How to make friends with older LGBT people

October 8, 2018 2:33 PM

I am ending a 25-year relationship and I have become very isolated. My sexual orientation is complicated. I used to say I was bi, but then married a man, and now I don't know who I am. I want to make friends with LGBT people aged roughly 40-60 years old -- not necessarily for a sex or a relationship, but for friendship and community. How do I do that?

I didn't realize how isolated I was until the cracks in my marriage became impossible to ignore. I need to re-build my social network, and I want to make sure it includes LGBT people. But how? Where should I go? What should I do? Back in the day I would have hung out at feminist bookstores and gay bars -- but those don't seem to exist any more. What should I do?

posted by OrangeDisk to Human Relations (7 answers total)

Do you have any particular interests? If you're somewhere with at least something of an LGBT community, you'll probably find an LGBT book group, running club, choir etc. A trawl through google or facebook or Meet Up along those lines maybe? My work includes supporting a couple of Frontrunners running clubs (linked above) and they have the specific intent of helping people build an LGBT community without having to go drinking/clubbing etc.

If you don't have any particular interests like that, is there something you could at least tolerate for a while in order to meet people? Once you've book groupped (or whatever) for a while, you can ask the people you get on best with to something else outwith the club, meet their other friends, etc.
posted by penguin pie at 2:55 PM on October 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

Attend a UU church, or at least check out your local UU to see what activities they have that interest you.
posted by molasses at 2:57 PM on October 8, 2018 [9 favorites]

If you are blessed by having a gay square dance club near you, learn square dancing. It is your target age, fun people, not a lot of drinking, and an entré into an international community, so you'll meet people from all over.

(Disclaimer: I self-identify as (mostly) straight, but/and dance primarily with gay square dance clubs, and fly with mrs straw to the annual international convention, because the community is so awesome.)
posted by straw at 3:20 PM on October 8, 2018

You could go to Camp Camp! I have an older friend who more or less meets your description, and she loves it.
posted by the_blizz at 3:21 PM on October 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

Meetups?
posted by whimsicalnymph at 4:17 PM on October 8, 2018

Seconding UU church.
posted by matildaben at 8:52 PM on October 8, 2018

If you’re interested in volunteering, you might be pleasantly surprised by all the cool things you can’t believe people need you to do. For example, a friend of mine is very involved in our local LGBTQ film festival and gets to go to all the films and parties and they need people for EVERYTHING. And a local health promotion type of NGO I am a little involved in runs lots of great events and they always need more hands. The community-ness is lovely, as is the warm fuzzy of contributing to something good. This latter organisation does stuff like promoting breast screening for people transitioning to male who are not targeted by mainstream health promotion messages so they’ll set up somewhere LGBTQ friendly, like a festival or whatever, and there’s food and music and it’s just fun and good and makes me tear up* that people care about each other.

*yes I am super soft.
posted by stellathon at 9:01 PM on October 8, 2018 [1 favorite]