Where is a good place to meet like-minded, safe, sane married guys for mutual male-on-male fun?
By your wording, I'm guessing you're married yourself (presumably to a woman), and you're looking for another guy in a situation similar to yours. If you're doing this with your own spouse's blessings and are looking for another married guy doing the same, you should check out the app Feeld - it has a lot of partnered people looking to explore with other people. On the other hand, if you're doing this and you don't want your spouse to know, an app like Scruff allows profile pics that don't show a face, and many guys tag themselves as either 'discreet' (implying they don't want other people to find out they hook up with men) or 'bisexual' (which doesn't mean they have a partner, but you'd know they like women too. You can filter profiles on Scruff to show either one of these tags. Neither of these tags mean in themselves that these guys might be out to do something with a spouse in the picture who doesn't know, or that they're comfortable sleeping with a guy who is doing the same. There are other options too: I talk about them in this guide. Also, a number of guys have been bringing up squirt.org lately, although I can't vouch for it myself.
If you're doing this and your own spouse is in the loop, you should check out my post on consensual nonmonogamy. It lists some good books and resources that are helpful to people who are considering taking that path. If you're planning on hooking up with another guy and your spouse doesn't know, maybe you should check out that post too: exploring your sexuality doesn't need to happen without your spouse knowing about it. While it is a risky conversation, many couples do it, and they often end up much closer as a result of knowing they can share these needs and desires with each other. Look at your own reasons for not having that conversation with your spouse. Maybe you have solid reasons to think she'd be homophobic or biphobic, or that a conversation about consenting nonmonogamy just isn't possible without her feeling really hurt. When that's the case and it's otherwise a happy marriage, it's understandable you wouldn't want to start a conversation that could wreck this when you have solid reasons to believe it would - and decades of suffering in silence and feeling like you're missing out on an important part of yourself isn't fair to yourself either. But I'm sure I don't need to tell you how big of a breach of your spouse's trust doing this without her consent is, and how hurt she'd likely be if she found out. It will also be a secret you will have to keep for a long time, and a barrier to your intimacy with her. You need to weigh the pro and the con of doing that, along with the pro and the con of having that conversation with her on opening your relationship, and make the decision you believe is the best one for your family and for yourself.
As for the prospective guy being "safe" or sane, there are never any guarantees on that, and you should plan your own safer sex practices accordingly, especially if your spouse has unprotected sex with you with the expectation that she's your only sex partner. My post on anal sex and on safer oral sex will give you info on keeping your sex safer. You can talk with that would-be sex partner too about their own safer sex practices, when they were tested last, whether you are the only person besides their wife they're doing something sexual with, etc. But obviously, people don't always tell the truth, or they overlook something that might not seem like a risk to them but in actuality is. While you don't have control on what they say or do, you have control on the own safer sex practices you choose do yourself.
This is the SFW/censored version of this post. You can view the uncensored, sexually explicit version here on Pillowfort. All images are borrowed from the internet and are in the post because I like them. If you are the copyright owner or a person in the image, contact me: I’ll gladly credit you, or remove the image at your request.
Guys ask on r/BisexualMen how they can find other people with whom they can explore their bisexuality. While most of the time its men seeking a first experience with another guy, it can also be about exploring sex with women or people of other genders. While gay men know the world of hook-up apps for men, many bi guys might not be. Also, for bisexual, pansexual, and polysexual men, there are options that are more interesting for us than for monosexuals (folks attracted to a single gender). This post is a brief guide to the most interesting options to get started. You must be at least 18 years old to use these apps. Also, I’m in Montreal, so the size of the userbase for each app in your area might differ.
Quick pointers
Have good photos. Smile on them. The more photos you can put up, the better.
Mention early on in your profile what will make you stand out. What kind of person do you hope will contact you? Put forward your qualities and interests that would grab their attention.
State clearly what you are looking for, but don’t be a jerk about it.
Read people’s profile and mention something that you liked from it when you message the person.
Take the initiative and message people who catch your eye. Ask open questions that give them a chance to talk about themselves. Reply including some information the other person can engage with.
Do not send a pic of your junk unless the person told you they’d like to see it. It won’t take you long on hook-up apps to see why that’s a problem.
The male hook-up apps
These apps have many similarities. They are for men: some are more trans-friendly than others, but they acknowledge little gender diversity. They show you a grid of guys near you that you can contact. They allow profiles without a face pic unlike most other dating apps, which discreet/closeted guys might appreciate.
Grindr is the inevitable one, as it has the largest userbase of all hook-up apps for men. Most guys who are into guys end up on Grindr at some point or another. It’s meh for trans men and it has a reputation for being toxic, but you can meet good people on there still. It has a filter based on “tribes”, but it lacks features that set it apart for bi men.
Scruff also has a large user base. It’s geared towards hairier guys and people who like them, but not exclusively. It is friendlier than Grindr (for trans guys too), but expect some toxic stuff still. It’s more interesting for bi guys than Grindr, because you can tag yourself as bisexual and filter to see other guys who have done so.
