What's Stopping You?

I've been struggling for over a year now with finding a good BDSM "practice partner." I'm clearly not ready to pursue a more sexually or emotionally intimate relationship, but this necessarily means that anyone I reach out to for bondage practice is going to be less than ideal. This means that it becomes a tradeoff, that I need to calculate the opportunity cost of working with one person over another.

One person who has expressed interest lives fairly far away. It's about a one hour drive. She also has several of my big ticket No's: she's married to a monogamously-oriented kink-shaming partner with major jealousy issues. On the other hand, she's been as reliable as she can be, given that her partner will sometimes demand she cancel our plans in a jealous fit. She's been sensitive to the geographical issues, and has suggested a variety of ways to add value to the time I spend way out in her suburb. There are a lot of negatives, but ultimately, I think the opportunity nets positive for me.

Reliability is the major virtue for me here. There are several other people who say they want to tie with me, claim they're open to exploring sexual elements in due time, don't have to contend with jealousy issues, but....they don't actually show up. They disappear on me for months and then pop back up and act like the plans they were so excited about six months ago are still somehow a current conversation.

There's also a two or three people who seem to have the reliability (they're more reliable than I am, at least), but present mental health considerations that would be time consuming to work with. Trying to figure out how to establish and maintain boundaries with them AND have a good bit of kinbaku with them sounds exhausting.

The other options are to go out and find more people to consider, or to just not tie at all until I find Miss Perfect. That doesn't feel very healthy to me right now, either.

I had a kink filter on my LJ, but the only people on it don't seem to actually use LJ anymore, and its been months since I've made a post, anyway, so I'm keeping this public. Just in case there's anyone out there still reading.

A few years ago, I had this very young play partner. She had a lot of issues that resonated with my own dating history, and playing her was really good for both of us in terms of getting over our baggage, learning to talk through our fears, stuff like that. We didn't really focus on intentionally exploring cathartic play, but between the age difference and the particular issues each of us was dealing with, our time together often helped heal old wounds and strengthen our resolve to be better than our fears would make us.

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( Introspective meanderings )

Maybe I'm approaching this all wrong. Maybe ghosts do not always linger inside the heart, but sometimes they stand on the bridge between two souls. Maybe I should not look for a primary relationship among those before whom I am defenseless. Maybe those defenses are an important part of relating functionally to the rest of the world.

After all, every time I have let my spirit soar, it was only to fall again. When I do not rush heedlessly forward, I rarely trip. Slow, cautious steps are part of why I've managed to keep wonderful things in my life, like my relationship with LDB, like most of my friends in Pittsburgh. My friendship with f(AD) only survived once I stopped letting my heart rule over my head.

Maybe my heart only has wings as a warning against strong winds.