Happy New Year! It’s 2026, and with a fresh calendar comes a fresh opportunity to reflect, reset, and grow. New Year’s resolutions don’t have to be about productivity or perfection — they can also be about how we show up in our relationships, how we treat others, and how we understand ourselves.
If you’re someone who’s curious, imaginative, or interested in kink and alternative relationship dynamics, here are a few kink-positive New Year’s resolutions worth considering.
1. Resolve to Be More Openand Communicative
Being open-minded doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. It means listening without judgment.
People experience desire, curiosity, and connection in wildly different ways. When we approach those differences with curiosity instead of disgust or fear, we create safer spaces for honesty. Open-mindedness allows conversations to happen before misunderstandings turn into shame or silence.
You don’t have to like everything you hear — but giving ideas room to be expressed matters.
2. Make Consent Non-Negotiable
Consent isn’t just a checkbox. It’s an ongoing conversation.
Resolving to always seek clear, enthusiastic consent means respecting that people can change their minds, feel unsure, or say no without needing to justify themselves. Consent builds trust, and trust is what makes any relationship — kinky or not — feel safe and mutual.
A good rule for 2026: if it’s not a clear yes, it’s a no — and that’s okay.
3. Try New Things (Thoughtfully)
Growth doesn’t happen in our comfort zones.
Trying something new doesn’t mean pushing past your limits; it means being willing to explore curiosity safely and intentionally. Sometimes you discover something you love. Sometimes you learn something isn’t for you. Both outcomes are valuable.
You can’t know what resonates with you until imagination meets reality — and learning what you don’t like is just as important as learning what you do.
4. Respect Your Boundaries — Without Apology
Your boundaries are not obstacles. They’re information.
One of the most important resolutions you can make is to stop forcing yourself to be comfortable with things that genuinely aren’t right for you. Saying “this isn’t for me” doesn’t make you boring, close-minded, or difficult. It makes you honest.
Respecting your own boundaries teaches others how to respect others, too.
5. Let Go of Resentment
People are allowed to want different things.
In kink, as in life, frustration often comes from unmet expectations. Let 2026 be the year you stop resenting others for liking what you don’t — or for not liking what you do. Difference doesn’t mean rejection; it just means diversity.
The goal isn’t sameness. The goal is understanding.
Here’s to 2026
May this year bring better communication, stronger consent, kinder curiosity, and deeper self-knowledge. May you learn what excites you, what grounds you, and what you can happily leave behind.
Happy New Year — and here’s to growing, exploring, and respecting ourselves and each other.
Human desire is astonishingly diverse. What excites one person may do absolutely nothing for another, and that difference is not a flaw—it’s simply part of being human. We rarely agree on what is “sexy,” and that disagreement is not only inevitable, but healthy.
There are entire worlds of attraction that I personally don’t understand. Some people find excitement through words on a screen, through imagination alone, crafting entire experiences out of text and suggestion. While it doesn’t resonate with me, it clearly resonates deeply with others.
There are also interests that make me uncomfortable, not because they are unfamiliar, but because they collide with my personal boundaries or values. It’s important to say this plainly: desire is only acceptable when it is consensual, ethical, and confined to adults. Outside of that, it stops being a preference and becomes harm. However –between two adults– many people engage in adult baby play, daddy/daughter play, or Little play. While these aren’t things I’m personally comfortable with, I don’t judge what they enjoy.
And, I recognize that I enjoy things others have no interest in whatsoever. I’m drawn to intensity, to structured fantasies, to the idea of imagination becoming real through shared trust and play. I love the creativity of roleplay—the way it allows people to step outside themselves and explore safely.
The truth is simple: you don’t have to like what I like, and I don’t have to like what you like.
Of course, our reactions aren’t always fixed. Sometimes something that initially feels strange—or even off-putting—changes once it’s understood or experienced in a safe, respectful way. I’ve seen how trying something new can surprise a person, especially when it offers relief from anxiety or allows them to inhabit a role that feels easier than simply being themselves.
There are limits. Some ideas simply never become comfortable, no matter how much time passes. Recognizing that boundary is just as important as exploring new ones. When that happens, it may mean accepting that no single relationship can fulfill every desire—and that’s not a failure.
For me, this realization made room for a broader understanding of relationships. Different people can meet different needs, whether emotional, intellectual, or physical, as long as honesty and consent guide those connections. Not everyone is equipped for that kind of emotional openness, and that’s okay too. For those who can handle it, I think polyamory is a good way to deal with people you love not necessarily sharing all of your kinks.
I always tell people to take some time with each idea. Never refuse anything outright. Let it marinade in your imagination for a while, and then tell your partner what you think. Sometimes you cozy up to an idea when you let it hang out in your head. Other times, you don’t. But you should never say no before giving the idea time to percolate. When people do this, it reminds me of a child being offered a new food and saying: “No, I hate it!” (Before even trying it.) Don’t be a child saying no to watermelon.
Most of the time, it won’t hurt you to try something new.
Trying something doesn’t mean it will define you forever. Sometimes a desire dissolves once it’s explored. Other times, it deepens. There’s no way to know which until experience replaces imagination. Wanting something intensely doesn’t guarantee it will last, and discovering you don’t enjoy something can be just as valuable as discovering that you do.
What matters most is refusing resentment—toward yourself or others. People are allowed to like what they like, and they’re allowed not to like what they don’t. Difference doesn’t make us incompatible by default; it makes the world more interesting.
If we were all the same, desire would be dull, relationships would be simple in the worst way, and curiosity would disappear. Variety is not the problem. The lack of understanding is.
I thought it might be fun to date a little (since I’m free).
I’d like to talk about how that’s been going:
Women: You are doing great. Plenty of romance. All the dates have been fun and creative. It has been easy to trust my female dates, and they have been up-front about what they wanted. Thank you ladies for being sweet, kind, and compassionate.
Men: What happened to you in the 15 years I was married?
Straight men keep saying things to me like:
“Dating is impossible now. You have to worry about everything you say or do, because women will claim you raped them.”
Guys, when you say this, it is telling people that you have raped somebody. If you are a man who asks for -and gets- consent, then you will never have any reason to fear being “accused” of rape.
Or I hear:
“Women are just after money.”
I suppose this was true in the 1950’s when most jobs were not open to women, and women couldn’t have bank account or credit cards. At that time, women were horribly oppressed and couldn’t make money of their own.