There are more options with smaller userbases; they might be dead unless you are in a major U.S. or world city. Jack’d is known for being friendlier to people of colour – racism on male hook-up apps is a major issue – and people can select (and filter) a “bi/straight-curious” scene. Hornet adds a social media feed; you can hashtag yourself as bisexual and search by hashtag, but no bi guys were online in my area when I scoped the app out. GROWLr has a larger user base; it caters to hairy, bearded men (“bears”) – even more so than Scruff – but it has no bi-friendly features.
The dating apps
These apps are more dating-oriented, but many people use them for hook-ups also. They are not restricted to a single gender, but some are more gender-inclusive than others. Typically, the app presents you with a person’s profile, and you swipe right or left (or a variation on that) depending on whether you’re interested in them or not. When the other person also likes your profile, the app notifies you that you matched, and you can strike up a conversation. Unlike male hook-up apps though, face pics are usually mandatory.
Tinder has the largest userbase. Straight people use it the most, but there are people of all sexual orientations on it, and it has inclusive gender options. You can set the app to show you people of all genders, but Tinder tends to throw a truckload of women at you and few other people when you do that though. It makes attempts at inclusivity, but it wasn’t built from the ground up for that. Tinder lacks features that let you focus on people with similar interests and values, or other bi people also.
OkCupid has been friendly to bi and non-monogamous people from the get-go, and it has a large user base. It has a matching system in which you answer multiple-choice questions in an attempt to match you with users who have similar interests and values, and you can write detailed profiles. Like Tinder, it throws more women profiles at you than anyone else when you indicate your interest in multiple genders (it’s gender-inclusive). You can hide your profile from straight people if you’re worried about outing yourself. Although there are many search filters, you can’t filter for specific sexual orientations.
Hinge lets you put up your answer to three different questions that are a way of letting people know something about you. Their shtick is that people can like a specific answer or photo, providing a conversation starter and more to go on than profiles on Tinder. It’s gender-inclusive and it gives you a good gender balance when you tell it you’re interested in everyone. It’s reasonably well-populated also.
Feeld and #open embrace people attracted to multiple genders, and they offer many gender and sexual identity options. Many people seem there because they want to explore their sexuality. They have features for couples and make it easy to look for a threesome, although a single person looking for just one other partner is fine also. Feeld seemed more populated than #open in my area.
BiCupid is exclusively for bi people. You’re unlikely to encounter biphobia or be outed, but you won’t be able to meet gay or straight people through that app; it also lacks gender-inclusive options. Despite the similar names, it is not affiliated with OkCupid. BiCupid limits a lot of features for non-paying users though: you can’t be the first to message another person, and you can’t restrict the search radius to less than 320 km (and profiles are not sorted closest first).
Bumble is similar to Tinder, except only women can message men first; it also has a feature for people looking for friends rather than dates. It did a better job at showing a good women to men ratio, but it didn’t seem as populated as other Hinge or Feeld in my area.
This should give you an overview of apps that are worth checking out for a bi, pan, or polysexual man. Although the hook-up and dating scenes have moved to apps in this day and age, there is something to be said still about meeting people the good old-fashioned way: in person through social activities. This is a topic on which I’ll expand in an upcoming post.
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Come see us on r/BisexualMen on Reddit; we are a supportive community for bisexual, bicurious, pansexual, and polysexual men (cis, trans, and nonbinary), as well as for men questioning their sexual orientation. We also have a SFW and a NSFW chatrooms that are pretty active.
Check out all Sex Ed for Bi Guys posts here, including articles such as Dating men, women, and nonbinary folks, Butt sex 101, and Sexual consent.
I remember when Grindr first became a thing. I was living in Boston at the time and coming home one night on the bus from my latest freelance gig. A guy sat down a few seats in front of me. He kept looking at the screen of his phone and up at me, smiling and nodding. Because I didn’t know him, I was a little alarmed. Did he know me from somewhere? I did a mental inventory of past companies I had worked for, schools, vacations abroad, but I came up with nothing. I thought maybe he wanted me to play World of Warcraft with him via my phone, but this would have been impossible because I still had a flip phone at the time. So, I just sat there and looked straight ahead, ignoring him. He looked mildly disappointed and eventually turned around and faced the front, still checking his phone screen from time to time.
Little incidents like that kept happening to me. It wasn’t until I had heard about this thing called Grindr, which was basically like having a bath house or public men’s room in your pocket. Cruising for sex had gone digital and getting sex was now easier than ever. (Or potentially so.) You could order up a guy like a pizza and invite him over for sex or go over to his place. It felt like we gays had finally found the promised land. And the streets were paved with cock.
Only I wasn’t having it.
I’ve always felt like an outsider in the gay “community,” particularly the scene aspect of it. At first, I thought it was self-loathing. But then when I remembered the time I was at a club and saw two guys holding their drinks and staring at me. “You’re not so great,” one of them said as I walked by to get to the bar. Or the bartender who pointedly ignored me and cackled with his regulars. He finally served me a drink with a heaping helping of attitude and didn’t give me my change back. Or the bar in San Francisco where my friend Christian asked for a drink and was told, “Say it like a man!” Yeah, excuse me, barkeep, could I get a pint of femme-shaming, please?
