“Are you dead?” — On Loneliness

  • From “A Conversation with Gail Honeyman” on her book “Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine”:

Interviewer: “Where did the idea for Eleanor Oliphant come from?”

Author (Gail Honeyman): “Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine started with two related ideas. The first was loneliness, an issue that’s now thankfully starting to receive more attention as we begin to understand more about its often devastating consequences. I remembered reading an article in which a young woman, living in a big city, said that unless she went out of her way to make arrangements in advance, she’d often find herself not speaking to another human being from the time she left work on Friday night until her return to the office on Monday morning, and not by choice. I started to wonder how such a situation could come about. When loneliness is discussed, it’s often in the context of the elderly, but I began to think about how it might manifest in younger people, and whether the issues might be slightly different for them. Was it harder to talk about, or even to identify, because their loneliness didn’t result from, say, the death of a spouse after decades of marriage, or from becoming housebound due to age-related illness? Did social media have an impact and, if so, was it positive or negative? Was it worse or better to find yourself lonely in a big city rather than in a small town or village? In the end, it wasn’t difficult to imagine how a young woman with no family nearby could find herself in the situation described in the article, moving to a new city, she might rent a one-bedroom apartment, take a job at a small firm where she had nothing in common with her colleagues…”

  • In the intro to Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine:

“

Loneliness is hallmarked by an intense desire to bring the experience to a close; something which cannot be achieved by sheer willpower, or by simply getting out more, but only by developing intimate connections. This is far easier said than done, especially for people whose loneliness arises from a state of loss or exile or prejudice, who have reason to fear or mistrust as well as long for the society of others…

[…]

The lonelier a person gets, the less adept they become at navigating social currents. Loneliness grows around them, like mould or fur, a prophylactic that inhibits contact, no matter how badly contact is desired. Loneliness is accretive, extending and perpetuating itself. Once it becomes impacted, it is by no means easy to dislodge.

”

[Olivia Laing in “The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone”]

My full moon hike

For a large part of my life, I’ve enjoyed doing fun and/or adventurous activities on nights with the full moon: sailing, skiing, swimming in the sea back Europe, hiking, or long walks at the beach along the ocean in California. 

Since moving to Colorado I had only gone for a few full moon walks in the open space near where I lived — nice but nothing much, not really comparable to what I used to do. 

During the holidays this past December, spurred partly by the mild winter we’re getting and partly, to be honest, by my big crush on the gay climber, I decided to go on a night hike for the first full moon of the New Year and I suggested it to the gay climber who had never done anything like that & accepted the invitation enthusiastically. 

So on Saturday, 3rd January, we went for an 8-mile hike on a trail I had recently discovered and which had quickly become one of my favorites. It was lovely. We hiked for nearly three hours on a clear, mild night, with no need for headlamps, the moonlight so full and bright. It felt good, even magical to me. But after the gay climber’s painful rejection of me as anything more than a platonic friend last Thursday, I needed to reclaim the full moon hike for myself. 

I did so last night, taking advantage of another mild, and relatively clear, evening. I only did half of the hike since I had run over 10km yesterday afternoon, but it was still lovely. And it was all mine: my trail, my moonlight, my night, my experience. My own passion, my habit for full-moon activities, yet another of my own rituals being reclaimed by me again. 

For the first two-thirds of the hike, the full moon was covered by a relatively thin layer of clouds so I had to use my headlamp for the first half-mile or so, in order to make sure I didn’t go off trail at the beginning. But then, I switched off my headlamp and let my eyes adjust to the relative darkness, to the delicate, almost ghostly light. It was a mild night, more than I had expected it to be, so I had to stop and remove a layer. As I hiked along the ridge, I could feel my heart thumping and realized I was walking really fast. “Slow down, no need to rush”, I told myself. And then, once my eyes had adjusted to the semi-darkness and my emotions had settled into being out in nature alone at night, I started taking in my surroundings, noticing everything: every little rock on the path, the boulders on the hillside, the stars in the part of sky that wasn’t covered by clouds, the sound of distant traffic, the lights of the planes coming in further southeast. Being alone made everything sharper, everything more clear and detailed than when I had hiked with the gay climber. Because it was just me: just me and the trail, just me and the full moon, just me on this night reclaiming one of my favorite places, one of my favorite activities, another important part of my identity. 

