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My wife and I travel for her job 100% of the time. We left this past January and will be living in a different country every 8 weeks. It’s a blessed life and a whirlwind to say the least.

Living in different countries and amidst different cultures is fascinating but it can also pose challenges. We were definitely thrown into the deep end of the culture shock pool earlier this year in India. On top of just about everything you could imagine being different our biggest challenge there was hiding our relationship. Indian culture on the whole is very conservative and I would consider them somewhere in the middle of the dark ages when it comes to gay rights. Although nothing is on the books for lesbians, sodomy is still illegal and gay bars are often raided.

Being in Europe for the past few weeks has almost felt like going home. Although European cultures are still different from our own back home in the U.S., it is “western culture” and much more familiar.

Last night we decided to find some Mexican food. If you don’t count the “chips and salsa” we had in India that consisted of Doritos covered in tomato sauce and sprinkled with peanuts, we hadn’t had any in over 10 weeks. This is unacceptable to my wife who would have queso dip running through her veins if she had her druthers.

So, we hopped in a taxi with a couple of my wife’s colleges and headed out in search of margaritas and enchiladas. My wife couldn’t have been happier when we were successful but it was something we hadn’t intended to find that made my night.

As we were eating I noticed a table of 6 women arriving. After about 2.3 seconds I deduced they were lesbians and for the rest of our evening I was completely obsessed with them. I couldn’t stop myself from staring and listening to them chat, albeit in a foreign language. If only I could understand their conversations. Which ones used to date, who’s dating now, who just hooked up with a straight girl, who’s breaking up…I knew they were talking “lesbian drama” and I was desperate to join.

My wife’s colleagues thought it was strange that I would be so excited just to see other gay people. Before this I had only seen maybe one lesbian and a couple of gay flight attendants since leaving the States. At home we lived in a gay friendly city and a very diverse neighborhood. I’d venture to say at least 35% of the people living just our street alone were gay. So, as strange as they thought it was, I was excited. And when the table of gay boys came walking in you would have thought it Christmas morning I was so elated!

It’s human nature to want to be around your own kind. It’s innate. It isn’t that I feel separate from my straight friends/family…it’s more about me needing to relate to other gay people on a different but still very basic level.

I wrote about this on my blog and asked both my straight and gay friends to throw their two cents but since they’re pretty bad about feedback I thought I’d pose the questions here.

Would you feel deprived if you rarely, if ever, saw other gay people? Do you seek out other gay people outside of trying to date? Do you think it is important to commune with other gay people? Do you consider the GBLT community “your community” and if so is that your only community?