Princess —as he goes by these days— seemed to have it all. He had a stimulating job, a boyfriend, and a strong network of queer friends in Brussels. And yet, something was missing. 

“In the city, I became frustrated by how hard it was to build a deeper sense of community,” says the 35-year-old. 

His search for belonging had intensified after breaking up with his previous partner. He made new queer friends and got involved in activism, but the culture of political meetings didn’t feel particularly nourishing. “At the end of the meeting, everyone goes home and still has to manage life on their own.” 

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Princess found the city challenging in other ways as well. With rent rising, it was becoming increasingly difficult to live in a nice neighborhood or have friends nearby who could still afford the area. Coordinating his busy schedule with others to find time for socializing was a constant struggle. Outside of political meetings, most socializing within his queer community revolved around partying, often accompanied by substance use and the reality of addiction.

Having grown up in a small village on the French border, he longed for a slower-paced life and a deeper connection to nature. But moving back to the countryside alone was out of the question.

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Maevon, 58, lost his job as a tour guide during the COVID pandemic and found work as a gardener on a large rural estate on the outskirts of Berlin. For most of his life, he avoided situations in which he would find himself alone. 

He carried what he described as “the fear of a child just weeks old—the fear that if no one cares for you, you will die.” 

Throughout his adult life, he had fled small-town environments for the bustle of cities like London, Barcelona, and Berlin. “Once I was in big cities, I always sought out the busiest downtown areas, thinking they would help me feel connected. But beyond short-term fixes and distractions, they never really did,” he says. 

When he became a gardener, Maevon discovered that the satisfaction of getting his hands dirty far outweighed the comfort of fleeting social interactions. He hoped that by finding other gay men who shared his love for gardening and nature, he could enjoy the best of both worlds.

Despite their differences in age and nationality—Belgian and British—Princess and Maevon grew up as gay men sharing the same belief: that happiness lay in moving to the city and finding a boyfriend. Both things were deeply intertwined—cities offered the largest pool of potential partners, while the countryside felt like a gay desert. 

However, the promise of urban bliss proved less fulfilling than expected, leading both to reconsider their path. While loneliness was one of the most significant challenges of rural life, building a community provided both solutions and opportunities. For the past two years, they have been at the forefront of two queer community projects in rural France.

Along with five other queer people in their late 20s, Princess began renting a large farmhouse in eastern France, not far from the Swiss border. The community started as an experiment—they chose to rent first to see how it would work. 

In its first year, some initial members returned to the city, but the project persisted. In fact, it has grown to the point where Princess and his housemates have now set up a plan to buy the farm and transform it into a queer nonprofit. 

For Princess, a key aspect of this project has been reimagining how his social, emotional, and sexual needs could be met in a more fulfilling way. “A lot of the things I used to seek through dating—like a sense of connection, tenderness, or even cuddles—I’ve found simply by living in community,” he says. Opportunities for meeting new potential partners have not been lacking either, as the vision of communal living has struck a chord with other queer people, attracting a steady flow of visitors.

After his stint as a gardener, Maevon joined five other gay men in their 50s and 60s in search of a place they could call home. For Maevon and the others, the COVID pandemic acted as a catalyst for a project that, until then, had been only a dream. The group purchased a small hamlet in southwestern France and founded a community called Queercus, a tribute to the many oaks that grow on the land (from quercus, Latin for ‘oak’). 

For as long as he could remember, Maevon had clung to two interrelated beliefs: that he had to adapt to his partner to be loved and that he needed a partner to feel happy and complete. Through therapy and deep introspection, he came to realize that “the feeling of loneliness is a state based on my relationship with myself rather than with other people.” Learning to befriend himself not only dispelled the fear of living in the countryside but also opened him up to the possibility of more authentic relations with his community peers.

Chas, 67, is also one of the gay men who founded Queercus. Growing up in a Detroit suburb in the 1960s, he had never felt lonelier. That early experience set him on a lifelong search for belonging. He recalls the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s with mixed feelings of nostalgia—he lost a partner to AIDS, yet those years were also among the most meaningful in terms of bonding and community organizing. As the pandemic waned over time, Chas began to question what, besides a crisis, could serve as the glue that binds people together.

Entering old age, Chas no longer wanted to spend his remaining years on his own in his San Francisco apartment, especially in a city that no longer met his social needs. “My circle of friends became less centered on genuine connection and more consumed by the distractions of city life. What frustrated me most was the lack of continuity in these relationships—even when I met new people, it quickly became clear that they had so many other options that forming any meaningful connection felt nearly impossible.”

Chas’s experience echoes previous research, which consistently shows that aging lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals are more likely to suffer from loneliness than their heterosexual counterparts. According to this research review, aging LGB people experience loneliness at higher rates than the general population due to several key factors. They are more likely to live alone, withdraw socially out of fear of discrimination or internalized stigma (minority stress), and have lower rates of homeownership—leaving their social networks more vulnerable. Additionally, queer people are overrepresented in both the lowest and highest quintiles of household income. For those in the lowest income bracket, the inability to afford paid care and services further limits their opportunities for socialization.

For Chas, living in a rural community is not all roses. He acknowledges that finding sexual partners will be more difficult, but it’s a tradeoff he’s willing to make. “I’m reaching a place of greater acceptance around the possibility that sex is very unlikely to happen here. I need to find other ways to feel supported and happy,” he says, while also adding that “there is a self-fulfilling prophecy in that we see ourselves as older and less desirable.”

Looking at Chas’s schedule from the past week, it was surprisingly full for someone living in the middle of nowhere. Each evening was dedicated to a different community activity—board games, movies, tarot readings, and stargazing by a campfire, to name a few. During the day, he helped refurbish one of the rooms in the house and even found time to plant a new batch of herbs with Maevon.

While his world is far from perfect, Chas feels he has a fair chance at living the kind of life he once longed for as a lonely teenager in Michigan. “I wanted to find a group of people to grow old with—a place where I would feel seen and known, where familiarity fosters a level of care that isn’t possible in more transient relationships.” Community living at Queercus might just be what he’s been looking for. 

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