My experiences in gay land have mostly been negative, and so I’ve become more of a gay token in straight land. It’s fine, though. They love me there. I don’t feel like shit after a night out there. The gay community has always felt to me like an abusive parent that I’m somehow supposed to love. Gasping voice: “But it’s the only gay community you’ve got!”
I find myself feeling like there is this nurturing world of gays out there somewhere. Clubs where you can show up and everybody knows your name. They raise their glasses when you walk in the door. They don’t try to steal your boyfriend. They pat you on the back and ask how you’re doing. And it’s not a front for a gay-conversion center. The reality of a place like that in the gay community seems like the mythical world of Narnia or Never-Never Land. Gay men in predominantly gay settings are more like cats being introduced to each other: they hiss and spit with the fur on their backs standing up. It’s ugly. But even when we get used to each other, a betrayal is almost always around the corner. There’s eventually a knife in the compliment.
And gay men are famous for their promiscuity. That’s why I’ve felt pressured to load up my phone with the endless array of hook-up apps now on offer. (I have to laugh at those who call them “dating” apps. Yeah!) I’ve definitely felt the pressure to get out there and get humping. So far, I’ve resisted the siren call. Maybe it’s because I somehow have a genetic propensity for monogamy. The men in my family marry for life. They have the ability to sleep with the same woman for decades. Would-be mistresses get put in their places. Casual sex is seen as childish. There’s a joke that if a man in my family is single, it’s because his partner left him. To be like this and be gay is like being a unicorn. The last unicorn. The idea of pair-bonding for life seems like anathema to the gays. Everyone talks about fucking. No one talks about love.
But I have to admit, I’m insanely curious about hook-up apps and what those encounters must be like. I imagine how weird they must be. In my mind, it goes like this: You exchange texts with a guy on your phone. He shows up at your door later. You smoke a joint together and exchange pleasantries. There’s some kissing and groping and then the clothes come off with some quick foreplay. Then it’s down to pumping while each guy stares off into the middle-distance like zombies, avoiding eye contact like actors trying not to look at the camera.
After that, you get up, get dressed, nod appreciatively or awkwardly, (don’t shower!) and go your separate ways. It’s perfunctory. Like animals fucking on National Geographic. Frequently, one guy is left sitting in his apartment crying tears that it never becomes anything more. One gay bear friend of mine lamented, “They never want to cuddle after!” Really? Fucking, really?
Oh, yeah, and occasionally it turns into a fuck-buddy arrangement. Just until things get weird. (Feelings!)
I’ve heard and read so many horror stories about hook-up apps. If you’re ugly, the constant rejection will make you suicidal. If you look like a Colt model (like an actual, goddamn Colt model), the sex apps are your goldmine. I also feel like the hookup-apps are at a saturation point right now. (Grindr seems so passé. Like the Friendster of hook-up apps.) And there are so many of them: Grindr, Scruff, Squirt, Hornet, Adam4Adam, DaddyHunt, Straight4Straight, Hole4Hire, OrificesRUs, YourBestFriendsHotClosetCaseDad, BiNet, PrudeHunter, and on and on…. We’re so damn spoiled for choice in this first-world culture of ours that exclusivity is all but obsolete. Why stick to one? When it breaks or gets bland, throw it out and get a new one.
I guess I’m stuck on this subject now because I’m getting to the tail-end of my time on OkCupid and contemplating other ways to meet guys. My OkCupid profile has been up for almost two and a half years now. I’ve been on a bunch of dates, been catfished, been toyed with, been ghosted, ghosted some guys (Don’t judge. One guy immediately told me he’d like to put me in the pile-driver positon. [I had to look it up.] Another guy just talked in circles forever.), made a few acquaintances, and attracted more guys who so aren’t right for me that I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve had better luck meeting hotties when I’ve joined special interest clubs, done semesters abroad, worked at places, and gone on vacations to far-off lands.
Last December, I joined a gay men’s hiking group and met a guy who I’ve been dating off and on since January. There’s something to be said for good, old-fashioned face-to-face. Pictures on a computer screen with a blurb attached just open the door for you to invent someone who doesn’t exist. And that just leads to disappointment. (I recently tried to gently turn down a guy on OkCupid who was apparently smitten with me and who later wrote a caustic rebuttal to my rejection. It left me reeling for days.)
So, carry on with your hook-up apps, if that’s your thing. I’m not here to slut shame. I’m just saying that it’s not for me and will probably never be for me. It just seems to me like being on hook-up apps is compulsory if you’re gay. It’s just assumed that everyone’s doing it or bouncing back and forth from it. If you’re not on them, there’s something wrong with you. It’s as if when gays turn 18 now, they register for the draft and download Grindr. It’s required!
Because I don’t follow the crowd, does that make me the new face of fagism? The new, aging face of fagism? I don’t think so. There has to be a whole bunch of guys out there who feel the same way I do. Occasionally, I get glimpses of them online. Sigh… It would be so nice if we could all go off and build our own community.
