When looking for someone to date, the last thing I care about his how much money he’s got.  Compared to my main priorities – 1: face 2: brain 3: body – someone’s (wage) packet is way down the list.  Idiots, good guys, bastards and charmers seem to be quite evenly distributed across the classes in my experience and I don’t need anyone to pay my bills.  That said, after talking to my friend Mark this week, I realised that in insisting that money has never shaped (or warped) a relationship I’ve been in, I’m lying to myself.

It’s certainly shaping Mark’s at the moment.  After a seven year relationship where Mark has always been the less wealthy partner, Mark’s slightly older boyfriend was made redundant two months ago. Mark has been supportive about it, but his boyfriend’s confidence has taken a hard knock. In an effort to compensate, he’s now spending long hours daily at the gym, and boosting his self-esteem with the occasional bit on the side.  While this isn’t a total disaster (their relationship is semi-open) it bothers Mark that his boyfriend is looking elsewhere, not to him, for the affirmation he no longer gets from a job.

While the shit economy is messing with Mark’s love life, it not just redundancy that brings this sort of pressure. Many relationships have an underground tremor of carefully repressed discontent about money.  It’s not about who bought the milk last, it’s about the way that wage differences slowly wheedle their way in to how you interact.  Put more into the kitty than your lover and you have to work hard to fight the feeling you’re entitled to something extra back, if not in cash, then in attention.

While this assumption doesn’t seem entirely reasonable (you’re working your balls off in part to give your lover pleasure, aren’t you?), it pushes the relationship towards a form of transaction – I give you holidays, you give me love.  Your lover, sensing this unspoken obligation, then feels pressured into being on their best behaviour to match your generosity, and inevitably feels a bit resentful about the unspoken pressure on what they say and do.  If he expresses this, he can come across as an ungrateful git.  If he just rolls with it and accepts the dynamic, your initially equal partner may soon start thinking of you as a father figure and asking you to pass the sugar.

Hide the shoes!

Mind you, being the poorer one can be no less irksome, as I’ve learnt myself in the past.  In my early twenties, I had a brief 3 month affair with a minted, handsome Arab American man who always wanted to go to expensive restaurants, which I couldn’t afford and didn’t like (I never had the right shoes).  He would brush away my objections with “Relax! I’ll pay…”.  At first, I thought this was generosity, but I soon realised he was just purchasing the right to be inflexible.  He didn’t really want the “me” I recognised, he just wanted a youthful face and chatter to cheer up his dull round of status asserting binges.

Real love can resolve all this kind of money-related niggle of course, as I’m sure it will for Mark and his man.  Even so, I still long for an ideal world where cash doesn’t drive wedges between people, puff up the worthless, demean the unlucky and drag the marriage of true minds into pettiness.

look at how oddly stick-uppy this guy's veins are

“How did I get here?” I wondered to myself, lying back on my psychotherapist’s couch and looking out the window at the clouds overhead.  I’ve always thought of myself as a fairly cheerful, well-adjusted sort of person, but I’ve long been burdened with a nagging sense that there is something buried in my past still tripping me up and holding me back.  With my memories piling up and my future ever shrinking, I decided 6 weeks ago it was time to look in the musty lumber room of my memory and clear out some old baggage.  This is how I found myself in Kentish Town describing a dream involving board games, Japanese crafts and the disembodied head of Portuguese explorer Fernando Magellan to someone who looked disconcertingly like my mum.

What is this minger doing in my dream?

Yes, therapy can be odd, but initially, I enjoyed it.  It’s an entire hour to go on about yourself, so what’s not to love?  As the weeks unfold, however, I’ve discovered something that might seem glaringly obvious but has still shocked me.  I’ve learnt that I still have a sense of shame and embarrassment about my gender and sexuality, and that this is deeply rooted in my early childhood.  After years of living openly and happily as an out gay man, I find this more than a little annoying.

