A Reddit user says he has “a very strong attraction” to his roommate, one of his best friends. The friend is exactly the Redditor’s type, they can hang out for days, they’re both gamers, they like the same TV shows, they have the same sense of humor, and they’ve been known to cuddle in bed. And this friend even says that he bases his attraction on personality and not “physical form.”
Unfortunately, the friend has an off-and-on girlfriend. “Aside from that, I am friends with his GF and would not think to interfere in their relationship, even it being as confusing as it is,” the Redditor says. “But I never really even got to the point of thinking about that since he is straight. I never let my feelings for him develop. This isn’t my first rodeo with straight/curious guys, and know to protect myself and keep it platonic. There’s no point in pining after someone who will never like you back.”
But now that this friend is on a break with his girlfriend, he appears to be looking for Grindr matches.
Related: 20 guys who confessed their love to their straight best friend
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
For backstory, this Redditor explains that he and his friend, both in their 30s, have been living together along with the friend’s “girlfriend” for about a year now.
“I say girlfriend with quotations because their relationship has been rocky, and they do not consider themselves in a relationship, aside from living together and having sex, which is quite confusing,” he explains. “We’re all very close and typically do everything together. [A] recent turn of events have made things very hairy.”
Even more confusing? Both the friend and the girlfriend have talked about “messing around” with this Redditor while they were drunk.
“We’ve all cuddled in bed before, and she has tried to initiate things between us on multiple occasions, but it just hasn’t happened. There have been incidents where it was clear he wanted to do something sexual with me but got uncomfortable about it and couldn’t follow through.”
But now the friend and his girlfriend have hit another rough patch in their relationship, the girlfriend has moved out, and the Redditor thinks this break might be permanent.
And then, while he and his friend were watching TV recently, the Redditor saw his friend using an app that looked just like Grindr. “I could have left it at that, but my curiosity got the better me,” he said. “I downloaded it myself and saw the closest person to me was a profile with his exact stats.”
Related: Gay man’s touching ode to his “best straight boy-friend” is going viral for all the right reasons
Now the Redditor, who’s been single for seven years because of his shyness and fear of rejection, is torn about what to do next: whether to let his friend have his Grindr secret or to talk about it. But mostly, the Redditor “wants to open the door for possibilities with him, whether its just experimentation or something more.”
Then again, the Redditor thinks that if his friend were indeed bi or gay, he would have initiated something already, and the Redditor thinks he would be devastated if his friend turned him down.
“Is appropriate for me to try and talk to him about his sexual preferences based on what I’ve written?” he asks his fellow r/askgaybros users. “If so, is there a particularly good way to go about it, especially for someone who is potentially closeted? Is it wrong for me to want something to happen between us? Is this something I should let go?”
Related: Straight guy decides to ‘make a go of things’ with his bisexual friend
So far, the responses to this Redditor’s plight have run the gamut. One commenter told him to hit up his friend on Grindr and see what happens. Another recommended messaging the friend and inviting him to his room if he’s interested, and if he’s not interested, they never have to talk about it again.
A different commenter urged caution, however. “To break it to you, this honestly seems like wishful thinking on your part, and you’re putting two friendships at risk by entertaining the idea,” that user wrote.
And while one person advised letting it go — “If it [is] meant to be, it will develop when you least expect it,” that user wrote — another person told the Redditor to broach the topic.
“You would rather take temporary embarrassment than living with regrets. While you should try to not scare him off, it’s fine to ask him about Grindr and his sexuality. Friends can talk about those topics, and for the sake of reducing future regrets, you should probably shoot your shot.”
Check out the full thread for more responses and to get updates on the story: The Redditor says he’ll post a follow-up if he “work[s] up the courage to do anything about it.”
amanwithanedge
b.s.
MiguelInVanCT
Agreed, I feel that sometimes this site can do better than scour reddit for scripts that HBO turned down.
Norm
Have a 3 some.
ShiningSex
try to date him if you like him or elsewhere mind your business
Donston
This is where being educated on “sexuality” helps, knowing that someone’s sexuality is individual to them and that it encompasses a lot of stuff (the types and rates of attraction, desire, enjoyment, passion, fluidity, fetishes, extent of sex drive, what you will and won’t indulge). This is where knowing the gender, romantic, sexual, emotional investment, commitment spectrum also helps. This is where understanding how much certain things may guide someone: sociology, general psychology, mental health, money, family, religion, ego, resentment, internal phobias.
I repeat these things a lot because knowing this stuff helps these types of situations and helps you understand yourself and others (especially potential partners) more. It can assist more than mere identity or presented behaviors or cliches. If you know this stuff then you know where to take the dialogue, and you can get a sense of who and what you want to deal with.
