I’ve been recently chatting with a very nice guy in another city who is eager to meet someone available, honest and into the same things that he is. I understand all too well the process of weeding out potentials from online, especially when you have a huge  desire to be with someone.

During one of our chats, he mentioned how he was going to be traveling to meet someone he had been chatting with online, and that the fella had offered to "buy" him a flight back if he could get himself out there. Just the whole idea of it, put me on edge (maybe its the Daddy in me coming out...) but I began to think about what are good boundaries to have when traveling to meet a man in a different city. Questions like: Who pays? Where to stay?  And how to stay safe.

1)    Make your own arrangements. If you can’t afford the entire  airfare or travel money to get to him and stay on your own (with friends or a hotel) the first time – then it might not be a good time to go.

Dear Kirk,

My Name is Larry and I'm 19. I have been with my boyfriend for over 2 years now and he is 37. Like most relationships we've had our ups and downs. We've argued and we've made up. He can be really sweet sometimes, leaving me little notes everywhere...he likes to surprise me with little gifts, no matter how small. But he also can be a complete ass. He has this amazing gift of saying the wrong thing at the absolute worst time for it. Like "I don't understand why you're stressing over exams...they're not important."

I've also just realized how controlling he is, when he'd ask me every day to go upstairs and get his laptop for him, or get him a drink etc. If i ask anything of him he tells me to "get it myself and stop being so lazy.”

We'll be in bed, having a nice hug when he grabs my cock. So I'm guessing it wouldn't be wrong for me to assume he wants sex. So I try and start something and he slaps my hand away and tells me to go to sleep, leaving me with a huge hard-on and a damaged ego. He does this a lot. He'll grab my nipples because he knows it gets me hard...then if I try and start anything he'll slap my hand away and say later. We hardly ever have sex and sometimes it's months before I get any.

I have worked as a mental health counselor for gay men for 24 years both in private practice and in public clinical settings. For the past twelve years I have offered pastoral counseling as part of my role as spiritual director of Ashram West, a gay spiritual community based in traditional Hindu Tantra. What follows is a distillation of decades of experience both personal and professional, during which time I have corresponded with gay men all over the world from whom I have heard essentially the same lament expressed in numerous variations: Why can’t I find a man serious about forming an intimate relationship? I write this with the full understanding that casual sex has been and continues to be a norm in gay society, so I expect some readers will disagree with my characterization of casual sex as a curse. I admit I have participated in this aspect of our gay culture from my very first sexual experience 34 years ago, though always with reservations, if not always with restraint.  I believe my considerable experience over the past decades qualifies me to share my observations and judgments about what I have found to be the net negative aspects of casual sex despite the inherent pleasures of sex, about which there is nearly universal agreement. I ask only that the reader consider my points carefully before forming any conclusions.

I saw a photo of a particularly attractive young man on a gay dating site, and I sent him a brief message saying I found his photos attractive and his profile appealing. He responded in a polite, friendly manner, and after some exchanged messages, he agreed to join me for dinner. Before we hung up he informed me that I am “much too old” for him to consider dating me, but he was interested in me for other reasons. When he arrived we discovered that we share the same alma mater, although he had only just graduated from UC Berkeley, and I graduated in 1975, several years before he was born as it happened, and we also had other common interests. After some polite conversation I felt obligated to inform the youngster that men my age (55) don't consider themselves much too old for anything.  He barely remembered the remark he had made on the phone and seemed embarrassed to have it repeated while sitting in my presence, and I gently told him that I was not much offended, and that young men frequently say insensitive things without even realizing they might be giving offense.

Let’s face it, sometimes we all put our “foot in it” and say the wrong thing. But the real skill I figured out is how to recognize what was said and then work to reduce the times we say it…

A pal of mine and I were grabbing coffee the other day and we brainstormed our top 10 – communication pitfalls.