And then, for the last mile or so, the moon finally came out of the clouds and everything was bathed in such bright light that it felt like day. I could see my shadow stark against the path, outlined against the hillside, and everything as clear as if a spotlight had been shining. And maybe, for me, it was shining. A spotlight back on my life, on what is mine and belongs to me deep down inside and is independent of any crush. 

I cannot have the relationship I was hoping for with the gay climber but I can have my places, my rituals, my full moon activities. I can give space to, hold onto, and enjoy all the important parts of my identity, including my full-moon adventures, even if I’m by myself. And I know that by reclaiming one of my places, one of my rituals, one of the activities that define my multifaceted identity last night I started my journey of healing from the pain of this most recent rejection.

Not “man enough”?

“Did you know I was trans?”, I ask the gay climber as we hike in the first full moon of the new year. 

“I assumed you might be from something you said to M. at dinner the other night but otherwise I wouldn’t have known”, he replies, then adding, “And anyway, I don’t care what your gender is!”

“What about your queer identity?”, I ask. “J. said you’re ‘queer’ but is there any other term or label you use or identify with?” 

“I’m gay”, he replies. And then explains, “When I was together with my ex-girlfriend a decade ago, I really loved her and tried to make it work but then I realized I needed to be true to myself and explore my gayness. I’m attracted to men”. 

In my short and sparse experience trying to have more-than-platonic relationships with cis gay men, I met two men who were very attracted to me physically/sexually and both of them, while identifying as wholly gay, said explicitly that they were attracted to masculinity, not to men, and that I was a “hot guy” and very “masculine” in some way, and I could feel how real their attraction to me was. In contrast, the gay climber’s words “I don’t care what your gender is!” & “I’m attracted to men” stick out to me and hit me as clear, painful proof of my not being “man enough”, not being “masculine enough”. I remember going home after a hangout with the gay climber at a cafe the afternoon of New Year’s Eve feeling in a similar way: somehow from the conversations we had had, I felt that he would not be attracted to the sides of me that enjoy gender-bending. And I can remember distinctly the feeling I had that night, celebrating New Year’s Eve with some close queer friends (all of us AFAB), as I wore a very sparkly, “girly” top and thought to myself, “He wouldn’t like this”. Not in the sense that he would disapprove of it on the whole but that he wouldn’t be attracted to me in that. And I also remember reminding myself, almost forcing myself, to enjoy that gender-bending I was doing on New Year’s Eve, to lean into it and enjoy it, because I do enjoy it and it is part of me. 

I realize that what I was writing the other day about liking “the person I’ve become” isn’t as straightforward as the thought initially seemed to me that morning with Chance Peña’s song “The mountain is you” playing softly. Overall, I do like who I’ve become, or who I’m becoming, on the inside, and I do truly feel appreciated and even loved, platonically, for the person I am on the inside. But the outside is much trickier. There are painful, contradictory emotions I feel with respect to my exterior appearance and also, to a certain extent, a dichotomy between how I experience myself/my gender identity and how the world still perceives me. For myself, I am esthetically pleased with how I look, which is a great relief after decades of (gender) dysphoria. Most of the time, I also feel in alignment between my inside and my outside, i.e. to me I usually look like a guy, to me I look “masculine enough” (e.g. I wouldn’t want to have any more body/facial hair). However, I realize that this alignment between my interior (gender) identity and my exterior appearance is very fragile: there are times when I see a photo or video of myself, especially if I’m smiling, and I see a “girl” (& hate it); often, when I’m not concentrating on how I’m talking, my voice still sounds like a (deeper) “woman’s” voice even to myself; and it still happens quite a bit that people will misgender me if they hear my voice without seeing my face, so that is definitely a source of great gender dysphoria for me as well as proof that some part of me isn’t “masculine enough”. 

