166. Confront Gay Ageism and Redefine Midlife (with Hunter Flournoy)

 Snarky Opener (0:00) 

Hunter Flournoy  

We began to look again at ourselves and say, what more is there in me beyond what I have come to understand as a gay identity? 

Episode Introduction (0:29) 

Rob Loveless  

Hello, my LGBTQuties, and welcome back to another episode of A Jaded Gay. I'm Rob Loveless, and today I am a jaded gay, just because the burnout is real. 

We're getting close to the end of the year, so finals are right around the corner. Work has just been super busy, and I'm trying to get caught up on some podcasting stuff for 2026. 

And then just real-life stuff's popping up. So yeah, it's been a lot. I mean, if you're a longtime listener of the podcast, this shouldn't be a surprise. I have quite a few jaded gay weeks because of burnout. 

So, it is what it is. But luckily, some good news that helps me push my jadedness aside. I have a special shout-out today for Addison. 

No, not Addison Rae, but Addison, my bae for supporting the podcast on Patreon at the $5 LGBTQutie tier. Addison, thank you so much. I greatly appreciate the support. You keep the podcast going. 

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Gay Midlife (2:18) 

Rob Loveless  

Anyway, getting right into this week's topic. You know, a couple years ago, we did talk about the stereotype that 30 equals death in the gay world. 

And in that, we talked about the privilege of youth, beauty, and sex in the gay community, and how navigating midlife as a gay man can be confusing. 

So, I wanted to talk a little bit more about that topic, and I'm very excited because we have a very special guest joining us to dive all into that. 

But before we start the discussion, you know the drill, let's pull our tarot card. 

Tarot (2:49) 

Rob Loveless  

So, for this episode, we drew the King of Wands in reverse. As a reminder, Wands is tied to the element of fire. 

It's masculine energy, which is action-oriented, and Wands is all about our passion, creativity, and sometimes sexuality. The king also exudes masculine energy. 

So, between that and the suit's masculine energy, this card is pure action. 

The king is also the final card in the suit of Wands, which is signifying that we are at the end of one cycle and about to begin another one. It's also number 14 in this suit. 

So, we add double digits together, which equals five. And in numerology, five is tied to struggle or conflict, specifically around change, instability, or loss. 

And while this card typically signifies authority, stability, and remaining calm in the face of adversity, we drew it in reverse, which is telling us that we may be encountering unhealthy displays of masculine energy, like an abuse of power, holding grudges, or bullying others. 

And if this reversal represents us, we may be struggling to communicate our vision. So instead of collaborating with others, we isolate ourselves, thinking we're the only one who can achieve the vision. 

And this leads to burnout and resentment. So, we need to remember to be mindful about how we're pursuing our goals, and ensure we're not pushing others aside. 

Guest Introduction (4:03) 

Rob Loveless  

And with that in mind, I'm very excited to welcome our next guest. He is a certified life coach, healer, and spiritual guide. Please welcome Hunter Flournoy. Hi Hunter. How are you today? 

Hunter Flournoy  

Hi. I am really happy to be here with you. 

Rob Loveless  

Awesome. I'm glad to hear. I'm very excited to have you on today. I think this is a really important topic that throughout queer culture, it has been discussed gay men and their relationship with aging, midlife. 

So, I think it's a really important topic to be going over today. Super excited to get into it, but I'm jumping ahead a little bit. 

Before we start actually breaking it down, I was wondering, can you introduce yourself to the listeners? Tell them a little bit about how you identify, your pronouns, background, career, all that fun stuff. 

Hunter Flournoy  

Yes, I identify as queer, non-binary, Two Spirit, multicultural, and that has been its own journey over the years. 

You know, as the terms that were popular and the terms that we really felt as relevant to ourselves have evolved over time, but that's where I am now. 

Rob Loveless  

And today, are you a jaded or non-jaded gay, and why? 

Hunter Flournoy  

Is there a way to have one foot in both camps? 

Rob Loveless  

Oh, absolutely. 

