BootmanLA

Not to disagree with the other parts of your post, but these are, as stated, bullshit. "Monogamy doesn't truly work." - For you. I'm not saying it's easy (it's often not) but it does work for lots of people, and their experiences are no less valid than yours. "as we should." - "Should" is the most useless word in the English language. Who died and made you Princess of the Universe to declare what other people "should" do? (Hint: nobody.) It's not your place to determine what other people "should" do in their own relationships, which don't affect you one iota (unless, of course, you view them as prey that need outside sex and you go after them to get them to cheat, in which case, maybe it's your business but then maybe again, screw you). "The Divorce rates are so high because of the control tactics of Monogamy." - You have zero basis for making that statement, unless you believe that the primary driving factor in divorce is people wanting to fuck other people and not being allowed. You're just over 30, so let me try to enlighten you just a tad: there are a thousand reasons people get divorced, and most of them don't have anything to do with one person wanting to fuck around.

Of course it's possible. Almost anything is possible. But that's on him, not on you. And you wouldn't be an asshole for pointing it out, if he ends up unhappy: "Look, we agreed on an open relationship. I'm not saying you have to stay in it, if you're not happy; but I won't be happy if it's completely closed off, either. So if we can't find a compromise that works for us, we should part now, on as good a set of terms as possible, rather than making us both miserable because neither of us can be what the other needs."

Sure it is. Look for the big magnifying glass (the universal symbol for 'Search') on the top row of icons, just above the red and white "breeding ZONE" logo. Harder to do a screenshot there, but it's right there in front of you.

I wouldn't say "aren't a turn on for men" as though it were some sort of absolute. If there's one thing that nearly 40+ years in the gay community has taught me, it's that there are men out there into just about everything. Now, that doesn't mean that some sorts of partners aren't much more universally appreciated than others; and yes, both chubbiness and being a trans man are things that appeal to fewer men than, say, a swimmer's build twink with a really firm butt or a hairy muscle daddy with a thick cock. (I'm neither of those, myself.) And because those are two "specialized" interests, you may well have fewer guys interested than some other people. On the flip side: you apparently live in Pittsburgh, which is a pretty good sized city. While the city itself is only about 68th in population, the Pittsburgh metro area has about 2.4 million people and is the 27th largest metro area in the US, which means you have a lot more options than someone living in, say, the Texarkana metro area, which has about 150,000 people. So you have an advantage that many men in your situation may not.

To all of the advice above (most of which I find sound), I'd also suggest considering this: What do you (ultimately) want? If you're hoping to someday be in a monogamous relationship - and monogamous means NO outside sexual partners; having threeways with your partner and another guy doesn't count as monogamy, even if you both are always present and always agree on the guy - then that's one thing. If you are open to that, but are also willing to consider an open relationship (of whatever kind; they come in all flavors), then that's something else. If you're sure you don't want a monogamous relationship at all, but you're open to other sorts of arrangements, then that's yet something else. Answer that question first, and that will guide you further. If you meet a guy and go on a date, there's no reason you can't ask him what he's looking for, ultimately, as well. You don't have to tip your hand right away (although you should try to answer any question honestly, if you do answer it); but his answers can give you powerful guidance on where to go from there. Let's say you know you'd consider a monogamous relationship, but you're not set on that as the only long-term option. He mentions that he's ready to settle down with one guy. You can feel him out - "Do you think you'd want that to be a strictly monogamous relationship, or do think you'd prefer something less rigid?" If he says "absolutely it would have to be monogamous" then you have some additional info to work with. You know his end game, and even without telling him yes or no to that, you can evaluate this and future dates, if any, with that in mind. And if at any point you feel like "This is fun, but I don't think I could ever settle down with this guy exclusively", then you've got your answer, and you can either break it off, or make it clear to him that this won't end up where he wants it, but you're willing to keep seeing him if he's OK with something more casual. But in general: you can, if you want, upfront, say something like "It's not that I date around a lot, and I always hope things go well with a date and we hit it off. But I don't want either of us to assume exclusivity until we reach the point that we talk about it and agree that's what we want. In the meantime, I hope we enjoy each other's company as we see where, if anywhere, this leads us. Cool with that?"

Thank you for this thorough and clarifying post - it's the kind of thing I tend to do (as you probably know) but I'm glad I'm not the only one.

