...And the Light Side

So obviously not everything about polyamoury is bad. It's very easy for me to dwell on the downsides of poly relationships; not because I've suffered so terribly with it (in the grand scheme of things, I haven't), not because of the terrible relationships my friends have had (though at least one has - had, soon, we hope - a really neglective punk of a husband I'm not a fan of)... Just because I've seen and heard of too many cases where one person just blithely jumps into a poly relationship, convinced it's the best thing they could ever do and totally unaware of the consequences... Usually ending in less sadness and more anger. So I'm always very cautious.

That being said, I don't want to sound like I'm down on it - from my comments about my own life it should be obvious I'm not, since I'm functionally open/poly myself. When they're healthy, poly relationships really do have a huge upside. So why are people poly? Why are people open? What do they get out of it? It varies from person to person, and also frequently varies between open and poly relationships,  but here are a few things.

To some people, being in an open or poly relationship is a nigh-endless source of "new relationship energy" - or NRE, as it's usually referred to. Meeting a new person can be a huge rush. Getting to know them, exploring them, finding out how you mesh and merge can really charge a person up, and it's almost like an addiction. Some people do it to continue to get that feeling.

Some people do it to meet different needs. My need for companionship, for example, is generally separate from my needs around sadism and dominance; getting them all fully met with a single person is... Not incredibly likely. Most everyone has different needs in different areas and at different times... And sometimes, it just makes more sense to meet them with different people.

Another rather obvious possible reason is that of variety. Some people, for lack of a better way to put it, get bored easily. Continueing to date openly to keep that variety going, for some people, is about the only way to make a permanent relationship with someone else viable. The only alternatives, to some people, are being single or cheating; and there's nothing inherently wrong with a person being functionally unable to be monogamous, just like there's nothing inherently wrong with a person being functionally unable to be polyamorous.

Some people - especially those in long-term, close-knit relationships - do it because of the extra support it can generate. In a lot of healthy relationships, your girlfriend or wife or significant other is your greatest supporter and biggest source of external strength; if  you have two partners instead of one, they can each be a similar source of the same strength and support. This means, of course,  in relationships with more than two people when one is upset or sick there are more people to take care of them; and when one *isn't* in the mood, you're far more likely to have someone to fool around with...

The most basic thing that I've seen or experienced, though, that people get out of being poly is simply expressing their natural feelings. In any monogamous relationship people have to suppress feelings for those who aren't their primary partner; an open or poly relationship usually takes that restriction away and allows for far more honesty between the people involved.

So yes, as long as the relationship is healthy - by mostly the same definition as I would use to describe a healthy monogamous relationship - and whatever complications it brings, there's a lot of benefit you can get from a poly relationship. People may or may not agree, but to me it's worth the trouble.

The Dark Side of Poly

Jealousy is one of the most endemic human conditions you'll ever encounter; it frequently astounds me how much so. I've been more or less held hostage by past girlfriends (and my ex-wife), being forced to disassociate from female friends in order to preserve my relationship. It's astounding what you can be convinced makes sense by someone you're attracted to or invested in, especially when you're insecure and confronted by the handicap of a confused or mistaken sexual identity.

I really have very little idea how much this happens to other people outside my immediate experience, but it's been endemic to one degree or another in my own relationship history and that of the people I grew up with. The worst was my ex-wife - about whom I could, were I feeling unusually masochistic that day, go on for hours - but it's happened with numerous other girlfriends as well, on dozens of individual occasions. So many people live in a haze of restrictions and problems and jealousy, and it's so normal in our relationship that half they time they don't even realize it.

Being poly doesn't really solve any of those issues - unsurprisingly, it makes them worse for all sorts of reasons. A lot of glib comments about poly folk having it great and lots of sex and no problems and... It's all so crazy. And for today, I thought I'd address a few of them.

The biggest one, unsurprisingly, is jealousy; and this is honestly the one that stops more people than anything else from being in open relationships. It can be difficult to see the person you're with be with someone else. The reaction from many folk when confronted by the idea of their partner being with other people is "Why am I not good enough for them?"... A question which is sure to start a fun conversation.

The problem here, of course, is that sometimes that *is* the answer; but that's less of an indictment than it may at first appear. It's... Hard to find someone who will meet all your needs. Not just because compromise is a major part of relationships; but more simply because so many people have partially or wholly conflicting needs. There's nothing wrong with getting parts of your needs met by different people... Until jealousy kicks in and those people conflict with each *other*.

