I mean, there's a large portion of my friends who do know, don't get me wrong. Hell, at this point, a significant number of my friends are involved in BDSM or Polyamory themselves, which makes the whole thing easier; but a significant number of them (especially my friends from longer ago and my entire family), aren't and don't... And it's very imposing to consider telling some of them. And yet at the same time, intellectually, I know it's self-defeating to not tell them - it puts us in a situation where they like me for who I'm not, rather than liking - or disliking - me for who I am... And that's a mistake. It's easy to say, of course, "That's a mistake", and yet much harder to do it - so this is a step in that direction.
Makes it sound so ominous, doesn't it?!? That's okay, it's not - at its heart, it's pretty simple - I'm a dominant, I'm a sadist, I'm polyamorous, and I'm demi-sexual. Historically most of my relationships have been both vanilla and monogamous... But for more than 15 years now, that's been in respect of my partners, not necessarily by choice. I've had multiple long-term submissives, a number of shorter-term subs that either were a bit more special-purpose or simply didn't work out. I've also - primarily recently, like the last two-three years, but to a lesser extent much longer than that - had multiple relationships and multi-person relationships. On top of that, my sex drive is unusual; sex itself interests me very little; and while I do get turned on by a number of things, they frequently are not the things people tend to expect or assume.
This is a list of things that took me... Well, better than 30 years to figure out. The actual facts haven't changed much in that time, but my understanding and acceptance of them has changed drastically, even in just the last few years. I have gotten some very askance looks when I've referred it to "coming out" before, but it definitely applies in its own way. I strongly suspect, for example, there are far more people in our culture who are okay with the idea of two men or two women being married who'd be rather upset by the idea of a man and two women being married... Or a man in dedicated, long-term relationships with two women. At the very least, that's my experience. It's not easier to admit to people what my interests actually are. It may not be easier, or harder, but it's still important... And something that people should know.
There's a lot of intolerance out there for *any* alternate lifestyle, whether it be homosexuality, queerness, or alternate lifestyles of a different sort. It's depressing to me sometimes to see how totally people disassociate the concepts, as well... But I think that's an idea I want to explore more another day. There's lots to expand on here, a lot of thoughts I think I'll need to finish another time... But for today this is enough.
In other news, life is full of strange coincidences. Yesterday, my fiance told me of a conversation with a coworker on the subject of BDSM - apparently, she wants her boyfriend to "dominate" her. After hearing the entire conversation, I'm pretty convinced that what she *actually* wants is just some nice mild bondage and maybe a spanking, but hey, not my business. I did forward the offer to talk to her and her boyfriend if some Q&A time would be useful to them, but I don't really expect them to take me up on it. Still, it's cute to see people feeling blindly towards the light... So to speak.
*tips hat*
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