u/abu_nawas

So my older bf is a top. He has only topped until he met me. I am a side, in that I have no strong preference to top or bottom.

He claims he's a top but when sex gets really heated, he'd get on all four and wants me to top him. And eventually I did, I learned topping, which is something he desires, I think, he took the initiative on his own to learn to douche and finger himself. But I think that's died down. We no longer have anal sex.

Anyway, when we talk about sex, he'd default to topping. Like cheating jokes would imply that he's a top.

Now, into a conversation involving stereotypes and fetishes:

I know the guys he likes, dated, and looks at in public. They're quintessential Asians — dark hair, smooth skin, skinny, less pronounced features. He's German. I'm mixed.

So sometimes I often feel like I'm too masculine. Too much hair on my body even if I wax or shave. My facial features too angular. Too sallow (we're similar in skin tone but he's rosy while I'm a true olive, not golden like other Asians).

I feel like I'm something uncivilized, like an ogre, trying to play dress up and dollhouse with the other gays.

Do I want him to top me? Yes. But he has said that he doesn't feel that way about me though it is his fantasy to top others.

Do I enjoy bottoming? Not necessarily. I just enjoy having him on top. And often times in sex, he does get on top of me and fuck my thighs.

A lot of Asians would think I am attractive, but I think internationally, I really have a face without an imprint or context. I don't easily fit into someone's type. I feel like white guys have an inherent feminity in the broader sense — rosy skin, narrower features — but they can also lean into masculinity very naturally. And Asian guys in interracial dating are easily perceived as delicate, youthful... I don't belong.

Today I had a nap at work during my lunch break and I dreamed of him, 62, just like in most dreams right now.

I woke up and my heart was beating really quickly. I realized that I graduated from my BEng. program last February, the same week I met him, and ever since then we just kept going. Dates, visited two countries together, living together, not living together anymore, career changes. He helped me get my first engineering position after years of retail and FnB. I was there for him as the company he works for go through a long, stressful merger process.

His birthday is coming up and I feel like, oh shit, finally, a real, actual milestone together. And I got a flashback of us during my unemployment, just on bed, talking about birthdays, and August/September sounded so distant.

Ever since we were together, my memories of past relationships have dwarved. I barely remember all the older men who came before him because we have this high intensity, high frequency thing going on for 6 months now and it's not cooling down at all. Yesterday, my ex called and I answered, because I answer every phone call coming in my way, and when my ex started to speak I said sorry I have to go because the dissonance was huge that I felt bodily sickness — I could tell you 100 things my current boyfriend does for me without a second thought that my ex would never do. Kind things. Small things.

And of course, once you leave the honeymoon period, exchanging excitement for familiary, butterflies for comfort, all the issues come up. Where is this going? What are we? Does he love me? Well, he's on a work trip right now and I miss him so dearly, and he calls every day, and eventually I arrived at the heart of it all: Do I love him?

And the answer is yes, I love him, and this is a first time I feel this love again in many years, and I understand this may end in sadness, financial damage, or whatever, but at the same time, it might not. Because he's here, and he's here right now, and it's treacherous to go worrying about the future or if he'd hurt me. And the most treacherous thing of all is in my surveillance of whether or not he loves me for real, I neglected the question of whether I love him, and how do I go about showing him this love.

I have a lot of gay friends, coupled friends, because I live in a major city in this part of the world. And for a long time I used to wonder how do they keep going, Isn't everyone constantly looking for a better model, an upgrade? Or even without infidelity, how could they stand each other? That frequency, seeing each other almost every day, or even living together — how can you love someone that much without hating them, too?

I feel like for the first time in my life I am so close to having the answers, and I don't mind if it means accepting that life is short, we all get older, and maybe... just maybe, this is worth it to pursue. I don't know. I haven't felt this love in a long time and I forgot what to do with it.

Tomorrow we have a pool day. On a Thursday? Yes. And that sums up our relationship. I met him in February when I was graduating and he changed my whole life. We navigated so much - sobriety, career changes/start, travels.

