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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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This discussion only partly overlaps, and @TracingWoodgrains’s real world experience is more relevant than mine, but it may still be worth reading.

I generally don’t recommend pushing yourself into casual sex you don’t want. Yes, you’ll get swamped with ‘dtf’ comments on most dating sites, and there’s a more emphasis on sex early in relations with online dating, but it is absolutely possible to focus on people looking for real relationships and get some genuine interest. You’ll have to handle some rejection, but so do the dtf-spammers.

In the US, I’d point to interest organizations (both explicitly gay, like various Pride orgs, or where there’s just a bunch of people who happen to be gay and out), but I don’t know enough about Kiwi culture to say whether norms are the same there.

Getting more comfortable about sex, both in terms of shyness and in terms of physical comfort, can be valuable. Most people will have some patience for shy folk, and some love the idea of bedding a blushing ‘virgin’, but there’s a lot of ways discomfort with or with talking about stuff can backfire, even with partners who want to take things slow. Nothing’s going to swap for the frisson with a partner, but if you’re used to never ever mentioning anything about your sexuality or interests, there are a lot of spheres where it’s ’normal enough’ that it’ll at least get past the feeling that mentioning top, switch, or bottom is going to have the earth open up under you.