Unfortunately, in many cases there's going to be very little you can do about this. Most jealousy is - at its heart - the product of insecurity, so sometimes this can be resolved simply by proving the person's fear is unfounded. This isn't always a viable option, though - sometimes the insecurity is too deeply seated.

Never forget that this type is feeling is valid. One of the biggest problems I've encountered with poly folk in the past is the idea that everyone either is or should be poly. You'd think that with the level of intolerance poly practitioners meet in some areas, they'd be more accepting in their own right - less intolerant of *monogamous* folk.

Poly isn't for everyone. Some people (some tiny minority) really do find a perfect partner who meets all their needs... And of the vast majority where that isn't true, many do find a partner they're perfectly content compromising for. Relationships, partnering, is compromise; you're sharing your life with someone else, and it won't always be exactly what you wanted or assumed. Maybe the person's unwillingness or discomfort with being in a poly relationship is insecurity; or jealousy; or fear; or possessiveness; or discouraging past experience; or social conditioning; or any of a number of other possible things. No matter how invalid it may be *in your own mind*, remember that it's valid *to them*. You have the right to disagree - hopefully respectfully - and discuss it, even try to sway them to your point of view... But they have the right not to change their minds.

Monogamous folks, whatever the reason they choose to be that way, have every much as right to be monogamous as poly folk do to be polygamous. Failing to respect that is just sad hypocrasy.

Beyond those emotions, however, there are still other problems with poly relationships; and the next biggest one is the sheer amount of work it takes. Relationships take *work*. You have to put effort into maintaining all of your relationships. Depending on the exact nature of those relationships, maybe it's not hard; having one primary partner and a large number of tertiary partners is perfectly viable, for example. Partners who lean towards being purely sexual or activity-based relationships rather than emotionally attached partners tends to take less effort - just time. The more involved you are with your partners, however, the more of an investment you have in the person, the more thinly spread you become having multiple partners.

This isn't really something you necessarily need to fix; it's more accurate to say that this helps shape your relationships. I'm not currently dating anyone; but when I am dating someone it eats up time. I spend time talking with them, texting them, concentrating on them, actually physically going out with them, just as I do with Ash. Of course for me and my occasionally-confusing demisexual nature the line isn't quite so clearly defined (my motivations and relationships are just different than most), but the same applies to any polygamous person with their own quirks and differences.

Communication in a poly relationship, of course, gets far more complicated. It's bad enough trying to keep abreast of everything when you only have one primary partner; trying to give that level of attention to two primary partners (or a primary and one or more secondary partners) is far more complicated.

The last big downside I'll mention is that being in a poly relationship - even if, or especially if, you're the monogamous partner of a poly person rather than directly poly yourself - imposes entirely new problems on you that you may never encounter in another relationship. Things like dealing with the downside of your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend's "NRE" (New Relationship Energy, the rush they get when they get a new girlfriend/boyfriend), or dealing with their significant other's breakup.

Break-ups can be exceptionally ugly in poly relationships depending on exactly how it falls out. With a couple or monogamous pair, if there's a breakup, there's normally no really complicated emotional entanglements to sort out. It may be painful, the two of you may not agree... But once the decision for the relationship to dissolve is made, it only *directly* affects the two of you. In a poly relationship, the possibility exists for a relationship to *partially* dissolve, and this gets incredibly complicated incredibly quickly. If my three fake poly folk Alfred, Bobby and Christine are in a relationship, and Alfred and Bobby decide to cut off their ties... What happens? Does it transition from a triad to a V? Does either Alfred or Bobby leave entirely, changing the threesome into a couple? What if Christine's relationships with both men are still strong - does it convert to a vee? Does the entire relationship end and dissolve entirely? You end up in a situation where your relationship with a single person is intimately tied to your relationship with someone else, and they can affect each other in ways monogamous folk are not confronted with.

When it comes down to it, this category isn't really drastically different from things you may encounter with your friends and family; being poly just drags it into relationships in a way that doesn't happen to monogamous folk. It's the same problems, but more... Intimate and possibly intense. New wrinkles on the same issues you've always had.

The summary here, of course, is that being polygamous (successfully and fairly, at least) isn't easy; it's work, it's difficult, and it's not for everyone. Never forget your communication, never forget the feelings of the people you're with, and never forget they have a right to those feelings! If you make sure everyone's needs are being met, it'll work out. Just never forget that some days, "working out and meeting everyone's needs" means breaking up, if your needs indicate another partner or poly relationship, while their needs exclude it. Be honest with yourselves, address it carefully but directly, and you'll find a place that's best for both of you.

