And of course, for many queer Christians, this can lead to feelings of isolation, because of the way the Christian subculture trends towards marriage at younger ages than the broader population. In perhaps an even more magnified way, queer Christians often find themselves within a system where many of their friends are married, engaged, or in serious committed relationships while they are still figuring out what it means to be in a romantic relationship at all. This is something I’ve experienced for myself, and I know from talking with friends and interacting with other queer Christians that it’s not an uncommon sentiment.

This territory also comes with all the other complications of only beginning to work out how to engage in romantic relationships at an older age, like the majority of your time being consumed with work, sometimes school, and other obligations that tend to leave many adults with little time to date, let alone figure out how to date, as is the case for many queer people. Along with all the other pressures of early adulthood, queer Christians may also feel a sense of “not being able to relate” to many of their straight peers as life stages often begin to diverge even more at this stage of development. While we’re still trying to figure out dating and relationships, many of our straight friends may have already moved on to other life stages such as the early stages of parenting, which can only heighten the feelings of being “behind” in terms of life milestones and development.

Perhaps more than anything, the case of the second queer adolescence is just another one of the many things that changes the lived experience of many queer people. It’s another one of the things that changes the dynamics between us and the people in our lives, here highlighting how growing up queer has changed the “speed” at which we might reach certain cultural or societal milestones. It’s not something that’s bad or even necessarily something we’ve “suffered,” but something that makes the way we live our lives different due to growing up in times and spaces where there was less tolerance and less normalization of who we are, resulting in certain milestones and events occurring for us later in life. It’s just one of those things we learn to live with and navigate as queer people that we understand many other people will not have to confront, and it just becomes part of the queer experience for many of us.

So, we may sigh a little as our straight friends get married while we nervously go on first dates, and we may feel that rush of giddy excitement as we hold our partner’s hand for the first time while our friends get engaged, and to many of us, that’s what our normal becomes as queer people. And despite the fact that many of these experiences might be “delayed” but the typical straight societal timelines, we live and love on our own time, hoping that for many of the younger queer people that come after us, they will grow up and live in an accepting and tolerant world where they get to have those adolescent experiences during their adolescence. And I think that’s already happening, which makes the living out of our second queer adolescences feel more worth it.