Last year I experienced the closest thing I’ve ever had to a relationship.
It started on Grindr, it was just a guy who came over to my place to hook up. He was already in an open relationship with another guy (they were engaged), so I wasn’t expecting anything.
But he kept coming back again and again. Then every weekend. Then I started sleeping at his place every day. We traveled together and built a very intense connection in a very short amount of time. It lasted 5 months.
It’s been 6 months since he left my city and everything ended, and it still affects me to this day.
Yesterday I invited another guy from Grindr over, also with no expectations beyond casual sex. But he was very attentive, affectionate, and seemed to genuinely enjoy my company. We spent the afternoon together and it was really nice. At night I told him he could stay over and leave the next day. That’s when he told me he needed to tell me something: he was in an open relationship.
At that moment I had déjà vu. I saw everything happening all over again. I asked him to leave and told him it wouldn’t work out. What feels even stranger to me is that he seemed sad too that it was ending right there. He even joked, saying, “The gay world is weird, right?”
And since yesterday I’ve been thinking about that.
There are days when loneliness feels unbearable, and right when someone shows up that I feel a genuine connection with, they’re not actually available.
It feels so unfair. I find it so hard to build this kind of connection, and then have to throw it away so easily, like it’s something casual, meaningless… I don’t know.