Hunter Flournoy  

Good, because I can say I've been part of the gay scene and gay community for long enough to have what feels like a pretty, hopefully grounded and realistic view of the limitations of the gay scene and the gay culture. 

But also, I've been gifted with so many experiences that show me that there's so much more to gay community than the gay scene, and that gives me endless hope. 

So, so I have, to the degree that I'm in the gay scene, I'm a little skeptical and perhaps jaded. But to the degree that I'm in real gay community, we have endless possibilities of what we can do when we're together. 

Rob Loveless  

I love that, and I really love how your answer focused on the community aspect, because I think some of these systemic issues we face as gay men or as queer people are something that it's not just individual to us. 

It's something that our community needs to work on collectively to tackle together. So, with that in mind, I'd like to start off learning a little bit more about your career. 

You've had over 30 years of recovery, healing, and apprenticing with medicine people, mystics, and healers. So, can you share how that journey led you to become a coach and a spiritual guide? 

Hunter Flournoy  

Sure. Well, coach and spiritual companion are the words that seem to fit what I do best. But like everyone else, I discovered what I was and what I was good at as I went along. 

So, having been born into a family where I was always in either the hero role or the mediator or the negotiator or the caretaker role, practically from birth, like many young gay boys at the time. 

Those sort of things came natural to me in my relationships with other people. And like a lot of other queer folk, I grew up at that time being the best little boy in the world. 

The one who never caused trouble, who never drew attention to themselves, who always tried to stay as invisible as I possibly could, while giving no one a reason either to notice me or to judge me. 

This led to, of course, a pretty profound sense of self-hate, which I think is really common in our community and and not really including myself in the circle of my own loving. 

Fortunately, I have had one great skill in this life, which is I bumble into extraordinary human beings who have the patience and kindness to let me stick around. 

And I've had a lot of elders who loved me into loving myself and and taught me how to include myself in the circle of my own loving. That led me, of course, to therapy. Psychotherapy first. 

I became a very well-educated neurotic, and I knew everything that was wrong with me. It didn't necessarily help me love myself much more. 

But as I met medicine people from different traditions around the world and began to sit with them as they did their work and live with them and study with them, I began to hold myself in a different regard and and I began to feel myself as not so isolated and as so exiled as I had experienced as a child. 

And and that sense of being deeply and intrinsically related to other human beings and to everything else began to slowly sink in, soften my armor and and I began to sit with other people who I saw struggling with many of the same things I was struggling with. 

And and to hold that space of sacred relationship where they could begin to find the truth of who they were. 

Now we often hear, love yourself. You know, learn to love yourself, but that's not something we can do alone. We learn to love in relationship. 

And you learn to love when there are those around us who see us as completely as another human being can, and hold us in in deep respect and love and tenderness and curiosity about what's unfolding in front of them. 

And so, I had enough people do that for me over the years that I began to hold myself in that space, and naturally that led to sitting with others and holding them in that space. 

And of course, we always draw to us, the people who are working on the same things we're working on. Hopefully, a couple steps behind where we are on the path, so we can be useful to them. 

And that means I've been working in queer community now, primarily since about 1999. 

Aging and Queer Belonging (10:06) 

Rob Loveless  

And I love that answer, talking about learning from queer elders and then sharing that knowledge with others and that communal love within the queer community, because that has been something that's been lacking for so long. 

Now, queer people have always existed, but we weren't always able to be recognized, let's say. We had to kind of hide who we were. 

And then, following the gay liberation movement of the 70s, we started getting some recognition. And then comes the AIDS pandemic that wiped out an entire generation of gay men. 

So, we're at a time now where we actually are having queer elders that we can learn from, but it's still a somewhat new phenomenon, because for many gay men, they did not have those queer elders to look up to. 

And we're arriving at a moment in time within history where there are so many rights that we're afforded, although, given the current political climate, some things are up for debate, but we do have so many options. 

You know, if we as gay men want to be married and have a family, we can do that in, you know, assimilate to a heteronormative lifestyle, or we don't have to adhere to that. 

We really have the options to choose how our life path goes. But I think that can be a source of anxiety for some gay men, because there's no blueprint. 