That’s not true anymore. Every woman I know would rather make their own money than have someone accuse them of being a “gold digger.” They are absolutely not after men for money. They literally just want someone to do stuff with.
This break from reality seems to have been done intentionally via propaganda from men like Andrew Tate. Let’s all be honest: Andrew Tate is gay. I have never seen anyone want to suck a dick as bad as Andrew Tate wants to suck a dick. But, he’s a coward so he plays “A Straight Guy” and talks about how he hates women.
If you hate women, just go fuck dudes. No one will stop you. It’s still legal in the blue states. (That joke may be too old for some of you, but that’s okay.)
I beg you -all men- if you want to be with men then just go do that. Don’t make a career of shit-talking women because you’re too afraid to be out and proud.
Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t been all bad. I went out to a Halloween-themed acrobatic show and dance party with a guy who was fairly nice. He wasn’t a good fit for me personally, but he was polite and seemed nice.
And I still have the boyfriends who have been hanging around forever, so I suppose I don’t really need to pick up more men when I already have a few that are nice and kind.The boyfriends prove that there are at least a few men who haven’t bought into the anti-women propaganda.
However, so many are falling for anti-women hate speech and saying ridiculous things like:
“Women said they would choose a bear so they hate men!”
How could anyone intentionally misunderstand something so simple. The “bear thought experiment” was simply a metaphor to explain what it’s like to be a woman. Bears rarely attack women. Men attack women every day. The example of a bear was used because men said they were afraid of bears, so the goal was to point out:
“Yes, you are afraid of bears. However, we want you to know that men are actually more dangerous to women than bears. Think about what that is like for us.”
Because a man’s biggest fear going on a date is that the woman will be fat. And a women’s fear is that she will be raped and murdered. These experiences are very different.
Women were just trying to explain that, and so many of you didn’t listen.
Men, I don’t know what to tell you. Women are making their own money, joining groups and clubs, and spending nights cuddled up watching movies with their friends. They’re making lives centered around themselves, and it’s not to spite men. It’s because of men. It’s because men are so openly hostile that they’d rather hang with their girls.
They’re not bitter. There is no “female loneliness epidemic.” They don’t care if you have money or what you do for work. Most of them don’t even care how tall you are. All your fears are coming from other men, not from women.
All women are asking for is to be treated like people. And to be clear: They deserve that.
Either way, this bisexual girl is sticking to women for now. I like boobs. I like pussy. And most of all, I like being treated like a person rather than an enemy in some boring culture war. I’m an extremely capable person who has survived things that most people don’t survive. However, that doesn’t mean I want to keep surviving crappy stuff. I’d much rather be happy and have fun, and I only want to do that with people who see me as an equal.
Let’s talk about Scene Negotiation for kinky people. It’s really important to talk carefully through scenes before you play them out if you are planning to do something involving kink. However, this same idea can be very helpful for vanilla folks as well. Healthy communication is a positive addition to any lifestyle.
So first, why do we find it so hard to talk about sex? Not all of us came from oppressive households where the topic was taboo. Some of us came from open households where our parents discussed the topic with us, right? And yet, everyone struggles at first to communicate their needs to their partner.
There is a lot going on there of course, and we could do an entire workshop on the topic of sexual repression in society. Suffice to say, even when it is a topic that you feel safe discussing at home, you are often shamed for bringing it up in public. It’s completely okay to discuss your back injury at work, but not your struggle with impotence (even though they are both medical problems). It’s fine to talk about being in a community play, but not okay to talk about wanting to roll play being kidnapped by aliens with your partner (even though both are practicing acting skills).
It is this line that we as a society have drawn which has taught us that sex is private. You shouldn’t talk about it. You should keep it to yourself. You should be embarrassed.
I am not saying that I advocate talking to your co-workers about sexual fantasies. Obviously that would make for a really strange environment that not everyone would be comfortable with. I’m not sure if changing the world is required. However, since we all grew up in the world, we do need to learn to change ourselves so that we can lower that taboo against talking about sex when we are with our partners. It may be uncomfortable at first, but like everything else, practice makes perfect!
Let’s start by realizing an important truth: No one can read our minds.
That means that no one can know what we want until we tell them. Oftentimes we run into the problem of desperately wanting our partner to do or say something that would make us happy, but they don’t know because they can’t read our minds. And sometimes, we can feel resentful that they don’t do the things we want, even though we haven’t told them what they are. This is understandable, but it is also unfair. That’s why it’s important in a healthy relationship to learn to understand your own needs, and then to learn to communicate them to the person you are with.
Figuring Out What You Want
The first step is to figure out what matters to you. This is a big step, because we are all individuals and so we all have different ideas about what is important. In order to effectively communicate with others, you must first look inside yourself and determine where your limits are. That way, you will be able to let other people know. There are several key things that you should determine for yourself when it comes to sex.
1. Do you wish to be monogamous?
This is a question that requires a lot of thought. If you want to be able to have sex with other people, then you also have to be comfortable with your partner having sex with other people. That can be difficult for some people, and so if you think you are curious about polyamory, it’s important to be honest with yourself and your partner and make sure you are not looking for an excuse to “cheat,” but instead have a legitimate interest in both of you perusing loving relationships outside your own.
Good questions to ask yourself:
* How would I feel if my partner went out on a date and I was at home alone?
* How would I feel if my partner developed feelings for another person?
* How would I feel if my partner decided another relationship was more valuable to him or her, and therefore moved me from the primary position to a secondary position in their life?
* What rules would have to be in place to ensure good communication ?
Note: It is okay if you decide to be monogamous. It doesn’t mean that you are not open-minded and interested in sex. Just make sure that you are making a conscious choice to be monogamous or polyamorous. Don’t let yourself be pushed or coerced into anything that you are not comfortable with.
2. What is your comfort level when it comes to STDs?
Some of you may have grown up before this was a big concern, so let me start by telling you that HIV is a big deal, more aggressive strains of Herpes are going around, and there is also an untreatable strain of Chlamydia that has developed. This means the days of just taking a pill if you get something are over, and STDs are a real concern.
Personally, I prefer to exchange STD tests with potential partners prior to having sex with them. This is not a guarantee of safety since some things can take time to show up on a test. However, it is an added layer of safety that helps me to feel more comfortable with new partners.
