Meeting someone new, carefully

Most of what is written about meeting somebody from the internet is either frightening or breezy. Neither is much use when you are standing outside a cafe deciding whether to go in.

This is the plain version. None of it is unusual and none of it implies you expect the worst.

Somewhere public, in daylight, that you already know

A place you have been before does more work than a place that is simply busy. You know where the door is, you know how long the walk to the bus takes, and you are not spending any attention working the room out. That attention is better spent on the conversation.

Not their home. Not your home. Not the first time, and there is no rudeness in it. Anybody worth meeting will find that completely unremarkable.

Tell one person where you are

A friend, a sibling, anybody. Where you are going, roughly when you expect to be home. It takes one message and it changes how the whole thing sits in your chest.

If there is genuinely nobody to tell, that is worth knowing about yourself rather than glossing over, and it is a fair thing to arrive at a site like this carrying.

Keep the first one short on purpose

An hour, with something afterwards that you actually have to go to. A short meeting that both people wish had been longer is a much better outcome than a long one that neither could work out how to end.

It also removes the hardest part of leaving. You are not deciding whether to go, you are going because you said you would.

Leaving early is allowed

You do not need a reason, an excuse or an argument. Something has come up and you need to go is a complete sentence, and you owe nobody an explanation for it.

If it feels wrong and you cannot say why, that is sufficient. You are not required to be able to defend the feeling before you act on it.

• Make your own way there and your own way back.
• Keep your phone charged, and keep it on you.
• Have the first drink be one you can leave.
• If somebody pushes back on any of the above, that is your answer.

Nobody asks anybody for money

It is the one rule here with no exceptions and no sympathetic version. Not a loan, not petrol money, not an emergency, not a story with an account number at the end of it. If it happens, before or after meeting, write to safety@freehug.me. You do not have to be signed in, and we would much rather hear about it early than have you sit on it.

How meeting works here

Meeting on freehug.me is one person at a time and only when both of you have said yes. Nobody sees that you said yes unless they say yes too, so there is nothing lost and no awkwardness in being honest about it. That is the same consent design described in the two rules.

You are also free to never use it. Plenty of people are here for the hugs and nothing else, and that is a complete way to use the site.

Two honest limits. We do not verify anybody, so none of the above is us vouching for the person you are meeting — the consent design controls who can reach you, not who they turn out to be. And freehug.me is not a helpline; nobody here is a professional anything. If today is heavier than that, there are people who can help properly.