My Impression of a Dictionary

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Opening Up Your Mind

On the first of my five overnight business trips, back in May, my coworker (who was driving me) and I had a very long conversation on the way there and back. We had a good 4-5 hours of driving and topics roved from books to movies to music to work to relationships to hobbies to houses to our ex-marriages. It was obvious on the way out I'd said something that confused her slightly, though, and on the way back I managed to figure out what it was. She'd asked a question and I'd responded with a comment about my "girlfriend", and to other questions I'd answered with comments about my "fiance", and there was enough of a conflict in the responses that she'd gotten confused. On the way home I asked her, and figured out what had happened - and I clarified by explaining the fact that the girlfriend I was referring to was not the same person as my fiance.

She was in many ways way more okay with it than I'd been expecting. She's now the second person at work who knows the situation, and it really was a bit of a risk; she's definitely more conservative than some. She took it remarkably well, though; she wasn't willing to at least openly object to it. It may be telling that she's carefully avoided the subject ever since. Which is fine; most people really aren't entirely comfortable with the idea. She was remarkably open about discussing it rationally rather than just reacting badly. For better or for worse, the idea of an open relationship or being polyamorous really isn't one that most people even understand very well.

Our US culture is very firmly rooted in the concept of monogamy, mostly because... Well, maybe I'll try to dodge most of the really controversial commentary at least for this entry. The fact remains that the general assumption up front in the dating scene and most relationships is one of monogamy. It doesn't help that "monogamy" means different things to different people. This is the first problem people run up against - misunderstandings or different understandings - but it's certainly not the last.

So what exactly is "cheating"? What constitutes breaching monogamy? Ask different people, and the following may or may not be allowed:

• Staring at another person
• Finding another person attractive
• Developing feelings for another person
• Flirting with another person
• Being close/best friends with someone who could be a potential love interest (bi/pan-sexuals have it rougher on this one...)
• Become "emotionally involved" with someone else (e.g. fall in love with them)
• Hugging another person
• Cuddling another person
• Being sexually involved with another person
• Have a "relationship" with another person (e.g. dating)

I think it's fairly obvious that the ones near the end are "cheating" on a monogamous relationship, but some of them aren't even - in my opinion - under control of the person in question. Sure, no matter how I feel about someone, I can avoid getting naked and having sex with another woman; but how could I possibly control whether or not I find someone attractive? And yet, with a number of my past relationships - including my marriage - just finding someone else attractive was considered "emotionally cheating".

You know, it's funny to me how much easier my current relationship is than so many of my relationships in the past. Even if we didn't have an open relationship Ash and I would at least be able to talk about it, which seems to be a rare commodity in general. It's somehow comforting to be able to discuss attractive women we see - our tastes are different but overlap, so it's occasionally also amusing. But Ash is willing to admit that there's a lot of factors here not in our control, and that's a good place to start.

If I pass a sexy woman in the street, I notice. Most people do. The fact that she's a body type I like is an objective statement. If I notice her, the fact that I find her attractive is also an objective statement. The first place my actual judgement, my conscious choice, comes in is when I respond to that fact. I can just ignore it; I can be creepy and stare; I can strike up a conversation and flirt; or any of a number of other possible things... But why would you judge someone on the pieces not under their control? Why would you hold how someone *else* looks against your partner?

Be willing to talk. Be willing to discuss and be open to the fact that you aren't the only person your partner will ever possibly be attracted to on any level. Very few people get married to and die with their first ever girlfriend; if you were even the second person they dated, it should be blatantly obvious that there were other options out there. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that fact! There's nothing wrong with being human... And part of being human is other people. Remember that, and your relationships will probably be far happier.

A Matter of Context

I went on a short overnight business trip this week; I was there for one day out of a two-day meeting at a conference center a couple of hours away. This is actually the fourth of five that I've gone to at the same place, and for most of them I actually got a ride from one of my coworkers. The first time we went, she came to pick me up and so I gave her directions. It talked about turning off the main road, going around through the access road, going through the intersection, etcetera... And it ended up confusing her - I'm bad at directions, I guess. When she got there she looked up and said "Oh! Why didn't you just tell me it was the white building?" So I looked around and of course she was right - every building in our complex is plain brick except ours which is painted.