Now, this is not always possible for me. My partner and I occasionally attend orgies. In those situations, I have to realize that I am taking a risk, and that there may be terrible consequences. We have decided in our relationship that we are okay with occasionally taking this risk if we are attending a sex party together, and we do try to minimize our risk by using condoms. It is still dangerous because many STDs can be spread by skin-to-skin contact. However, we don’t engage in orgies very often, and we feel that an occasional risk is acceptable for the same reason that we are willing to drive cars and fly in airplanes. Sometimes risk is required in order to have fun, and each person must decide for themselves what they consider to be acceptable risks.
Good questions to ask yourself:
* Have I considered all the possible consequences?
* Have I decided what risk level is acceptable to me?
* Have I decided on a plan to make sure that my risk level is met?
3. What kind of sex do I want to have?
Some people are very uncomfortable with oral sex. I have found that comfortable levels actually vary widely about a lot of things. In the kink community, we like to talk about “hard limits” and “soft limits.” So for example, you might be completely uncomfortable with the idea of anal sex, but only a little uncomfortable with oral sex. Hard limits are the things that you will communicate to your partner as unbreakable. You refuse to consider doing those things, and you do not want to be asked or have them try to coerce you into them. Soft limits are the things that you may be okay with sometimes, such as a blowjob on Valentine’s Day.
Good questions to ask yourself:
* What you are hard limits?
* What are your soft limits?
* What are things you are unsure about?
4. What are your fantasies?
Most people have things that they fantasize about, but that they have never done before. Or, perhaps they have tried them before with an ex, but don’t know how to broach the subject with their partner. Fantasies are a healthy part of life, and there is nothing wrong with trying new things that you and your partner may enjoy.
However, please remember that sometimes you have a fantasy, but it might not be a good idea to actually do it. An example might be a gang bang. Maybe the fantasy excites you, but in reality you would be sore and unhappy, and your partner would be hurt. So be honest with yourself about which fantasies you actually want to play out, and which ones are just for fun. You do not have to act on every idea that goes through your head.
Questions to ask yourself:
Are you sure that you are comfortable with this?
Are you sure it is fair to ask your partner for this?
What are the things that could go wrong, and are you willing to accept responsibility for those things?
Summary
So, now that you have asked yourself some really important questions, you have a better idea of what you want and what you are comfortable with. Great! Knowing yourself is important and some people go their whole lives without ever looking inside themselves and exploring their dreams and desires. You are already ahead of the pack!
Remember that there are always different things that each person needs to consider, so take some time to reflect/meditate/thought diagram or whatever you do to make sure that you haven’t missed anything. For example, I excluded the complication of children and pregnancy because it isn’t relevant to me. My son is grown, and I am no longer able to have children. In addition, my husband has had a vasectomy, so I don’t have to worry about him getting any of his girlfriend’s pregnant. Therefore, this isn’t a concern in my universe. But your universe may be different. So make sure you haven’t missed anything before you move on to the next step, which is to communicate your desires.
Communication
In the kink community, we like to use scene negotiation forms, worksheets, and checklists. I generally make a pot of tea, and then we have tea while discussing the paperwork. This is because there is a lot to consider when you are about to have a kinky threesome with two of the participants gagged and a role play scenario playing out. Vanilla sex is less complicated. Because of this, you may not need paperwork in order to let your partner know what you need.
Things to keep in mind:
1. Use positive language.
Of course this applies to all communication, but it is particularly important when talking about sex, because it is a very sensitive topic for people.
Example of poor communication: “When my ex Mandy used to lick my asshole it was amazing and I want you to do it just like her.”
Why is this an example of poor communication?
Well, for starters, we’re referring to an ex by name, and that can make it more hurtful, as though you are comparing your partner to someone else. It is often less hurtful to say something like: “In the past, I have enjoyed X.”
Now, another way this is hurtful is that the person speaking is throwing the idea in their partner’s face. We shouldn’t do that when raising new ideas or fantasies. Instead we should try to bring up the idea in a more gentle way, such as “Have you ever given any thought to X?”
Finally, let’s remember that we need to give our partner room to say no if something isn’t okay with them. People can be uncomfortable with various things due to past trauma like rape, previous negative experience with the specific thing, and many other factors. If we introduce a new idea, we need to be willing to receive a “no,” and we need to leave room to hear it.
2. Set the right mood.
When there is paperwork, you need light. Hence I try to use my living room as the place to sit, with cozy warm drinks and comfortable furniture.
However, if you are not doing a kink scene negotiation, then you probably don’t need a handout to talk about it. If that is the case, then I recommend having conversations about sex in the dark, in bed. If possible, it helps to be physically touching in some way, although I can understand that when you feel the need to emotionally pull back, you may also feel the need to physically pull back. We can’t always control those involuntary things that are brain makes our body do. However, maintain physical contact if you can, because it helps. Touch is comforting.
I also recommend music, which is something I use. I don’t necessarily use relaxing music, because often I am trying to create a sexy mood and I personally don’t find relaxing music sexy. You may feel differently. It doesn’t matter what you select as long as it’s something that you and your partner both like. It fills in awkward pauses and provides a helpful distraction.
3. Bring all your love and acceptance.
It is wonderful if you can get some or even most of the things that you want from your partner. However, since people are all very different, you will probably never get every single thing you need from one person.
Therefore, you may ask for some things and get a no. Perhaps your partner doesn’t like role-play. Maybe they don’t feel comfortable with spanking. It could be that anal sex just isn’t their thing.
And when you run into a thing that you would like and you ask your partner, it can be easy to feel like you deserve this thing because you got up the courage to ask. This is natural, but it is also wrong. You need to overcome that feeling.
Yes, it takes courage to ask for things.
However, your partner still has a right to say no.
So when you are talking about things you want, remember that you won’t get all of them. Maybe you really want to go to a sex club and switch partners with another couple. But, maybe your partner is not comfortable having sex with strangers and needs to get to know someone first. Well, just because you want to go to a sex club and have sex with a stranger, doesn’t mean that you get to if you want to stay in the relationship. You both have to be okay with it.
When possible, try to find a compromise. In the example above, you wanted to swap partners at a sex club. However, your significant other didn’t feel comfortable with that because they won’t sleep with strangers. So, you can compromise by getting to know a couple first, and then taking then to a sex club and swapping partners. If you’re all into role-play you can even pretend you have never met once you get there.