Looking back, my early years were relatively stable and my parents have always been kind, but I clearly remember discovering some uncomfortable truths very early (about aged 4 – yes, I have an amazing memory).  Starting school, I learnt that

1: I was definitely very different from everyone else, and felt neither like any of the boys or girls I knew.

2: While I wasn’t clear exactly what this difference was, I knew it was shameful, awkward and, if possible, to be concealed.

Concealment wasn’t something I was very good at, however, and I spent many of my early years being nervous, shrill and defiantly anti-social.  I cross-dressed whenever I could – I remember a memorable time when I did a one-man show to my class at aged seven playing Henry VIII’s 6 wives (Anne Boleyn’s headdress was a pair of rose print bloomers belonging to my grandmother).  I also got into trouble constantly for being outspoken – many of my primary school memories involve standing with my hands on my head in the corner after being caught playfighting or telling people their lunches looked like sick (which they did).

Is any of this antique trivia really significant?  I think it is (to me).  By contrast, the vicious homophobia around during my late 80s/early 90s teenage years were a breeze.  While there was plenty of hatred around, my 13-year-old self could see it came from people I despised and whose good opinion meant nothing to me.

Dead bears are currently ruling my life

That early sense of shame and awkwardness, however, has stayed with me (albeit buried deep), as a young child has no real defence or distance from the messages it receives.  Even now, I find it difficult to accept praise – the voice in my head still says “ah, but I know what I’m really like” – and my relationship with myself isn’t as smooth as those I have with other people.

I don’t want to dwell on this – I have seen the dangers in other people.  Sometimes I meet gays who have such an acute sense of victimhood that they look for offence in anything, convinced that every tiny detail of mainstream society is a dart trained to wound their already bruised sense of self. This seems to be continuing the hurt rather than turning it around.  At the same time, I think it’s hugely important for many gays to realise that their frustrations with themselves often come from outside not within.  So many of us think our bodies are ugly, that we have to fit in, sometimes even that we’re not worthy of protection from HIV infection.  Turning society’s disapproval in on ourselves, we are often hyper-critical and intolerant of our own personalities.  Many of us also project these feelings onto each other through judgment, cliquishness and disapproval – I’ve often come across the idea that there are a group of “bad gays” out there (drag queens/muscle boys/fat blokes/”straight-acting” gays – you name it) who are ruining it for the rest of us.

It’s useful to think about the roots of these varying degrees of self-hatred, to unpick how we arrived at them and start forgiving ourselves.  Right now I’m starting to look back and see my younger self not as a bizarre, outspoken exhibitionist but as someone angry and confused, fighting back against narrow-minded ideas of what a boy should be that, deep down, I sensed were wrong.  That, at least, is a start.

For those of you paying attention, I’m sorry I’ve been so slack at posting on here recently.  It’s just that my life’s been uneventful and, whenever I’ve sat down to write, I’ve been distracted by something more pressing.  I might find myself busy wondering why the fluff I’ve picked out of my belly button is always blue, for example, or perhaps flicking through a catalogue for vinyl flooring, only to realise 30 wasted minutes later that I am still sitting on the toilet and my bare knees are getting cold.

Okay, so I’m lying.  The truth is quite the opposite.  My life has in fact been hair-raisingly eventful (emotionally at least), with more hectic stage business squeezed into the last few months than I have had in years.  The problem is, I just can’t bring myself to talk about it publicly – not at the moment, anyhow.  After years having the bizarre experience of watching Londoners read about my (no longer) private life in a free paper on the tube, I’ve grown wary of making myself un-dateable by broadcasting my lovers’ failings to anyone who would listen.  And while initially I thought discussing my life in a newspaper would boost my confidence, it wasn’t always that simple.  Back in the day I had some lovely encouraging emails, but I would also walk into bars or clubs inhibited by the megalomaniac misconception that I was being recognised and discussed by men around me (and occasionally I was right).  Likewise, publicising my occasional successes with men scared off a few shy potential boyfriends, which is a pity because shyness is something of a fetish of mine.  Now the London Paper has gone, the pressure is definitely off – but right now, I am afraid to break the spell by explaining exactly why I am so happy.

