I owe a lot to kink.
Kink has not only helped me realize who I am… it forced me. Sometimes influence is the barest hint of a breath. Sometimes it is a violent gale.
The more I learned about my kinky self and the kinky world, the more I love and accept myself. The more secure I feel in my own happiness. Kink isn’t a solution, at least I don’t see it that way. Kink, however, can be an incredibly powerful tool.
And I used it to learn.
I learned consent for the first time. Not only consent in “I agree for your penis to be in my vagina,” but full bodily autonomy. I could hug when and whom I pleased. I could choose the kinks in which I engaged. Beyond that? Desire. Needs. The difference between the two. How to recognize others’ needs and wants. How to balance the needs and wants of various people (i.e. relationships.)
I never had to do this in my former, vanilla life. Whatever you might want to say, a kinky and poly lifestyle is a fantastic tool to educate yourself on those subjects. Even if you, like myself, ultimately end up in a fairly vanilla existence (compared to, say, the girls who live to hang from hooks pierced through their upper back). Conscious choice of a life is not the same as living the one your mother told you to, because that was “the only way to be happy.”
One can live a very nice, satisfying kinky life, too, without thinking too much— but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Living amongst the vanilla is one thing, but I won’t exchange more than a cursory smile and nod with kinksters with no self awareness. The blowups are too dramatic and too common, and come far too quickly! No, thank you!
Because it’s one thing in a vanilla relationship to ignore consent (still not good!). But failing to find a rope partner who understands consent and safe relationship practices can get you killed. Or at any rate damaged and broken (broken and damaged people are still beautiful, but they don’t deserve to be that way in the first place!)
Kinky or not, I would hope anyone might peek into the kink community. If only to learn.
It’s easy to live a vanilla life and not learn and still be perfectly happy. Dating, engagement, married, home, kids, live till death do you part. But once you take the red pill, there is no turning back. Ask any of my kinky friends. Hardly any of them have been flogged with fire whips (sounds scarier than it is!). None of them want to have their eyes closed.
Once you realize that you are the sole mistress (or master) of your life. (Perhaps you choose to defer that to someone else who owns you. Perhaps not.) Once you realize that you can be touched on your terms. Loved on your terms. Love others on your terms. Once you, well, don’t let me tell you.
Enter that world for yourself.
Because there is nothing, I promise you, like discovering the beautiful and strange world that is the kinky life!