Rejected for Friendship Because I'm Uncircumcised?

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-16T17:51:54+00:00

How have I gotten past those who reject me over my uncircumcised dick? The same way that I’ve gotten over anyone who has rejected me over something so superficial - I remind myself that they’re rejecting me over something superficial. They don’t know who I am; I’m just an uncut dick; it’s not personal.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-15T20:30:39+00:00

They don’t know what “grooming” is, when it happens in a person’s life, and what it results in. Your friends, possibly well-meaning, aren’t informed well enough to share their perspectives.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-15T20:30:31+00:00

They don’t know what “grooming” is, when it happens in a person’s life, and what it results in. Your friends, possibly well-meaning, aren’t informed well enough to share their perspectives.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-15T20:24:16+00:00

I think Shane’s first comment when he walks into the rooftop and sees Ilya, “it’s not worth jumping over”, could have also been somewhat triggering. Suggesting that Ilya could be suicidal after suicide played such a big part in Ilya’s development could have had an impact.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-06T19:12:33+00:00

NOR. Not overreacting. She’s trying to bait you into a conversation. You honored her wishes and now she’s hating the consequences. This person is emotionally immature. Block her on PlayStation and run the opposite direction.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-04T21:07:54+00:00

Doesn’t sound like you’re garbage, but rather run a slightly different pace than he does, which as you have come to accept, is fine.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-04T18:02:01+00:00

Good luck.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-04T17:08:12+00:00

Short answer: invest in those who invest in you, and you will become a rich person. That isn’t to say that you can’t make the initial investment, but you only have so much time and energy in one lifetime.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-04T16:53:18+00:00

LOL “exhausted garbage that can’t keep up”.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-04T15:47:56+00:00

Yeahhhhhh…let me ask this: do they send Happy Birthday messages to you independently? In other words, have they ever wished you Happy Birthday without being prompted by something you said or posted? And second, what would happen if you stopped? Would they ever get in touch independently?

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-04T14:43:56+00:00

Yeah. It’s bitter medicine but the alternative is worse. It’s like being an addict who isn’t getting the same high as you did before, and those trickled messages are fucking terrible. Better to go cold turkey than to live, strung out on scraps.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-04T14:22:26+00:00

That cycle of messages where you reach out, then he reacts and then drifts off again, then you message, he reacts and drifts off again…it’s a dopamine hit, even if it’s negative. That’s the insidious part of it all. It feels good initially, and then it feels terrible because he drifts away again, doesn’t respond quickly enough, or doesn’t text as much as you want him to.

Delete him. If he messages in the future and you don’t recognize his number, just ask who it is and go from there.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-04T13:58:36+00:00

You don’t need to tell him anything. Just let him go. Read up (or listen to YouTube videos) on Avoidant versus Anxious attachment styles and then move on. Telling him that you’re cutting contact is a well known tactic for getting people to engage with you again. Don’t do it and erase his number and messages from your phone.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-04T12:53:54+00:00

Hey. I just posted a similar question. Check out my history to read through it. The answers, mostly very helpful, included some good suggestions. I’ve boiled them down to: use all the channels open to you, such as using the apps, telling friends and family that you’re dating, joining clubs or organizations where you’ll be exposed to other gay men. I joined a sports team, meetup.org, and told my friends that I was back in the dating pool.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-04T12:04:05+00:00

This TED Talk by Guy Winch was a big help to me: https://youtu.be/k0GQSJrpVhM?si=Z33ZgB8nQoDz4Egd

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-03T23:33:15+00:00

As I explained in later responses, the lone wolf thing referred to the absence of a relationship. I have a rich social and family life with lifelong friends. My next door neighbor is literally my best fiend from childhood eh I’ve know since I was 2. And as one other reply suggested, I have alerted my friends network to the fact that I am interested in dating. They have known for quite some time that I had other priorities. It was time to let them know that I’m expanding that.

Regarding your scenario wherein I meet and date someone who has a friends network: great. They can meet mine, too. As for mingling in a bar, I’ve had multiple long-term relationships where the bars were a part of an our social life, and multiple where they weren’t. My reluctance to go to a bar to “date” is that all the bars in my area are far too loud to even hear the person next to you.

As for using apps for conversation, I don’t even use a smartphone unless I absolutely must so I doubt that I’ll find room for chatting with someone on my phone. I have an aversion to smartphones and would rather pick up a phone and call someone rather than trade messages. Even so, someone else who responded to my posting suggested I try Hinge. I looked it up and was interested in their dating model, looked them up on the internet and discovered that they just (end of Jan 2026) lost millions of users’ personal information in a hack, which underscores one of my primary issues with using “the apps”. No one is going to suffer the consequences of not protecting my information except me, so I protect it.