We're the first ones kind of building this blueprint of what it can look like. And I should say blueprint loosely, because there's a million ways to be gay, just like there's a million ways to be straight. 

There's no one-size-fits-all. But I think that might be one of the issues, especially as gay men approach midlife, where they may be confronted by, what am I supposed to be? Who am I supposed to be? 

Because we're at this moment in history where we do have the possibilities to really own our identity. 

So, with that in mind, I know you do work with gay men to help them realize a deeper vision for their midlife. So, what does that practice look like in your practice? 

Hunter Flournoy  

A lot of us growing up, in particular, I work with right now, a lot of men who are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and up into their 90s. 

For many of us, we were not given any boxes to describe who we were when we were young. 

Or we could feel just deeply and intrinsically, we didn't fit the boxes that we were given, and we knew that something in us could not fit in all the roles that we were given. 

We did our very best, and we became very good at living up to those roles, but at some point, we had to forge some kind of new identity, and you're right. 

We, many of us, didn't have a whole lot of elders. I was lucky enough that I had elders who had been around before sexual liberation and gay liberation, and were were at a place in their lives where they were little less vulnerable to the AIDS pandemic. 

So, I had that gift. But then I also saw how in the next generation, it was completely missing. That I knew, I saw gay elders who were incredibly resilient and tender and nurturing to me. 

And then I saw, well, an entire generation disappeared, the one between that generation and mine. And so, I had no sense of how I would get from where I was to where they were. 

No image of what we could become. And I most people in my generation, if you talk to a lot of us, who were coming out just around the time of the AIDS pandemic, none of us expected to live past the age of 30 or 35. 

We simply didn't have an image for that. So many of us would, when we came out, take on what we thought was a gay identity, a proud and out gay or queer identity. 

And it was a pretty limited identity, because it was based only on the gay scene. It was only really in response to the AIDS pandemic that we started to come together as a community in a deeper way, and we started to look out beyond what is there, beyond this gay identity that I've been handed. 

Love rainbow flags, love marches, love the clubs. They were sanctuary and safe places and temples for me and for many of that generation. But we had to ask, as we were facing death itself, is there more? 

And many of us also had, we had pushed aside all spirituality, all religious practice, in order to come out as gay, because so much of what we had been fed as religion or as spirituality was so damning of who we were and so terribly exiling to who we were that we had to push that out completely. 

And so, after the AIDS pandemic, we began to look again at ourselves and say, what more is there in me beyond what I have come to understand as a gay identity? 

And I think it also led to another equally important question, which is, what is there in being gay and in the gay collective experience that goes beyond the gay scene? 

And we began to reinvent gay community at that time and to create spaces that were more creative, more artistic, through the Radical Fairies, through ACT UP, through all kinds of community organizations. 

We began to reinvent what it meant to be in community together. Because up until then, at least where I grew up, gay community was all anonymous. 

It was standing in the stalls at public parks in shopping bags, so someone thought there was only one man in the stall. 

It was coded language. It was shadowed in dark places, which were safe for us and precious, but we didn't have a vision of community. 

What I've discovered over the years is that for for many queer folk, they still don't have a vision of community. 

I'll have a lot of people, when they first come to me in my practice, and say, well, you know, I've never really had a good experience with gay community. 

And I'll ask them what their experiences are, and I'll realize that the reason they've never had a good experience with gay community is they've never been in one. That they've been in the gay scene. 

They have been on the apps. They've been in the anonymous scene. They've been in all of these scenes that are either deliberately engineered like the apps or by the necessities of safety and anonymity to prevent connection. 

That most queer folk don't know what it is to show up in a room and really be witnessed and really be safe as exactly who they are. 

So, to come back around to your question, all of that does lead back to your specific question, which is when people show up with me in my practice, most queer folk have not experienced deep safety because they have not experienced deep community. 

And so, a lot of the work is just creating one a space where they can recognize the ways that they hold unsafety in their own nervous systems and in their own psyches, and the beliefs that they have about being gay. 

What used to be called internalized homophobia, just all of the cognitive, emotional, and neurophysiological patterns that we hold inside of feeling unsafe in this world, and beginning to unwind some of those patterns. 