Summary
The keys to remember are:
1. Get comfortable with the idea of talking about sex.
2. Figure out what you want first.
3. Use positive language, set up a cozy environment, and be prepared to hear “no.”
4. Never stop communicating with your partner, and re-negotiate your sexual interests at least once a year because tastes change over time.
Note: I am sure all of you wonderful people know this already, but I will remind you anyway. Please make sure that you take time to put yourself in your partner’s shoes and think about them before you talk to them.
And now there is only one thing left to say: Have Fun!
At the core of the community, I feel like there is an urge to push the envelope in many ways. Perhaps that is why we are often excluded from spaces. Others don’t like to be pushed out of their comfort zones the way we do.
With the rise of the Internet, we’ve been allowed more opportunities to feel “normal.” It’s easier to get enough of us in one place that we don’t have to feel like freaks. Venues like the CSPC, the Velvet Rope and Club Desire give us places to congregate. Websites like Fetlife.com and CollarMe give us online spaces to socialize. Younger kinksters might not realize how special this really is. However -as any elder kinster will tell you- having spaces where we can belong is very special.
A Horror Story That Really Happened
I knew I was kinky since I was a child, but I didn’t know that other people were like me until I saw a flier at an edgy clothing store called The Graffiti Shop. It invited those who got pleasure from pain to come enjoy an evening of community sharing tips and tricks and making friends. I was so excited to go!
The night of the event, I changed my outfit twice. I was too young to have a closet full of leather and vinyl, but I stole some of my mom’s lingerie and paired it with fishnets and heavy Goth makeup. I was certain that I would find a play-partner like I’d read about in Anne Rice’s the Taming of Sleeping Beauty. I’d have settled for someone who would let me play out some of the better brothel scenes from Santaram. (Never having met another kinky person -and growing up before the internet- I only had books to go on for ideas!)
When I arrived, I found a table full of people who looked very much like me. They were all dressed in some way to mark themselves as “freaks.” At the appointed time, someone got up to speak and I expected to be welcomed and given some sort of format for the event.
Instead, what I got was a Mormon preacher shouting at all of us for being disgusting hell-bound sinners.
I turned and ran out of the coffee shop in tears, and I cried all the way home. I’d been so hopeful; and suddenly I was so crushed. It was a trap!
Having spaces in society where we can go to feel normal is everything.
My entire life I have felt out-of-place and even outright shunned for who I am. This seems unfair for a multitude of reasons, but the most striking to me is the fact that we -as kinksters- are some of the most honest and brave people I know.
Avoidance Versus Growth
There are people who live in denial. If anything even slightly unpleasant comes up in conversation, they change the subject. My grandma was like this. I attribute it to her years as a politician. I could tell her about good things happening in my life, but the moment I mentioned a struggle I was facing she would change the subject. My ex-husband was also like this. He was often obviously upset about something, but he would refuse to tell me what. I would say that I could feel his anger and unkind feelings in my direction and I needed to know why so that we could deal with whatever was bothering him, but he would say that he couldn’t talk about it, or later, he would simple get up and leave the room. If I tried to follow he would slam the door in my face.
This is avoidance. It’s the opposite of growth in relationships, and in kink.
There is a clear parallel because -while not all scenes that you play are within a relationship and not all relationships involve kink scenes- in both cases you have to be brave and face The Scary Thing in order to have the best time.
For example: I once dated a guy who had a worship kink. I thought it was sort of amusing so I played along. I could tell it was based on his dad beating him up as a child and then leaving, and his mom only ever saying nasty and critical things to him. I could literally see him healing when I would worship him; feeling that perhaps he did have value after all.
The problem? Once he felt that he did have value, he left me. He’d grown out of the thing he’d asked me for, and so he mistakenly thought he’d grown out of me. Three months later he realized his mistake and was back, telling me how sorry he was and asking to try new kinks instead. We ended up dating for a long time, and I think the biggest reason why was that he was able to see his mistake -thinking he’d outgrown me rather than realizing he’d outgrown the fetish he’d asked me for- and self-correcting. He reacted wrong based on incorrect assumptions, but he realized he was wrong, and he was grown-up enough to apologize. (It was the 90’s, so he apologized with a dozen roses, a CD from one of my favorite bands, and a gift card to Hot Topic).
We worked through a lot of each other’s issues over the years. I think we were together off and on for about 14 years total. In that time, I opened up to him about fetishes I wanted to try and explained why, and he did the same. We both found that we could trust one another to push just a little bit more than what was comfortable. As we grew, we discovered that some fetishes were just part of who we were, while other fetishes stemmed from psychological trauma and would get old once they were played out enough.
For me, one of the core fetishes that never went away was humiliation. Not in the way someone else wants me to be humiliated, but in the ways I want to be humiliated. It stems from being transgender and being kind of a shitbag of a dude. (Only on an instinct level, which I’m careful to rise above. But, it’s still a core part of me.)
I basically just jump into the perspective of the person doing the humiliating; like watching from the outside. Why does it have to be me? Well, it doesn’t. I can do humiliating stuff to other girls. But, I usually feel bad about it after since I respect them as people. If it’s me being humiliated, then I can just put up a wall of cognitive dissonance and objectify myself for the purposes of the scene.
However, I grew out of other fetishes, such as exhibitionism. I can still enjoy it, but I don’t get off on it anymore the way I used to. It doesn’t have the power over me that it did when it was tied to unresolved psychological trauma.
Right now, the only fetish I have tied to trauma motivates me to abuse men. It doesn’t really matter how. If they want to be whipped and spanked, I can do that. If they want to be fucked in the ass, I can do that. If they want to be verbally degraded or forced to lick my boots or something, that’s fine, too. It doesn’t matter as long as I can degrade them. You would be shocked how many men are really, really into this.
The trauma behind that is obviously that my ex-husband was extremely abusive. He was an emotional cripple who refused to ever say what he wanted or needed, belittled me for asking for what I wanted and needed, and in general spent all his energy finding ways to blame me for the fact that he is a fuck up with brain damage. His instincts tell him that he is worthless, but he would not confront those feelings, so instead he tried to make me feel worthless because -I guess- misery loves company. He tried to tear me down whenever I exhibited a shred of self-love because he had none. He attacked me for having feelings because he was not brave enough to express his. He abused me for asking to be treated well because he couldn’t validate his feelings of self-loathing without taking them out on everyone around him.
