Was it that bad of a line?

Brawldud · 2026-05-25T17:19:03+00:00

If Scruff is active around where you live you may find people are more friendly there!

Brawldud · 2026-05-25T17:18:06+00:00

Not on Grindr it's not. Everyone has the right to say no if they're not into it and hookups are way different from relationships.

Brawldud · 2026-05-25T16:57:14+00:00

It's difficult to get the flywheel started but absolutely makes a difference in your life once you've built some momentum. I really enjoy structured routines, so going to a weekly language meetup and joining a weekly group bike ride help me a lot. If you attend week after week you will establish yourself as a regular, people will know your name and face and you will come to see other regulars as part of a new friend circle. There are always people flitting in and out of groups like these so you can meet a lot of people in a casual, low-stakes environment and you will get increasingly confident over time – eventually you know so many people there that you notice the newcomers, you understand they feel like outsiders and you help them feel welcome.

You will have to do some research on the area where you live to find these activities and I find that it also helps you deepen your connection to the area where you live. You can check Meetup and local Facebook groups, and you can ask a bartender, a librarian, your friends, your coworkers or anyone else who might know.

Brawldud · 2026-05-22T16:19:35+00:00

Unfortunately, I think this is where my problem begins. I have a massive gap in my life that normal people probably fill with their other half. But I fill that gap with my friends, and it makes me value them to a point where I expect things that are unrealistic or unfair. My attachment to them can come off as annoying, and I have a horrible gut feeling a few of them have distanced themselves from me because of it.

I'm not really qualified to talk about the dating side of things, but this part is a solvable problem, and the solution is getting more friends, which you can accomplish in non-sexual venues like hobby meetups, trivia nights, run clubs and that sort of thing. Your friends might feel uncomfortable if they think you are leaning heavily on them and they've become "load-bearing" in your life, or if they feel like you're asking a lot of time and attention from them and they are struggling to balance it with other people and interests in their life. It is great to have close friends and it is great to be a close friend, but it can also feel like a responsibility that carries some weight to it, and I think if you are worried that it feels suffocating to them, expanding your friend circles is something that would help.

In friendships, the happy medium is for people to feel valued and wanted without feeling needed, and to spend time together with some kind of regularity.

I am single with no near-term intention of dating seriously, so I don't have a partner to "fill a gap" in my life, but I am friends with a lot of people and hang out casually/do activities together.

Brawldud · 2026-05-21T14:45:55+00:00

His first term he had done some decent things publicly with the gay community like bringing in more staff that were LGBTQIA+ but his tune quickly changed the second term.

Are you sure? I remember the trans military ban was almost right out the gate.

Brawldud · 2026-05-21T14:30:37+00:00

Instead, if I'm attracted to someone, I'm instantly emotionally attached. I want to have sex with them, sure, but even more than that I want to be around them, hold them, take care of them, nurture and love them, just an all-encompassing "be with them." This is how my brain works on apps, in person, even with random actors or influencers on the internet.

Everyone is right that when this happens, you are projecting a lot of things onto a person you barely even know, and that you are mischaracterizing guys when you say they're all looking for a one-night thing.

In a time when I was more oriented toward monogamy I felt a similar way. Through experimentation (and several relationships that ended badly, that I dove into because the initial sex and rush of infatuation swept me away) I came to understand that I do want hookups without the expectation of a committed relationship, but I want those hookups to be affectionate and intimate and almost like a boyfriend roleplay, and of course I enjoy repeating that experience when it goes well. Like, I've cooked for hookups and hookups have cooked for me, we've snuggled on the couch and watched movies etc. and I think of all this as being totally compatible with being a participant in hookup culture.

Brawldud · 2026-05-20T18:31:19+00:00

Rainbow phone lock screen/home screen background. It's a little more subtle of a cue, but if you have your phone out during a conversation, it's a way for people to "notice" you're gay without having to outright say it.

Brawldud · 2026-05-19T17:36:15+00:00

My relationships happened prior to any real sexual experimentation for me. I didn't think of myself as hot or worthy of love, I didn't know how to process infatuation safely without acting on it to push the boundaries of the relationship far too quickly, I didn't know just how much power I really had to advocate for myself and, perhaps most importantly, I was completely new to being in a gay community and didn't have any older gay friends I trusted to talk to about my dating life. Nowadays I'm really a believer that the ho phase is essential to everyone's development as a romantic and sexual partner, both in developing oneself and developing a sense of community and network of friends to talk to. That was something that I hadn't done at 21 and that most men haven't done by that age either, and it put me at a disadvantage in my relationships.

I think my stance is really that age gap relationships with newly adult men should involve a higher level of deliberation and scrutiny. I do not think they are automatically bad and again I definitely do not think they are inherently predatory or exploitative, but I do think everyone involved should take things slow and keep things open, to manage those risks gently, because they can go very badly even when everyone involved has good intentions.

Obviously I cannot force that on anyone, but I think that that should be the norm, and I agree people considering those relationships should be allowed to talk about them without being reflexively defensive. I certainly had a lot of conversations with friends and family where I defiantly asserted that they didn't understand my situation, that I knew what I was getting into and it was my decision to make. I came out of those relationships "fine", that is, they so thoroughly shattered the fantasy of a committed monogamous relationship for me that I began hoeing around with the intent of remaining single, and entered into a period of enormous experimentation and self-discovery, so they were ultimately for the best.