And as those patterns unwind, finding within us things that we have been longing our whole lives, to question, to explore, to share, and to discover that it's safe to be exactly who we are. 

And then the work shifts often as people begin to discover that they're safe as they are, to begin to build relationships, and I support them in building relationships in their lives that extend that safety outwards from the space that they have with me or a handful of one or two or three others out into the world. 

And then to begin to imagine that they have gifts to share, but gifts that are not coming from their overdoing and their perfectionism and their striving and their performative act, but gifts that come from simply being themselves in the world and being received by others so that they can experience being in community, not with what I like to call our stupid pet tricks. 

You know, which we in queer community are really good at. We know how to pass; we know how to impress. 

But to show up in community where we don't have to anymore, and at that moment, that's when we really begin to experience that we're in community. 

And to come back to the topic of our conversation, aging, where we began. 

Once you have community, and once you feel some sense of deep safety in community, the whole game of aging as queer folk in queer community changes completely, because suddenly it's not based on earning anyone else's attraction or appreciation or approval. 

It's based in our own unfolding as we move through the process of discovering who we are, exploring who we are, creating and sharing who we are. 

And so, aging becomes an expression of that, until the body begins to decline. And then there's a whole other chapter. 

But even then, as the body declines in little ways, something else begins to blossom in us. And so and so, aging is no longer about managing communal or social expectations, I should say. 

It's more about giving ourselves a permission we've never had in our lives to finally and at last be ourselves, safely in real relationship, and to discover what begins to blossom in us as some of the things that we are so proud of in our youth begin to fall away. 

Queer Midlife as Rebirth (20:55) 

Rob Loveless  

Parts of your answer there really stood out to me, especially the part about we know how to pass and we know how to impress. 

Because to me, I think that parallels pretty closely to Dr. Alan Downs' concept in The Velvet Rage that we put up this facade. You know, we can be the most successful in our careers. 

We can have the best body going to the gym, or spend, you know, the most money on this and that, but it doesn't equate to genuine identity. 

You know, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be successful or staying in shape or things like that. But we can't rely on that solely to feel a sense of connection with others. 

Instead, it seems like we need to kind of step outside of the curtain and really allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to find that true sense of queer community, which I think we can also look within, to find that sense of what we need to find the connection in life. 

So, with that in mind, throughout your work, how does midlife become an opportunity for this kind of spiritual awakening and self-discovery, rather than a time of limitation or loss? 

Hunter Flournoy  

I think one of the first tasks of midlife that I experience in queer community is what is finally giving ourself the experience of queer community. 

I think that's essential, because most of us settle for just being in the queer scene for a while. 

And and and we develop other places of community, and those are valuable and important, but ultimately, we need people that feel like our tribe in order to, and people who have stories that are similar to ours, and that are going through some of the challenges that we're going through, and who are willing to talk more deeply about those and authentically about those. 

We need that kind of community in order to find who we really are, and many of us have never experienced that. And so, it, I think it requires us to start looking outside the circles that we're used to. 

When, like you said, we were very good at recreating ourselves because we weren't given boxes. And that ability to recreate is an extraordinary gift. 

But if that power to recreate ourselves is based only on the expectations of our social circle and sort of the norms of that social circle and the norms of the environments that we find ourselves in, I think it's easy for us to feel like we're living an inauthentic life, which is usually the point at which people show up with me. 

Is they're successful to some degree, they're creative, they're impressive in the ways that they are, but they've begun to feel the emptiness that lives down underneath that. 

And so, I think listening to that emptiness is actually, and being willing to really feel it, is is part of our rebirth in midlife. 

I was leading a group of about 40 gay men in a workshop once and and I asked them, how many of them had struggled with, spent a lot of energy struggling with shame in their lives? 

And and out of the 40 men, only one person raised their hands, one very brave person. And I saw that and went. And I looked at the emotional bodies and the nervous systems in the room. 

And I went, okay, I think I asked the wrong question, because I know that's not an accurate reflection of what I see in the nervous systems in the room. 

