u/AdLopsided1748

When I was 19, "disillusioned" with dating (apps), feeling like I wasn't making friends at university and living in one of those small cultural deadzone Canadian cities, I got addicted to weed or at least being a recluse (yes the computer, but moreso general antisociality) and stopped trying to date. Now I'm 23, I've had great friends for a while, become involved in the local scene and earlier this year kicked the weed. However the experience of being gay is still foreign to me. I'm quite straight passing (lanky nerd no lisp) and I've never really had any gay male friends that I could talk to about dating or relationships or that just have the same baseline I guess. I've never been in a gay relationship and the straight one I was in (when I thought I was bi) was a different can of worms, thankfully far in the past. I've struggled with a number of compulsive behaviours in the past and know myself well enough to have decided (till now, at least) that hookups are a Pandora's box/compulsion loop I don't want to open. I have gone on two dates the past month and both made me want to move to a bigger city. (There are no gay bars where I live, but there are "queer" events I know enough about to know not to bother, and I have queer friends who are great. None of them clocked me. Most of my friends are straight guys tho.) Shit man my hair is getting lighter on my head. The selective pressure for normals on the apps reminds me both of my intolerance of uncritical, unreflective, uninterested people and what this says about me in assuming this (I hate to be proven right). Banal texting on the apps (and their reduction of people more generally) don't help this perception! Will someone who's miserable be miserable anywhere? Do straight passers "need" dating apps? (probably not?) Should I just not look for anything and focus on just making friends and connections generally? How do I make gay friends and influence neighbors? Should I just go out more or dare hookup? Video representative of my sexual frustration