High time this blog had a picture of a kitten on it

My situation may be extreme, but it’s not as uncommon as it might look.  To an extent, many of us are Katie Prices and Peter Andres nowadays, publicising our relationships to the world in a semi self-conscious, exhibitionist way.  It seems like the biggest step in many people’s loves now, for example, is changing their Facebook status – not just because we’re all shameless self-publicists (though we are), but because adding or removing “in a relationship” invites a cascade of comments, many from people whose connection to us is pretty tenuous.

It can be handy sharing your life effortlessly, but the downside of it is that it becomes hard to remember exactly where your representation of yourself ends and your “real” relationships begin.  Are the many photos of ourselves with lovers that we post online, for example, always a proof of our happiness, or are they sometimes a way of calming our doubts by presenting the appearance of happiness to the world?  And how many couples have felt romantic moments in public enhanced by a tingling awareness that they look to the world at large like a handsome, happy couple in love?  Neither of these things means a relationship is false, but this self-consciousness can suggest it rests more on other people’s reactions to it than might be healthy.  Having been professionally obliged to live out my love life partly through other people’s responses to it, I’m wary of doing it again without thinking about it first.  So, dear readers, please give me a bit more time…

Is London really a big city?  Is the world indeed a large place?  I’m starting to doubt it.  As I come into weekly online contact with friends (or often just “friends” with inverted commas) from Lebanon to Liverpool, the world is starting to look less like an infinite, unknowable expanse and more like a small, tangled cat’s cradle, with digital links binding us all into uneasy false

Bearing this in mind, I completely understood my friend G’s enthusiasm for the man he’d just started dating.  Discussing him with me in a deserted café in Bethnal Green last Sunday (everyone else was at Lovebox), G mentioned his most impressive quality:

“You know what’s best about him?” he asked “He’s practically a Facebook virgin”

“What, you mean he doesn’t even have a profile?”

“Sure he’s got one, but we’ve only got three mutual friends in common.  Two of them are old work colleagues of mine I hardly see and one of them lives in Madrid.  We’ve got almost no connections at all – and that’s after his living in London for 7 years” he smiled.

So it’s true.  There has long been a rumour that there is actually a gay man in East London that Nobody We Know has had, but due to lack of verifiable sightings, he’s now been filed with Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster as just a beautiful legend.  Meet someone you think is new and invariably someone says something like: “watch out for that one, a friend of mine did him and he stole a box of breakfast cereal the morning after”.  You might also get something like “he’s still in love with my ex and goes round to shag him every second Tuesday” or the enigmatic and not entirely unpromising “he’s dirty”.

This run of familiarity and rumour is nothing true love or lust can’t overcome, but it’s slightly annoying.  Don’t we all want to find someone different and shut the world outside for a while?  To forget our futures shrinking away second by second and to find someone with whom to live briefly in the here and now?  If the hazily understood object of your affections turns out to be friends with people you hate, or just out of a relationship with someone you once shagged absentmindedly, then the world outside sneaks its way under the bedroom door and escape is harder.  And believe me, when you’ve been writing about your love life publicly for years, it’s nigh on impossible.

I’m pleased G has proved its possible to break out, to find someone likeminded, attractive, kind and based in London for years who is still as yet not yet entangled in your social network.  At least that way, he gets to find out his new man’s strengths and flaws all by himself.

Shallow and stupid. You, not him

I’ve noticed two things about gay life in London recently.

1. Loads of people are sick of the gay scene’s brainless commercialism and petty cliques.
2. There is a real fire under a lot of people, from many different gay subcultures, who want something better.

