A gay man in recovery shares how to build friendships with other gay men: state your boundaries upfront, say you want platonic connection only, and see if they respect that. If they do, pursue the friendship. If not, move on.
I found when relating to gay men that for me, what I find the most helpful, as I said, and as I practice with you, is like early on saying, here's the boundary. Okay. Now when I make a new gay friend, that's the first thing. Our first hangout, when we're first communicating, or even if they send me a message on like a social media and then I'm responding, I'll say, hey, just so you know, like, this is where I am. Like, I'm open to friendship and Connections like that, but I'm not here for anything romantic or sexual. And so I'll say that from the very beginning, and then it's, you know, then you see how the person responds. Right, right. A lot of information, right? So it's like, are they going to meet me in this container, or are they going to show this is not a fit? You know, then I say thank you and I would move along. Or this does really feel like a good container, we can continue to connect and get to know each other. And for me, that's been super helpful. I'm just saying it right from the beginning.