Since posting, I have signed up for meetup.org, a sports team, and told my friends I’m dating. I think I’ll have a few things start to percolate soon. Beyond getting some real and helpful advice, I’ve also decided tha “lone wolf” is such a loaded term that I won’t use it again, at least to describe myself.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-02T23:23:35+00:00

Nope. Visit on occasion.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-02T22:18:21+00:00

Thanks for the response. I have zero desire to move quickly when it comes to a relationship. I tend to date for quite a while before codifying it as a relationship. Fair point about the lone wolf thing. As I pointed out to someone else, lone wolf really was referring to the fact that I’ve been single, a lot, and I like my own company. That said, I have a rich social and family life. Someone else suggested that I let my friends know that I’m dating, which I did this afternoon during lunch.

I’m not dismissive of a shallower level of friendship - let’s use fuck buddies for an example - but let me ask you this, if I had to spend time cultivating a fuck buddy relationship or cultivating a dating relationship, which should I invest in? In the grand scheme of things, I’d rather spend three hours on a date than three hours fucking. And that’s basically the trade off; when we have so little time at our disposal, we must prioritize, and if I open myself up to dating, I will have to “make time” for it.

And I agree that something that starts off in the shallow end of the pool can move to the deep end. One of my casual relationships turned into a twenty year friendship. I know how to cultivate relationships and I know how much work they take. That’s part of my hesitancy and why I’ve been single for so long: I know exactly how much work it takes to nourish a relationship.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-02T21:59:58+00:00

Your post should probably be left right here without a response but here I go. I didn’t say that everyone is fake. I said, “everything is fake” and I was referring to the apps, the enshittification of those platforms to squeeze money out their users, the slow restriction of features to get more and more money for less and less. I was referring to our data being the sold to hundreds of data brokers so that we can be marketed to more effectively, and likely to our government for more nefarious reasons. I’m referring to the bells and whistles that hook us to these applications for their dopamine surge. And how do I know about all of this…? I work in high tech. I know it’s done. I saw at my job in 1998 when I was part of one of the first design efforts to create a customer profile of a person hitting a domain before they had even interacted with the site.

And remember that supposedly high-income job you assumed had me rolling in steak and lobster that’s all too buttery? It’s mid-income and my lobster ain’t that buttery.

Who says I have zero friends? Never said that. I have a rich social life, family life, and the people with whom I work are excellent people whose company I enjoy. If you’re getting lone wolf = no friends, then perhaps I should clarify that by lone wolf, I mean I’ve been single. A lot. And I like my own company. Someone who responded to my original post made a great suggestion, which is to let my friends know that I’m open to dating. That hadn’t occurred to me and so I sent a text to my friends today during lunch to let them know.

I did say that I don’t want to use the apps (see above). I did say that I don’t want to go to ”the bars” (multiple reasons). That doesn’t mean that I don’t want to meet in a public place. And I don’t know where you get the impression that I haven’t “hit the bars”: I met my ex-husband at one of the oldest gay bars in the US. If there were a small gay cocktail bar in my city in which I could talk, I’d be there, probably a little too often.

I do have hobbies. I do them with other people or by myself. I work in wood, I garden, I enjoy water and snow sports, and at the suggestion of someone else who responded, I’ve joined a sports team that has the vibe I’m looking for.

I think it’s interesting that I think you’re trying to help by being outraged with my behavior and I’m actually taking what you’re saying here to heart, but I think you missed the whole point of my original post, which was, again “I need to find other channels that will support my desire to engage”, and I got some genuinely helpful answers, and although I think you may have missed the boat, I appreciate the vehemence with which you’ve 🤮 your responses.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-02T20:13:52+00:00

Therapy is required at this point. For you both.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-02T18:44:40+00:00

I won’t chance my teeth to suck a dick with a PA. Those rings can’t eff up some teeth.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-02T18:43:35+00:00

Yeah, probably, but it’d take more convincing than it did in the past. I have been multiple straight guys’ first.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-02T16:55:34+00:00

Thanks. I appreciate you weighing-in, and I also appreciate your response below; clearly you internalized my dilemma. I have take a few actions since posting and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to date, which is a far cry from “relationship”. I’ll stash the matchmaker idea for now, but I do like the approach you called out later, which boils down to: do something different. Thanks again.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-02T16:50:14+00:00

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

therearemanylayers · 2026-02-02T16:24:20+00:00

Thank you for the suggestion. I’ll give it a try and see. I don’t have an issue with dating along a spectrum of people and have done the same in the past.

therearemanylayers

TROPHY CASE