Sometimes I feel so sad. He does all these nice things, on top of being an extremely handsome, and likable person. Last week we had a fight, I don't remember about what, and we tried to clear the air. He just kept talking about it, trying to set the record straight, and I jokingly screamed because it was too much talking about feelings and relationships and we both laughed and he spent the rest of the day making silly faces.

He often puts himself down, calling himself old or fat or ugly, and it just makes me very sad. In my eyes he's not. He's the most beautiful person I ever met. And there was never a person I so willingly experimented sexually so much with.

And it makes me sadder to think that he's sharing his time, experience in relationships (and career), and resources with me and for what? Attention from a younger man? That's it?

It just makes me sad to think that the sum of a life is shared with me, the unworthy.

Hi all.

I am 27, graduated last February with a B.Eng in electrical and electronics. Now I'm working in construction engineering and I hate it, I hate the industry, everything feels dead-end.

I've been applying to sales engineering position but so far, no bites. I guess what I'm looking for is a job where the scope is narrower than construction (where you have to account for everything from the plumbing to the wiring to interior design bickering on why they cannot close up the ceiling yet).

Final hour in the office... I (27) was discussing a drawing with my boss (late 40s) when my bf texts were coming in.

Bf: meet u after work?

Bf: sushi?

Bf: 🥰

I pretended to not see this shit but my boss did. He just sighed at the very male name popping up on my screen. I don't know. I'm still frozen and don't know what to feel.

(I use my personal laptop in addition to the slow work PC)

Title... I am 27. Been dating middle-aged men since 18.

I met him in the gay bar on Valentine's this year. I was graduating from uni, so my parents cut off all funding, I felt too old for older men (so many getting disappointed when learning my age, or online dating having banners of "18 to 25 only.")

It was overall, right person wrong timing. But he was willing to wait for the right timing. He helped me apply for jobs, and is really my rock at keeping it.

So ever since Valentine's, we just kept going. We live together now. We have plans for the future. We have rituals. Favorite songs, favorite films, favorite restaurants.

Recently I helped him find an old friend via internet sleuthing, which I'm pretty proud of. We also attend adult parties which bring us very close together.

But as we grow closer, sometimes when I hug him, I feel contempt. Hatred. Not for him but other people I've dated. Why did they make it so hard? Why did they constantly forget everything about me and us?

I mean, sure... I am not saying that the older men before him wasted my love and effort to the point where I feel burnt out in dating. There's no end to the blame game — do I curse them for everything they did and didn't do, or do I feel grateful because our relationships allowed me to get to this point where I'm with the most wonderful man I've ever known?

So no, not going down that road... but I just can't help but wonder. Why were all of them so awful. By the way I still talk to most of them. Still amicable. But not friends because that would require some kind of routine.

Asking because my partner (60+) has adult children older than me. We have our own understanding but I wonder:

Do you ever feel like your bio family and your chosen partner should not mix? Or do you want them to know each other?

So I started living with my boyfriend and everything has been perfect.

At first yeah we tried hard to impress each other. Nice restaurants. Day trips. But he's been converting into my religion of lazy evenings and Sundays. I remember after coming home from work I said to him I just want him to sit with me. He was restless. Sit - why sit? Eventually he got it. And he says sitting together is his favorite thing.

Though it keeps gnawing at me - what's the cost. Why is it so perfect. Is this a dream? Why did it take so long to arrive here, is it gonna last?

We've been together 4 months.

I was in the office (KL, Malaysia) this morning when I got an e-mail from my ex. American residing in Switzerland, runs his own company. Let's call him Jem. Jem said he had unblocked me, and I responded by telling him that I lost his number. He gave me his and I promptly texted him. I'll tell you he's been gone for 4 months, and he said to me it's been 3 months as a reaction to my "It's been a while." And he's probably the correct one here.

We talked a bit about what happened, differing perspectives again, but we both agreed: I had said to him I didn't trust him, and Jem left my life very much immediately.

