Life on the Swingset

i haven’t cried myself to sleep for a long time, but i did last night. i’m feeling a combination of hurt, embarrassed, confused, shocked, sad, frustrated, and pissed off. i’m glad that Maximus was home with me, for a brief time, even though He probably didn’t get the sleep He needed with my emotional tossing and turning. And yesterday had been such a great day up until right then.

While Maximus and i have been in swinging lifestyle for years and years, BDSM is relatively new for us. We branched into it four years ago, together, and it has been a roller coaster ride of discovery. It’s taken us much of this time, especially the first two years, to figure out our relationship, a lot of trial and error, researching, reading, listening to podcasts, talking with friends and acquaintances, some classes, revisions, etc., and we’ve been able to distill down into what works for us. But we’ve done it alone. We don’t really have a peer group–BDSM has been something we’ve done in a relative vacuum.

After this last Desire trip with the Life on the Swingset group we love, Maximus and i discussed needing to find a like-minded community here locally. We have been so fortunate to find and develop wonderful friends with this group who are into BDSM, D/s, and swinging. It’s nice to have people to talk to, learn from, have fun with, and feel true to ourselves. But they all live far away and we would like to have similar connections here at home so we don’t just have that physically once a year or emotionally at a distance.

So Maximus has tasked me with finding/cultivating a local community for us. We went to a munch, we went to a new swinger’s club that has been temporarily housing a kink community looking for a new physical location, i’ve signed us up for some classes, updated our Fet Life profiles, scheduled ourselves to go to other munches and a D/s discussion group, to get us out there. And i’ve started reaching out to other couples on our swinging sites, as during the last two years we’ve not really cultivated a lot of new swinging friendship due to time constraints of remodeling the condo, me healing from hypothyroidism, and then moving.

It’s not particularly easy for me to contact others on swinger dating website, in fact it takes a lot of effort. i am, by nature, introverted, although outgoing and not shy, and searching websites and going through the process of writing introduction messages is exhausting and time consuming. i struggle with what to say, worry about whether they will like us, and it drains my energy into slight anxiety over the whole affair. i would much rather sit there and wait for people to contact us, but it is not how it works. Maximus knows this about me. He is the complete opposite, but really wants me to work through my struggle and frankly doesn’t have the time to devote to this search. And besides, i am much pickier than He is, so it’s better for me to find people in the end. Further, i don’t feel comfortable, at all, contacting unknown people on FetLife  as it doesn’t seem like a search site, and won’t do that.

So imagine my surprise and complete glee when we got a random friend request on a swinger website Monday morning. It was on the website for the kink-hosting swinger club we toured this past weekend, and i didn’t even know you could search profiles or contact people through that site until we received the message. i logged on and while i could see their picture and screen name, i couldn’t figure out how to send them a message. But i really, REALLY wanted to because i could tell they were D/s (His name was capitalized, hers was not, and they both had to do with rope). So as this was the group that was hosting the rope class we are taking this weekend, i decided to look on the FetLife event page to see if they had possibly RSVP’d, and lo and behold, the D-half had!

i looked through their Fet pages and determined they seemed like a great match! They were indeed D/s and into rope, which Maximus is wanting to learn. His profile said he wouldn’t accept friend requests from submissive-types and her profile said all correspondence had to go through him, which is typical, i’ve found. Maximus was traveling for work and i just couldn’t wait to share with Him what had happened, what had literally fallen into our laps!

Maximus was thrilled and asked me to contact them. i told Him the only way i could was through Fet as the other page wouldn’t allow me to. He instructed me to message him from my Fet page, letting him know He’d asked me to do this for Him. So i did. And yesterday Maximus got a wonderful reply from him. However, Maximus was still away for work and unable to read the message or reply to it. He asked me to log into His page to read the message and then reply to him. This couple was planning on going to the same rope class and we really wanted to arrange some time to meet with them. i was greatly concerned that me replying to this Dominant through Maximus’ page would be deceitful and a poor way to start a relationship with a D/s couple. Maximus agreed and instructed me to message Him from my page, letting him know He’d instructed me to message him that He was traveling for work and would not be able to respond until after Thursday. So i did this. i was very careful with my pronouns, very respectful, acknowledged that this was unconventional but that Maximus really didn’t want to leave him hanging so long.

i had gotten confused and thought Maximus was not coming home until Thursday, but it turns out He was coming home last night and then flying out again in the morning. Once i figured it out, i could hardly contain my excitement realizing that He and i would be able to go through the messages from this Dominant and look at their profiles together to discuss it all. So once Maximus got home, which was late, i got my phone while we were in bed to read the messages to Him and share the profile. However, when i went to do this, i discovered that this Dominant had blocked us. Not me, but BOTH of us! i was horrified and shocked!

“Maybe it was a mistake,” Maximus said trying to comfort me, “I’ve accidentally hit the wrong thing on those sites and accidentally deleted or blocked people.”

But it wasn’t a mistake. A mistake would be blocking one of us…this was intentional, we were both blocked.

i instantly started to cry as emotions swirled through and around me. i’m sad that we’ve seemed to have lost an opportunity to meet a similar couple in our area. i’m horribly embarrassed that i did something wrong by messaging him rather than just letting it hang for Maximus to reply. i’m upset at myself for not just having us wait for Maximus respond and sending the message through my profile rather than somehow knowing i should suggest otherwise. i’m hurt and shocked that this person blocked us rather than just letting us know we’d crossed a boundary with them. And i’m frustrated and pissed off that we just can’t seem to get any inroads into local BDSM here.

The thing is, we’re new at this and we’ve not given anyone the impression otherwise. This BDSM couple found US on a swingers site, not a BDSM site, that describes that we’ve been swingers for years and new into BDSM and looking for like-minded people. Our Fetlife profiles reflect this as well. We are trying to find people so we can learn how to navigate this world of kink, find mentors, and we’re going to make mistakes. We don’t even know what we don’t know! i feel like the teenager looking for their first job that has no experience but needs experience to apply! And right now this whole BDSM community feels so elitist, i hate to admit that.

So now, instead of feeling excited and looking forward to our rope class this weekend, i’m embarrassed, anxious, and dreading it. First, because i’m afraid we are going to encounter someone who’s upset with us, and second, because i’m disappointed with the encounters we’ve had so far, with the munch and now this. i feel like an island.

i know, if i had a friend who came to me and told me about this situation i would see it from the perspective that this person did us a favor, that would you really want to be involved with a Dominant who would treat you, both of you, this way? And the answer is no, i wouldn’t. But from my perspective, i’m hurt, feel rejected, and have no way to apologize for doing something i didn’t know was wrong. And i feel responsible for making Maximus look bad to someone in this community–that’s the worst.

And i just don’t even know where we fit in anymore. We’re too kinky for swingers and too swinger for kinksters. i feel like i just got another slap of “you stupid swingers” from someone in kink, first the comment during the munch that i shouldn’t have been doing our introduction, and now this. And it’s so different from what we experience with our Swingset friends, where i can talk to, text, and email with the D half just as well as the s type. i just need a friend and some guidance.