LGBTQ+ health specialist Daniel O’Shaughnessy on why dating feels harder after battling his own inner demons

As a gay man in my forties, I used to think dating would get easier once I got healthier, once I had processed what happened to me in the past, healed from trauma, and stopped numbing. I believed that if I understood how my mind works, grasped the true meaning of vulnerability, and could openly discuss topics like shame, body image, sex and my needs, dating would become less complicated. I assumed healing would make me more available, especially now that I was no longer throwing myself into chaotic relationship scenarios.

Instead, it made me more awake. And awake is not the same thing as relaxed. On paper, I am exactly the kind of man people say they want – self-aware, sober, emotionally literate and into growth. In reality, I often walk into a date with my system already slightly braced, as if my body is quietly asking: ‘how many more of these can you take?’ Another £9 on flat whites served with a spoonful of disappointment, I think, as my people-pleasing reflex kicks in and I insist on buying the coffees to smooth over any potential awkwardness.

Being single and dating in your 40s is not just awkward, it is cumulative

Most of us swipe a two-dimensional image into a real-life encounter. Add endless chats that go nowhere, the subtle sizing-up that happens within minutes, and the small rejections you tell yourself you are fine with. Over time, it builds up in the nervous system. Eventually, you stop asking, “Do I like him?” and start asking, “Do I have the energy for this if it doesn’t work?”

Sometimes I wonder if it would be more peaceful to remain single. Even people in relationships tell me how liberating it must be not to have to answer to anyone. And yet I keep trying; part loneliness, part habit, part dopamine-hungry brain primed for swiping, and partly to alleviate guilt about busyness consuming my life.

Dating feels like an assessment now because, in many ways, it is

Apps reward speed. They reduce someone to a handful of photos, often outdated, and a few lines of text. That logic bleeds into real life. You sit across from someone and the atmosphere can feel like a subtle interview you never agreed to, both of you quietly scanning for disqualifiers.

As gay men, we bring extra layers into that assessment: body type, age, masculinity codes, sexual role, libido, relationship style, sobriety versus partying, and emotional openness. These details coalesce quickly, often unconsciously, into a judgement about whether someone is worth pursuing. You can be kind, funny and intelligent and still fail an invisible checklist you were never shown.

For me, I oscillate between “I don’t want to go through that again” and “please like me.” All of this plays out inside a culture that constantly whispers: ‘there’s always someone else.’ Research backs this up. Large dating pools are linked to a “rejection mindset”, where people dismiss more quickly and filter more harshly, even when they want connection.¹

The gay male body is not just a body, tt is social currency

If you grew up gay, you probably learnt early that your body wasn’t neutral. It was something to be evaluated, ranked, desired or ignored. Attraction often meant safety. Not always physical safety, but social safety. Being overlooked could feel like exile. You learn quickly where you sit in the hierarchy and how much of yourself you will need to edit to stay desirable. That survival logic never fully leaves us, and it helps explain why body dysmorphia is so common in gay male culture.

So when you sit on a date, you are not simply meeting a potential partner. You are stepping into a marketplace of perception. Even if you consciously reject those rules, your nervous system remembers them.

Porn and social media reinforce this. They offer a narrow visual script for what desire should look like: instant certainty, instant confidence, minimal awkwardness, bodies that seem effortless and endlessly available. Then you sit across from a real human being and everything is slower, messier and full of ambiguity. That ambiguity is where I unravel the most.

There are dates where I can feel myself trying to get ahead of judgement. I notice the urge to justify who I am, what I like, how I live, how I relate to sex, and what sobriety means to me. I sometimes enter the room already half-defending myself, a quiet attempt to control an outcome that has not yet happened.

Your nervous system does not care that you are self-aware

Social evaluation and potential rejection activate threat responses in the body. Add queer-specific stress and history, and those responses become even more sensitive. Even if your adult life is stable, you do not lose the conditioning of being assessed, judged or made unsafe earlier on. There is a body memory to it.

This is where polyvagal theory becomes useful. Connection depends on felt safety. When safety is absent, the body defaults to defensive strategies: tension, performance and withdrawal. When cues of safety are present, those defences can soften.²

So it should not surprise gay men if dates feel tense, performative or guarded. That is physiology doing its job. When someone looks you up and down on a date, your brain does not register it as neutral. It lands on a whole history.

Inner work makes dating harder because it removes your favourite exits

Before inner work, many of us dated in armour. Some of it looked confident, some of it looked casual, and some of it looked picky; attachment theory dressed up as “I just have standards.”

With inner work, that armour peels away, sometimes painfully. Like a slightly bruised banana you can no longer pretend is fine.

You start to notice your patterns in real time. The urge to dismiss someone quickly because uncertainty feels intolerable. The pull towards unavailable or destabilising people because those dynamics are familiar to the nervous system and keep intimacy at a safe distance. The tightening that happens when someone is actually kind. And how easily you slip into being the “good date” instead of a real person, following a role your nervous system already knows.

Healing does not make you shinier. It makes you less able to lie to yourself. And once you see those strategies clearly, you cannot rely on them without feeling the cost.

There is a less talked-about dynamic here. When you have done inner work, you tend to carry yourself differently, listening more closely, performing less and becoming harder to keep at arm’s length. For someone who has not done that work, or who relies on distraction, numbing or emotional distance, that presence can feel unsettling and may be unconsciously met with withdrawal or rejection because it mirrors things they are not ready to face.

Stepping away from party culture adds another complication. Without alcohol or substances smoothing the edges, you lose the shortcuts that once made dating feel lighter. Even if those connections were chemically inflated, they still offered relief. Remove them, and you meet dating as it actually is: two nervous systems, two histories and a lot of unspoken hope.

I am tired

There comes a point where your capacity narrows, not because your heart has closed, but because your body is protecting you from another round of disappointment. There have been periods where my nervous system simply could not take more “almosts”, awkward conversations, polite rejections or uncertainty disguised as “maybe.”

So I became more selective. I stopped searching for The One (Disney has a lot to answer for). Career pressure, life stress and ageing mean I sometimes need less exposure to dating. That might sound pessimistic, but it isn’t me giving up. It’s me trying to stay intact enough to actually receive connection when it shows up.

A way forward that isn’t motivational nonsense

What has helped most is not a technique, but learning to stay present when my body wants to exit. When I feel the urge to dismiss someone quickly, I slow down and ask myself one honest question: am I seeing a genuine mismatch, or am I reacting to the discomfort of being seen?

The difference matters, especially when fear is disguised as discernment. Because if you always choose what feels instantly safe, you will keep choosing what keeps you alone.

The other shift has been allowing attraction to unfold without demanding instant certainty. Not forcing chemistry that is not there, but recognising that many gay men have trained desire to respond to fantasy, performance and visual shorthand. Real connection can be quieter, slower and less cinematic.

Finally, I am allowing someone to meet me without the need to pre-explain myself. I have spent years learning how to speak about shame and healing. Now part of the work is knowing when to speak and when to simply be.

Inner work has not made dating easier. It has made it more honest. And honesty asks more of you.

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Daniel O’Shaughnessy is a nutritionist and mindset coach with over 10 years’ experience and a master’s degree in trauma and transpersonal experiences. A Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner, he is known for pioneering work at the intersection of LGBTQ+ health and holistic medicine and is the author of books on LGBTQ+ wellbeing and body dysmorphia, including Letting Go of Perfect: A Gay Man’s Guide to Healing from Body Dysmorphia.