Which was a shocker. I didn't realize it was such an important question to him. So I was wrong. But we had known each other for very long. Six years to be exact. First wrote to each other during COVID lockdowns. Pen pals. Then we called. We'd set the phone down on a video call and go about our days. We were like Pyramus and Thisbe, talking through a hole. He was there when I cried, having bombed my first engineering paper. Helped me prep for quizzes. Eventually he met my family. Got into a fight with my Dad. Survived. We traveled to Singapore together. He said he'd attend my graduation. I then never registered to attend my convocation.

Jem kept me out of credit card debt throughout the final year of my engineering degree. And early this year, Jem promised to fund my master's degree - but obviously that didn't happen. Instead I met my current boyfriend, 62, drowning my feelings in the gay bar.

My current boyfriend pressured me to quit my retail and FnB jobs to put my degree to good use. We were writing resumés and cover letters together. When I finally got an engineering position, we went to dinner. He insisted on champagne but I negiotiated for Negroni and Italian food instead. Something lowkey. He also bought me socks that I wear to work every day. I took him to sushi on my first paycheck. We fall asleep watching 'Somebody Feed Phil.' We shower together in the morning. I make breakfast. He cleans the kitchen. We both come home to the apartment at six, crack open cold cans of beer.

It really is my dream life.

So when my ex wrote to me in the grammar we used to share - that is to say, very familiar, and also very heavy, I didn't know what to respond. We both agreed that it's nice to reconnect but I didn't disclose to him that I live with my boyfriend now. I still love both men, you know. But one is very far away, and not my boyfriend anymore.

My ex warned me that going forward, he will 'tolerate no abuse' and I shuddered. Maybe I was abusive. But why don't I fight that much with my boyfriend? Really. We never fight. Well - small ones in the beginning. Teething pain, I suppose. And when he's gone too long on business trips. Which he was - gone for two months. I declared myself completely single during this period. But when he came back, he asked me to move in. I said yes. As if he was asking something simple, like: leaving the light on for him. So of course I said yes.

But now my ex is sitting in my inbox. His photo cut out into a circle. Two ticks sitting next to the last text.

For context I have light to medium olive skin.

So I recently got two Charlotte Tilbury lipstics. Pillow Talk Medium, a deep mauve, and Super Fabulous, a red brown. Love. They just blend into my face instead of looking like they're sitting on my lips.

For a long time I thought it was just the formula, but as I read the ingredients again, I noticed they use blue pigment in their lipsticks. This sent me down a rabbit hole. I checked every other lip products in the same price range or color and finish on Sephora and most of them do not use blue pigment. The Hourglass Phantom Blur Balm didn't. Which I thought is pretty shocking because they market it as natural in finish and color.

We talk about blue pigments lacking in foundations a lot... but where else is it missing from? Which lips and blushes have them?

I'm 27. Malaysian. I work in the country's center, KL, as an electrical engineer.

I loved every older guy I dated... it was all very ichi-go, ichi-e. they were all above 50. I decided 40 was the midlife crisis decade. 30 is still trying to find his footing. 50 and 60 were the sweet spots. Identities stabilized. The grammar constant.

I loved Western men. I still do. When people talk about culture, they often mean clothing and food and dance. But it's also how someone carries themselves. And others.

Yesterday, I was invited to have lunch with a local gay legend. My friend. He had been in the scene for 30 years. Me? 10. But I didn't start here. I had my start abroad - Bangkok, Amsterdam, Singapore. There was nothing quite like the 2010s. The internet wasn't clogged with spam, romance scam robots, and AI photos. It was real. People wanted to meet. And travel was cheap, before Ukraine, before Iran.

I came back to Malaysia at 21. I decided to do a degree. Engineering. Gruelling. Then COVID happened. By the time I graduated the world had changed a lot. I talked about this before. A lot of the connecting nodes of the Southeast Asian circuit were labors of love. Gone when the tourism dropped.

Anyway at lunch we discussed a local bar in one of the three major states. Also a labor of love. Now closed. Licensing issue. But we all know it's political. The last general election was close - the radical Islamic party almost won. We thought they might take KL. They didn't. Or not yet. The apps are gone. Romeo. Grindr. You have to work around it to install or update them. But most users are gone.