To be fair, he has good reason to feel as he does. He’s ended up just like his alcoholic father who couldn’t hold a job and was abusive to his mother. His trauma and brain damage are causing him to play out this whole weird script from his childhood that I –as in The Actual Me Who I Am– have no part in.
I don’t fit in his story. You know why? Because I love myself. I love life. I love my friends and my whips and chains and the art on my walls. I am a happy person, so there is no place for the real me in the stories he is playing out, and that is why I had to step out of them (first by leaving, and then by insisting on a divorce).
I work through my issues with kink, but I also work through my trauma by writing. You are watching me grieve my marriage in real time as I blog. However, kink and writing aren’t my only tools. I also see a kink-friendly therapist, talk over things with my friends, and make time to do things that enrich my life. I’ve been to the volcano when it was erupting to see Madam Pele in action. I drive to the beach when I’m stressed. I hike, swim, and go to workshops to learn new things. A life has to be well-rounded.
The part of trauma that kink can heal is the part where you are exposing yourself to a trauma. You want to hurt like you hurt when you were traumatized, but in a situation where you have the control and what you say goes. Getting a do-over where you consent is a powerful tool. Over time, it can absolutely be part of your healing.
Psychologists call it exposure therapy, and it’s actually a recognized treatment for PTSD now. Those of us in the kink community have just been doing it all along.
However, I also recommend finding a therapist, doing fun things to remind yourself what joy feels like, spending time with friends, and taking time to feel awe and remember how small you are. And -if the way you decide to feel awe happens to be confronting Pele in action- stop by and see me on your way to the volcano.
Remember: Avoidance is the opposite of growth and healing.
The human brain is a fascinating thing. When you really think about it, it’s terrifying that your consciousness resides in a lump of salty fat that only weighs about three pounds. The fat is tickled by electricity, and we call it thought. Protein chains form, and we call them memories. Yet, all you really are is a salty little fat ball.
My first degree was in Psychology. That was in the 90’s when we still taught that personal responsibility was the cure for addiction. My professors also felt like Prozac was a magic pill, and that it truly healed people. While I enjoyed the opportunity to navel-gaze and unravel the mysteries of my soul, I’m pretty convinced that the LSD I dropped on the weekends had more power to fix me than anything I learned from the field of Psychology in the 90’s.
I kept up on all the research, even though I veered off the therapist path and into communications for my second degree. Your local library probably has access to Lexus Nexus, meaning that you curious folks can simply get a library card and have access to all the scientific research you want. Or, if you’re more for the pre-digested content, science journals are available for free at the library, too.
The most interesting research related to who and what we are has not come from Psychology. Rather, it has come from the fields of biology and genetics.
As a teen, I tried all the things. However, I didn’t get addicted to anything. I picked up and set down addictions with an ease that made others hate me. To me, they weren’t addictive. Quitting smoking, meth, or anything else required nothing more than my desire to do so. Many people whom I loved dearly resent me to this very day for not being subject to the power of addiction.
Yet, my Psychology classes said addiction was a disease that could be overcome with willpower; the same for all people. I knew in my gut that this was wrong, and that’s why I never bothered to become a therapist. I didn’t believe I could talk people out of addiction. I’d seen the absolute power it held over others, and that no amount of will power could help them.
When we finally sequenced the human genome, I was vindicated. Sure enough, there were a variety of genetic markers that contributed to addition. After having my genome sequenced in South Korea (where your genetic blueprint stays private and cannot be sold) I was unsurprised to find that I have none of the markers for addiction.
However, it’s more complex than that, and this is where biology comes in. Full disclosure: I have actually been trying to get over microbiology since I was a kid. I took my first microbiology class when I was 17 at Paradise Valley Community College. I was avoiding chemistry, which I didn’t develop a taste for until my 20’s. I thought it would be an easy class. It was easy, but it was also the stuff of nightmares. In the words of John Oliver: “The human body is a carnival of horrors -and frankly- I’m ashamed to have one.”
Glands secrete things. Chemicals that go into your bloodstream attach to receptors in your brain and other parts of your anatomy. Hundreds of types of microscopic life lives within you, in symbiotic relationships and adversarial relationships. Herpes crawls into your nerves and lives there until you die. The bacteria from 100 dirty travelers who scratched their sweaty balls resides on the bar on the subway that you’re supposed to hold to keep from toppling into the people near you. When you kiss, bacteria eating your partners teeth hops onto your teeth and begins to feast. Worst of all, microplastics -being so foreign that your body cannot process them- accumulate in your brain, your glands, your veins, and all other parts of you, gumming up the works and making your immune system go haywire.
Your body is gross, (at a microscopic level). What is really neat is, each of us is more different than fingerprints. We react differently to medications, environments, and every other stimulus. Each of us is our very own chemical cocktail. And, while your entire frontal lobe might be overrun with dopamine receptors causing you frustrating lapses in organizational thought, I lack the receptors for opioids and those suckers do literally nothing to me. This is good when fending off heroin addiction, but a real shame when coming out of surgery and having nothing buy Tylenol to dull the pain.
As humans, we are all so different that it’s actually shocking to me that we react similarly to anything at all.
Where I am going with all of this?
Well, science has yet to uncover what makes someone kinky, but I’m convinced that there must be something biological that explains it.
A Few Examples
• I figured out how to masturbate when I was five years old. I didn’t know a thing about sex yet, but I didn’t have to. I knew all about pain, and that is what turned me on. At first, it was only my own pain, but in my 20’s when I worked as a Dominatrix, I began to appreciate helping other people enjoy pain. However, it has to be wired into us pretty deep. I didn’t feel attracted to another person until I hit puberty. I spent 10 years masturbating to pain before I ever even felt the desire to have sex.
• Some people are drawn to kink. When they find it, it’s exciting and new, but underneath the exciting and new there is something else. Familiarity. Comfort. A feeling of finding one’s place in the world that can only come from getting to know your soul. It’s as instinctive as knowing that you’re gay, and as easy to be sure of as your own gender.
• Often kinky people try to have vanilla relationships at some point in their lives. They do this for various reasons, but that’s not what concerns me. The thing I find interesting is that even in vanilla relationships, us kinksters -myself included- tend to overlay kinky scenarios onto our sex lives so that we can still derive some kind of enjoyment from sex.
