I was never really into Abe and couldn’t

So true. I remember having several conversations with guys that they should’ve told me they didn’t want what I wanted. But if I’m being fair, they probably didn’t know it themselves. This is one of the reasons why I’ll never again date someone who’s not out of the closet and/or hasn’t truly accepted being gay. I know that sounds basic, but I was surprised at how many gay men who haven’t quite accepted the fact or even understand where they fall on the spectrum. As you said, you can have two people feeling around in the dark and it works because neither can see clearly. All I know is that I’m now much too old for this relationship business. It’s too much work and I’m too tired, a little too smart, and have exhausted all patience & tolerance. In the end, it pays to accept things as they come and keep expectations to the barest minimum.

There are manipulators out there…guys who are fully aware that they’re playing you to get what they want, sure there are these guys but there’s also millions of guys out there that either don’t know what they want or they think they know what they want, but still don’t know and are not actually malicious or deceitful but they also are not likely to work out either. It’s possibly for one or both guys to get together and it work out without them knowing what they want, but I think the chances are much higher when both guys are mindful and deliberate.

Yeah, agree with all you said. His experience reminded me of one I had around his age. I met this guy on the “personals” (guys these days don’t know what this is” and it was clear we were both attracted to each other. We went on a date and talked frequently. One day I had him over to my place and we did the deed, even tho my preference is to wait a much longer period. In the days/weeks to come I tried calling him but couldn’t reach him. Months later he calls me from outta nowhere wanting to get together. Of course, I told him in no uncertain terms I was looking for a relationship, not a booty call. And that was that. It did leave me feeling used, but I wasn’t hurt; just pissed. But it taught me something about life I haven’t forgotten.

It’s difficult to determine what the other person is looking for, even when you discuss it at length. But if you can actually find someone who’s knows himself and can be completely honest, at least you know where you really stand and can take it for whatever it’s worth. But that brings us back to dealing with someone with a level of maturity that may not necessarily come from age, altho it often does. Thanks for your take on the subject. I thought it was just me.

I did watch that particular video since you mentioned it. I only watched it once but I don’t recall hearing anything that led me to believe it wasn’t 100% consensual. My bottom line take is he allowed what he wanted to project onto reality, even tho they were not the same. Millions of people do this and will continue to do it. A few things or a lot of things about this guy that he met energized him and to such extent he didn’t allow himself to see much else.

On the one hand all this stuff doesn’t seem extraordinary to me for someone like him, young and inexperienced. Yet on the other, it’s also exactly like my own personal experience currently and I’m much, much older than him with decades of experience. Most guys these days are either looking for (1) no investment, no frills at all gratuitous sexual hookups OR (2) they’re looking for that but with a romantic, emotional window dressing that lasts for days or weeks or even months. The bottom line between these two different paths is that they are NOT looking for a REAL relationship, either short term or long term. In the second example, it allows two people to pretend like they’re boyfriends in a real long term relationship but without the hard part. The WORK. Ultimately, this second type is not sustainable and it’ll fly apart, sooner or later. The other thing I’ll say is, one person can be doing the second example, the window dressing thing where you pretend to “love” while the second person is not pretending, and this might be what happened with Taylor Robbins and his first time top.

Thanks for watching! Anthony is just my type, altho I like your type of guy as well. I just don’t want skin & bones. Otherwise, I’m easy to please. Mostly, I like Anthony’s face. He really is beautiful to me with those kohl-dark eyes and coffee complexion. I didn’t notice his skin issues until recently when he did a close-up of the camera. I hope he’s not juicing. I understand he used to be lots bigger, so maybe he has in the past. Michael is more ordinary, as you said, but I love his personality.

You’re right on the money with Taylor. He can camp it up at times, and at other times, seem just like a regular “bro”, which is something I think he’s proud of. I’ve heard him brag about being in touch with his feminine side. But he’s a cutie pie too. I just wish he wasn’t so intense all the time. Hopefully, he’ll grow out of it as he really learns who he is as a gay man. Def a work in progress. I was wondering if you watched his “1st time bottoming, being used” videos. I would love to get your take on that. On the one hand, I can understand his feelings of being “butt-hurt” and feelings of being used for sex when he wasn’t ready for that step. OTOH I wonder if he’s making more out of it than he should. It happens to so many of us; nothing to be too upset over. You learn & move on with your life. That other guy whoever he was wasn’t even a serious relationship, so I’m not sure from where such intense feelings began. Well, that’s just my take on the subject.