Exactly how to go about making gay public life better for us all, however, is a tricky question.  On a small, intimate level, I think a good start would be to try treating each other with more respect, kindness and tolerance.  While there is a lot of generosity and mutual support out there among gay people – I experience it daily, in part from people who read this site – I can’t help feeling we could all approach each other with a little more love and a little less judgement.  I need to do this as much as anyone.  In the past I’ve been quick to reject and slow to forgive, happy to dis people I didn’t know because they made me feel insecure, ugly or out of touch (even in print).

But if you want to change, where do you start?  From my own viewpoint, here are some phrases and standpoints not all that uncommon among gays that I think we could all do with ditching.

1. “No Asians please: no offence, just not my type” on Internet profiles.

Totally unsexy. You, not him.

What so out of over a million Asian men in the world, you can confidently say that you don’t find a single one attractive?  And are you really so constantly inundated with offers of Asian loving that you need to make an excluding banner statement making sure that Asian men don’t dare to join your club?

2.“Muscleboys are all vacuous idiots”

Really?  So you’ve given every single one a personality and IQ test?  Demonising a whole group of people because you suspect they don’t want to sleep with you is hardly a sign of intelligence.

3.“I have no respect for people who don’t look after themselves”

There are a thousand ways to “look after yourself” – say, spending time with your friends, enjoying food or studying – that have no visible effect on your body.  To assume that exercise is the only way people can boost their health and happiness suggests that you are doing a poor job of it yourself.

4.“Why do so many Lesbians want to be men?”

Because they don’t.  That some lesbians want to ditch a conventional feminine image that they find both oppressive and a bit silly on them is one thing, changing sex is another entirely.  Just because some find female gender stereotypes a cage doesn’t mean they want to swap theirs for ours.

Wants to be a man. You, not her.

5.“I can’t stand politics, I just want to have fun”

Don’t we all want to have fun?  Politics can sickening and dull, but ignore them and you may find yourself chewed up and spat out by the people who have chosen to act on your behalf.

6.“I can’t stand queeny gays.  I only like real men”

Everyone has their fetishes, but stigmatising people you consider to be less than butch smacks of projected self-loathing– especially as so many “fem-haters” have a hint of campness to their behaviour that they’re unwilling to accept.

7. “Ewwww, this place is full of Breeders!”

Granted, it was straight people who started it on the prejudice front, but stigmatising people for fancying the opposite sex and having kids makes no one look big or clever.

8. “You don’t know the tracklist for Kylie’s new album and you dare to call yourself a gay man?!?”

For the record I AM familiar with the track list for Kylie’s new album (and quite like it), but the assumption that being gay automatically means a love of mainstream gay icons is a pain in the arse for the thousands who couldn’t give a toss about Liza or Gaga.  Likewise the belief that all gays have an innate aesthetic sense makes shabby gays like me, with razor cuts, magnolia walls and beaten up furniture, feel inadequate.

9. “He/she’s such a fag hag / chicken hawk / muscle mary / rice queen etc”

There’s a venerable camp tradition behind a lot of these terms and no one wants gay chat to turn bloodless – but it’s depressing that, whoever you are and whatever you do, gay slang will find a way to make you sound ugly.

10. “Gays are just so shallow and dysfunctional – except my friends and me, we’re all lovely”

Bullshit – there is plenty of love and kindness out there.  Seek and you shall find.

Not exactly random eye candy - this guy is Spain's former Mr. Bear, and a Moroccan Muslim

I’ve lost a fair few illusions since I came out aged 18. Among many groundless fancies dashed over the years, I’ve realised that:

- I do not have a lovely singing voice.

- I do not look cool with an “interesting” haircut.

- I cannot breakdance / vogue/ krump, even when extremely drunk.

- Despite my mother’s protests to the contrary, I do in fact bear a passing resemblance to Henry VIII.