So my identity as a “man” is still very shaky. And the rejection from the gay climber, i.e. the confirmation of his lack of physical attraction towards me, was an additional blow to my insecurity as a man. If he is, in his own words, “attracted to men” but not attracted to me, then am I not “man enough”? It also compounds decades of wounds and scars from my trying to be seen as a “boy” or “man” by people whose approval I needed and who just couldn’t or didn’t want to see the “boy” or “man” in me. For decades, I tried to tell my family of origin, with words or behaviors, that I was a “boy”, but I was ignored or ostracized. For years, I tried to have my ex-partner (a straight man) see & appreciate my masculine qualities, to love me for those “as a peer” (i.e. as another “man”) instead of as a “woman”. Those experiences with my family of origin and with that ex-partner (my last, to date, long-term partner) scarred me very deeply and got triggered again by the gay climber’s comments. For me, at a deep, incontrollable, emotional level, it all goes into the same bucket: people from whom I want, almost desperately need, approval of my identity as a “man”, are refusing to give me their approval. It is devastating. 

My identity as a “man”, though, is not only very shaky: it’s also multifaceted. To a certain extent, in a very general way, I could say “I’m a man who likes men”. But my liking of men goes beyond physical/sexual attraction: most of the time, what I mean is that I like their company, I enjoy being friends/buddies/comrades with cis-men. Often, I like to be “a guy among guys” or “just one of the guys”, and going climbing or on trips or adventures with (a) male friend(s) is one of my greatest longings (and, rarely, sources of joy). Physical or sexual attraction for me, as an asexual person, is very rare and complex. I’m often attracted to a somewhat “multifaceted masculinity” or to androgyny but there are cases where I could say that I’m one of those “flannel shirt gay guys”, i.e. one of those gay guys who like & present as “just a guy”. Honestly, I think that was one of the major appeals I felt, at least initially, with the gay climber: the feeling that, if neither of us had been open/out about our queer identities with our (mutual) friends and with each other, we probably wouldn’t have guessed that the other was gay. We’re both very “straight passing”. There are other sides of me, though. Most of the time, I am or want to be “straight passing”, “just one of the guys” or “just a guy”. But there are times, likes at New Year’s Eve or at the queer gala last night, when I like to be a “guy in a dress” or a guy in a sparkly, “girly” top, I want to dance shaking my butt and letting all of my energetic grace as an ex-ballerina come out. For me, the dress or the sparkly top are not intrinsically “girly” or feminine: they’re just fun clothes. They’re clothes which, in that specific moment, feel right to me — be it because I find it more fun (& even comfortable) to dance in a flowy flapper dress rather than in a tight suit, or because I want to enjoy the playfulness of sparkles, or because I want to enjoy how a skimpy dress shows off my body. For me, I’m “no less of a man” if I dance in a golden flapper dress and heels. I can do that on Saturday night and then go on a risky climbing adventure completely in “bro mode” with my male buddies, as “one of the guys”, on Sunday. There’s no contradiction for me. It’s all part of my multifaceted identity: I am a “man”, a queer man, a trans man, a queer gender-nonconforming person with female genitals, a climber, a nonbinary athlete, a scientist, an adventurous explorer. 

I am a guy. I feel like a guy. And nine times out of ten, I will choose the (flannel) shirt over anything else. Most of the time I will try and pass as a cis man. But that’s not the whole of me. And I don’t want it to be the whole of me. So it’s super painful that someone I like so much does not like me as that “whole”. It feels like those painful rejections from my past all over again. 

