So in my last post I spend a whole lot of time harping on the fact that I don’t fucking care what your kinks are if I don’t like you as a person. Let’s keep beating that point into the ground 🙂
For me, knowing and liking someone as a person is absolutely necessary for me to want to play with them. Why would I want to get up close and personal with someone if I don’t know or don’t like them? That’s a completely serious question, I want you to think about what I could possibly get out of being intimate (yes, kink is intimate even when it’s not sexual) with a stranger. For some people anonymity is super hot, but it’s not my kink. Knowing that, why on earth would I want to play with someone I haven’t gotten to know?
Part of that may have to do with me being an introvert. I’d generally rather be left alone than have to deal with people, which makes the idea of dumping a huge amount of energy into J Random Sub without any reason to believe I’ll get anything back repellent on so many levels.
One of those levels is my simple lack of interest in what strangers want. If I don’t know you at all, then sure, in a very general sense I hope you find a good relationship and are happy, but I don’t personally feel the need to do anything to make you happy. If I get to know you, that’s when I actually care whether you have a good scene and feel like your submission is appreciated. It’s not that I’m actively repelled by people I don’t know having kinks, it’s just that if I don’t have a reason to care about you then I just don’t care. I feel really weird explaining such a basic concept in small words, but there are an awful lot of people on the internet who don’t seem to get it.
When it comes to interacting with people, I’m very opt-in. That is, my default answer to “do you want to deal with this person?” is no unless some special circumstance gives me a reason to be interested in them. Other people are opt-out, in the sense that unless there’s some particular reason not to hang out with someone, they’ll hang out. Assuming that I’m opt-out when I’m actually opt-in irritates the shit out of me and makes me think you don’t value my time. I have internet access and therefore a thousand other things I could be doing besides entertaining you. Basically, if you want me to feel anything but indifference toward you and your kinks, you need to give me a good reason to care.
That reason to care can be as simple as having an interesting conversation with me, you’ve just got to give me something to work with.
I also need to know I’m going to get something back for all the effort I put into a scene. With people who recognize that I’m a person, not a life support system for a whip, I can have a really satisfying energy exchange. The way a person proves they understand that I’m a person is by treating me like I matter beyond my ability to make their boner happy. If you act like there’s no reason to talk to me unless I’m going to dispense your favourite kinks like a fucking vending machine, then all you’ve accomplished is making me completely certain that beating my furniture would be more satisfying than playing with you. At least my couch is comfy to sit on and doesn’t complain that I wasn’t wearing a sexy enough outfit while I beat it. I guess the moral of the story here is you need to have more to offer than an inanimate object if you want anyone to play with you.
Like I mentioned in my post It’s personal, personal connection is what makes kink work for me. I’ll quote the relevant part of that post here so you don’t have to read the whole thing because let’s be honest, I’m pretty wordy 🙂
Speaking of play partners, as much as I want our play to be about me, I also want it to be about them. I’m not going to dominate just anybody, I can’t be bothered. It fucking matters to me who you are, what you’re doing with your life, what you want out of this scene, what you have to give and how much you can take. Even outside of wanting to have some sort of connection with the person I’m playing with, it’s just so much more fun to use a smart, capable human being as a toy. I can’t get that hit of “yeah, you could be building a house or writing beautiful music or giving a speech in front of hundreds of people, but instead you’re here getting slapped around because I wanted to play.” That’s an amazing feeling, and it’s one I can only have with someone I can relate to outside of a scene.
As much as I enjoy reactions, personal connection is what makes a scene special. Without that connection I just can’t be bothered and there is simply no connection with people I haven’t at least had an interesting conversation with. Pick up play can be fun, but for me the novelty has largely worn off. I mean, it’s never exactly terrible to hit somebody with stuff and then cuddle and be thanked for it afterward, but I want more.
To try to explain what I’m getting at, I’ve seen a few waterboarding demonstrations and watched a few people come up afterwards and try it out. It was certainly intense, and to be fair it is fun to say I watched someone get waterboarded with ginger ale, but the whole idea of waterboarding just never really clicked for me. Then one day I went to an edgeplay workshop co-presented by someone I’d seen before and liked, and his master. They did a waterboarding demo that was really hot, and considering I’d seen waterboarding before and not been particularly moved by it, it must have been the connection the two of them had that made it special. Those particular leathermen were absolutely adorable together, which probably had something to do with it. The juxtaposition of two people who adore each other being thrilled to be at a conference together and the intense edge play they showed us just did it for me. Without that connection, even waterboarding is just sort of an odd extreme sport. With it, it’s incredible to watch.
Readers, how do you feel about personal connection in your kink? Is it necessary for you or just a nice to have?
For me, a personal connection, of some sort is a necessary ingredient for kink. I realized that at the one, and only, play party I ever went to. It was with several people (two Dommes, and two other subs) that I didn’t know all that well, and while it was a fun and interesting first time, it was more like a costume party with whips and floggers than a true D/s experience.
Random play holds little interest because in my mind, being submissive means making myself vulnerable, which is something that I cannot do until there has been some measure of trust, and emotional connection, built between me and the one to whom I will submit.
Makes sense to me. Even as a top I have to be at least a little bit emotionally vulnerable to have a really good scene and that’s just not something I’m going to do with people I haven’t built trust with.
Personal connection is important to me–among other reasons, I have to know that when I do something dorky or awkward, either as a top or a bottom, the other person isn’t going to go, “You suck and I’m never playing with you again!” or “I can’t take you seriously, you sneezed/lost your footing/giggled!” or whatever. There’s vulnerability there and I need to play from an emotionally good place. I probably don’t have to be BFFs or lifelong partners, but I have to at least have friendly feelings. Or sexual attraction + trust. Or something.
As for opt-in vs opt-out, I’m fairly extroverted, but I’m coming to realize that my default settings seem to be more opt-out for women, and opt-in for men. That is to say, if I’m on Fetlife or at a munch at someone introduces themselves to me, I’m likely to be happy to interact with women unless there’s a reason not to, but if you’re a guy, you have to be interesting or hot, and you have to not be pushy, and it helps if you’re queer in some way (while being into women, yes). Basically my standards are way higher for interaction with men, partly because a lot of guys are so bad at it and partly because I’m over here getting gayer by the second. (Nonbinary folks usually fall into the opt-out category too; I haven’t met any who triggered my “Go away and stop bothering me” reflex the way some guys do.)
waterboarded with ginger ale — Jesus fucking fuck! O.O Too intense for me but creative as hell, I’ll give them that.
Yesss! I giggle all the time during scenes, there’s no way I could play with someone who expected me to be super serious all the time. Plus as much as I rail about how ridiculous it is to expect people to be perfect uber doms all the time, my feelings would still be really hurt if someone I was playing with told me they couldn’t take my seriously because I acted like a human being.
Yeah, stuff like the ginger ale waterboarding is both creative in sort of a terrifying way and why I have the (possibly very skewed) idea that I’m a fairly moderate sadist. I’ve seen people do some stuff that just made me go nope nope nope I’ll be over there (far over there) with my nice thuddy flogger thank you very much.