However, this story indeed comes off like BS and fantasy, like the majority of those Reddit stories. A lot of these details don’t add up. If the “straight” friend has let you know he’s not really hetero and has cuddled with you multiple times, more than likely he’s giving you an opening. And considering this poster is really into this friend, it makes no sense that he hasn’t peeped this out and ceased that opening. It seems like they threw the “his ex girlfriend is my friend” in there for extra conflict.
Michael
This sounds like BS but…. If the friend wanted to actually have sex with him he wouldn’t be on Grindr looking for tricks to do the job.
renzinthewoods
Sounds like the intro to a cheesy sex story you’d find in the pages of Blue Boy magazine. For real? If not, then there are red flags ALL over the place…Talk about lookin for love in all the wrong places. If there is even the remotest bit of truth to this story, he should RUN, not walk, AWAY and find himself a nice guy. This scenario is the crap that comes from all this “non-binary” “pan sexual” b.s.
Monkey1
Agree with everyone else… absolutely not real. Why does Queerty scrape the bottom of the barrel on Reddit to find a straight/gay p*rn fantasy and make it a story?
Donston
It gets clicks. It gets comments. And apparently many “queers” (especially some of the people that work for Queerty) are obsessed with closeted/straight/overall hetero-leaning/bi-curious dudes.
I’d be cool with the exploration and conversation if it didn’t always come from a place of sensationalism and fetish. Also, if it wasn’t instigated by Reddit users and their basic, shallow fantasies.
Monkey1
You’re right Donston, if they took this as a basis for a converstation that would be a much better story.
zephyr69
This happened to me many years ago when I was a lot younger. I’m gay and my straight roommate knew it and we were very good close friends. He would have a girlfriend now and then but nothing steady. We shared a two-bedroom apartment and sometimes in the winter he would cuddle in my bed to stay warm. Then one night when he was in my bed I got up the nerve and jokingly said to him: You know, if you get any closer I am going to get really horning and can’t be held responsible for anything that happens. At that point, he pressed his whole body against mine and said that was fine with him and to do anything to him that I wanted. We ended up as friends with benefits and it worked out great.
Monkey1
I’m sorry but a straight guy will never cuddle in bed with a gay guy… or probably any other guy.
Donston
Yeah, that’s not really this story. This story has extra contrivances for the sake drama (the Grindr account, his ex being the dude’s friend, the friend hinting that he wants to hook up but the dude being hesitant). I guess the “I mess around with my ‘straight’ friend” narrative is too basic and old-hat.
It would just be nice to stop using identities (particularly a “straight” identity) for the sake of fantasy and fetish. If we want to explore that everyone has their own sexualities, the realities of fluidity, convenience, experimentation, paraphiliacs, the romantic, sexual, affection, emotional investment, commitment spectrum- that’s all fine . But we just can’t move on from using “straight” (and all these identities) as click-bait and arousal material and validation. Even in this story he says that his “friend” doesn’t care about gender. But this dude is still using “straight” as click-bait.
Kangol2
@Monkey1, did you ever serve in the military? Ask a few men who have and they’ll tell you that under certain circumstances straight men most certainly will cuddle with other men, straight, gay, bi or otherwise.
SoaringLeap
A more realistic story: I have an attractive coworker whom I figured is straight because default assumption. Really nice guy, fun to talk to, quirky, sharp and athletic. A charming package for me, this guy. Leaving from work one afternoon, I saw – to my pleasant surprise – he’s on grindr! There he was, face and a remarkable body with stats to match, sending my gaydar readings off the charts. But his profile disappeared before I could send a message. The end. ?
SoaringLeap
The ? was supposed to be an emoji but it changed to a question mark after submitting.
Evji108
He downloaded Grindr & the saw he was like two feet away but his friend didn’t notice? This story is fishy.
sfhairy
I thought Graham was the only fantasy writer on Queerty? I guess Dan has started attending a fantasy writing workshop.
MudgeBoy
I clicked on the link and the story is definitely on reddit. Of course some will say it was planted by the author of this story, but i choose to believe the story is real. And I confess that I lived with a straight roommate for four years: we never cuddled, there was no Grindr in those days and if there was he would never have been on it. Nevertheless, I harbored a crush on him the whole time. We liked the same things, including spending hours talking, drinking, and smoking. We have since parted ways and, except for a very occasional phone call, don’t have any contact.
There was one occasion when we both got drunk and tried to have sex but, the next day, we laughed it off.
Believe this story or not — I don’t care.
Cam
Once again Queerty uses the word “Straight” when they mean “Closeted”.
mailliw110
This isn’t even a good Nifty story. All it needs is some relative thrown in.
Consider This
Whoops!