The mountain is me

“

I’ve become

A figment of my imagination

That’s why I run

Towards self-love and inner restoration

”

“I like the person I’ve become”. The thought curses through my head, all of a sudden, almost startling me, as I’m sitting at the table, eating my breakfast cereal, tears streaming down my cheeks and Chance Peña’s song “The mountain is you” playing softly. The thought startles me so much that I write it down in the notes on my phone, as a reminder for all those future moments, that will certainly come, when I will doubt myself again.

I like the body I have now, the body I’ve “made for myself” through surgery and GAHT and exercise. I feel aligned to my body the way it is now, after decades of (gender) dysphoria. 

I like the human I’ve become on the inside, too, the person I’ve grown (& am still growing) into. Yes, I have lots of defects, lots of “areas of growth” still and many issues that I’ll never solve — I can be self-centered and unavailable sometimes; I can be short-tempered and impatient; I’m socially awkward and direct, sometimes to the level of abrasive; I cannot hide my emotions, especially frustration, and I flare up easily in anger; I can be loud and opinionated and sometimes come across as patronizing even if I don’t mean to. But my anger is usually short-lived, I don’t hold grudges, and it often comes from hurt. The bluntness in my directness and/or social awkwardness stems from an innate honesty that, while sometimes uncomfortable or undiplomatic, I believe to be a generally good trait. I’m honest and loyal and brave, bold and straightforward and dedicated. I have a big heart, I’m not jealous, I can be very nurturing and even gentle. And I’ve done a lot of work on myself to get here. A lot. 

I guess what hurts the most in this moment is the sense that, while I like myself, I’m often not liked. I spent years in a relationship with a partner who tried to change me, oscillating between fighting him to be myself and trying to adapt or mold myself into what he wanted for fear of remaining alone. Years fighting people (my parents, other relatives, that ex-partner) who wanted to transform me into a pretty (female) doll. Years acquiescing to not being “too loud” or “too opinionated”. Years trying to curb my “anger issues”. Years feeling a closed, stunted heart and hardly any bandwidth for anybody else. I’m not doing that anymore. I’m not going back to all that shit. But while I feel that several people, at least my close friends, can see and appreciate my growth on a personal level, within our platonic relationships, my physical changes to align my body to my identity don’t seem to be liked. And that’s painful: when I had body & looks that were not aligned to my identity, I was very “liked”, often without wanting to or seeking it out; now that I have a body that is aligned to how I feel inside me, I’m not liked physically. 

That hurts a lot. So in dark moments like the one I’m going through now after yesterday’s rejection, a small light like the thought from this morning is a life-line for me to hold onto.

“

I don’t know what it is that I’m climbing to

I hear your words in my head, you said, “The mountain is you”

[…]

I’m scared to let go of what I’m scared to lose

I’m pouring out myself […]

[…]

Heart and my hands, don’t fail me now

Won’t let the weight of my fear go and knock me down

Only way’s up, no going around

Oh

[…]

I was barely surviving, almost left the climb

Said, “Don’t look down, but open your eyes”

You werе right, you said, “The mountain is you”

[…]

“

[from Chance Peña’s song “The mountain is you”]

The many levels of pain beneath the umpteenth rejection

This afternoon, I got the umpteenth rejection. Once again, it was from a gay cis-man. I was expecting it, I had a gut feeling he didn’t return my feelings of physical attraction, but still I needed to clarify explicitly. 

We’ve been friends for only a couple of months, having met through a common climbing buddy, and we connected really fast because of all the things we have in common: apart from both being climbers, we’re also both in hard STEM, both ride motorcycles, both enjoy getting out on the trails to run or hike and tend to have adventurous characters. And on top of all this, we’re both openly queer, which isn’t easy to find in general and even less in STEM and climbing. 

Despite my expecting the rejection and needing the clarification, the fact that he doesn’t feel physically attracted to me and that he only wants a platonic friendship with me (while he’s going out on dates with other gay men) really hurts me on multiple levels. There are many layers to my pain and disappointment, and I feel the need to unpack them here. 