Ok, I finally checked out Taylor Robins and Michael & Anthony. I did watch more video minutes of Taylor, I must admit. Anthony, the pro wrestle you said he is, Uh, I didn’t actually get to see his whole body but he might be a bit too big for my taste, tho he is pretty cute and it looks like his complexion might clear up, perhaps when he’s not juicing so much? He looks more big and beefy whereas I prefer lean, cut, dried out fitness model type muscles. Michael seems rather ordinary attractive…nothing wrong with him, mind you. They seem like an odd match, physically.

Taylor is more my type than Michael. Taylor is kinda interesting as he has a range of sugar, I call it. Sometimes he seems pretty butch but he seems to also turn up the sugar and be a bit more animated, shall we say.

But, again, my impressions are mostly just based on the physical…you might have different ideas from watching all their videos and knowing them much better than I do.

No, normally don’t like tatts unless they are well-placed and artistic and not overly done. Funny, never noticed Mark’s tatts. In fact, I never really found Mark attractive. He’s alright, just does nothing for me. Maybe because I’ve dated his type before. Didn’t work out. And he was awful in bed. Way too boring.

Nice to know Zach is versatile. That’s why I like that man!

There are those reasons, yes, but I was more riffing on his masculine, butch, hetero-normative demeanor and fixations. BTW, Zach of Zach & B said awhile back that he’s versatile! He didn’t say much about it, but at least someone is honest and forthcoming.

I didn’t know you liked tattoos. I personally almost always hate them and Mark has at least a couple garish tats on his arms, highly visible.

Oh, I didn’t know about Mark Miller! It’s always the quiet, straight-laced buttoned-up ones. They should both let their hair down and get a tattoo or something, lol!

The only bigger insatiable black hole of a bottom than Andrew is (drum roll) MARK E MILLER! Loves the cock. Loves to be pounded up the wall, across the ceiling and down the other side, HARD!

Now you’re talking! He needs to stop getting those vanilla boys and get somebody with some flava who can keep his pipes cleared! A little freaky never hurt nobody. I could use some myself right about now.

PS Andrew Neighbors just needs to skip all these wall flower passive geek boys and get him an in charge dom that can fuck him like he so desperately needs to be fucked hard, at least once a day!

I have those two YouTubers in tabs ready to go but I need to spend the time finding videos of theirs to watch. Stay Tuned!

I think even if you have developed a friendship within a relationship, it’s still very hard to not let the negative baggage resulting from a breakup affect your friendship with your now ex. Also, breakups bring out the worst inclinations of people.

I figured out why I’m being inundated with ads, from all over the place! I use Firefox Nightly and A d blo ck Pl us extension but I think in order for it to work properly you have to subscribe to lists and when I checked into the settings there were no lists at all! As soon as I remedied that, the a ds were all gone!

Okay, thanks for clearing that up. I sometimes don’t hear everything that’s said; Andrew tends to mumble a lot in his videos so I think I miss a lot. Yeah, that sounds like a breakup. But the “let’s just be friends” is a thing young people say because they don’t know any better. If you don’t have a friendship to begin with or have enough time in a relationship for a friendship to develop, there’s no friendship to fall back to. It sounds nice and softens the breakup rhetoric, but the hard truth is more “have a nice life”.

I still think Andrew needs to think about the type of man he wants and go after it. It seems like he’s dating guys he’s attracted to, but they may not be the right type of guy for him. He’ll have to learn that for himself with lots of trial & error and broken hearts along the way.

Andrew’s words were, “its not some crazy kind of breakup”, I think. On either side of that was everything else that says to me, they’re broke up. I’m guessing for him a crazy breakup would be one that is full of drama. So, its still just as much a breakup as any other dissolution of relationship as any other. He said they’re spending time apart, he’s doing a bunch of traveling for work and he’s not in this room that he’s renting from friends very much. Many, many people try very hard to have breakups that are all friendly and touchey feeley and “oh, we’re still gonna be friends and hang out”…all that crap. Good luck! However super duper mature he is or he thinks he is, he’s still a young’un and it takes a lot of effort to transition a lover into a friend while living all the rest of your life. And, as an added bonus, the other person has to do all the same things or it just doesn’t work out. Again, good luck to them. But I think they’re broken up and I don’t think they’ll be getting back together.

I’ll check out Michael & Anthony…never heard of them. I thought “pro” wrestlers were ENORMOUS “beefy” guys, roughly amateur wrestling’s “heavyweight” class, which is North of 200 pounds I think. The pro wrestling I know is the WWE or WWF stuff on TV and I can think of fewer more egregious forms of torture than watching pro wrestling. I quite enjoy watching college wrestling meets and especially the NCAA tournament in February.

