where to look for substantial friend/relationship

I'll cut to the chase.

1. With some 2 thrown in.

One reason many gay men hook up so much? It's easy. Finding someone to have sex With is as simple as pitting the word out and saying "you wanna?" You don't have to click on any level other than "we're horny, let's do this".

Friendships and relationships are far more complex. They're not available from vending machines or iPhone apps. You have to meet someone. You have to click on some level. You have to nurture the relationship. You have to introduce the sexual component, if this is a sexual relationship. And they have to, at the very least, be willing to go along this path with you. (Ideally, they'll be nurturing it as well.)

These would-be friends and lovers aren't squirreled away, hidden from view, waiting for you to find them. They're everywhere. You just have to go meet them and start the process. The thing is - it's work. And when you get rebuffed - and you probably will - it's easy to get disheartened, and fall into a "nobody wants to be my friend/boyfriend" cycle of despair.

To me, the smart move is to remain open, and put yourself out there. Don't immediately run up to people (metaphorically) and say "will you be my friend?" But chat with some people. Everywhere. Maybe the conversation ends right away. It happens. Try again with someone else. Work your common ground. Talk to your classmates about your classes, and to your dormmates about your dorm. If you join groups at school - like an intramural sport - that gives you more area of common ground, and more people to interact with.

And yes, online friendships are easier. You can immediately join a group that interests you, you can think about what you want to say, you can easily switch to private messaging. And yes, I've made several online friends this way. Do know that these friendships can be fragile. It's easy to end a relationship with a few keystrokes. Online friends can suddenly vanish without warning or explanation. But they can be good sources of interaction.

When it comes to romantic (and perhaps sexual) relationships, the idea is the same. And that means going where the guys-who-are-interested-in-guys are. Here, we call that "gay". So you may have to bite the bullet and join some gay groups. If you were just looking for something physical, there'd be nothing wrong with saying you were "straight-but-curious". (Actually, it attracts more guys than saying you're gay!) But you may need to be cautious if you're looking for a relationship. Many people will be reluctant to date somebody just to be their "trial run". It'd be like...well, not sure of your nationality, but let's run with that. If I asked you out, and said "I just want to see if I can date a (nationality)", you might find that offputting. So I wouldn't ask a guy out just to see if you like guys. Not only is it unfair to him, but it may end up being a bad fit, period. In which case, the only thing you proved is "I shouldn't date HIM".

Lex

 

I don't feel like I can give you advice on forming relationships or on whether or not you're gay, but I think developing friendships will be good for you whether it's online or offline. It may not find you a relationship, but it will find you some people you can trust and be trusted by which sounds like something that brings you a lot of happiness. These people might also be able to introduce you to LGBT-friendly places or potential dates, because two heads are better than one for locating them.

Online friends are something you do need to be cautious about, but good things can come of it. It's very easy to misread someone through text and not everyone will put any value into an online friendship, but you meet a much wider range of people and often in an environment where they're more comfortable opening up. Online friends do sometimes become offline friends or extremely close, so if it interests you go for it. I have a few very close friends online that I've known for years who've been an amazing help to me, and one of them lived close enough that we were able to hang out offline until he moved away.

 

Hi and welcome to EC! I hope that you'll find some consolation and the support you need from this forum.

I'm going to address a couple of your questions:

1) About becoming personal with your therapist - as much as we hope that we can go to a therapist and have them talk to us as though we were friends, that's just not going to happen. Mainly for professionalism reasons, they are not supposed to share information (especially deeply personal ones) about themselves or anybody else. They're paid and they're there to listen to YOU talk and to help you break down the psychology of what you're feeling and thinking. In order for a friendship to take place, there has to be give and take; that being said, if you're the only one talking about themselves, then it's not a friendship. That's the way it's intended to be. The therapist is just as much a doctor as your regular physician. Would you expect to become friends with your physician? No. It's the same principle. It's a doctor-patient relationship that has boundaries and limitations to maintain professionalism and ethicality. I know it's a bit harder to be so matter of fact with a therapist since your doctor-patient relationship is built on talking and sharing, but there's just no way a therapist can be sharing his or her life story with his or her patients. The therapist is there to be an objective ear for you - to listen without judging and to listen and help you understand what you're feeling. I know this isn't real life, but just an example from a tv show: this psychologist had a patient who had a been raped. The psychologist had been raped herself when she was younger, so she told her patient her own rape story to try to make her patient feel as though she's more understood and that she's not alone. That sounds, to us, like a caring, well-intended gesture from the psychologist, but the psychologist ended up getting into huge trouble by the clinic she worked for because of what she did. Revealing personal information to patients is not allowed.