We Are Bias
I was once in a relationship with a guy who was demisexual, and really couldn’t stomach the idea of kink. I loved him very much, and going into the relationship I thought I’d “talk him into it over time.” Maybe some of you have done the same. It’s called the False Consensus Effect. Basically, you assume that because you are some type of way, others must be that way, too. You see this all the time with sexual orientation. Bisexual people always assume that everyone is at least a little bit bisexual, and hound their straight friends looking for some sign of same-sex attraction. Meanwhile, straight people often try at some point in their lives to nurture a same-sex attraction; like a woman who is “done with men” but still wants to have sex and be close to people. And yet, if you’re straight, you’re straight.
This absolutely goes for gender as well. I’m transgender, so for a long time I refused to believe that anyone was actually cis. I figured everyone had tendencies toward other genders from the one they were assigned, but they just felt unable to express those feelings due to societal pressure. Wrapping my brain around the fact that cis people exist was wild. I’m not healthy enough to transition, but I’ll always be a boy anyway.
We actually don’t have the right to take credit for most of who we are. It’s all pre-loaded. We get a gender, a neurotype, specific genes, and so much more before we’re even born. The more I study neuroscience, chemistry, biology, and genetics, the more I realize that we take a lot of credit we don’t deserve when we are proud of who we are. There is so little that we get to choose, and so much that is assigned to us.
I’m positive that kink is one of those things. I know people openly shame us for our behavior and see us as deviants. I know we’re basically looked down on by every vanilla person on Earth. But then, so are gay people and it’s not a choice for them, either.
I know in my soul that this is who I am, and that nothing in my environment or my upbringing could have changed me.
My ex-husband was a very kind man when I met him. Sometimes I think it was an act to trap me in marriage. Sometimes I think he changed over time. I’ll never know for-sure because he lies better than anyone I have ever met.
When we were dating, he flirted with me at parties.
This is important because when a man is clearly into a woman, other women notice. My ex-husband and I attracted many people who wanted to be part of our relationship; even if only for a moment. This was possible because he treated me with kindness and respect, and he worked hard to be charming. We had threesomes, got invited to play parties, and generally had a really good time.
When we got married, he began to disrespect me.
It started with ignoring me in favor of flirting with other women online. Then, I threw a kinky mixer at our house in hopes of getting him to behave like he did when we were dating. Instead of flirting with me, he spent the entire night flirting with some girl he just met.
Obviously, the result was that no one had any sex that night.
The girl didn’t mind being flirted with, but she had no interest in a man who would disrespect his wife. The way to turn a woman all the way off is to disrespect other women in front of her. You’re basically saying: “I’m only flirting because you’re new. If you were mine, I’d treat you like I’m treating my wife right now.”
Then he had the nerve to complain that:
• I no longer felt like topping him (because he was disrespectful to me). • No women wanted to play with us (because he was disrespectful to me). • We didn’t get invited to parties (because he was disrespectful to me).
I gently tried to explain the situation. I tried talking to him first, but he acted very haughty and refused to admit to having done anything wrong. I tried writing him a letter, but he refused to discuss it. I tried writing a blog post about it, but he wouldn’t read my blog.
I continued to try to communicate, explaining that when he ignored me to flirt with other women online or when he wouldn’t even acknowledge me at a party, it made me feel bad. As a Domme, I do all the work. I set up the scenes, I create the headspace, and I make the magic happen while he sits there tied up or in a submissive position. I explained that I simply could not get into the headspace to do that much work when he refused to treat me with respect.
For a while, I thought it had to do with the Madonna-Whore Complex. Psychologists often say that men cheat because they don’t want to do “dirty” things with their wives (who they wish to see as pure). The theory is that there are some things a man will only do with a stranger.
When I thought that was the case, I tried to get him into role play. I thought that if we were different people, then we could overcome the problem. I suggested we “meet” at a bar, and that he “sneak me into his house” while “his wife was asleep.”
He refused to discuss it, saying that he would never consider doing any kind of role play. He also said we could not talk about it.
I tried writing love letters with lots of sex in them. I tired sending him porn. I tired all kinds of things to communicate. And let it be said that he did “act nice” sometimes. Though -to be honest- the strain in his voice and movements was so obvious that I couldn’t reconcile it with him saying things like “you look nice.” It was clear he was only doing it because I told him to be kind, not because of any genuine feeling.
In spite of this, I convinced people to spent time with him. I outright asked friends to sleep with him. I got him play dates. I continued to try to act the way I did when we were dating, while he continued to find new ways to be horrible.
For a while he would point out other women to say they were attractive, but never anyone that looked like me. Only Asian women. I am mostly Polynesian and Swedish. I can’t change my genes. It’s not as though I could have tried to look more like the women he pointed out. I’ll never be Asian. So, what it amounted to was really just him finding another way to put me down and make me feel bad, and then still expect me to want to top him in bed.
So, what do you do when a partner changes? When they will no longer do the things they did before?
Well, we were polyamorous, so I tried to just date other people and be his friend. I have some long-standing relationships that I enjoy with people around the world, so I put energy into them. I flew to Las Vegas to give a talk on kink and sell my romance novels. I worked on my blog and things that were important to me.
Yet, I never gave up on him. I kept thinking that he was just going through some things and that we’d be able to sort it out when he had a little more emotional maturity. I waited, and we had kinky sex that wasn’t a power exchange. Just little things. I’d choke him. He’d fist me. Whatever. It wasn’t bad sex, and I liked him as a friend and companion. I thought that was enough, I guess. But all along, I missed when he flirted with me and treated me with such care and attention that unicorns flocked to us and we got invited to every party. We had that energy that everyone wants, and I thought we’d get it back if I kept trying.
There were moments when we did. He bought MDMA from someone on his ship, and took it. I don’t do that shit, but I was happy to have him being flirty and sexy again for once, so we played out a fun scene with me as the Domme. It was a great night.
Once a sex friend came to visit and he flirted with me because she was there, and that made me feel sexy enough that I did a scene with both of them. It was her first time trying out the Domme role because we duel-topped him, and she had a blast. I did, too.
