I have said it pretty much my whole life. And I hear gay men say it in my Pleasure Medicine community all the time:
“I just want real connection”
But up to now, we haven’t known what real ‘connection’ actually means!
It’s such an easy word to throw around, isn’t it? I’m sure you’ve said it on your dating profile, to friends or to your therapist:“I’m just seeking a connection”
But have you ever properly thought about what you mean? Have you clearly defined what connection is to you? Because it is different to every single person who wants it.
Do you mean physical connection?
Or do you mean emotional connection?
Or is it psychological or spiritual connection?
A sexual connection? Or an intimate connection?
Or some of or all of the above?
And then, can you define further what each of those types of connections means to you?
How will you actually know that the form of connection you’re seeking is happening? How will it feel? What will it look like? You could carry on trying to find this elusive ‘connection’ without ever knowing it’s happening… because you haven’t defined what it means!
My whole adult gay life, I’ve been looking in the dark for connection. I’ve said it’s what I want without ever truly getting clear on what the F I’m talking about.
It took until my mid-30s to realise that, first and foremost, it’s an intellectual and psychological connection that really gets me going. It’s called being ‘sapiosexual’.
I get hyper-attracted and turned on when someone shares with me how they see the world, what they think about something, their philosophy about life, the universe, and spirituality… or anything, really.
Of course, a sexual connection and a physical connection are super important too. But they don’t feel half as good without the psychological connection!
If a man sits opposite me on a date and starts telling me his theory of why there is a universe and where it comes from, or his weird way of thinking about why humans are creative or what consciousness is… I’m done. I’m in. The attraction is 80% there immediately! The connection has forged.
I suppose it’s because these are the things I spend a lot of time thinking about and exploring in my own consciousness. As humans, we are naturally drawn to people who mirror our own selves. I feel like when someone speaks this way, they ‘get me’. I breathe a sigh of relief that there’s another weirdo out there like me.
It took me so long to figure out what I actually mean by ‘connection’.
This is the reason that at Pleasure Medicine (my ecstatic dance for GBTQ+ men in London) and The Connection Lab(my ‘learn the art of being yourself around other gay men’ workshop), we focus on experiencing and practising manyforms of connection.
They are fun, playful and safe facilitated spaces where you get to practice and experience these different forms of connection with other gay men wanting the same thing as you. It’s a space where I am supporting gay men to re-edu-gay-te themselves in relating and communicating.
Some of the forms of connection you’ll be familiar with and take to confidently. But some will be new and unfamiliar to you. The only way to make the unfamiliar more familiar? Practice. And that’s what we do at Pleasure Medicine and The Connection Lab. We practice connection.
For example, the gay men at The Connection Lab practice psychological and emotional connection through 1:1 experiences of sharing their beliefs, values, and stories with one another. They often share things in ways they haven’t expressed before, fostering insights, breakthroughs and epiphanies.
And it’s magical what happens when another gay man just sits with you and listens as you speak and share from your heart without advising or telling you what they think. At The Connection Lab, your partner sits and witnesses you until the timer goes off. One guy said, “Wow, amazing, I could come and do this every week”.
When do you ever get another human’s unadulterated, undistracted attention and presence? It’s a profound gift to be given and to give.
Then, we practice physical connection through simple, clothed, non-sexual massage and touch. The guidelines are simple: ask for what you want, and your partner says yes or no. If it’s a yes, then you enjoy getting what you asked for. If it’s a no, then you ask for something else. It could be as simple as “I would like you to rest your hand on my heart”, or “would you hug me for 2 minutes?” or “could you massage my hands?” or anything.
This is a simple way to experience physical connection while also practising boundaries and good, clear, direct communication; essential life skills that nobody ever taught us properly.
At Pleasure Medicine, my connection workshop and ecstatic dance for gay men, we practice a non-verbal form of connection through embodied, conscious free movement and dance.
For example, in warm-up practices, we lean back-to-back, speaking with movement and listening with the body instead of the mind.
One person leads, and the other follows. This simple practice is so grounding, centring, and nervous system regulating.
When the timer goes, the guys naturally turn to each other and hug. I don’t know why, but this exercise brings about such a connection in a non-sexual, low-pressure way. In the sharing circle, one guy said: “I’ve never experienced being non-sexual around other gay men…. it was so refreshing to just play and be light with each other”.
I think it’s because it’s so rare for us to be felt with the body and listened to that way, without things getting pressured into the erotic and the sexual. Which is all good. I celebrate sex and our erotic selves. I’m a sex therapist and sexologist! But we need spaces where we can come out of that mode and into a softer, more easeful, less intense zone. We need that too!
Through this work, what these men discover is which forms of connection come naturally to them, and which forms of connection bring up more of an edge.
Then, the more you come to practice at these workshops, the easier the different forms of connection become.
You build skills and experience in all forms of connection as they feel increasingly natural. Then you can take that into your dating, love life, sex and friendships. And life becomes better!
Because a truly happy life starts with connection, intimacy and self-expression.
It doesn’t matter what you own, how much money you have, or how successful you are… if you don’t have a deep, meaningful connection in your life, you’ll probably find it hard to be happy and fulfilled.
But let’s talk about the most important form of connection.
The connection with yourself.
We live in a fast-paced world of dopamine-driven apps, seeking, searching, scrolling and immediate gratification. We’ve lost, or maybe we never even had, a sense of who we are and what we want.
There’s a beautiful moving meditation I do at Pleasure Medicine and The Connection Lab. It’s called The Body Poem. We stand in a circle with beautiful, flowing music playing, and the invitation is simply to say out loud what you wish, want, and desire.
Sounds simple, right?
More men than you can imagine find this hard.
Saying what you really want and desire without limits? Radical!
Most of us learned that wanting anything made us greedy or selfish. Or that desire was somehow unholy or bad.
The truth is that the whole universe is built on desire. Every atom desires to become something. A seed desires to become a flower. An acorn desires to become a tree. Two molecules desire to fuse and become more. Clouds desire to become raindrops, and raindrops desire to become rivers. Rivers want to become seas, then rainclouds again. We all want to become… ourselves.
And so we have these desires, wants and wishes in us. When you foster and cultivate that connection with your own inner self, when you know what you want, and who you are more fully, then you can create connection more powerfully, openly, vulnerably and truthfully with someone else.
I believe that connection, with yourself and others, is some of the most powerful healing work we can do as gay men.
So, are you ready to connect?
Love Gary x
- Book a Pleasure Medicine ticket: www.pleasuremedicine.co.uk
- Join The Connection Lab waiting list: www.pleasuremdicine.co.uk/lab
- Free guide ‘Create a Dating Profile to Magnetise the Right Men’:
- www.pleasuremedicine.co.uk/bio
More about Gary
Gary is a therapist, embodiment facilitator, somatic bodyworker, award-winning music maker, conscious DJ and writer. He’s the creator of Pleasure Medicine, a bi-weekly connection workshop and ecstatic dance for gay men in London that blends conscious movement with embodied connection.
With over a decade of experience as a facilitator and therapist, Gary is devoted to helping gay men unlock their pleasure centres, soften shame and rediscover joy, intimacy and sensuality through dance, touch and celebratory sexuality.
He is a guest columnist for queer culture magazines. He writes personal essays, opinion pieces and cultural reflections, always from the perspective of being in the waters with the reader, trying to work it all out together.