The answer, of course, is that I didn't mention it to her because it had never crossed my mind. I can be less than perceptive on occasion, I admit, but I can be extremely perceptive at others - it's a matter of context, not just my total oblivious nature. I knew the building was white; what didn't occur to me was the significance of that in relation to the context at hand.

Over the weekend Ash and I were out shopping - looking at craft supplies, as it happens, and discussing projects one could make with them - and I'd made a comment about replicating a Doctor Who thing I'd seen online and giving it to her sister. There was a fair amount of discussion around it, centered around the question she had for me, "Do you 'like my' sister?" Ash is concerned about the possibility of coming across as coming on to her - whether or not there's any truth to it, or whether or not it's reasonable or logical - to the other family members who'd probably end up observing at least part of our interactions.

The answer, if you're curious, is "no"; she's cute and kindof adorable, but we have very little in common outside of video games and my fiance. More to the point - and completely ignoring that I'm engaged to her sister, which is potentially creepy enough, and that I'm ten years older than her, which is enough to turn off the majority of folks - I have no particular reason to believe she'd be the tiniest bit comfortable with a number of aspects of my lifestyle and preferences. But the problem isn't reality, or what I'm thinking, or what the sister is thinking, but the perception different people apply to the situation. In a very similar way to it just never occuring to me that the colour of my apartment building was relevant to the question at hand, the idea that people would perceive anything I'd been doing as a come-on or something inappropriate.

The occurrence is really demonstrative of what I've always personally found to be the worst aspect of being into various kinks and having an alternative lifestyle; people simply don't understand. I've talked about assumptions before, because they touch on so many different aspects of alternative lifestyles. I've talked before about addressing your assumptions, trying to identify them and tear them down to resolve them - because as a rule they're dangerous. What do you do, though, when it's simply such a different context that you can't see the assumption in the first place?

In my life it comes up most often because of my asexual/demisexual side; it gives me a very strange perspective on interactions with other people at times. It's certainly not the only thing, however. When you're into this sort of edgy thing - in the sense of "edge of society", at the very least - you end up getting a lot of blank stares. People just hear these ideas that don't grok, these concepts which are so far outside their worldview that they don't have any basis for analyzing or relating to it. What do you do? Most people run away or freak out or get weirded out and turn their backs... And this is one of the worst things that can happen to a kinkster.

This entry is less about advice and more about fear. This is what drives people to avoid kink, to compromise on what they want, to give up their dreams. To be in vanilla relationships even though they're unsatisfied. To refuse to come out to their friends, family, and loved ones. It can lead to an incredible amount of isolation, depression, fear and dread - it's not hard to convince yourself you'll never find anyone who'll really fill that hole in your life... And when you do, your family and friends and coworkers will still never accept it.

When Ash and I were on vacation a couple of weeks back, we got together overnight with a friend of mine and her fiance - Lorena and Xavier, we'll call them. Lorena and I have known each other for a number of years, though this was only the second time we'd actually met; I'd never met Xavier before, and Ash had never met either of them. It was a really good time, even if I - very unfairly, I'd say - never did have a chance to tie Lorena up and play with her tits (which, obviously, is what you do with a hot girl with a nice chest when you meet her at the beach...). There was a fair amount of mutual attraction floating around the group, though the level of comfort was obviously limited by the fact we were really only just meeting as a group (as a pair of couples) for the first time; still, we have a lot of common interests, a lot of similar personality traits, and I happen to know Lorena would love to fool around with Ash and - if it weren't for the current state of her relationship with Xavier - me as well. It's not hard to imagine the four of us settling into a life together, really; I mean there's a lot of "if"s and unknowns and problems and barriers, but - no matter how unlikely the idea is - the basic compatibility is there. And of course, the three of them would probably have a very pleasant, fulfilling sex life; and I... Well, none of them are submissives or masochists or particularly into bondage except as a feature of sex; and as I've frequently ended up in my life, however much I loved them and however much they'd be willing to include me in vanilla sexual activities, my base sexual proclivities wouldn't be satisfied. And the idea was... Very depressing. Knowing that even as one part of me was totally fulfilled beyond what I'd once considered would be possible, another part of me would still be looking for a way to be satisfied. It can be hard being faced with that kind of situation - very hard to get past the isolation you feel when you realize that.