Any time he flirted with me and treated me like he had when we were dating, I was able to get into the headspace to be a Domme. But it wasn’t often enough to make me happy, and I tired to communicate this in every way I could think of. I started out kind and patient, but after ten years I started to get snippy and even angry. I couldn’t understand how he still hadn’t grown up yet, and why he was still behaving like a spoiled child who thought he could treat me like dirt and then expect to be spoiled like a good sub.
Some of my friends think his actual personality changed from a series of brain injuries that he had in 2016, 2017, and 2023. Some of my friends think it’s because he was raised by alcoholic failures who were abusive to each other but stayed married, so he simply had a mindset that wives are supposed to be treated like shit (because it’s what his father did to his mother). Some of my friends think straight men simply can’t handle serious relationships or talking about their feelings.
I don’t really know what is true; only how much it hurt.
I do know that if you find yourself in a situation where your partner changes and stops wanting to do the things you need, leave sooner rather than later. I shouldn’t have wasted all those years on him. He was never worth the effort. I spent a fortune on gifts for him. I spent so much time trying to help him to be better as a human, and to teach him kindness and love. I wasted years of my life on a man who -I can see now- never had any value at all. I truly think he only pretended to care about me when we were dating.
For those who feel unsure in their relationships, there were things that I now understand were warning signs:
• I said it made me feel bad when he flirted with other women while I was there, and he kept doing it after I said it hurt me.
• I explained to him that his poor treatment of me was the reason that unicorns no longer wanted to sleep with us, and that it was the reason I no longer felt into being his Domme. He didn’t make any genuine effort to treat me more respectfully in front of people or in private.
• I would tell him exactly what I wanted and even explain why, and he seemed to always do the exact opposite (it felt like out of spite, though at first I made excuses for him in my head, and then later I thought maybe he was just dumb).
• I always dressed up and wore kimono and makeup around the house because those things give me confidence. He whined that it made him uncomfortable and kept asking me to just buy some pajamas like a normal person and stop “trying so hard.” Then when I did as he asked (after two years of protesting it) he told his friends that I laid around in pajamas and stopped even trying to be attractive.
• He did little things to undermine my confidence and make me feel bad, like only saying women of different races were attractive, but never a woman that looked like me.
• When I tried to talk to him about anything at all, he responded with anger.
People can see this list and say: “Well clearly he’s a loser! Why did you stay? That’s on you!” But the truth is, I just kept thinking he would grow into himself and see that I wasn’t his enemy eventually. Like, we started out as a team, you know? And then after he trapped me in marriage, he began to treat me as the enemy.
I thought: At some point he is going to wake up and see that I am on his side. He’ll want to be a team again.
I had hope. That’s really my main problem. Some people suffer from depression, but I have the opposite problem. I have an excessive amount of Serotonin and Dopamine. I am a cheerful person. In fact, my favorite thing to do in public is try to find one thing to compliment about each person I pass. I’m so happy that it often annoys the crap out of people, and I can’t really tone it down.
People think it must be awesome to be naturally cheerful but it’s not. Always seeing the best in people means being screwed over and disappointed a lot. Having high expectations for the world means being let down. Thinking you can love people hard enough that they will eventually be better never actually works (in spite of what my brain tells me). You can’t make people better by seeing the best in them and trying to build them up. My ex-husband never got any better as a person. In fact, the more I asked him to be better, the worse he treated me. (You might say, the more he failed, the more he failed.)
I’m not saying you should give up right away if someone used to do things you loved and now, they won’t.
Try sending each other porn, writing love letters, talking it out, and other communication first.
Many times, communication can fix things.
However, I’ve learned now that the main sign that you need to walk away is actually very simple: If you try to communicate with them and they respond with anger, you need to leave.
Every time I tried to talk to him to solve any issues, he would gaslight me by saying he was not doing the things that he was doing. Then, he would admit that fine, he was doing those things, but it was actually fine and my feelings weren’t valid. Then he would say fine, maybe I had a right to be mad, but my bringing it up hurt him so we were even. (Men being hurt by you saying they hurt you.) And so on.
It was textbook abuse, but I am hopeful and loving and it makes me a fool. Don’t be like me. Get out the first time they get angry at you for raising an issue and asking to discuss it.
There’s only one holiday where strangers come up to us; be they young or old, beautiful or ugly, Goth or brightly colored, and all are accepted.
I was a Goth kid from way back, and people have heckled me and spit at me for it. I really couldn’t help being drawn to the darker aesthetic, but so often it seemed that others couldn’t help being cruel because of that.
On Halloween, instead of going outside and having people be rude and derisive, I could wear the same thing I wore every day of the year and have people cheerfully remark: “Nice costume!”
Another reason I love Halloween is that it’s for everyone. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and so many other holidays are seen as being “for families.” If you sit down to a meal with anyone but blood relations you have to call it something sad like “Friendsgiving,” because it can’t be real Thanksgiving unless you’re surrounded by relatives.
Many people -myself included- grew up without close family. That meant a lot of holidays being pitied by others because I was “missing out.” I hated the way happy families looked down on everyone else at the holidays.
However, Halloween offers all kinds of spooky diversions for people that have nothing to do with family. There are spooky performances, haunted houses, Goth dance nights, and even Fall festivals with hay rides and pumpkin carving, all without need of a family.
In recent years, Christians have used made-up stories and rumors about poisoned candy to take trick-or-treating away from us. A fearful and cowardly bunch, they are too afraid of their neighbors to allow trick-or-treating outside of an environment where they can run anyone they don’t like off. More is the pity, I say.
Despite the miserable fear-mongers and their attempt to ruin the good things of the world, Halloween persists. Even better, the magic is spreading. It was once only an American holiday, but it caught on fast. Now, countries around the world have begun to pick up the torch and embrace the spooky.
May Halloween live long all over the world. There is no better holiday.
I want to take a moment to talk about some of the most magical people in the polyamorous community. They are called Unicorns.
Unicorns are people (most often women) who enjoy dating couples.
An unfortunate thing I often see in the Polyamorous culture is unhappy couples trying to hunt for a unicorn because they think it will fix their marriage.
Remember: No one wants to date an unhappy couple. Unicorns are attracted to love and joy, and if your marriage isn’t loving and joyful, they won’t want to be part of it.
