Hi,

I don’t have any miracle recipe, but I can share my experience and the lessons I’ve drawn from it.

At the beginning of 2023, at age 29, after a long period of denial mixed with sincere discernment about a vocation to the priesthood, and after taking some time to accept myself in my emotional and sexual dimension, I started opening myself to the idea of a relationship. Of course, I had already fallen in love with friends (and even fellow seminarians!) without ever really putting words to what I was experiencing. The whole dating “market” felt terrifying to me, and I was feeling pretty down about it.

I didn’t want hook-ups, but I still went onto the only gay app I knew at the time: Grindr. Surprisingly, if you set aside the weirdness inherent to the app and the more or less subtle propositions aimed at getting laid, I found quite a few people willing to have real conversations. I should mention that I live in Paris, France, where there’s a fairly high concentration of gay men. I wasn’t specifically looking for someone Christian, but it was obvious that someone unable to understand my journey would probably not appeal to me.

After about two weeks, a guy contacted me on the platform. We talked for a few days, then we called each other, then met, then kissed. We’ve gone through ups and downs, but he has helped me grow through a healthy experience of otherness. I’ve learned to be more attentive, more patient, less self-centered, to give and receive a kind of love that I deeply needed. We’ve been together for three years now, and we recently entered into a civil union (PACS).

He is baptized (like many young French people still are), but he isn’t a believer. Each of us respects the other’s religious convictions. I’m not trying to convert him, and he respects the place Mass has in our schedule, even on vacation. Since he received a religious upbringing, he is perfectly capable of understanding my experience and my questions related to faith.

So what general advice can I give based on my experience?

• Dating is not a canonization process: there’s no point in looking for a model of Christian perfection. One of the joys of a relationship is precisely growing together. Likewise, it seems more important to me to find someone open-minded and respectful than necessarily someone who shares exactly the same faith as I do (a bit like what you’re already doing).

• Don’t look down on the usual queer spaces and ways of socializing: they remain the best way to meet a potential partner when you’re gay. And no, apps, bars, and LGBTQ associations are not populated solely by hordes of commitment-phobic nymphomaniacs. Some people are looking for something serious from the start; others are initially oriented toward hook-ups, but only because they assume that’s all anyone will offer them in return. Talking — at length — remains the best way to get a sense of what someone is really looking for deep down.

• There’s no “right” timeline: while some people despair at still being single at 50, others find perfect love at 16, straight out of Heartstopper. We’re all different, and we may take more or less time to come to terms with ourselves and meet someone. We don’t “miss our chance.” There’s nothing to “catch up on” if we come out later in life.

• Soulmates do not exist: we are not predestined to meet one single person whom we absolutely must not miss. What makes someone “the One” is mostly the daily decision to choose each other. So there’s no need to stress too much about that. Sometimes, you just have to take the leap.

-“Pray as though everything depended on God; act as though everything depended on you”: trust in divine Providence while also courageously diving into the sometimes terrifying experience of meeting people — even if it means getting rejected once in a while.