The first, of course, is the pang to my ego: the more superficial pain coming from knowing that someone doesn’t find me attractive or handsome (while he’s talking about so many other men as “beautiful” or “handsome”). 

Then, there are the deeper levels: 

– Firstly, it’s yet another cis gay man who doesn’t find me physically attractive, so that undermines my own gender identity and confidence in my gender expression/presentation because, my reasoning goes, if cis gay men don’t find me physically attractive, then it must mean that I don’t look enough like a (cis) man, that I’m not “masculine enough”. And this hurts and rattles my (gender) identity at a deep level. 

– Then, there’s probably, once again, the pain of a rejection from a cis man (independently from the sexual aspect) that compounds old wounds from the neglect and abandonment and rejection I experienced from my own father (a cis man), and also adds to the sense of neglect that I’ve been feeling from many of my cis-het buddies who don’t keep up the friendship/connection with me (thus making me do all the work in our relationships).

– Also, this gay climber is a decade younger than I, and I’m sure part of me is attracted to men who are so much younger because I’m trying, or wishing, to recapture years that I lost when I couldn’t be my full boy self more openly.

– And last but not least, there’s my insatiable yearning for an adventure buddy who could also be a sexual/more-than-platonic partner: I had this with my sailing buddy a quarter of a century ago, my first “great love”. It was wonderful and I’ve never been able to find it again with anyone else. With this gay climber I thought it might be possible because, as with my sailing buddy many years ago, we had so much in common, including our adventurous characters. From the things I’ve done and said with this gay climber over the two months that we’ve been hanging out, I’m sure we both would have enjoyed going on climbing trips and adventures together — to a small extent, we already did some playful, adventurous outings even with the limited time available in these past weeks. I’m sure it could have developed into becoming full on “adventure buddies”. And, as with my sailing buddy so many years ago, there’s a complementarity in our approaches to adventuring: like my sailing buddy, this gay climber tends to be playful and lighthearted in his way of going into adventures while often also needing some prodding, whereas I’m a little more serious or responsible, and I’m usually happy to take the initiative. Generally, I need a follower to inspire me to take the lead, whereas he’s usually an enthusiastic follower; but then, sometimes, we also swap roles. I need that. So when we started to get to know each other and I sensed this dynamics between us, it felt wonderful to me, like I had finally rediscovered a long-lost treasure, both a long-suppressed part of myself and a type of relationship that I was longing for and thought I’d never have again. 

For a moment there, it — he — felt like a breath of fresh air in my life, and one I could really use.

So now, with his rejection of me, I feel that I’ve lost that dream again, too. And given my age, on top of the fact of being trans/nonbinary and gay and aro-ace (all of which reduces my “dating pool” drastically), I feel I’ll never find anyone again that checks so many boxes: queer, STEM, climbing, adventuring, lightheartedness/playfulness complementing me and lightening me up. 

This is making me feel terribly sad: dark and heavy and old (on top of unattractive and “not masculine enough”). Hopeless. And envious of this gay climber who, a decade younger than I (& cis), still has his entire, promising adult life ahead of him, while the best part of mine is behind me, lost and gone forever. 

My Double Anniversary

Four years ago, I was driving the last stretch for my move from California to Colorado. 

I cannot remember what I ate that first night I got here, staying by myself at my friends’ for whom I was going to house-/cat-sit, but I do remember that I stopped for groceries at the local King Soopers at the very end of my trip that afternoon and that the whole day I drove with the snow storm on my heels. And it was fortunate I stopped for groceries that afternoon because then I was snowed in for a few days! 

I can still remember the feeling of waking up in my new “home”, surrounded by a white, quiet, snow-covered landscape the next morning… Lovely. Magical. 