Search is in the upper right corner. It's a drop down menu. See:

In that case you're probably out of luck. You'd presumably need to contact the person and ask if he's willing to share an email address to which he can send them.

So just to be clear: you're saying that one cannot be a good bottom and also insist that the top pull out before ejaculation? Just another person trying to define what "good bottom" (aka "real bottom" or "true bottom") is for everyone else in the world.

That sentence, right there, explains it: you are not cheating, because this is an arrangement you and your partner came to, together. By definition, it's not cheating, because cheating is going AGAINST the rules you've agreed to. You're not. You've both agreed to a new set of rules that covers things at least until (when and if) he ever recovers his sex drive. It's like Monopoly. Lots of families play the game with a set of "House Rules" - some twist that all the players agree to, up front, regardless of what the actual rules say. That's not cheating; that's an agreement to amend the rules that the players find acceptable. But if one player decided to take $300 every time he passed go, instead of $200, that would be cheating.

If I am not mistaken, BBRT is the primary sponsor/coordinator of the CumUnion parties.

It's just honesty. When people find honest statements of fact "racist messaging" then I think it's time for them to do some self-reflection.

Short answer: No, I don't think you can. Longer answer: "Messages" on here are not "email". They are simply a specialized kind of post in the database, that only the recipient can see, and that automatically "chain" like a series of posts would. Attachments, in the email sense, came about because the original underlying mail transfer protocols used on the internet didn't have any means of embedding an image within the message. There was no such thing as html-formatted email (with pictures within the message text) because HTML hadn't been invented when the fundamental email transfer protocols were created. So attachments - a means of sending any file, of any format, attached to the email - came about in an early iteration of the mail transfer protocols simply so that documents could be shared between people. Eventually, HTML and web pages came along, and included within the basics therein is the ability to put an image right into the text of your message, instead of only attaching it. That's where all the fancy email newsletters and so forth come from - inserting a link to a photograph at the point you want it to appear among the text. And that's what you can do here, since (as noted) a "message" is simply a specialized form of a web posting. What you'll want to do is open another browser tab (or window) to the folder on the web that contains your pictures (and it will need to be stored on the web somewhere, either here in a BZ gallery, or another image storage site, or whatever). Navigate in that extra tab to the picture you want to send - make it the only picture showing in that tab - and then copy the URL for that tab, then paste it into your message with the "Insert Image from URL" button/link.

Here in the U.S., at least, according to the guidelines for prescribing PrEP, a health care provider should only do so after (a) confirming that the patient is HIV-negative and (b) having the patient commit to regular HIV *and* STI screenings in order to have the prescription refilled. And most guys on PrEP probably do just that. However, as I've noted elsewhere, there's a small industry revolving around getting people on PrEP as expeditiously as possible, with telemedicine consultations instead of full-scale doctor visits, and so forth. There's not a lot built into those systems to *ensure* that these places don't become pill mills for PrEP, with no real monitoring of whether a guy who's taking it is adhering to the schedule, whether he's accidentally converted anyway without knowing it, whether he's sharing other STI's regularly, etc. These places COULD make it fairly rigorous in terms of checking up on the patients and making sure they're doing well, etc., but there's nothing guaranteeing it.

What I'm getting at here (and may not have expressed well) is that if someone has all the facts, and knows the risks, and decides that becoming poz and remaining off meds indefinitely is what they want to do, then I don't think there's any role for others to impose a change - neither by any sort of legal or pseudo-legal mandate nor by public shaming (which seldom if ever really works). But at the same time, the owners of any particular platform (such as this site) can opt to promote the public good by refusing to allow such people to promote that same behavior. Does that make it any clearer?

I don't see anything amiss in how you view yourself in a relationship context vs. how you see yourself in a hookup context. But I do think that might be good guidance for how you describe yourself. If you're posting on a site that is primarily about hookups - Grindr or BBRTS, for instance - I would list yourself as a versatile or versatile bottom, because that's what you are *in the context of that site's demographic*. If you're on a relationship site, or one where relationships are are a prominent focus, I would list yourself as a versatile top. And in the comments section of your profiles, give a condensed version of this. On the hookup sites, say something like "Willing to top but it takes a special partner and circumstances". On the relationship sites, say something like "Love to top a really compatible partner, but also happily willing to bottom."

