You Can't Always Change Your Reality. But You Can Change How You Experience It.

There are certain things in life that we desperately want to change.

We want to look younger. We want to be more attractive. We want other people to desire us, include us, accept us and choose us.

We want to belong. We want meaningful friendships. We want relationships that make us feel valued.

And sometimes, without realising it, we spend years trying to make these things happen.

For many gay men, this can become particularly complicated.

We grow up in a world where appearance, masculinity, desirability and social acceptance can carry enormous weight. Then we enter gay social environments where we may find ourselves comparing our bodies, measuring our attractiveness and wondering whether we're good enough to be included.

We might tell ourselves that if we were a little younger, a little fitter, a little more masculine or a little more successful, things would finally be different.

But what happens when we spend our lives trying to become someone we believe other people will accept?

And what happens when the acceptance we're chasing never quite arrives?

The exhausting pursuit of being enough

Research has explored the relationship between minority stress, masculine expectations and body image concerns among gay men.

This is an important distinction.

Sometimes, what we experience as personal insecurity doesn't develop in isolation. Our relationship with ourselves can be influenced by the social environments we've grown up in and the expectations we've learned to navigate.

Consider the amount of energy some men invest in trying to meet particular physical ideals.

And this isn't simply about wanting to look good.

For some men, their appearance can become closely connected to whether they feel desirable, accepted or worthy of attention.

A photograph receives no response. Someone doesn't reciprocate interest. Another man appears to have everything we wish we had.

And before long, we can find ourselves questioning our own value.

But here's the uncomfortable question:

How much of your life are you willing to spend trying to become someone you think other people might finally approve of?

You cannot force someone to like you

One of the most difficult things to accept is that we cannot control how other people feel about us.

We cannot make someone desire us. We cannot force someone to become our friend. We cannot guarantee that we'll be included in every social circle or welcomed into every community.

And yet, we can spend an extraordinary amount of time trying.

We change our behaviour. We seek approval. We become agreeable. We hide parts of ourselves. We sometimes tolerate relationships that don't make us feel particularly good because the alternative feels like being alone.

The problem is that when our sense of worth becomes dependent on other people's responses, we give away an enormous amount of control over how we experience ourselves.

This doesn't mean that self-acceptance magically removes the difficulties people experience. It does suggest that developing a healthier relationship with ourselves matters.

Perhaps the work isn't about making everyone like us.

Perhaps it's about becoming comfortable enough with ourselves that not everyone liking us doesn't feel like a personal catastrophe.

You cannot change your body by hating it

Let's talk about appearance.

The gay male experience can involve considerable pressure around physical attractiveness, muscularity and body image.

And while there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to improve your fitness, build muscle or take pride in your appearance, there's a difference between caring for your body and believing your body needs to change before you can be happy.

This gives us something practical to consider.

You don't necessarily need to stop wanting to improve your appearance.

You might need to stop treating your current appearance as something that prevents you from enjoying your life.

You can go to the gym because you enjoy feeling strong, rather than because you believe your body makes you unworthy of attention.

You can take care of yourself without constantly criticising yourself.

And you can allow yourself to feel attractive today, rather than postponing that feeling until you've reached some imaginary physical ideal.

You cannot build meaningful friendships without taking emotional risks

Now let's consider something else.

You might want a close group of friends. You might want people you can call when you've had a difficult day, people who invite you to dinner, people who genuinely care about what's happening in your life.

But meaningful friendships don't simply appear.

They require participation.

You have to initiate conversations, make plans, show interest, communicate honestly and allow people to get to know you.

Sometimes you'll reach out and someone won't reciprocate.

Sometimes you'll feel excluded.

Sometimes you'll be the person who makes the first move, and sometimes you'll discover that a friendship isn't what you hoped it would be.

The study was small — eight participants — so it shouldn't be treated as representative of every gay man. The interviews still offer insight into how earlier experiences can influence relationships and belonging later in life.

This is worth thinking about.

If you've experienced rejection, exclusion or difficulty finding your place, it makes sense that putting yourself out there might feel uncomfortable.

But protecting yourself from the possibility of rejection can also mean protecting yourself from the possibility of meaningful connection.

You cannot guarantee that people will become your friends.

But you can become someone who creates opportunities for friendship.

You can become someone who initiates, communicates, shows up and allows others to see the person behind the carefully constructed exterior.

The difference between accepting something and giving up

I want to make something very clear.

Accepting your reality doesn't mean accepting everything that happens to you.

It doesn't mean tolerating discrimination, unhealthy relationships, poor treatment or circumstances that you have the power to change.

It doesn't mean giving up on your health, fitness, ambitions or desire for a better life.

It means recognising the difference between what you can control and what you cannot.

You cannot control your age, but you can influence how you approach getting older.

You cannot control whether someone finds you attractive, but you can develop a healthier relationship with your appearance.

You cannot force someone to include you, but you can seek out people and environments where you feel welcome.

You cannot guarantee that opening up will result in acceptance, but you can develop the courage to be genuine.

And you cannot rewrite your past, but you can begin to understand how it influences the choices you make today.

This reinforces an important point: resilience isn't simply about enduring difficult circumstances. It involves developing resources and capabilities that help us navigate them.

Become the person you keep waiting to become

Perhaps you've been waiting to feel confident before putting yourself out there.

Waiting until you look better before allowing yourself to date.

Waiting until someone invites you before making an effort to build friendships.

Waiting until you feel completely comfortable before allowing yourself to be vulnerable.

But what if the very things you're waiting for are developed through doing the things you've been avoiding?

Confidence can develop through taking action.

Friendships can develop through initiating connection.

Self-acceptance can develop through changing the way you treat yourself.

Emotional strength can develop through learning to experience rejection without allowing it to define you.

This doesn't mean self-compassion solves every difficulty. It does, however, support the idea that how we relate to ourselves matters.

And perhaps that's where we need to start.

Not by trying to become someone everyone wants.

Not by chasing an impossible standard of physical perfection.

Not by waiting for other people to give us permission to feel good about ourselves.

But by becoming someone who can experience life without constantly needing external approval to feel worthy.

Someone who can be rejected without feeling worthless.

Someone who can grow older without believing their best years are behind them.

Someone who can build friendships without needing a guarantee of acceptance.

And someone who is strong enough to be vulnerable.

Because you might not be able to change every circumstance in your life.

But you can start changing the person who experiences those circumstances.

And that can change an awful lot about the life you live.

Stop waiting for the world to make you feel worthy. Start building a life in which you already know you are.