So, I shifted the question and said, how many people have spent your whole life being everything you thought you needed to be in order to be worthy of love and to never, ever, ever have to feel shame about yourself? 

And the other 39 people all raised their hands. So, so I think many of us have gotten so good at what we do, we don't even know how unhappy we are until we hit a crisis point in our lives. 

Which, for many of us, comes around midlife, whether midlife is 27 or 57. I've heard and seen people having midlife crises, you know, from in that entire 30-year range. So, I'm not sure exactly when midlife is. 

But it comes in a moment of crisis when you begin to feel your own emptiness. And many people, when they come to me, they first want me to help them fix the emptiness. 

What do I do to fix the emptiness? What do I fill it with so I don't have to feel it? 

And part of my work is as I help them learn to feel safe in relationship with me, to feel safe sitting with their emptiness, and to really feel it and to listen to it and to feel the parts of themselves they've never had the opportunity to be. 

The parts that are messy and inappropriate and angry, all the things that they judge about themselves. And to be able to sit with those with some self-compassion, and then to begin to learn from them, from those parts of themselves, and discover what are the things in them that have been waiting their whole life for them to be. 

But but I think it does depend, you have to hit your emptiness first and and then there has to be this willingness to step outside of the circles that you call community, and to find a wider and a deeper community to hold you through that process. 

Aging and Queer Connection (26:32) 

Rob Loveless  

And talking through that, one thing that jumps out to me as we were talking about knowing how to impress and pass and, you know, put off this persona that we're successful is I think a lot of us can be focused on youth, beauty, and sex, because those are validating markers of success within the gay community. 

At least traditionally, that's what's been perceived. 

So, with that in mind, I was curious, from your perspective, how does the LGBTQ+ community navigate aging, and where do you see opportunities for greater compassion and connection? 

Hunter Flournoy  

I really wish we had more opportunities for young queer folk and older queer folk to interact with each other. 

In back in the days when we had community centers and queer bookstores and say square dance conventions, there was more opportunity for inter-age interaction, our dignity, integrity. 

And my life was changed by interaction with queer folk across a wide array of different ages and cultures and religions. And we really lack those situations right now. 

And if we are all together in a room, the music is too loud to really hear each other anyway. 

So, I think create us, communally creating spaces where we get to interact with each other is is an extraordinary need in our community. 

When, when I began teaching, leading retreats in Europe, the first year I led retreats in Europe, someone came up to me that and said, Well, you. 

I would speak about the power of gay community and and he said, well, I'm sure in America, you need gay community. He said, but we're really accepted by everyone here. He lived in Northern Europe. 

We're accepted by everyone here. We were not excluded, and we're not marginalized. We don't really need gay community anymore. We sort of outgrown that. 

What was touched me so much is, at the end, at the end of the retreat, he came up to me and he said, I'm so sorry that I said that because I realized that I was accepted by everyone in my life, for the parts of me that I've learned how to be in public. 

But the parts of myself that I didn't know how to be in public, I was never accepted for those exactly as I am. 

And until he discovered real queer community which made room for people to speak and be heard and deeply listened to and supported in being curious about his own experience, he had those parts of himself were were sleeping. 

And so, I think we have a desperate need, especially in the age of apps and and now that we're entering into another period where it's harder to be open, it's harder to even explore gender. 

You know, I read a well-conducted study recently that said young people are less and less likely now to call themselves nonbinary. Just within the last couple years, it's trending downwards. 

That the freedom to explore who we are and in publicly in community is beginning to disappear again already. 

And I think we have to fight for communal spaces, because they are life and breath for discovering who we are. 

Ageism in the Queer Community (30:12) 

Rob Loveless  

As you're talking through the example of community spaces and queer bookstores, I'm thinking of the TV show Looking, which I know definitely had its critiques. 

But I think you see somewhat of that intergenerational dynamics in the characters there. So, within the main friend group, the majority of them are around, I think, late 20s or early 30s. 

But Murray Bartlett's character is about in his 40s, maybe mid-40s there. So, there is an age gap there, but they interact as a friend group. 