2) About making "true" friends online - I think it can happen...only if you eventually end up meeting and becoming friends in person! I've heard plenty of stories of relationships that began online (and I'm not talking dating websites). I know couples who met through following each other on tumblr and messaging each other, and they eventually met up in person and started dating. In terms of just friends, I think you can find great people to talk to, but I don't really think you can call them "friend" if your relationship is just through a computer screen. For me, I met this older guy on an iPhone game app who I became pen pals (or rather email pals) with. He's 30-something from the Netherlands, a very liberal place, so I became very comfortable talking to him about being gay. For a good 9 months or so, we emailed each other constantly. Even with the time difference, we'd send each other anywhere between 2-4 emails a day, each, and the emails were longggg. I was telling him all about me, and he was sharing stuff about himself. We talked about things that we wouldn't talk to with other people in person, but it was okay because we live on separate continents and it's only an online relationship. Then eventually, over time, maybe he got too busy with life or whatever, but our emails tapered down. He'd send 1 email a day, eventually 1 email a week, then 1 every now and then, until now where I haven't talked to him in a couple years. Despite that, I'm still very thankful for having had him as an email pal. I had nobody to talk to at the time and that was during my darkest days, but I could at least unload some of my feelings on him and have him respond thoughtfully. In the end, there's a bond from a face to face relationship that can't be achieved through text on the web. So I think you can easily find random people to talk to or even to keep in touch with, but until you've been through life together in person and had some trials and tribulations with each other, it's not a friendship per se.

Hope this helped!

 

Wow, that friend of yours sounds like someone I know! He got an obsessive international roommate that he's still trying to ignore now even though they're not roommates anymore. And yes, he's got this heart melting smile. He always looks cheerful, but everyone can see that he hides his feelings inside. I hope we're not talking about the same person here! :lol:

So, onto your questions. I could give you my opinion on whether you are gay or not, but it wouldn't matter as you are the one who needs to find that out and come to terms with it on your own.

Online relationships can be a hit-or-miss game. I genuinely think you could develop a real relationship from online friendship, but it's not going to be easy to achieve, and you have to be careful, and also not expect too much from it. It could be hard for you since you are, er, obsessive, as you stated.

Luck also has a big part in this relationship game. Of course there are many people who look for a real meaningful relationship too. Relationship is not only about sex, and being gay doesn't make it any different. I feel like I'm giving you empty advice, but really, you just haven't met the right person yet.

I have to ask, why do you think you need to be in a relationship now? You want to, yeah, but you can't find one person that suits you. But that's perfectly normal (and fine too). You're 20. There's nothing wrong with not having a relationship now... All I can say is keep looking. You'll find one eventually. Sorry, I know how empty I sound.

 

Yup, we exchanged that many emails a day...and each one was as long as or even longer than the text in your original post lol. And considering the time difference between San Francisco and the Netherlands, I was pretty surprised myself too that we were able to keep that up. Anyways, how I met him: I downloaded an app on my iTouch called Distant Shores. It's this virtual beach where you walk around collecting seashells, and for every 5 shells you collect along the shore, you gain one glass bottle. With each glass bottle, you can write a message and throw it out into the sea. As you walk along the beach, you will also find these bottles, which contain messages that other people have written and "thrown out to sea." So I find other people's bottles, and other people in the app will find my bottles on their beach. When you open a bottle, you can either discard it or reply to the message; then, the original sender and you can continue your conversation by writing a message and sending it back out again. It will show up at your "home mailbox." Sounds kinda lame, but it was fun and cute...to me, at least haha. I kind of used this app as my way of releasing some of my emotional burden anonymously.

So, I sent out a bottle asking the question, "Do you think there's someone out there for everyone?" My soon-to-be pen pal found my bottle on his beach. He replied saying, yes, and he asked me why I would ask that and he asked that I be totally honest with him. I told him I was worried because I'm gay and there's a much smaller chance of me finding someone. Once I told him that, we started replying to each other with really long messages, so we eventually exchanged email addresses and emailed each other instead. I was so happy to find someone who was actually totally cool with me being gay and who was glad to talk to me about it. I met several other people on the app who were cool talking to me about it as well, but those conversation exchanges never lasted. With the Netherlands guy, though, he basically helped me out all through my junior year of high school...then as I said before, we lost touch along the way. I'm still glad for what we had though!

It's not out of the question for you to meet someone online and to eventually meet them in person! It's totally possible as long as they live somewhat nearby! Not in a different continent like me and my pen pal haha.