Do you read Dan Savage? http://www.thestranger.com/columns/savage-love http://www.thestranger.com/columns/savage-love Your new city probably has a gay counsel

Do you read Dan Savage? http://www.thestranger.com/columns/savage-love http://www.thestranger.com/columns/savage-love Your new city probably has a gay counseling phone line. If it doesn't, you need to move somewhere that does. You're the reason volunteers spend their time on those phones, so call them. They're gay, and they know where gay people hang out in your part of the world. > Has anyone else found themselves in this situation? How did you get out of it? By joining the university choral society, persistence, and a fair bit of luck. You'll probably do it differently. > None of my friends are gay, nor do they know any gay people. Let's do some probability theory. Trait X is randomly distributed across 10% of the population. (You can cut the Kinsey scale at different places. It's a round number, and it's true for some plausible definition of "gay".) The likelihood of your assertion is around P=0.9^(N²), where N is the typical number of friends you or one of your friends has. Go run hoc. Case 1: P is above, say, 5%. This is the easy case. You could be right, and you just need to get out more. Stop reading HN and do it. Case 2: P strains credibility. You might have to replace "are" with "say that they are". This is the hard case, because meeting more people who say that they're not gay won't help, and you need some different friends. A few things to consider at that point: Things like online dating, and events where 30% of people are gay, make it sound like you're still at least partly in the closet. If you fix that, you can start going to pubs and parties where 99% of people are gay, and they're 99% sure that you are. That makes everything much easier. For one thing, closeted guys in their late 20s aren't boyfriend material. Coming out is like standing on a diving board: make sure there's something safe to land on, take a deep breath, then take a step where you can't step back. The feelings of exhilaration, existential choice, and not standing on anything solid, are pretty similar in both cases. People tend not to be out at work. Therefore pretty well all sane gay men have a significant life apart from work. That has some negative career implications, but it also has some positive ones. Good luck.