My friend told me that at one of our gay sport meetings, a young boy of only 15 had crossed two states just to join in the morning on a Saturday. Nobody spoke to him, of course, he was fifteen, he was saying whatever teenagers say, but it painted an image of direness. Since the government crackdowns - bars closed, saunas closed, apps banned, books banned - a lot of people are being pushed out from their more conservative towns.

As I said, I work in the country's center. So we're very urban people. My office's fine with me not praying, or looking a different way. But this is it. It doesn't get better than this. And I am one or two degrees of separation from any other gay in the city.

It's a glamorous strip, but it starts to feel like an aquarium. But the kind where the fish doesn't remember the ocean.

And every day I look in the mirror to see if this is the day my hair visibly recedes, or my teeth shows decades of wear and tear, or perhaps my nose decides to fall off. Because in KL, there are many pretty men. Who are also successful. It's difficult to not feel unattractive or like a failure.

I used to have fantasies of going abroad. Finding a man to marry in a small Euro flat or one of those cardboard houses in small town America. I'd be a good husband. I can cook well. Keep a garden. Cleaning? Not so much.

But lately I've been thinking there's no better place for a short brown man than home. If I lived in the USA or West Europe, I'd be a brown man first before anything. Before my education or my personhood. Maybe. Or maybe not.

But even then, home feels off. Why am I constantly plotting to escape from home?

I've been having a very bad year. The raids are softening the gay bar's crowd. People are unfindable because of the app bans. And nobody's complaining. Rioting. Not even me.

The only bright spot this year was visiting a friend of a friend's café. It was a café, but it had the vibes of a gay bar. Cheaper, too. We hung out till day's end. Yeah I like that. But those days are becoming increasingly rare.

I live in the center of a major SE Asian city (KL).

How do I meet older gay men? I used to use the apps but the government has been on a strike. Grindr and Romeo can't be downloaded from the App Store anymore. There's a workaround but the app is mostly depopulated.

I tried Tinder and Bumble and most guys there are unresponsive. Maybe they only swipe for validation.

There's a gay bar. But most guys are in their 30s to 40s. I tend to go for older (and they me). I don't do bath houses. My friends tell me they were groped in there, stalked, and I have personal hangups surrounding consent.

I don't know how to meet people anymore. I go to work, I come home. On weekeds I sleep in.

So I am working in KL. All my life I wanted to move here, but every jump was harder to do.

From Perak -> Selangor was easy, but from Selangor -> KL was near impossible.

And I'm happy with it. I work with liberal Malays. No compulsive need to inject GOD into every sentence. No peer pressure to pray. No policing of religious duties.

But now I'm afraid. Maybe I can't move back. What if my next job requires me to be back somewhere in Shah Alam, or Pahang. Because this is it. KL is the most liberal place West Malaysia has to offer. It doesn't get better — only worse.

Yes I can understand the local complaints - long commute, expensive food, expensive housing. But the city is flexible. It works with your budget. You don't have to eat in a restaurant if you can't afford it. A street hawker can cook something up for you using whole foods. You can get nasi goreng that isn't too oily with an egg for 4RM every morning. Yes. You can get roommates. It's not expensive if you don't have a wife and kids. I stopped driving, too. The My50 RapidKL pass and a good pair of running shoes get me to wherever I need.

I grew up in a sleepy town. It was a Chinese town. Which didn't help. Because when Malays are outnumbered, the ethnocentrism and religious climate get more oppressive. But twenty years ago this was tolerable. Twenty years ago the Chinese spoke to us. Gave us grace.

No I can't imagine going back ever.

What future do I have?

I'm 27, working as an engineer in my country's most glamorous, most expensive strip. It's a 3-min walk to the oldest gay bar. It sounds fantastic, but this is it. The older I get, maybe I'll get a better postcode, better tags on my clothes, but everything can only get worse from here. I think.

I was an international escort in my late teens to early 20s, got to see a bit of the world, enough for me to not feel like breaking away every now and then. I know what it feels like to be small, big, foreign, local, accepted, unwanted, poor, comfortable.