And then, a year later, three years ago today, I had my masculinizing mastectomy, my gender-affirming top-surgery. I was in the operating room at this time three years ago… Somehow those memories are less vivid, or vivid in a different way… maybe because of the general anesthesia? But also, and maybe especially, because somehow this years it’s the geographical anniversaries (from Europe to California, from California to Colorado) that I feel like celebrating more. I don’t know exactly why it is so but it is what it is and I’m going to respect and honor this feeling of mine. And celebrate in whatever way feels appropriate to me this year!

January: The month of Janus

The name of the month January comes from Latin Janus: in ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus, the guardian of doorways typically depicted with two faces looking to the past and future, is the god of gates, transitions, time, duality, passages, beginnings and endings. 

The realization hit me as I was brushing my teeth in my hostel room in San Diego, CA, where last weekend I was celebrating the tenth anniversary of My Liberation. On January 19th, 2016, I arrived in San Diego from Europe to basically start my life all over, following one of my deepest dreams and my inner compass. And all of last weekend in California, as I walked around my beloved spots in San Diego reminiscing those life-changing moments with the memories — sounds, sights, images, smells — from a decade ago coming back very vividly, despite my thoughts often going back to those first days of my “new life” that started a decade ago, despite the thought “I’ve come so far”, the question that kept popping into my mind persistently was “OK, and what next? Where to from here?” 

“I’ve come so far, and where to from here?”

Looking to the past and into the future, beginnings and endings, just like Janus. 

In the past decade, the month of January for me has indeed been “the month of Janus” as it’s been the month of really life-changing passages or transitions: the move from Europe to California ten years ago; then, the move from Colorado to California four years ago; and then, my gender-affirming top-surgery three years ago. For me, for my personal history, the week that goes from the 19th to the 26th of January has been a week of portals, passages, transitions, or leaps of faith. And now a week of commemorations and celebrations. But for the first time ever this year, this week of celebrating those important anniversaries has been just as much about looking to my future as about commemorating my past achievements. 

Despite recurring moments of deep loneliness and sometimes even the resurfacing of suicidal thoughts due to unbearable emotional pain, I have rediscovered in myself a drive to push and move forward, to look into the future. And a readiness to do something else, do something more once again. Basically, taking the energy from the thought “I’ve come so far” to ask myself “Where to from here? What next?” 

I don’t know for sure what that “from here” or “next” will be… Probably some activism, organizing, more social engagement, maybe even some political involvement; certainly a different approach to relationships, especially my most intimate ones. What else, I’m not sure, but I can definitely feel that “Janus energy” in me now and see the deep meaning of the name of this month.

“Do not obey in advance”

“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

“Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. Perhaps rulers did not initially know that citizens were willing to compromise this value or that principle. Perhaps a new regime did not at first have the direct means to influence citizens one way or another. After the German elections of 1932, which permitted Adolf Hitler to form a government, or the Czechoslovak elections of 1946, where communists were victorious, the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience. Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change. The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed. 

[…] 

In 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the SS took the initiative to devise the methods of mass killing without orders to do so. They guessed what their superiors wanted and demonstrated what was possible. […] 

At the very beginning, anticipatory obedience means adapting instinctively, without reflecting, to a new situation. Do only Germans do such things? The Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, contemplating Nazi atrocities, wanted to show that there was a particular authoritarian personality that explained why Germans behaved as they had. He devised an experiment to test the proposition, but failed to get permission to carry it out in Germany. So he undertook it instead in a Yale University building in 1961 […]. 

Milgram told his subjects (some Yale students, sone New Haven residents) that they would be applying an electrical shock to other participants in an experiment about learning. In fact, the people attached to the wires on the other side of a window were in on the scheme with Milgram, and only pretended to be shocked. As the subjects (thought they) shocked the (people they thought were) participants in a learning experiment, they saw a horrible sight. People whom they did not know, and against whom they had no grievance, seemed to be suffering greatly — pounding the glass and complaining of heart pain. Even so, Milgram’s subjects followed Milgram’s instructions and continued to apply (what they thought were) ever greater shocks until the victims appeared to die. Even those who did not proceed all the way to the (apparent) killing of their fellow human beings left without inquiring about the health of the other participants. 

