Are NSA encounters safe?

I was going to post this as a separate thread earlier, but I think I'll just put it here instead:

I'm in my 30s but when I was around my late teens (18ish-19) I rather idiotically got talking to a guy online. This was in the days before apps, so I'm talking about Gaydar and IRC. Anyway, he turned out to be considerably older than me (late 20s but afterwards found out probably more like mid 30s).

Like a complete moron (and I was relatively naive and geeky at the time) I met up with him and while nothing dangerous happened, I felt absolutely awful about it afterwards and it was really embarrassing. What was worse was the guy was fairly recognisable and I kept running into him in public contexts when I was in university. It wasn't the fact that it was an gay encounter, it was just how it happened. I really felt bad about it.

Looking back on it with hindsight, I think the guy was a total sleaze bag basically preying on very naive young guys online. I mean, I know it's not illegal as I wasn't underage, but at the same time it was pretty disturbing.

It gave me a terrible introduction to men and I had this notion for years that guys were all like that and being bi, it didn't really help with my figuring out where I stood as I just had this sense that every guy was going to be just interested in one thing.

Add to that a couple of other meetings with guys who were total closet cases (my own age) and it was just giving me a dire opinion of the same sex. You know the usual stuff, you meet up with a guy he's all over you and then you bump into him somewhere else and he blanks you or crosses the street. That kind of stuff left me feeling like I'd been kicked in the stomach.

I know it's probably a bit stupid going on about this years after and I know I was a bit of a fool for doing what I did, but I would just caution against NSAs as a result of that.

I kinda feel like I was almost groomed, even if it wasn't illegal. I was hassled online for weeks until I basically allowed myself to be convinced to meet up and I had a pretty grim experience that left me feeling very bad about myself for years. used to have a lot of panic attacks and stuff and never really got my head around what had happened. I'm still not very comfortable talking about it.

Thankfully nothing bad happened in the physical sense and I did have the good sense to be paranoid about taking sti precautions, but it's something that just left me a really bad sense of what NSA encounters can be like and how they can be both dangerous and psychologically draining.

All I'd say is be extremely careful about who you're meeting, that someone knows where you are and that you can talk about and that you know that there's a strong possibility it will be meaningless and that you're prepared to deal with that emotionally. I mean, that's fine for some people, it's weird and cold for others.

I don't really know tbh. I just know it wasn't a first experience that I had intended to have. I'm not conservative about sex but it went way too far from fast and with the wrong person.

Just find the whole thing never sat well with me and years later I'm still feeling like a moron for ever having allowed myself to something so stupid, so I've never gone near anything online / NSA since.

This guy wasn't scruffy or ugly but he was way, way too old for me and somehow managed to convince me to get involved with stuff I would NEVER normally do and it was an awful intro and just felt like gay life was nothing but NSA hook ups and kinda gave up on it for a long while after and didn't bother looking much.

I know it sounds a bit mental, but I went through this sense of just feeling "dirty" to the point I just wash and shower and paranoid about STIs even tho I was definitely clear of them. Took a few years to snap out of that.

I mentioned it to a friend of mine once (maybe ten years ago) and he was just hugely judgemental and gave me a big lecturing about how stupid I was (which I already knew) so I haven't really ever discussed it since as I just find it extremely embarrassing.

I wasn't really ever on the scene in any significant way, possibly partly because I was a bit of an indie guy, somewhat geeky about music and didn't like the kind of music that was typically in gay venues at the time - most of my nightlife focused on music on the edge groups of people who were involved in bands and DJ scene and so on, rather than finding someone to go out with.

Any guys I've met since have been just randomly through my university days or other contexts - always avoided online stuff since, but in recent years fairly unsuccessful strategy. I've almost just given up on meeting anyone at this stage.

Ten of Swords wrote: »

That was a foolish and very unhelpful reaction from your friend

Anyway, apologies I probably hijacked a thread