Being an introvert is a complicating factor for sure. I would suggest you look more closely for local groups into your interests/hobbies. For instance, if you are into model airplane flying, search for "Model airplane group Melbourne" to see if there is a local club into that. In larger cities (and Melbourne, at 5 million people, is a larger city), there's almost certainly going to be a group that shares whatever hobby you might enjoy. Now, if you mean specifically *gay* people into that hobby, that can be more challenging. The Venn Diagram of queer people into anything - no matter what that thing is - probably has a fairly small overlap area, with the exception of a handful of wildly popular things like popular film and music, and then to impose a "local" restriction on it is even more problematic. I'd also add: look for volunteer opportunities in the gay community there.

Generally speaking, it means 'to tread heavily upon'. What this person is almost certainly referring to is being walked or stomped on, probably by heavy boots.

I do agree that if someone makes the *informed* choice to do just that, they should be permitted. But that presumes a level of information that few people in that situation really have. And I agree with the policy of this site that regardless of whether one should or shouldn't be allowed to do that for oneself, promoting that choice here is forbidden.

I think a lot of stories could benefit from more "lead up" to the sex, as opposed to hopping right into bed with the characters. That said, broadly speaking, no, I don't think most stories would benefit from horror, rape, drugs, or murder. Horror and erotica CAN work together - the works of the late great Anne Rice come to mind immediately, of course - but hers was a different kind of horror from most of what we see today. Certainly not slasher horror and the like - frankly, I think there's some sort of pathology involved if you feel compelled to link murder and sex; and generally speaking, posts here that promote harm aren't permitted. If you can't talk about deliberately giving someone AIDS or celebrating progressing to AIDS (a stance I agree with), you certainly shouldn't be able to celebrate or eroticize actual murder. As for the other topics: drug-fueled sex is already permitted in the backroom "Chem fiction" section. Isolating it into a separate section is a reasonable compromise between banning it entirely and other people stumbling onto it in the midst of other erotica. Rape is touchy because most eroticized fictional depictions of rape end up with the rape victim enjoying it, or at the very least coming to accept his position as the recipient of another man's lust. As such that's still problematic (because there will be those who assume all rapes, if done "right", end up that way), but at least *as far as the fiction goes* it kind of ameliorates the harm promoted.

I don't think most reasonable men have a problem with people who list "these are the things I like". I might roll my eyes if they're too specific, but I don't take offense. I do think more of us have an issue when the person posts a list of "these are the things I refuse" - the "no this, no that, no the other" types, especially when this, that, or the other are immutable characteristics. Back in the pre-online era, personal printed ads (in the backs of gay magazines and newspapers) not infrequently had the phrase "No fats No femmes No blacks" - a threeway of rudeness that just screamed "stay away from the crazy".

Generally speaking, doctors here do require fairly regular testing and consultations to continue on it. That said, the consultations can be by telemedicine - basically, zoom interviews - and there are some companies set up specifically to do just that - the doctors spend all day online running through one session after another. The quality of the "care" received in such sessions, of course, may vary considerably from provider to provider.

When I said "you" I was referring to someone who acts like you describe in your post: someone who is "deliberately running the risk of seriously hurting your lover, and ruining everything you have built together." If you meant that to refer to some hypothetical person other than yourself, then "you" in this case doesn't literally mean you. If you did mean to refer to yourself, that's another story, because I believe that information is enough to be judgmental about anyone who actually engages in that practice. To be clear: I have no objections to someone having as much sex of any kind he wants (that's legal), as long as he's either single or has the consent of any partner(s) he's got. It's when the person having the sex is breaking the rules of his relationship - repeatedly and deliberately, in the case you described - that I formulate an opinion of that person's character.

As in so many cases, I think this is more reflective of the kind of guys you tend to interact with more than a representative sampling of gay men in general. This isn't to say that BB sex isn't popular, especially with PrEP, but even a casual perusal of hookup and dating sites shows a lot of people listing "Safe Sex always" or listing "condoms" as their preferred sexual health strategy.

I've never used Grindr, but being familiar with several similar apps, I will note that yes, I always read the profiles. Sometimes I'll miss something important - it happens - but I find it's an excellent way to weed out lots of people who are clearly not matches. And I'm very short and abrupt with people who demonstrate they didn't bother to read my profile before contacting me. I agree with you that failing to do so shows an appalling lack of attention.