Clay Aiken Reveals Why He's 'Perfectly Fine' Being Single at 46: 'I Don't Have the Energy' to Date (Exclusive)
Aiken came out on the cover of PEOPLE in September 2008
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Clay AikenClay Aiken is protecting his peace.
The American Idol alum — who recently marked his return to music with the new album Christmas Bells Are Ringing — opened up to PEOPLE about his dating life and detailed why he refuses to change his "ways" for a potential partner.
"I just turned 46, and I have discovered I'm too old to change my ways for anybody. Unless I can find somebody who's happy to sit on the other end of the couch and not talk for hours at a time, then I'm perfectly fine not having to deal with that," Aiken tells PEOPLE exclusively.
He continues, "You shouldn't have to change your ways, but we do. When we're younger, we end up thinking we should... and then as we get older, we realize, 'I just don't have the energy for that.'"
If love were to find him, however, Aiken is open to it — and he knows exactly what an ideal partner would look like for him.
"If there is a perfect soulmate for me out there, then he is perfectly happy to go for a full 24 hours in the same house, but not having to speak. That's the dream," Aiken says, adding that he hopes he'd be happy to "go live in a small town" away from "clubs."
"I just don't have the energy to do any of it," he continues.
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Clay AikenAiken came out as gay in a cover story with PEOPLE in 2008. At the time, he said the birth of his son inspired the move.
“It was the first decision I made as a father,” Aiken, then 29, said at the time. “I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things. I wasn’t raised that way, and I’m not going to raise a child to do that.”
Reflecting on the moment with PEOPLE, Aiken — who was starring on Broadway's Spamalot when he came out — says he's happy he was able to get the information out there, even though it was met with backlash.
"The first four months that I was in, the show was selling out, standing room only. You can actually look at the ticket sales the week after that cover came out," he says. "It went from selling very well to the week after the cover came out, the ticket sales dropped. Spamalot ended up closing a few months after that."
"We are in a very different time," he continues. "I lost maybe 50 percent of the fan base."
Now, Aiken is focused on his son Parker, 16, and diving back into the music industry, beginning with his holiday album: "I wanted to do something that just made people happy — and Christmas makes everybody happy."
Read the original article on People
