So you think you've met someone

It's okay to be flustered. Just do your best to be honest and part of that is "I've never done this before and I don't know what I'm doing and I'm really nervous."

Make your peace with "I'm probably going to fall on my face a few times before I get the hang of this." (See also: Mistakes Were Made.)

Err on the side of not giving them anything they could REALLY hurt you with.

My rule of thumb: give them just enough rope to hang themselves and see what they do with it. If they hurt you, they don't deserve your trust. If they protect you, then at some point you take one more step of divulging info about yourself and moving towards intimacy.

ALL relationships go through some variation of this process. There is a process of divulging information and getting to know each other and there is always a risk factor involved.

Aim small, miss small.

You develop an intimate relationship one step at a time. Don't jump the gun on imagining love, marriage and a baby carriage so to speak. Just figure out what the next small step is that moves it forward.

Drop by drop, the river grows.

And also make your peace with the fact that times of enormous personal change -- like trying to come out of the closet -- have something of a tendency to not be a good means to foster healthy, long-term relationships. That kind of stability tends to grow out of two people who are more or less where they want to be and need to be simply "finding" each other.

Can you get a long-term relationship out of that? Sure, it happens. But sometimes it's a case of trauma bonding and people feeling unable to leave, not a case of "one plus one equals three."

My marriage was a weird mix of all the good reasons to foster a long-term relationship and some of the bad reasons and the bad reasons were a barrier to fixing any issues we had. It's part of why we are divorced.

If you can figure out HOW you ACTUALLY wrestle those issues to the ground in the face of trauma-bonding and/or in the face of desperately needing someone, you MAY have a recipe for a long term and healthy relationship. The problem is most of the time when people desperately need each other, they do whatever they can to preserve the relationship, even lying to the person they are with if they feel that is necessary. They err on the side of "staying at all costs" and that has something of a tendency to suffocate conversation, stifle growth, etc.

I've been ALONE a long time but that doesn't mean no one has been interested in me. I REMAIN alone in part because people want to imagine they are IN LOVE WITH ME and WE SHALL MARRY and yadda.

I am failing to convince people to just keep it real, keep it in the here and now and MAYBE SOMEDAY we can MEET FOR COFFEE. And then it inevitably implodes because they've built it up in their minds that if this isn't TRUE LOVE and I don't desperately WANT TO MARRY THEM, there is no point in traveling a long distance to HAVE COFFEE WITH ME.

Figure out how to have a coffee with someone. See how that goes. Figure out the next step.

Do not get hung up on how it NEEDS to be LOVE and it MUST lead to marriage and blah blah blah -- and do not let anyone else hold your feet to the fire over that.

People who cannot manage to meet you for coffee and their excuse is "I need a bigger commitment than coffee to travel that far." (or WHATEVER) are people living in a delusion with whom you will never be able to sort things out because they are averse to dealing with actual reality.

Footnote

Maybe you are just looking to lose your gay virginity. COOLIOS. I am not averse to that. "Have coffee" should not be taken too literally and is not code for "keep it platonic."

But do keep it real. Hook-ups, FWB and other "just for sex" relationships exist and do not automatically lead to True Love and Marriage.