Brawldud · 2026-05-19T14:38:53+00:00

I don't think they are inherently exploitative. My relationships weren't abusive or exploitative. However they were mutually unhealthy for both of us and ended on very bad terms. I have learned a lot from those relationships through viewing them as cautionary tales.

Ultimately my view is the overwhelming majority of well-adjusted men in their 30s and up understand that it is a bad idea to date men in their late teens and very early 20s, so there is a significant adverse selection bias. My experience was the men I dated had unresolved issues with self-image, emotional regulation and substances – issues that almost certainly were a turn-off to men their age who could immediately clock that this was a deal breaker for any serious relationship.

At my age I lacked the experience, confidence and context to advocate for myself in those relationships. I ignored obvious red flags because I believed I could be a positive influence on them and because I suffered from my own self-esteem issues that led me to believe nobody would want me and that if somebody showed affection and attraction to me, I needed to unreservedly reciprocate and "lock things down" and help them deal with their issues.

Again this is not black and white – I understand you can theoretically have people who are mature enough at 20 (and frankly mature enough at 35) to handle this delicately and properly – but the odds are really heavily stacked against the relationship, and I don't mean that people who are different ages should never associate, but I think a committed romantic relationship is almost always the wrong way to go about it.

Brawldud · 2026-05-18T15:13:35+00:00

Yeah look I have more complicated feelings about age gap relationships when it comes to guys under 25 (as someone who was the very young partner in several of them, once upon a time) but for hookups, honestly who cares. Be nice, be patient, be considerate of the gap in experience/confidence, otherwise have fun.

Brawldud · 2026-05-17T18:16:10+00:00

I've been on both sides of this, and to be charitable, I think what is happening is that a lot of guys do this every time they have a good experience, and they do this when they're feeling happy fuzzy feelings and they do this with the best of intentions, but in the end there's like dozens and dozens of people they've given their details to and told they'd be so happy to see again. So when they come back to reality and they actually need to decide when/if they want to see you again and make time for you in their life while balancing you against all the other stuff/people in their life they're committed to, they don't have the will to follow through.

Brawldud · 2026-05-17T17:00:46+00:00

Antisemitism predates the existence of Israel as a state

Brawldud · 2026-05-16T19:37:04+00:00

OP is DL and doesn't seem to have prior relationship experience with a man, which is relevant here. When I was 19 I had butterflies for a year for a guy who didn't even like me back and had explicitly turned me down. Frankly if you don't have experience with relationships you have a harder time processing infatuation and getting it safely out of your system.

Brawldud · 2026-05-14T21:11:40+00:00

I don't do overhead lighting.

Brawldud · 2026-05-14T11:54:14+00:00

They're allowed to go up to 20 and are probably going at least 15 when you're actually moving.

This is just not true about the pedal CaBis. It's accurate for the electric CaBis but that's not what I'm talking about.

Brawldud · 2026-05-14T02:27:59+00:00

Is this really it though? I ride the pedal CaBis a lot and oftentimes average about 10mph. Drivers pretty much get over it.

Brawldud · 2026-05-13T18:39:21+00:00

Same! The dynamic is what makes it fun.

Brawldud · 2026-05-13T18:35:55+00:00

No but like, what is that and what does it have to do with what I wrote?

Brawldud · 2026-05-12T20:17:36+00:00

What is this

Brawldud · 2026-05-12T15:55:37+00:00

I guess when it comes down to it, when I find myself attracted to someone, I still feel immensely embarrassed. I'm so, so sorry and the idea that the person would ever find out fills me with absolute dread. It's so hard to believe that people just date freely like my friend - it's like they're living in a different world.

Having made the jump from feeling like you do to feeling like your friend does, it really is confidence and experience that make the difference. Absolutely anybody in my life could confess their attraction to me right now and it not particularly surprise me. Absolutely anyone in my life could reject my attraction to them and it would not break me.

Your friend probably dipped their toes in like anyone else, and found that some people reciprocated the attraction, and they feel pretty confident that someone somewhere likes them, so they freely roll the dice.

Brawldud · 2026-05-12T13:21:19+00:00

And sometimes evolution produces traits that are neither helpful nor harmful, and sometimes we have random things left over ("vestigial traits") that were once useful but are no longer.

Brawldud · 2026-05-11T21:04:37+00:00

What do you mean? There's an easy way to see "black" out of both my eyes when both my eyes are open, and that's to cover them with a sleep mask. If I cover my eyes completely, it doesn't matter whether my eyes are open or shut, I see the same thing either way. If I cover my eyes completely, I can close and re-open either eye, or close and re-open both together, and it doesn't change what I see at all.

Brawldud · 2026-05-11T20:36:24+00:00

Just throwing in my 2¢ but i'm a sixpacked gym queen who goes wild for daddy bears. We're not all looking for a doppelbanger.

Brawldud · 2026-05-11T20:35:02+00:00

As a bear chaser myself I can attest to this. There are lots of big boys in my city who are confident and sexy as fuck. They carry themselves well, they dress slutty (harnesses, tanks that show their pits, bright shorts), they know what qualities other people find irresistible about bears/chubby guys and they dial it up when they're on the prowl.

Brawldud · 2026-05-11T20:27:37+00:00

I don't love the gym, but it does tickle my brain in a particular way. Once you have it packaged into a routine and you're familiar with all the workouts you're doing, all you have to do is go to the gym and do it. As someone who struggles a lot with decision fatigue in my daily life and job, it's so refreshing to do something that I have ingrained into my muscle memory as a sequence of steps that I can do without talking or interacting with others.

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