intimacy and emotional wellbeing.
You can be single and still have a meaningful life.
You can want a relationship without needing one to prove your worth.
You can enjoy solitude while still wanting connection.
And you can explore all of these questions without having to pretend that you already know the answers.
Male Minds Counselling | Reading, Berkshire
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