And then within his own experiences, he connects with an older gay man who has a successful business, who helps him begin launching his own restaurant business. And I do think that there is a romantic dynamic there. 

But even that aside, I think that's a great example that you don't frequently see in media where you have, I don't want to say three generations, because they're not that widely spaced apart age-wise, but at least 10 to 15 years between each of the main character groups. 

And I think that's a really beautiful thing, but I think for queer community and definitely more of the gay scene, people tend to interact with their own archetypes. 

And we even see that within ages, they kind of interact with those within their own age group. 

So, I was curious, if you think that ageism is a real issue within the LGBTQ+ community, and how does it impact gay men within midlife, both spiritually and emotionally? 

Hunter Flournoy  

I think ageism is a problem in gay community, but it arises from deeper problems. I don't think it's its own problem. I think it comes from a lot of different things. 

I think it does come from an absence of communal spaces where we just get to interact with each other. It also comes from our tendency to silo. 

As a people who have not felt safe in many areas of our lives, we create silos in which we can feel safe. 

In silos in which everyone uses the same language, and everyone shares exactly the same stories, or close enough, and we tend to be afraid of difference and only feel safe in places where everyone is exactly like we are. 

And I started to see this dissolve up until about 2016. Even in my own retreats, I found that that non-binary, trans, queer folk were much more open in discussing who they were and in being public, and there was a greater receptivity throughout queer community to the diversity of our experience. 

And then in 2016, because we started feeling less safe, I think, we began to silo again, and there began to be a separation between trans community, bi community, gay community, lesbian community. 

In other words, the sort of umbrella of queerness began to fragment a little bit. And I think we have lost out tremendously in that fragmentation because of our tendency to silo when we get unsafe with each other. 

And also, I think if I use certain languaging and talking to people of a certain age, if I say gay, for example, to people who are younger, it's actually a term of offense. 

If I say queer to people of another age, usually older folk, that's a term of offense. 

Every every word is a term of offense and a term that triggers a sense of unsafety, and I feel like our we need as a community to come together and share, Wow. When you say that word, it affects me like this. 

When you use that word for yourself, it affects me like that. 

And to really hear each other, but to be able to sit with discomfort again and to hold our discomfort collectively enough to listen to each other and hear the diversity of experience in and to grow a sense of a community that's larger than our tiny little safety zones. 

Because for sure, if coming back around to when we get to midlife, most of the community, most of the communities, or the scenes that we have felt at home in up until midlife, we're going to start to feel less and less a part of as we get older, and because both because there are things in us that want to be expressed. 

Because we don't fit the norms of the communities that we've been a part of in the past. We're going to have to expand outside of those things, which is one of the greatest opportunities of our lives. 

But I know for me, queer folk is deeply painful because you begin to feel like you're on the fringe of the community that was so important to you, when really, it's an invitation to grow your sense of community dramatically. 

Rob Loveless  

And what generational differences do you notice between middle-aged gay men and younger generations, especially in how they approach identity, connection, and meaning? 

Hunter Flournoy  

It is a good question to ask, because when we ask our questions, we get to hear some of the assumptions that underlie those questions, and we get to sort of break apart some of the assumptions under the question. 

When I come to a let's say I'm meeting a younger gay man. 

So I'm 58 now, so if I mean someone in their you know, 20s or 30s, and I come to them with any preconceptions about who they are and what life is like for them, and what is appropriate or inappropriate in talking with them, any to any, any, any sort of boxes that I have for what a young gay man is about, Gen Z, Gen X, millennial, whatever the generation. 

I'm not going to show up with the other human being. And I'm also going to come in with stories about who I am and how I'm different from them, and how my experience is different. 

And so if I can come in with just a sense of genuine curiosity and wonder and and not bring in a sense of what's different between our generations, but show up with a kind of innocent wonder about who this human being is, because if anything I've seen happen in our community over the years is there used to be a sort of monolithic story of gay coming out that we all more or less conformed to or tried to conform to in order to feel a sense of unity. 