Ash is amazing to me. She's very supportive, she loves me, she's my best friend, and she wants me to be happy; and she's never - since she really understood them - been anything but open about the fact that she'll never be able to satisfy some of my core needs. That's part of why she's so supportive of my seeking that with someone else. Not all of it, but an important part; she knows that there's some level where we'll both be unsatisfied together. Dan Savage would refer to it as the "price of admission" - is what we're missing worth what we get out of our relationship? - and the answer for us is a "yes" that neither of us questions, but in some cases it can be harder to agree or decide.

There are a few things you can do, but most of them aren't different from what you do in every-day life; just scarier and occasionally more difficult. You can find people who support you, who are willing to accept you even when they don't understand. And you can find people who are a fit to the relationship you need. It can be a long process; it can be scary, and difficult, and even painful. But it's just as possible as any search for a partner, and you can find the right person - or people - who will fulfill you and give you what you need to be happy

Don't give up hope.

So Far and Yet So Close

I work with computers day-to-day and I'm a child of the 90's, so it's probably surprising to noone that I'm a big fan of the internet. I use it for work, I use it to play games, and I use it to socialize - I actually met my fiancé on OkCupid. More relevantly, though, the internet has been an amazing tool for people who want to get involved in Kink - a veritable goldmine of resources.

I'm going to dodge the really obvious thing here - I doubt anyone would be reading this if they weren't already aware of the internet's resources for education, advice, social interaction, shopping, safety, and other things. I'm going to focus on the fact that people can now meet and stay in touch with partners far more easily... And yet I'm often astounded by how naive people are about the options for BDSM relationships online. I certainly won't claim that relationships are easier when based offline - or perhaps more likely to succeed, having more common experience to base it on - but modern technology gives many options for staying close. Here are my favourite ideas and bits of advice.

The most obvious one is video chat. Google (via Hangouts), Microsoft (via Skype), and Apple (via FaceTime) are the most common, but not the only options. Video chat, though, gives you amazing flexibility around spending time together. In particular, getting a submissive on video is an excellent way to have play sessions. Obviously you can't touch them, but it's easy to find ways to play. Have your sub spank herself on video - or point the camera at the wall and hold a quarter in place with her nose for as long as you need her to. Anything that doesn't actually require a second person is just as possible on video as it is in person; plus of course, video gives you far better options than phones ever did for fooling around and having remote sex.

One small addendum here - never forget the safety aspect. There are many things you can have a person do that are reasonably all right in person (where you would be able to help them if something went wrong) but are incredibly risky remotely (where they'd be at serious risk if a mistake or bad luck happened). Use common sense.

As another option, voice systems like Skype give you another option - you can simply leave a voice channel open on your computer essentially all the time. Especially overnight, this can be a pleasant way to be more connected.

A fun extension of this idea is to set up something like HabitRPG for them; I am acquainted with one D/s couple who does exactly this, and it's such an adorable idea I really want to try it out some day.

Use social media. Have them set up a twitter account or blog, and make it as private or public as you'd like. I've frequently had subs set up blogs to post daily reports and "homework"; Tumblrs are excellent for just kindof off-the-cuff things and photo feeds.

Anyway - this is in some ways just the tip of the iceberg. Use your imagination; distance is far less of a limiting factor than it's ever been before. Take advantage of the technologies available to you to stay closer to your partners... Even in the kinky corners of the relationship world.

Stay in touch moment-to-moment with messaging. Whether it be texting, Google Hangouts, iMessaging, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, or one of many others, computers and smartphones make it trivially easy to stay in touch all the time real life doesn't otherwise interfere. Take advantage of it; it's the next best thing after being together for keeping up with your partner... Or keeping tabs on them. Having them let you know whenever they're leaving or arriving somewhere, what they're doing, when they've completed tasks... Messaging is an excellent way to keep tabs on your submissive.

Talk. I know that phones are incredibly out of date, but actually hearing someone's voice conveys emotion and feeling and levels of communications that text simply can't provide. More to the point, while it has little to recommend it over video these days, the one thing plain voice does offer is convenience - you can just call up your partner  while driving or other times when a video simply isn't an option.

Schedule date-nights, another idea that works just as well for any relationship, not just kinky ones. There are lots of options, from playing games together to watching movies to using video or chat to read books or eat a meal with each other. Exactly what you do is less important than how you do it.

Utilize technology to keep track of their chores and tasks. Apple Reminders, Google Tasks, Wunderlist and many others give you options for setting up lists of rules and jobs, complete with (or without!) reminders, due dates, repeating tasks, integration to calendars or schedulers or other applications and technologies... There are so many options here you can find something that'll work exactly the way you want,  no matter what it is you're looking for.

