[imperfect_cupcake]

Ah ok, that is helpful, actually. Because I don't feel deeper intimacy with someone until I've been talking with them, being with them and having sex for a while. I don't open up that deep till I trust. So to me, if I have dinner and a chat with someone else, it's just dinner and a chat. I don't feel I've exchanged anything intimate. I don't feel I've given over anything intimate. When I *do* start feeling intimate, when I start trusting someone, then I feel ok about talking about monogamy, but to me it would feel like someone im having coffee with tells me "you can't can coffee with other people because of the way I feel about having coffee"
I find it just as baffling. So that does help me to understand that even a single conversation to you is deeply intimate. I take it that you are really deeply intimate with just a very few friends and don't have just happy casual aquainances you talk about things that don't feel intimate with?

Because I'm starting to suspect this is part of the issue. I can have really indepth, open, connective and happy conversation about subjects people feel private about and I just don't. It's very easy for me to do that. My *intimate* conversations are about really deep feelings, and intimacy to me is about when people help me, like drive me to the bank when I'm really sick. I would never, ever let anyone help me with things unless they were my partner or my parent or a very close friend.

For instance I was dating someone and I fell, smacked my head and got knocked out and got a concussion, I called my dad but he didn't pick up. I was at a little clinic and decided to walk to the train, even though they were worried about me walking alone. I did not want to call my date because I had not been seeing her long enough to ask her to help me like that. That is very intimate to me. So I'm assuming that having dinner and a conversation, which is just social lubricant to me, means something equally intimate to them.

That's why I don't go out for ice cream, or do certain activities with people - like weekend holidays or museums or cook dinner for them - unless I feel past the stage of just going out and having meals and drinks in pubs and getting to know them.

I am guessing that for some people, meals and drinks and long talks i pubs and a movie here and there are very intimate. I can understand that.

I guess then there is just finding activities that neither of us find really intimate in order to get to know each other. Bit difficult if someone has already decided they want what they want, but I can at least get a grasp of it now. Thank you masterful butch, that was actually quite helpful.