True to my self-satisfied self I’ve come to terms easily with these limitations – but the illusions I’ve lost about my fellow gays since getting to know them better have proved harder to do without.  When I first arrived on the scene, I assumed that because gays were the butt of so much prejudice, they’d be less prejudiced themselves.  Exposed to rejection and discrimination, gay people would be kinder, more inclusive, slower to judge and quicker to understand, an example to other people of what tolerance means.  Was I right?  Was I f***

Certainly I’ve come across many people whose sexuality has blown the doors off the prejudice they lived with in their own families.  I’ve often heard people say “If I wasn’t gay, I’d be a blinkered idiot like my brother/sister/parents”.  But the rainbow alliance between the victims of prejudice I imagined as a teenager has turned out, like a rainbow itself, to be a mirage.  I’ve met racist gays who would fuck but not date a non-white person and misogynist gays who think the pressure fashion exerts on women to loathe their bodies is a good thing.  I’ve come across rich gays who look down on people who aren’t “solvent”, privileged gays who think the developing world gets all it deserves and macho gays who sleep around but think their sisters shouldn’t cohabit before marriage.

While some of those views make me sick (actually, all of them do), I’ve accepted that a mere mutual fondness for cock isn’t going to create a universally shared ideology.  Now I think about it, my earlier assumption that being gay would mean sharing my liberal views had a faint whiff of fascism to it, as if people who disagreed with me couldn’t possibly join the club.

At the same time, when I come across outbursts like that by my (now former) Facebook friend Mark Ames – promoter of Europe’s biggest bear club XXL – I still feel hugely disappointed.  For those who haven’t come across yet, Ames suggested a boycott of all Muslim businesses and countries after youths fought with police outside East London Mosque. As a recent Dispatches programme on Channel Four showed, there is indeed a problem with Muslim extremism in East London, caused by the Islamic Federation of Europe infiltrating local institutions and then coercing and bullying people.  Moderate muslims, however, are the first target for extremists – recently a female Muslim councillor has been scared into wearing traditional dress after receiving anonymous death threats, while non-religious groups for Bengalis have had council funding removed.  Do we really want to isolate these people further by blaming them for the actions of the people who are bullying them?  It seems cruel and simplistic, a bit like hating gays because of the discovery of one gay paedophile.

Watered down, fleeting and illusory

This spat has been much discussed – and Ames has now apologised publicly.  I still think there is an important point worth making.  While we still get a load of shit, the position of gays in this country has improved hugely in the past few decades.  Now that many of our rights have been recognised, are we going to pull up the drawbridge and look at other minorities with automatic fear and suspicion?  Our own treatment has given us an inside knowledge of how prejudice breeds injustice – we should never lose sight of that in the way we treat other people.

I know plenty of men who fancy Seth Rogen, proof that bigger guys are still often lusted after

“You’re just getting a little too, well, chubby”

Does anyone want to hear this from their partner?  My friend Gareth was none too pleased when his boyfriend of 8 months made this comment last week.  Wondering why things were cooling off sexually between them, Gareth had gently brought up the subject of what was going wrong.  He hadn’t got what he’d expected.

“I can get all the pressure I need to dislike my body just by flicking through QX or the Daily Mail.  I don’t need extra help from someone I love.”

That said, Gareth accepts that his boyfriend isn’t making it up.  Over the past few months, old pairs of trousers have started digging ever-deeper caterpillar tracks into his waist, while his face is subtly but noticeably rounder.  He’s still a handsome, utterly charming person – and many men out there would prefer his new body shape – but there’s no denying that he’s more pillowy and less angular than he was when he met his current lover.  Whether this really matters, however, is a moot point.  When you fall in love with someone, after all, you normally do so with their whole personality, not because your heart has been smitten by a particular silhouette (at least, romantic that I am, that’s what I like to pretend).  As people get older, bodies usually get less taut and trim – if you can’t accept at least some evidence of the effects of time, you’re better off sticking to one night stands.

