Pensive
I’ve been meaning to write all week about the various problems associated with having one’s sexual or non-sexual intimate practices shared with the world. I’ve also been meaning to write down some specific fantasies. I wonder which one will come out of me this morning, hm?
~
If you haven’t yet, please visit the new blog by Chrysalis. She’s not new to the online twitter community or to the blogging world, but she is new to the spanking blogging world. The posts go back only to July 17… and a good many of the newest ones document the scary things that can happen when our inner selves are shared with what turns out to be the wrong person.
As a matter of course, when someone tentatively sticks their foot into our virtual kinky community, there are a chorus of people who recommend (often rightly) that you can share those specific fantasies and desires with your partner or potential partners, and to give that person a chance to engage with you in dialogue or even experiment. What a great idea! I commented that it is right to suggest this primarily because of my own ethos; I would not wish to play with anyone who was deceiving their partner, no matter the level of intimacy. With a few exceptions and a couple of party spankings, I make an honest effort to find out before engaging in play with anyone that it is okay within the relationship. There is nothing that leads to the disintegration of a relationship more than deceit, even if there isn’t technically any cheating. And, in healthy relationships, the fantasies of one partner should not be anathema to the other, even if there is no reciprocal interest.
But.
What happens when that person refuses to have any participation in our fantasies?
For Chrysalis the relationship ended anyway. But he knew her ‘secret’ and he knew she wanted to find out if it was everything she wanted it to be.
So now he knows.
And so does everyone else in her ‘real’ world.
For as much as we have informally established expectations and rules for each other in the spanking community, and understand that outing someone is likely to make us persona non grata, there are often very good reasons that people do not mix folks from their kinky and vanilla worlds. Some of us do with varying levels of success. I have lied outright to my family concerning the circumstances that led me to Chris, and have since fudged things or glossed over questions about other friends who are bridging or have bridged the gap between vanilla and kinky to become some of my favorite people anywhere (Iris and Mija: Happy Birthday this week!).
It’s not that I’m ashamed of it, but really? Who sits around the dinner table with their parents and talks about how good their hubby will be in bed? If your family successfully maneuvers that dynamic, that’s great! On the other hand, my mother was recently “shocked” and “horrified” when she went to a cousin’s bachelorette party (the bachelorette will be the in-law) and there was a stripper who stayed the entire evening. Stripped. She was confused and, I think, shocked to find that people use whipped cream in other ways than on pie, and hoped out loud that his mother never found out what he was up to in his free time. (Are you kidding? He made a fortune in tips and drives a Harley. His mom knows!)
On the other hand, when our extracurricular activities are thrown into the glare of the public, there is unmistakably an air of disapproval and, perhaps confusion. I think if I was called on the carpet, so to speak, by any number of my multiple professional overseers, I would point out that my relationship with Chris and how we express it is none of their business (and maybe ask if they’d like to share the details of their Saturday night with their respective spouses). Chances are that after that I’d be looking for a new job, too. The fact is that I do not want to be an ambassador of the kinky community to my employer, not in theory or regarding my personal explorations, and I frankly can’t imagine any of my colleagues or supervisors wanting to know any details. (On the other hand, they’d probably make incorrect assumptions about my personal preferences and behaviors that would reflect on their perception of my ethics, which would be detrimental to my work.)
[Please note that I am deliberately and consciously avoiding any discussion of 'real-life' intimate discipline/punishment with Chris, which I suspect would create a furor, and concentrating solely on the consensual fun and painful play. However, I acknowledge that any intense play does involve expectations and usually unpleasant consequences for not meeting them.]
So I do depend on those special people who have crossed from one world into another to respect the boundaries of our relationships, because violating those boundaries would have real emotional and (perhaps) financial implications.
And if those relationships broke? What would happen then?
Themocracy
Hi Serenity, I am glad your back to writing. I missed you!
Good questions, and such a difficult issue. I NEED my friends who understand and accept all of me. The few that have “crossed over”, as you say, are cherished because they are real friends and we share vanilla life stuff, and they are kink friends in that they live within similar relationship dynamics and they ‘get it’ when I need to share. And I DO need to share, as do they.
BUT, no one in ‘real life’ outside of those friends knows how I live, and yes, the exposure of kinky sex play would be bad enough, but the fact of the existence of serious discipline within my marriage I am pretty sure would leave me out of a job. Relationships have always been politicized and that is a fact I believe we need to stay aware of.
My husband always wants me to play it very safe. I try. However, I do need the support and camaraderie of friends, and believe at some point you must trust someone.
How sad that Chrysalis was betrayed!
You wrote: “Relationships have always been politicized and that is a fact I believe we need to stay aware of.”
Yes, it seems to be a common (and unfortunate) theme that we make assumptions about others’ marriages from what we see of them in public. Unfortunately, we only perceive what a couple wishes us to see. So why are we surprised when long-term marriages fall apart (for example, the Gores)?
Once we make that assumption about a marriage, then we tend to hold it up to others of an example of a “good” or “bad” marriage, especially to our children. I have recently learned that it is not necessarily a good idea to put couples in positions in which they are ‘models’ or examples to others of good relationships, because it encourages them to ignore or conceal very real problems from loved ones. Instead, we pity couples who we know go to therapy, talk about them when they aren’t around, and tell stories of their mistakes. I don’t like that at all.
And now that I’ve randomly written another blog entry on a completely different topic, I agree. We do need the camaraderie of like-minded friends to stabilize the presumable disapproval of other not-so-like-minded-but-important friends and family.
s
There is little more emotionally devastating than being betrayed and having one’s secrets no longer secret.
It comes down to being able to be a good judge of character. Sometimes you can — and sometimes you trust someone you want to believe in, but their goodness is more a figment of your imagination than it is a reality.