My last thought, and one of the newest categories of things you can do, is remotely controlled devices. There've been things like pagers linked to vibrators for years but the field has grown far more refined in recent times. There are directly computer- and phone-controlled sex toys of all sorts; large complex ones for the bedroom (or home office, I suppose) all the way down to small, discreet ones like Vibease which you can wear all day and can delegate control to someone else using your smartphone.

The Limits of Your Limits

I originally had a totally different idea for this entry, but I realized last night there was something I was much more invested in right now. When I started working through that, though, I realized there was really a prequel entry I wanted to do. I thought it through, and whether I could do them the other way around (I wanted to do one on a Tuesday and the other on a Friday), but it started getting complicated... And eventually I decided to just take it by the horns and do both.

I had a conversation with one of my friends... Hmmm. Let's call her Janet. I had a conversation with Janet about one of her friends who was just discovering the entire "BDSM" thing. Long story short, I ended up reading through "Submissive Training" by Elizabeth Cramer.

This book was well-written, easy to read, and - to me - nothing I'd never heard before. Since I've been involved in BDSM for creeping up on 20 years now, its not being new isn't immensely surprising to me. What did surprise me was how narrowly this book was focused. Essentially, this book is an excellent reference for a very narrow class of people - female total power exchange submissives beginning their roles as slaves.

Recently, I have encountered a number of people who are just first really exposing themselves to the wider world of BDSM. Bettina is the obvious example, who'd never actually encountered it before me. We've had a number of conversations around kink, her interests, what scares her, what she thinks about it... I've tried hard not to just teach her my own views - it wouldn't really be too hard to present my own views as gospel, given her relative isolation from the larger Scene - and rather am trying to encourage her to think about her own instincts and beliefs in the area. It's not just my own views I have to try and protect her from - she also has far more preconceptions and prejudices than I would have imagined before we really got into these topics. She finds herself trying to decide if she fits into some preconceived notion of "slave" or "sub" or "pet" or "little" or whatever else.

More than just Bettina, a number of posts have shown up on Fetlife recently as well... Which isn't unusual. There's inevitably a steady stream of people who are just discovering the entire world of kink, and it's not hard to encounter them if you want to do so. Similar to Bettina, though, most people ask the wrong question up front. One of the most frequent things you'll see is "Am I a X?" or "Do I fit in with group Y?" People almost always start off by taking an idea or a term or a phrase or a role and trying to ram themselves into it - frequently a square peg in a round hole... Or at least a rectangular one.

A couple of weeks ago, after To The Ends of Comfort and Beyond, Ash asked me a question - my advice to "know your limits" is great, but how do you figure them out? If you never step past your limits, how do you ever know what they are?

These are all symptoms of the same problem, unfortunately; kink is a huge world, kids. There's a lot out there to know. There are countless kinks, terms, adjectives, verbs, toys, bits of history, norms, bits of etiquette... It'll take anyone a lifetime to figure it all out. Coming into it from ground zero is imposing - and most people lose sight of the real goal in light of that barrier.

So, how do you figure out where you belong? How do you figure out if you're an "X" or a "Y" or a "Z" - a sub or a Dom/me or a little or a daddy/mommy or whatever else? How do you know what your limits are? There are a lot of possible glib answers. "Carefully," in particular, comes to mind. Really, though, the more important question has always been "what are you comfortable with?"

Names are very important to me - I wrote a whole entry on how much so. Names can cut both ways, though; they can describe who you are or they can constrain who you are, depening on how you use them. beginners to kink often take a name, a description, a role, and then try to mold themselves to fit it as carefully as they can. More often than not, though, they miss the crucial understanding that those molds are what they create for themselves, not what they have to make themselves to fit in.

So be brave; try a few things out. Carefully, of course; it's better to be cautious and drag it out than to rush in and panic. Don't do anything you're uncomfortable with; but if you are comfortable with it or aren't sure, try it! Safely, as carefully as you need to... But find out. If possible, find a mentor - someone who knows more of the pitfalls and possibilities than you and can help you fill out your identity.

How do you know your limits? Through conversation; through question and answer; through experimentation; through research; through careful consideration of the vast world now open to you. It seems scary at first, but some day you'll look back and laugh at how much worse it was just because it was all unknown. Never compromise your own self for someone else's definition; figure out your definition and own it. Most of all, be true to yourself and have fun.