At one point there were four of us young men in the city's gay scene, most wanted, most notorious. One got married. Relocating half a planet way in the UK. And he was always marriage material from the start — an uncomplicated identity and appearance, plain manners, simple values. A masculine top - not a side like me. The other one is fading into obscurity. Got mad when I told him beer has a lot of calories. One guy is holding down fort with his much older boyfriend, steady, becoming one of those couples who have been around forever. Like furniture in the scene. Then there's me.

I was so lost in work. Today I woke up to a message written at 3 AM. "Be back soon, can't wait." Oh. It's my sugar daddy. Early fifties. We met when I had just graduated in February. Oh yeah. He has been abroad, taking his family to Portugal for vacation.

What does he want?

What do I want? Is this peak? Becoming a kept thing to a married man?

When he wasn't around I did try again. The gay bar is full of familiar faces. People who like me, but just as friends, and people who don't. People who got hurt. People who heard.

And they took down the apps too in my country. Sure you can find a workaround to download Grindr or Romeo. But there won't be many people there anymore. And I suppose living in the nightlife district gives me a huge advantage. It doesn't. In the town I grew up in many people would find me very attractive. Not here. Here I'm jsut passable. Okay. Short.

To preface, the relationship is more than over.

But I just couldn't get over how out of touch he was. I just started work as an engineer in the construction industry in a very, very expensive part of the city. He said I should get an apartment near him. I said I can't afford that, and choose to continue living with my estranged family. We don't talk and there is no money going in or out.

There was so much pressure, on top of my job making me feel uncertain. Not bad, but suddenly I feel self-conscious about a lot of things. I also experienced a lot of gender dysphoria. I do NOT want to be a woman, I like the male body, but at the same time, I found myself going back into the closet, and being judged by all the merits of a straight man - how much money I make, how vicious I am at work, how confident and loud. Basically assholery. Not the softer world I grew up in, of sterile academia, and the largely feminine and maternal childhood I shared with my single mother.

I broke up with him because he asked that I take him to sushi. It wasn't about sushi - it was about him trying to pin down when am I getting my first salary. I said to him it's rude to ask about salaries, and I never asked about his, but I decided to end the relationship because how out of touch can you be?

I explained to him that I'm not making ends meet at all, I'm just taking this job because it's exposure to a lot of different industries while working on a prestigious project. It's a damn good start to a career but not the most materially rewarding. He kept pushing.

Overall I was sorely disappointed, because he was very sweet, and very generous too, but there was a huge switch up not even one month into my first serious job. So many times I have addressed this to him. He outearns me by 10x.

I think, he has some fantasies about being taken care of by someone masculine. A provider. It's a princess fantasy, maybe. But it's not uncommon. Most guys treat me differently when I disclose that I am an engineer. They hear money, when in reality, I earn peanuts.

Honestly, I feel pinched, and starting to believe that relationships are only for the successful. We poor emploids should just enjoy it vicariously on TV.

Last Saturday I was in the gay bar and it was... ass.

My ex (41) and his friends were there as usual and he tried to cheer me up, gave me a lot of attention and we caught up but I find myself physically unable to join him on the dance floor. Instead I just... gazed at shoes. Yeah.

Then there was the local creep who kept harassing me and I just decided it was time to go home. I called my boyfriend. He's been abroad for exactly a month, and coming home soon. It was a huge damper in our relationship.

And he picked up.

And I said the unthinkable - "I was here looking for new connections but all I can think about is how better it would be with you." Which is exactly where I met him.

And just like that we're okay again, today he sent me a song that I listened to on my commute home from work.

Am I... slowing down? I used to have a 100% success rate of finding an older man to go home with at the bar. I don't know. I feel less fun. And my idea of a romantic date is accompanying him to the dentist appointment. Which we did.

I'm only 27. My ex haunts the dance floor almost every week lol.

I have Super because I'm part of a family plan. I really want to enjoy it but every small exercise gets bloated by these casino games aspect of the app.

For me it's makan babi. Yum. It's like chicken but in the form of beef.