At the same time, relationships come with an unwritten contract.  Deciding you can fulfil another person’s emotional and sexual needs indefinitely is a brave thing to do, and no one should be surprised if it takes work.  A few inches more or less on the waistline should be okay with anyone but the most rigid body fascist, but letting your shape change radically (either way) is a good way of letting your partner feel taken for granted.  Has Gareth been doing just that with his partner, then?

“Not at all! I just splurged a bit last holiday and haven’t made it back to the gym yet.  I refuse to see that the odd extra pint and the occasional treadmill session less means I’m slapping my boyfriend’s libido in the face.”

Despite being put out by his boyfriend’s comment, Gareth says things have started improving.

“I didn’t like it, but just a bit of honesty between us has thawed things out, and we’ve started having more sex already.  It might be easier in the short term to lie and pretend everything’s okay –but sex aside, this is a relationship we both badly want to continue, so it’s better getting it out in the open.”

Ugly, isn't it?

“Don’t leave me here!” I thought to myself.  As the ferry rumbled away leaving my friend P and me – and no one else – on an unfeasibly remote Greek island, I felt little panic moths nibbling away at my stomach lining.  How would I cope with a week on an island whose inhabitants would fit comfortably on a single bendy bus?   Brought up in London, even sprawling Berlin is small enough to make me feel a little claustrophobic at times.  Here there was one bus, one bar, one restaurant, one priest, one resident foreigner (a Pole, referred to as “the Pole”) and just two gays – us.

Chances of gay action were therefore precisely zero.  P is a friend strictly without benefits, while the only other tourists were five buff, dead-eyed, apparently straight young Greek men who spent all day drinking beer and discussing basketball (so Greek-speaking P told me) ignoring their lithe, dead eyed young girlfriends looking on in mute protest.  True, there were a few bearish fisherman types lolling round the port playing backgammon, but while the odd lewd bit of ancient pottery gives many false hopes that many Greeks still swing, no one gets away with anything surreptitious in a community of only 200.  Still, what the island lacked in amenities, it made up for in rocks – they were everywhere, making the wild, rugged terrain look like a slightly dessicated version of Mordor.

Rather jaded as I have been lately about the gay merry-go-round, this wasn’t a problem – but one thought did strike me.  Lying under a shady bush on a deserted beach with P (I burn like buggery), I realised that my holidays are increasingly resembling honeymoons, just without the sex.  Last time I went away, to Morocco, I was with another old friend with whom I was routinely mistaken for a couple.  Here once again, the sight of two men alone on a far-flung island had something matrimonial about it, equally false.   Wasn’t this a bit odd?

Don't let ancient statuary mislead you about contemporary Greek mores

Possibly, but it’s an experience many of my friends, gay and straight, are going through.  Realising as their thirties draw on that we aren’t going to fall effortlessly into relationships we’d really choose to stay in, lots of us are making alternative plans to make sure we get the lives we want.  My single female friends are starting to consider having children without a committed live-in partner rather than waiting for some imaginary, infinitely fertile Mr. Right.  Meanwhile, men like me have noticed that, possibly because we don’t have partners, our friendships are often more close and supportive than other people’s, and that we already have the love and support around us to see us through.  On our trip, my friend P was infinitely generous, kind, funny and interesting – and without his enthusiasm I would never have seen that obscure, rocky island, which I must grudgingly admit was wildly beautiful.  Coming back on the ferry, I was sad to see it turn to a distant speck, but felt peaceful, cared-for and happy.  My life isn’t going to go according to the hazily conceived plan I had in childhood – but seeing that involved a wife and kids and a semi in the ‘burbs, I can’t bring myself to regret it.  In fact, I hope the honeymoon continues.

