Breaking up is hard for anyone, and nobody wants to go through it, or even put people through it. In some ways, however, a gay break-up can be even harder. This entry isn't supposed to claim that this is always the case, or that straight break-ups are in any way easy, but just discuss some of the peculiarities of breaking up with someone of the same sex and where it can leave you.

Particular Difficulties

Lack of Empathy

A large proportion of the gay population is not out to everyone (and some to anyone) around them, and this can make it very difficult since it makes it nearly impossible to convey why you are so unhappy. Even if you are willing to admit to a broken-up relationship, nobody wants to be forced to play the non-gender specific pronouns game when they are feeling low on strength and many just end up not discussing it at all.

Misplaced Reasoning

Even those who are out to people and willing to discuss the break-up have the added difficulty that many view the misery not as normal pain at the break-up of a relationship but as a particular faculty of the LGBT¹ condition. Many gay men find it very difficult to express their sadness for fear that it is just a representation of their effeminate nature - regardless of whether there is any truth in this - and often people around them make just this mistake. Lesbians, on the other hand, often suffer from quite the opposite - a total lack of sympathy because people simply think 'But aren't lesbians cold-hearted, masculine, blokish types who'll obviously just go down to the pub, have a drink and forget about it?'; obviously this is just as unfair a misrepresentation.

Particular Feeling of 'I'll Never Find Anyone Else'

The feeling after a break-up that you'll never find anyone else you love as much or want to be with or even vaguely like is almost always present in anyone. With the LGBT community, however, there is a particular difficulty in finding compatible people - a combination of statistics and the difficulty meeting up with people - and very often gay people are much less willing to let go, simply because of how much of a struggle it was getting to the place they were, in a relationship with a like-minded person.

The LGBT Emphasis on Promiscuity

Regardless of whether they were forced to it by the unacceptability of gay relationships, there is certainly still (sadly) a particular feeling amongst a visible proportion of the LGBT community in favour of strings of emotionless sexual encounters, usually simply one-night-stands. The wish that they didn't feel so strongly or that they didn't deal in love usually goes through the heads of those hit hardest by break-ups, and unfortunately due to the nature of the LGBT world often people going through gay relationships are particularly envious of those who do not hold emotion as important and prefer promiscuity to long-term relationships. The usual maxims apply - 'It's better to have loved and lost' and 'It's better to be unloved than incapable of loving' - but these aren't always of immediate use.

Lack of Marriage

'It's not like you're getting divorced!' the cry might go. Unfortunately, what many people seem to be unaware of is that (and I'd have thought this would be more obvious than the number of people who see it suggests it is) the break-up of a very long gay relationship can be entirely comparable to a divorce. People who have been going out for ten years would very often have got married, but since many gay people are not given this luxury², that doesn't mean that leaving the relationship is any less painful. Just as bad, this can often have a knock-down effect on other relationships - given that we've supposedly dismissed the possibility of the most intense of relationships (those resulting in marriage) anything less seems to be shifted down a notch - so a two year relationship is just about long-term, and anything under six months is practically just dating.

Visibility of Exes

With LGBT communities frequently so close-knit, it is often very difficult to achieve a clean break even if that is what you want, since many gay people find themselves constantly thrust into situations where they're in the same room as their ex, or at least with people that know them. This means that they have to confront their feelings, and attempt to move past them in a way that most people get more space and freedom to do.