I was kinda taken aback recently when “Zach” of Zach & B was talking about his mental illness and getting help but it wasn’t that part that concerned me it was the part where he seemed extremely uninformed about mental health. He seemed embarrassed and ashamed and was wearing the stigma heavily. I know he’s young and all but I thought they were teaching kids in school now about being aware of and identifying the symptoms of depression and anxiety and other things and how you can get help with those things. If they aren’t, they very much should be! Sadly, in society, we can’t rely on parents to make their kids aware of this stuff so it does fall on the schools. Where else are they going to get it? In some ways gays can be so much more advanced than regular breeder folks but not always.

Believe me, I think you won’t regret watching Michael & Anthony. Anthony is perhaps one of the most handsome (black) guys on Ytube. Only thing is I know next to nothing about his background (family, education, etc) which kinda bothers me, but privacy is something I respect being private myself. But yes, he wears a costume and makes a living off pro wrestling, believe it or not. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/664fc3a1e4b1a20e131dfa5eb12f2bfeb9248ac42282c30a247d56383703c00e.png

Zach’s mental illness is something I wasn’t clear about. But I gather he suffers from a form of depression. But you have to realize, he’s from the South (Texas?) so I imagine that’s not something often discussed. But I agree, it’s something that should be included in the curriculum.

Speaking of which, I also follow Taylor Robbins, a young cute kid gay YTuber. I watch him because he’s very real in his videos and he doesn’t shy away from discussing anything in his life. Recently, he posted a few videos where he experienced bottoming for the 1st time and felt taken advantage of, to the point of rape. Even though he consented to engage in the activity, it was after having discussed with his partner they wouldn’t take things to the next level (sexual) until the relationship had developed, which is understandable. But he felt he was coerced into it and has been crying in his videos about it. If I’m honest, it made me feel uncomfortable—that’s how real it got. He has also spoken openly about his issues with mental illness.

So, back to Andrew Goes Places, saw that he’s moving to LA for a while, but didn’t actually come out & say that he & BF are broken up, but that was my impression. He also said ‘we (youtubers) only show you what we want you to see’. I’m not sure why he said that; apparently, something happened that pissed him off, but he didn’t elaborate. What did you get from that? It could be nothing, but that was the feeling I got.

Oh, here’s a screencap of Anthony. Not a good one, he’s just really handsome IMO. Can you tell I have a crush? https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4568816346cac2d590fe8bc710fcd0f2c00e3a645b4ad809c744ad581d0eb33b.png

Yes, I’ve often wondered how Mark Miller is able to afford all the places he’s lived and all the traveling. I’m assuming his parents are well-off. They have their own very nice house plus they have a lake house where they have family vacations. I also assume Mark has a job, but as you said, he’s NEVER mentioned his source of income. I can’t imagine he makes enough from Youtube to afford all that. Ethan has recently finished college I believe, so he should be making a decent salary by now (I finished college but my salary not nearly enough to pay back my loans–but I digress).

I looked and I have over 200 subscriptions. Only about 40 of them are active, the rest I’ve been too lazy to unsub after the initial pruning I did. One channel I watch is Michael & Anthony. This interracial couple actually has some gems. They are cute & funny, and Anthony, the black one is GORGEOUS! He’s a professional wrestler–believe it or not! I also watch Zach & B which I think you’ve mentioned before. I would say probably half of the active channels actually talk about their jobs, but not much is said about their incomes. I wonder if some of them are on disability or some sort of government entitlement. Who knows? And I suspect a few are independently wealthy or have very nice incomes.

I kinda forget which YouTubers you and I both watch in common, but I know Andrew Neighbors is an Optometrist and while I’m sure he probably has a 6 figure student loan balance, (so do millions of other people) he is probably making more money than average so I don’t feel he needs to be paid for uploads and I don’t think his uploads are worth paying for. As for Mark Miller, I’ve seen tons of his videos for years and I have NO IDEA if he’s ever had a job. Naturally, all these guys can keep that a secret, but I do know he and Ethan have had nice looking apartments in Bloomington in addition to Mark renting ANOTHER space downtown as some kind of studio. I think I did hear references to Ethan having a job but those boys have nice homes, nice rides, go on LOTS of nice vacations and are seemingly always doing something. I do often wonder, in their case as well as many of the rest, where all the money comes from. Rhodes Bros, they’ve moved a couple times and again, nice homes and Los Angeles is almost ALWAYS SUPER EXPENSIVE. Mark and Ethan moved there, too! I never remember any references to RhodesBros jobs, either.

I guess the chapstick challenges and the blindfolded guess my body part videos are not inherently horrible, they’re just silly and thoughtless and completely lacking originality or creativity. They serve the purpose of being able to perv on your YouTube celebrity crushes. I’m sure they are wildly popular and generate lots of “interactions”.