I personally understand and empathize with a lot of what you said. It’s representative of my experience, that’s for sure. But I would push your perspective one step further.

I don’t think it’s set in stone that having sex is easier than getting to know someone. I think that’s something that has been conditioned to appear as the default, but I can think back to times when community, friendships, and “dating” (in the sitcom way) were the norm. Plus, just saying x is easier than y, while being fundamentally true, is not necessarily informative or conducive to a better understanding of gay loneliness.

I think sex is an inherently satisfying experience. That conditions your response. When faced with the choice between immediate gratification and delayed gratification, we are more likely as a species to go for the immediate gratification. This does not mean that we are incapable of delaying pleasure, not at all: we can and do, but doing so is more effortful than not. In fewer words, the act of “getting to know” someone is more effortful than the act of just cleaning up and having sex with someone, and critically, the latter is more likely to yield immediate gratification, which reinforces the preference for sex over dating.

Now, hold that on one hand. On the other hand, you have societal issues that LGBTQ+ people face, more specifically, the oftentimes fucked up family relationship that we grow up learning and modeling. We (not all, I guess I should say, but maybe most of us) grow up thinking about love and worth in conditional terms. That’s partially why coming out is such a huge deal for many people, myself included. On top of being a declaration about some explicit knowledge we’d like to share, it’s also a statement that often means “I have accepted myself like this.” But doing so takes time and mental resources, and in some way, forces you to deal with an issue that our straight age-appropriate peers do not experience. Basically the concept of love and affection gets somewhat distorted, and if we are lucky the distortion is temporary and we return to our family as equals, and if we are not, sometimes we die.

In a few words, there are dangers associated with personal bonds, and maybe some part of that becomes deeply ingrained in our unconscious. When faced with the choice between a long and possibly losing battle for feelings and belonging and a short and gratifying foray into sex, many, myself included, choose the latter. This becomes even easier to do when you have penises at your fingertips: a few messages and you know someone is about to come over to kiss you, fuck you, maybe cuddle, and then go. And sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that is enough, not noticing that we are angry, lonely, abusing substances, and fundamentally unhappy. If we are lucky enough to bitch to our families, we often cannot be as honest as we’d like, so we are further alienated into a world within us that most don’t understand.

They would understand, if we gave them a chance. Maybe others feel the same way. Maybe most feel the same way. But some of us also have convinced ourselves that being alone is fine, that there are more important things than relationships, and that showing emotion is a sign of weakness. I don’t know, though, to what extent this is a defense mechanism or an internalization of the societal abuse that our people have had to endure. I don’t know to what extent this is a symptom or a trait. Honestly, all that I know for sure is that it appears I am not alone, and that ought to be worth something.