Even if you have a happy marriage, it’s important to remember that the unicorn may not want to do every single thing together with both of you. Many couples fall into the trap of expecting a unicorn to like each of them equally and only want to do things with both of them together. That’s weird. It’s not natural or normal to expect someone to feel exactly the same about both of you and to always want to be with you together.
Let’s step back for a moment and examine what polyamory actually is.
Polyamory is about a lot of things, but the biggest thing you need to practice is being self-aware and managing jealousy well. You will feel jealous when your partner is with someone else, and moreso if they are with someone else without you. That said, you feeling jealous doesn’t automatically mean you should get everything you want. It also doesn’t mean that what your partner is doing is wrong.
When I was married, my husband would get extremely nosey about anyone I was talking to and everything I said. When I tried to go places with anyone other than him, he would invite himself along. In my experience, men are worse at managing jealousy because they’ve been taught that the only feeling they are allowed to have is anger. Anger is probably the least productive emotion and it only causes conflict, so men who want to practice polyamory need to spend a lot of time working on themselves and learning a few important lessons:
• If anger is your default emotion, then you need to fix that. Anger only causes conflict, and it is the least productive of all the emotions.
• Women are people. They each have their own wants and desires. You can’t make assumptions about what they feel or want based on stereotypes that you learned in elementary school or from other ignorant men. Just let her talk and listen to what she says. It’s not that hard.
• You need to learn to recognize when you are feeling jealous. Then, examine why you feel that way. Are those feelings fair? You want to date other people, so your partner should be able to do the same things as you. Sometimes that means spending time with someone with you. Sometimes that means spending time with someone without you. Either way, it is your responsibility to manage your jealousy, not your partner’s responsibility.
Compresion is the term we use to mean that you are happy that someone else is happy. This is the feeling you want to try to cultivate. If someone wants to spend time with your partner without you, it’s important to focus on being glad that your partner is desired, and happy for them that they are having fun. If you can’t do that, then you are not polyamorous. You shouldn’t be dating unicorns or anyone else.
Here’s something you can think about:
A unicorn is coming into a relationship where he or she doesn’t know any of your inside jokes, and where they don’t have any history with either of you. This can feel lonely. Instead of focusing on yourself or your partner, try to spend time focusing on how the unicorn feels, and try to help them feel comfortable.
Unicorns are special people, and they deserve respect and kindness. So, don’t hunt a unicorn because you’re unhappy and you think it will fix your marriage. It won’t. Adding another person to an unhappy situation will just multiple the unhappiness. Instead, fix your issues on your own, become happy and loving, and then watch the unicorns come to you.
My therapist a few years ago said something about me being Autistic, assuming that I had already been diagnosed. I had always thought of Autism as kids who scream and are impossible to control, so I was immediately offended. I told him he was full of shit and hung up on him. Thank you to Covid-19 for ensuring that I didn’t have to angrily drive away since therapy was virtual at that time.
I started reading about Autism and joining groups for Autistic adults. The more research I did, the more I began to understand myself, and to see that my therapist was right. Don’t worry; I called him to apologize. It was still awkward after that so I see someone else now, but at least he got the satisfaction of me admitting he was right.
The point is: Knowing I was Autistic helped me see why the kink community appealed to me. I hate surprises or not knowing what is going to happen next. Being a Domme and negotiating scenes in advance took all the scary things out of sex. It made it much more palatable for me.
I also realized that I’ve always done something called “masking,” though I called it my “chameleon response.”
Basically, I mirror whatever energy someone else puts out. I mirror their speech patterns and even their mannerisms. FYI: Being someone who masks heavily is not great around people who hate themselves or people who are assholes. I have a natural resistance to negativity due to having an overabundance of Serotonin and Dopamine in my brain, but a miserable enough person can wear me down eventually until I mirror them.
People can’t always tell I’m happy because I don’t do facial expressions really well. But, all you have to do is listen to me talk.
I also see the best in people, find the good in shit situations, and generally view the world as a great place to be.
This is not always good. For example, my ex-husband had a serious brain injury while out drinking in Seoul in 2016. He became meaner and more dependent on alcohol, but I didn’t really notice because I only saw the good things in him. Later, he had another serious brain injury while out on exercise with the Navy. He got so mean and violent, but I thought: “Oh, he’ll get better.” He got worse and worse, and I kept trying to help him instead of running away. I thought I could help, because that is the disadvantage of being a cheerful person who looks for the good in everyone.
Being Autistic means I’m pretty awkward (on the inside) and I always feel like I’m cosplaying as an adult. On the other hand, that makes role-play really easy. If you’re already doing cosplay in all of your life, then trying out different characters isn’t so weird. It makes being a Domme easy because it’s just another persona, like my work persona and my friend persona. It’s like being diagnosed allowed me to find the key to a lock I didn’t know I had inside me.
On balance, I think I’ve come to love who I am more now.
I used to be pretty insecure. My biological mom spent my entire childhood calling me a piece of shit, and my biological dad told me I was too stupid to grow up to be anything of value. The kids at school also bullied me, and I didn’t learn to read or write until I was in 5th grade. Thanks to Mrs. Delinsik for speaking kindly to me. No one had ever spoken to me kindly before, and it turns out that’s how I learn. I can’t learn from being screamed at. I can’t even hear people when they are screaming because it makes my brain panic.
I was never stupid. I was just processing external stimuli with my entire brain the way Autistic people do, instead of with only one specific part of my brain the way neurotypicals do. This makes it hard to hear people chew and hear appliances hum and other things like that, but it definitely makes sex better. Experiencing sex with your entire brain is pretty great.
Once I was diagnosed, I noticed that most of my kinky friends are neurodivergent, too. That makes me happy. I didn’t even know who I was, but I still found my people.
I’ve come to realize that Autistic people are often bullied nut neurotypicals, and it’s not because there is anything wrong with us. It’s because there’s something wrong with the people who choose to bully us. The people who didn’t like how I acted make me laugh now. After all, I was only masking and mirroring their own behavior towards me (including tone, inflection, and stance). The thing they didn’t like was actually their own actions reflected back at them. It’s amusing when you think about it.
Thank you to all of you who have been part of my journey and helped me along the way. It means a lot.
As for me, I am trying to unmask. I don’t want to mirror people anymore or be anyone other than myself. It’s about time. But, I wish I’d been diagnosed sooner. I spent 42 years thinking I was a defective horse when I was a zebra all along.
magicallydelicioussuperslut 