Part 1: A Retrospective
It's only been in the past year that I realized that kink is something I want to begin to explore with some amount of intention. When I look back on my rather sparse sexual history, I can recognize that it's always involved some amount of kink, even if I lacked the vocabulary or subcultural frame of reference to call it what it was.
I've only ever really had one serious long-term relationship. I was 22 and she was 26. I'm 43 now, so that should give you some perspective on how long ago I'm talking about. I've had the occasional casual encounter since then as well as a 4-year "friendship" with a woman that initially involved a sexual component but eventually morphed into what was basically sexless relationship. I effectively became Emotional Labour Guy -- the semi-platonic friend who would listen to all of her problems, give her back rubs, and occasionally cuddle with her. I clung to that relationship way longer than I should have but eventually found the fortitude to break it off.
But the dynamic between me and my first long-term girlfriend was something special. I use the term "dynamic" loosely here to refer to the way we interacted together sexually, not to any formal BDSM dynamic with prescribed roles or structure. This being my first sexual relationship and her being four years older than me, she was more experienced than I was and let me take the lead on pacing. She didn't want to make me feel rushed and wanted me to feel comfortable suggesting new things that we could try in the bedroom. The lines of communication between us were very open in that regard and she was very open-minded about trying new things.
At the time, I didn't see us as being particularly "kinky." For all I knew, the things that we were exploring were just the sorts of things that consenting adults do for fun behind closed doors. It was only in hindsight that I began to realize that we were actually pretty kinky compared to the average "vanilla" couple. We incorporated various toys like vibrators, cock rings and anal beads; we had a sexual board game, we played around with light bondage, I discovered that I was into ass-eating, and we each invested in books to help us improve our oral sex skills.
One thing I remember quite vividly is asking her to bite the tip of my dick because I wanted to know what the sensation felt like. I verbally guided her through exactly how I wanted her to do it, she was very careful not to hurt me and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I don't care what anybody says -- when someone literally holds your dick in their teeth, that is a trust exercise right there! It involves layers of both physical and emotional vulnerability and intimacy that actually drew us closer together as a couple.
But I think the thing that I cherished most about the sexual aspect of our relationship is that we developed our own private ritual of light sensual touches where each of us would take turns lying naked on the bed while the other lightly glided their fingertips over our skin. Sometimes it would lead to sex and other times it wouldn't. That wasn't really the point. It was more about building trust and intimacy, awakening nerve endings and giving each of us the opportunity to surrender to our bodily sensations. It may not be in the same league of physical intensity as some of the more high-impact forms of "edgeplay" that I've since come to learn about in the kink scene, but I absolutely do see subtle elements of dominance and submission playing out in this practise.
Part 2: Tuning Out The Noise
When I joined FetLife about two months ago, the very act of doing so was an acknowledgement to myself that kink is something I genuinely want to explore. This acknowledgement alone was liberating for me. I spent many years harbouring deep-seated feelings of shame and guilt over the misplaced belief that there was something inherently violent and predatory about my heterosexual male desire. This stems from spending most of my 20's embroiled in the radical activist scene in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where a general climate of hypervigilance regarding even the perceived threat of sexual violence by men towards women made me feel like I was under constant scrutiny for crimes I hadn't even committed. And because I have a neurodivergence that makes it challenging to read nonverbal cues, any interaction that I had with a woman in the scene that went the least bit awkwardly got amplified to the point where I no longer felt comfortable expressing any romantic or sexual interest whatsoever.
The impact of those years did a real number on my sexual confidence for long after I severed ties with the with the activist scene. But a lot has changed since then and I've had a lot of time to process everything that I experienced. After breaking up with my ex-girlfriend, with whom I shared a vibrant and adventurous sex life, being surrounded by many women who viewed me with constant suspicion made me feel like there was something about my unconventional desires that posed an inherent threat to their safety. It was easier to just not express those desires at all than to risk putting women in harm's way and to face social ostracism as a result.
It's only been through the wisdom of hindsight that I've been able to recognize that there's nothing violent or predatory about my desires. The realization that I'm "just a bit kinky" and that my sexual desires exist within a broader context of unorthodox but perfectly valid sexual practises that people regularly engage in safely and without coercion has been incredibly validating for me. And after some of the extreme practises that I've seen and heard about on FetLife, I can now see how comparatively tame my own desires really are. In that sense, joining FetLife served its purpose. I now know for a fact that 24/7 dynamics like Master/Slave, Daddy/Babygirl and Total Power Exchange don't appeal to me at all. Neither do particularly aggressive practises like CNC and Degradation/Humiliation.
But the FetLife 'Explore' tab has a way of amplifying the most extreme practises and sidelining the ones that don't exhibit the same shock factor. So constantly being inundated with kink practises that don't appeal to me whatsoever has a way of generating a lot of "mental noise" that started to distract me from what I want to get out of my exploration of my own exploration of kink. After disabling my Fet account recently for the second time, this mental fog is once again starting to lift. My kind of kink is the kind of kink that holds mutual pleasure and the voluntary sharing of power as its highest priority. It values spontaneity over structure, instinct over performance and transitoriness over permanence -- all within a bounded space and time that exists for as long as we want it to and dissolves when it's no longer needed.
My tastes tend toward primal play, switching, energy play, and a grounded sensual hedonism that expands its understanding of Pleasure to include not just physical and sensory pleasures, but also emotional, intellectual, psychological and even spiritual pleasures. I have my doubts that I'll find what I'm looking for on The Cage, but I'm here to share my thoughts and engage in discussion with others. And who knows -- maybe there's an outside chance that this place will surprise me!