greatbear | Ask Me: bearlover

bearlover wanted to know “We all know you're a happily partnered man, but I'm curious, what is your take on hooking up with someone over the internet? Is it something you've ever done or would do? I'm not asking for my sake BTW :)"

At the risk of sounding rather trampy, I see hooking up via the internet as a perfectly acceptable option. After all, I have done it literally countless times. I met Jeff via gay.com chat. I met Kit and a couple other of my partners there as well, and to be quite frank, lots of ‘fuckbuddies’. I am neither proud nor ashamed of this, because it is simply the way things turned out. But better still, I met so many wonderful friends via that service as well as other sites and venues, and it still continues to this day, most notably here at LJ.

I find getting to know someone via their written words to be a lot deeper than the typical bar room chitchat or even dinner-and-drinks talk. LJ especially is an outlet for people’s innermost thoughts, and from the privacy and intimacy of their console they are much more forthcoming than in a typical public setting. The beauty of this process is that when I finally get to meet in person someone who I’ve corresponded with via the net, it is like I have known them far longer than the period of correspondence. In fact, I know more about them than people I have worked with for 20+ years. I feel I am finding a long lost friend rather than a stranger, and I am relaxed and open with this person in a face-to-face situation. Such comfort levels for me take much longer to achieve when the interaction begins purely from a face-to-face encounter.