As the years have progressed, there are so many more possibilities and and no two people share exactly the same experience of coming into themselves as a queer person, which is nothing but a gift. 

And if we can let go of our assumptions about someone because of their age, and get curious about their experience and their journey, they will show us who they are in ways that are outside of any of the boxes we might have brought to the interaction. 

Finding Peace in Queer Midlife (37:38) 

Rob Loveless  

Throughout this episode, we've definitely touched upon some of the unique struggles that you see in middle-aged gay men. So how can spiritual practices or healing work address them? 

Hunter Flournoy  

Well, I think in the early, when people first come to me in the work healing, meaning becoming whole, is largely the focus. 

It is about listening to the wounds, listening to the longing, discovering all the parts of them they have waited their whole lives to wake up, learning how to feel safe in their bodies, and then learning how to feel safe in relationship with each other. 

That a lot of the spiritual path focuses on those sorts of healing issues. 

As we get a little older, though, and we get a little momentum behind that act of self-discovery, we learn how to listen to even deeper voices inside ourselves as we begin to face aging and the decline of the body and the loss of beloved friends as as they begin to pass and people are dying younger and younger these days as a result of the toxic environment we live in. 

So, we begin to face these issues of the of the of the body growing more limited. 

And what I've noticed is in particularly in Western cultures, we don't have an idea that as the body grows more limited, the spirit begins to really ripen and and to blossom and to ripen. 

And it's possible for us to grow into a sphere of existence that is so much more free of all the things that used to obsess us and keep us up all night. 

And that's where I think spiritual practice turns from sort of the pursuit of healing, the pursuit of becoming whole to it moves out beyond me becoming whole to me beginning to experience myself in a larger sphere of community. 

And we begin to think about what gifts we want to share in the world and and our our sense of self is less about my wholeness and more about our wholeness. 

But in even beyond that, spiritual practice becomes about sort of a spiritual wholeness where it's not just feeling a feeling like I'm all of myself, or like all of myself belongs in community, but feeling like I am deeply and intrinsically connected to absolutely everything in existence, and beginning to find a real sense of aliveness and joyfulness and resilience in that as we begin to experience some of the ways that we grow more limited in our lives. 

Rob Loveless  

And how do you guide men in moving through these challenges toward a place of peace, clarity, and purpose? 

Hunter Flournoy  

We often treat peace and clarity and purpose as things that are somewhere out ahead of us, like goals that we're working towards. 

And and we want some, some, some set of steps that we can take that is going to move towards them at some, some future point in our lives. 

And what I find is that as we shift whatever midlife is, but as we shift through midlife, we stop looking at those things as something that's out ahead of us, that we're trying to achieve. 

And being at peace means being at peace with ourselves as we are, and being at peace with our lives as as they are. And though it's a hard one in this world, being at peace with the world as it is. 

And that doesn't mean we don't do everything we can to continue growing and creating and learning and trying to fight against injustice and standing up for others, but doing it from a sense of being at peace with how it is right now. 

And I think also clarity, being really clear about where we are right now and and seeing ourselves without the layers of judgment and expectation that we put on ourselves when we're younger is such an extraordinary gift. 

To be able to see yourself exactly as you are, knowing you have plenty of blind spots still, to have some sense of peace with exactly who we are, and at the same moment, to have a sense of of creative joy about what we want to explore, what we want to grow, what we want to develop in our lives. 

So, it becomes less about achieving something and more present-centered being in our lives right where we are, seeing ourselves, accepting ourselves, and having a sense of curiosity and playfulness and joy, so that success no longer becomes defined by what's outside of us. 

It becomes defined by are we, are we living that thing in us which wants to be born in this moment? Are we dedicating our whole lives to making space for it to do exactly that? 

Rob Loveless  

And as we're coming towards the end of this episode, what first steps would you encourage someone to take who's considering life coaching or spiritual guidance? 

Hunter Flournoy  

Do it. That would be it. Yeah, don't hesitate and and reach out. And I would say, find find a life coach, if you're ready for it. Find one who makes you feel safe exactly as you are. 

Someone who promises to help you live up to your images of perfection is just going to keep you in the trap of perfecting and performance. 

