As John Donne said, “No man is an island, entire of itself…Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
While that applies to your favorite hobbies like reading, video games, or raising an army of potted succulents, it also applies to your kinks too. As I found out, being surrounded by people who find your idea of hot sex to be “disgusting” does not make you feel particularly warm and fuzzy and it also gets in the way of accepting your own sexual interests.
However, when I found myself surrounded by people who accepted and loved my interests (whether yours happens to be at an in person community or in an online kink community such as Free the Kink, I found it much, much easier to love those things about myself. I did not feel like such a “freak” anymore…I felt like I just had unique interests. Which is a viewpoint that I share to this day.
Hell…Sex should be unique to every person.
To be honest, I actually found the kink community late in life and to this day, I am thankful that I did. Granted, I had had kinks and “non-standard” sexual interests which although felt quite alienating, I was not at at a mature mindset.
Prior to finding the kink community, most conversations about “sex” focused around how people wanted to either pound the pussy or get the aforementioned pussy pounded by people they found hot. I was more interested in implementing restraints, ball gags and relishing making my love interests whimper, cry, kneel and beg for the privilege of even getting to touch me. After enough incidents like that, I just started to feel like the odd one out on a consistent basis.
I honestly felt like something was “wrong” with me on a regular basis and started to excuse myself out of conversations when attraction and sexuality became the discussion topic.
It was not until I started getting involved in my local kink community that I really started to feel like my odd interests were “okay”.
Do not get me wrong: my first few BDSM meetings were absolutely terrifying. I had no idea what to expect, and when I did get there, I felt extremely out of place…Everyone else seemed to know one another, and I was this weirdo who was older and had zero experience. I honestly went home after those first couple of events and questioned my choices in life. After feeling like the BDSM community might hold the answer to what I needed, it was rough to feel so much like an outlier…Even at the one place I was “supposed” to fit in.
I kept at it, though. After a few meetings, I started learning people’s names and people started engaging me in conversation. I started learning the relationships and I could figure out the various personalities of some of the people involved.
At some point, I remember remarking how much better my comfort level had gotten there over time, and even made a strong connection with several of the organizers who had well over 20-30 years of experience. Several admitted that kink tends to be a private endeavor where most people want to avoid being outed, so most groups may not warm up to you until you have shown dedication through attending a few events.
Some also noted that they get a lot of people who attend one meeting, assume it is a giant orgy, who have zero interest in the actual community, and are never see again.
While it did not make my start any less rough, it at least gave me context and I understand where the group was coming from.
In the end, getting involved in my kink community was all worth its weight in gold. When this new group of people started to have conversations about the types of dynamics I had been fantasizing about, it felt freeing. Instead of feeling like I was the weirdo who did not match anyone else, I was surrounded by people who thought in the same way I did.
Instead of light conversations about what celebrity I found hottest, there were discussions about power exchange relationships, how to do kinky activities, and discussions about different kinks. It was not just acceptance; it was a big ass how-to guide.
They did not just accept me…They wanted me to actively do the thing I had thought was “weird” and “freaky”.
To this day, a group of kinksters is still my happy place. I will still find myself in the happiest, buzzed-up energy when I participate in kink events. With my introverted nature, I generally bow out of most of the generic, small talk that happens, but once deep conversation starts happening, I am the most animated introvert you have ever seen.
And yes, small talk definitely still happens at kink events.