Milgram grasped that people are remarkably receptive to new rules in a new setting. They are surprisingly willing to harm and kill others in the service of some new purpose if they are so instructed by a new authority. “I found so much obedience,” Milgram remembered, “that I hardly saw the need for taking the experiment to Germany.” 

[Lesson #1, “Do not obey in advance“, from the book “On Tyranny— Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” by Timothy Snyder, published in 2017]

The eternal extra work for AFAB persons

Yesterday, I found myself venting with one of my closest cis-guy friends about my confusion and disappointment: the gay climber (another cis-man) with whom I had seemed to connect so nicely over the holidays and who seemed to genuinely enjoy my company & to care about my friendship has ghosted me. He didn’t reply to a direct question in a text message a week ago and then never wrote back. My friend validated my disappointment but he also offered an alternative viewpoint from my interpretation of ghosting and/or not caring: he suggested that maybe the gay climber had lost track of my text with the direct question, between being sick and going back to school, and then once he realized how much time had gone by, he felt guilty or awkward and didn’t know how to reach back out. I’ve heard this viewpoint from several other of my cis-men friends (gay or straight but anyway AMAB): “I missed your text, lost track of time, and then felt guilty and didn’t know how I could get back to you so late… I guess I was just unable to say, ‘Sorry, I messed up, want to hang out?’”, they explain. 

A few days ago, I sent out an email to several of my climbing buddies & the people on my climbing team suggesting an event. Of the dozen people to whom I sent this email, all cis-men apart from the four cis-women on my climbing team, four people have replied: three of the women on my climbing team (one of whom replied also for her boyfriend who’s on the team, too, although he’s the one who usually interacts with me more since we’re both “guys”) and one of the older cis-men on the team. 

In general, of the six very close straight guy-friends I have and even within my broader group of about a dozen cis-men who are buddies, only two of them ever initiate communication with me; the others always leave it up to me to reach out. 

One of the biggest problems and sources of disappointment for me in the gay men’s chorus was the incapacity of even the guys who actually liked and/or connected with me genuinely to reach out and keep in touch.

What is the problem with cis-men (or AMAB people more generally, since I know a couple of trans-women who do the same) and communication? I find it to be particularly bad here in the U.S. (at least within white American culture); my cis-men friends in Europe weren’t (& still aren’t) as bad. 

This isn’t a question of “female vs. male brain”. The excellent book “Inferior” by Angela Saini, among others, shows ample scientific proof and data that human brains are pretty much the same for males and females, the differences being really social and/or cultural rather than based on sex or gender. And I believe that the data I have in my own life with my friends & relationships proves this, too: although I’m a guy, I’m generally good at communicating or, at least, at maintaining communication and relationships, as I generally put effort into caring for the relationships in my life. And most of my other AFAB friends do the same, regardless of their gender identity. Part of the reason is our characters; but I’m sure the main reason is the way we were socialized: as AFAB persons, we were socialized to be care-givers, to be “in charge of relationships”, to “do the emotional work”, while our AMAB peers were not. Which in practice means we do the lion’s share of the work in maintaining the relationships and communication even when we shouldn’t. 

And this is getting to be a nightmare, a real problem, for me. I love my cis-guy friends and I know they care about me, too. They’re all really nice guys and they are caring and responsible both with me when we meet up in person and with their partners or families. But the responsibility or weight of maintaining the relationships with them always falls wholly on my shoulders. It’s a catch-22 (& I feel particularly cursed because I tend to like cis-men a lot): it would be painful for me to not have these cis-guy friends in my life but it’s almost just as painful to have them in my life because of the constant effort I have to make to keep the communication (or relationships) alive.