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Wellness Wednesday for June 12, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I want to try dating again and am unsure of how to proceed. Looking for advice.

  1. I am a gay man. Most salient information, I'm 32, white, average build and height, generally people seem to find me attractive enough

  2. I live in a medium size town not close to any cities. I am currently on a two year visa in this country, New Zealand, not particularly attached to where I am (could easily move to a metro area).

  3. I'm interested in a relationship but not in casual sex. I have very little sexual experience or relationship experience. I find this to be a problem because I end up being quite shy about sex.

Online dating is presumably the way, but do people still use Tinder (which is what I've used in the past). And the other question is whether I should try to push myself into having casual sex. I don't like it but I wonder if I need to get over my reluctance.

I'm straight, but my understanding is that the gay community in Australia/NZ revolves around the larger cities. In Australia this is Sydney and to a lesser extent Melbourne (particularly inner city). If you want access to a larger dating pool (particularly to find guys that want a relationship rather than casual sex) you might want to consider moving. I've heard from friends that Grindr is a bit of a casual dating cesspool, so you might want to try out Bumble or Hinge.

FYI gay public expressions of affection can lead to harassment in country towns in the region, but cities seem to be more tolerant. I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know.