As appears to be the case with Chrysalis’ Mr. xxx
Then on the karmic side, there comes the question of : who have you ever betrayed in your life, and is this an act of balance, and now you know what it feels like.
The the growth opportunity/healing becomes learning to be impreccable in keeping confidences from then on out.
Keeping secrets usually involves either private bedroom behavior that really is nobody’s business but the two parties involved as long as all was/is consensual between two people over 18.
Nasty gossip is very hurtful if you respect the opinion of the person being the mud slinger.
Then again, it may be a case that the nasty gossiper, well, their behavior says more about them than it does about you.
Everything is a choice.
Some people have integrity and some don’t. Some people have kimdness and some don’t.
Some people love to create chaos by spreading stories and some people mind their own business.
Maybe this was the only way that the Universe could think of that would get Chrysalis to get Mr. xxx out of her life.
It had to be something so drastically unpleasant.
I had a very active desire to be erotically spanked several years ago, and it led me to a local website/community.
The behavior of those people involved with that one site who were so proud of calling themselves ‘spankos’ was more reprehensible and shallow than anything I’ve seen outside of a gutter rat.
They had no idea what ethics was and weren’t smart enough to care, although they’d talk a good game until you saw what was really what. Ugh.
You have to be so careful who you choose as a friend and a lover, and sometimes revealing your secrets will lead to rejection if your fantasies are not equally shared/you both like the same things.
Sorry Chrysalis was hurt by this.
Sorry she is also undergoing chemo simultaneously.
The ‘person of God’ who spoke with her wasn’t acting like one by any stretch of the imagination.
It’s always better to clean up your own act than wag the finger at someone else’s act and pass your own judgements on them — under the guise of someone else’s name who hasn’t given you permission to do so.
Drinking alcohol affects your judgment and can bring dysfunction, chaos and heartache itno your life in many small and big ways.
Maybe stopping that will be effective in choosing a nicer partner when Chrysalis is ready to try getting involved with someone again.
And she really needs to get a restraining order on Mr. xxx !
Aurora, I’m not sure where you got the idea that alcohol has anything to do with this situation. She never has said that.
s
Chrysalis mentioned drinking alcohol/being hungover several times in her blog/on her various posts.
Once in terms of having to tell he chemo doctor because he had warned her not to consume alcohol in conjunction with chemo treatments.
So while drinking alcohol regularly has nothing to do with having your secrets violated — drinking alcohol may have an adverse effect on your choice of partner and/or staying with that partner that you might not have had as a sober person.
I was making the suggestion that staying free of alcohol could benefit Chrysalis for emotional as well as physical reasons.
This is not to get into a discussion of drinking in moderation versus being an alcoholic.
It was only meant to constructively have her do what she can to support herself emotionally in the face of what she is going through – and meant with encouragement.
I think I probably need to comment here.
Sorry, but I don’t drink alcohol regularly, and I never have. While it might be nice to have its effect to blame on some of my choices, that’s not the case.
I’m also not clear on the several references: I mention being hung over once (July 23). Any other references to it go back to the same night because that’s the only time I’ve drank during this whole thing.
My apologies for thinking it was more than once – careless reading on my part!
Wow, that’s scary reading on Chrysalis’ blog. Sounds like a lot on her shoulders right now. I’d really like to recommend a book for her, but couldn’t comment because I don’t have a safe email right now. Would you mind passing it along? It’s The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. It’s excellent, and very informative on the dangers of getting out of this type of relationships. It helps you know what to do, not to do, when to involve police, how to predict violence. It’s actually excellent on all types of people, and violence. I recommend it to all women. Might help her in this situation.
Impish, she reads my blog and I’m sure she’ll see your comment! I, too, have seen this book and think it makes some good points as well.
s
I’ve been thinking about this topic too. I have some close “real life” friends that I often discuss all of life with and avoiding the kinky stuff can be difficult sometimes. The other day I was mulling over what it might be like to tell one of them, what their response would be…and it never takes me long to realize that NO, I do not want to share that kind of information. You just don’t ever know for sure how they will respond and if they will keep it to themselves. I love the friends that I have made online and if I ever needed to explain who they were to people in my vanilla life, I’d find a way to explain them without mentioning the blog and/or the community. It’s just not worth the risk.
Yes, exactly. Unfortunately it’s not so easy a decision when the person we want to trust is the person we want to be involved in spanking us. (I’d think it’d be even harder as a top to come out to a wife with “Hey honey, do you mind that I fantasize about spanking your tush until you can’t sit down?”) I say it’s not so easy because NOT telling them isn’t just maintaining our secret, it generally means that we’re not likely to ever going to experience it, unless we go the regrettable route of keeping bigger secrets.
s
I’ve been reading Chrysalis’ blog and my heart goes out to her for everything that she is going through. I really struggle to comprehend how people can be that cruel, especially to someone they supposedly cared for.
My close circle of (vanilla) friends each know to some degree that I enjoy a bit of kink. The extent to which they know varies from person to person, but I’m lucky to have never felt judged by them. These are mostly people I’ve known since college – I’ve become more protective of my “secret” with friends I’ve made since then, I suppose the effect of getting older and a bit wiser to what can happen.
A few years ago I accidentally outed myself to someone I worked with. I was extremely lucky that she took it all in stride, and we continue to be friends to this day. On the other hand, a kinky friend of mine once outed me to friends of hers, and generally used her knowledge in ways that were damaging to our friendship. So, I think it’s less about sharing your inclinations with someone in the scene or not, but about choosing to share them with people of integrity and kindness. Unfortunately it can sometimes be difficult to spot those who are or aren’t until it’s too late