Nothing, actually.  Despite having been guilty of professionally peddling the notion that men only think about One Thing, I can’t see anything wrong with a restorative sexual lull now and again.  The trouble is, that men are pressed to see this sort of thing as a problem.  Women in this country have done a good job of challenging the notion that any woman who enjoys and looks for sex is a slut, but men are still having a simplistic cartoon version of their sexuality sold back to them.  It’s as if we’re all supposed to be desperate priapic fuckmonsters ready to shoot spunk at the merest sight of a well-turned ankle.  Men are animals, we hear, they’re programmed to spread their seed to the four winds, they effortlessly separate sex and emotion, they’re automatically turned rock hard by the slightest hint of tits and arse – in the words of Lenny Bruce, they’ll “fuck mud”.

Is this really true?   Right now, all this male is programmed for is reading books and farting into a chair.  Certainly, there are times of the month when, personally, I seem to be dragged around by my dick like a lost soul strapped to a hellhound (or maybe just a hellpuppy).  These phases, however, aren’t the sum total of my or any man’s sexuality.

My Ex's photos have been getting me excited. As has Mr. Cohen

So why are they often portrayed as such?  It might be because they’re so damned convenient.  “I/he just can’t help it – I’m/he’s a man” can be a handy excuse to have around for all concerned at times.  It means that men needn’t be held totally accountable for their horniness, while women who sleep with them can, if they so wish, claim they’ve been swept away by the power of their partners’ lust.  The gay identity is largely, if not exclusively, built around sex – our attraction is after all the one thing we all share.  But even in hyper-sexualised gay subcultures, the power of desire can be overstated.  For every gay man that sets up a blind sex date online, there are 3 who chat up someone online because they’re horny, then decide to stay at home because it’s raining and there’s something good on telly.

So for the time being I’m happy to hold it all in and see what comes.  That said, when my ex got in touch over Facebook recently (friendly again, at last), I did find myself flicking through his photos with surprising excitement.  Remembering how hot he was, what his skin tasted like and how much I liked the quiet little noises he made, I felt genuinely hot under the collar for the first time in weeks.   Despite his good looks, I suspect that it was our emotional connection that made the whole thing so exciting.  Does that mean I’m – horrid word, this – complicated?  Probably – so many men are more complicated than they feel they’re allowed to admit.

For 3 weeks he hasn’t replied to any of my messages or emails and doesn’t pick up the phone. The last time I heard from him was 3 weeks ago when I went to Paris on my own to use my unrefundable Eurostar ticket. This was after he suggested I didn’t come to visit him in Normandy as planned because he wasn’t well with depression. I’ve pleaded with him to get in touch but not a thing. We met at the beginning of the year and he has come over to visit England 3 times and I’ve been to visit him once, so we’ve seen each other once a month until the depression. Before the depression he admitted that he couldn’t give me the level of attention that I can give him because of his commitments with having children and a killer work schedule being a hospital doctor.

I am arranging to meet a guy I saw a few times at the time I met M and I’m in the process of planning another date with another guy. Am I wrong for doing this? Should I be holding out for M?

best X

No, you shouldn’t be.  What does this relationship have to feed on but misplaced optimism? Long distance relationships are intricate and fragile at the best of times – personally, I’m crap at them – and they require complete commitment from both parties to function.  Your man can’t offer you that, and in his current situation, he needs less on his plate, not more.  Though I’m sure you have a lot to offer, his asking you not to visit suggests that, depressed as he is, he doesn’t think you can lighten his load.

Almost invisible, isn't it?

Don’t take this too personally – depression is hell and it partly breaks its sufferers’ ability to engage with other people.  Do you remember Sylvia Plath’s description of it as a bell jar?  It’s as if there are glass walls separating you from everyone else, walls which no one else can quite see but which isolate you from human contact nonetheless.  If he feels like this, M may already be struggling to keep meaningful contact with the people he sees every day, so it’s not surprising he can’t manage time and space for you as well.  To his great credit, he has been clear with you from the beginning about his limits – and by doing so, has tacitly given you leave to seek out a situation where you get back as much as you put in.  Keep in occasional contact with M by all means, but do not expect any more of him.  You should feel completely free to meet up with other guys without any feelings of guilt – good luck.

xJ