And there are a lot of coaches who've been trained in traditional programs, who who focus on the goal that you're the image of perfection, that you're working towards, and every day, in every way, you're going to take concrete, objective steps to get there. 

And we need goals and we need visions. But for many of us, it is based on trying to run from the experience of our own suffering. 

And if you begin a coaching process that is founded in trying to escape your experience of suffering, then you're just you have a very long journey of trying to stay ahead of your suffering. 

But if you can find a coach that when you're with them, you feel like you can just relax and you feel safe, you feel at ease, and you can tell them anything about who you are and where you are. 

And they have a capacity, not to play therapist, because there's a difference between coaching and therapy. 

To go down into your stuff and you know, and root around in it and fix it, but who can just hold a space for you to be exactly where you are right now and and to to befriend yourself as the foundation of any goals or visions that might arise. 

I would say, you'll, you'll probably, you'll feel less satisfied in the beginning because they're not helping you reach your goals and achieve, you know, reach your measurable objectives. 

You'll feel frustrated at first, but if you're ready for it, you'll actually save yourself a whole lot of time, because if you just get very good at staying ahead of your suffering and reaching your goals, you're going to stay performative. 

You're going to be chasing perfection. And when you hit midlife, or a little past midlife, the emptiness and the suffering and the longing that you hold inside of all the parts of you that have been waiting to finally be explored, embraced, explored, discovered, and co-created with, they will eventually catch up with you and and it will be hard, and you'll also be one of the greatest moments of rediscovering in your life. 

So, I'd say, if you can, don't wait until midlife. Find a coach who can help you sit with who you really are and and discover that while they're helping you achieve your goals. 

Episode Closing (46:40) 

Rob Loveless  

And connecting this back to the tarot, the King of Wands in reverse, again, while this card is full of masculine energy and very action-oriented, it's warning us that we're encountering unhealthy displays of masculine energy, like an abuse of power, holding grudges, or bullying others. 

We may feel like we have to be successful all on our own, so we push others away and trudge along in our pursuits to achieve success. 

But by doing so, we're prone to isolation, resentment, and ultimately, burnout. 

And as it relates to gay midlife, like we talked about for so long, youth, beauty, and sex were considered to be the pillars of success in the gay community. 

And for some, that need for validation through those avenues can cause them to view others in the community as their competitors instead of their equals. 

And this need for superficial success and validation can cause us to lose our true sense of authenticity. So instead of viewing gay men as our competition, let's view them as our collaborators. 

We are at a time when we have more rights than ever before and have more representation and have our queer elders to learn from. 

So, we need to reconnect with what truly matters to us and for most of us, that's to be seen, loved, and accepted. 

And living through a time currently where the political atmosphere is so tense, we should be coming together as a community of all ages to continue to push the needle forward to achieve equality. 

And part of the way we can do that is by honoring our history and learning from our queer elders and mentors. 

And while the King of Wands is very action-oriented, it's important that we're taking meaningful action to continue moving our community forward while knowing that we don't have to act alone. 

Connect with Hunter (48:14) 

Rob Loveless  

Hunter, thank you so much for this. This has been a fantastic episode, a great topic to cover, and I really appreciate your insights. 

So, as we're coming to the end here, can you tell all the listeners where they can learn more about you and connect with you? 

Hunter Flournoy  

Yes, absolutely. I got two websites. One is spiritjourneys.com. 

Spirit Journeys was one of the first companies creating spiritual retreats and journeys for queer folk back in the early days of the AIDS pandemic, and still going strong. 

So that's a wonderful place to connect with me, to do retreats and journeys. 

And also, if you're interested in the coaching, spiritual companioning, breath work, or just sitting and having a good chat about where your life is and and what it feels like to you. 

Hunterflourrnoy.com is my website, so those are the best ways. Or you can email me at hunter@spirit journeys.com. 

Rob Loveless  

And all that information will be in the show notes, so once you're done listening, definitely go check it out and connect with Hunter. 

Connect with A Jaded Gay (49:20) 

Rob Loveless  

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Mmm-bye.