I was talking with a friend the other day, a mid-twenties woman name K. We both started exploring kink in January of this year, occasionally we compare notes, and our experiences have been oddly parallel.
K and I are pretty regular play partners. We met while I was under the influence of a rare bout of social confidence. She agreed to be my demo bottom for wax play at a Dungeon 101 event, that led to spanking, and then to pretty regular play. I enjoy spanking her, and she ends up a pile of melted butter once we are done, but there is nothing sexual about it in that we are not attracted to one another. Well it is sexual insofar as spanking and stroking a woman's backside is sexual, but I'm not so turned on that I have to go home and masturbate.
K struck up a friendship with a polyamorous married forty-something from the capital region of New York. I'll call him Albany. The initial meeting, again at a Dungeon 101 event, led to nearly daily e-mail communication and a long distance dominant/submissive relationship. For instance, he will tell her how many times she must orgasm in a given week, or if she must abstain from orgasm altogether. On occasion he will take the train down to DC and use her poor ass as a demo bottom for D101. Sex is a hard limit for both of them, but he has stayed at her apartment. During that stay Albany told her she could not use any of her furniture.
Aside from K, I've been playing with a married early-thirties man. I met him and his wife at a munch very early on and gradually we have built up a play relationship. Within the scene there is a definite sexual chemistry. A very hot sexual chemistry. But unlike K and Albany, the dynamic does not carry out into real life. The three of us have been out to eat and gone on nature excursions without random incidences of spanking breaking out. I guess that is the difference between bdsm and d/s. D/s goes with you everywhere if you let it.
Being the social animals we are, K and I were trying to make sense of all this. These are
relationships, but they are not dating relationships and they don't fit the contours of any relationships we've had before. Are they friends with benefits? Doesn't friends with benefits mean you're fucking? Neither of us are doing that with any of the people we hang out with. But "just friends" don't spank you, control your orgasms, or drive you crazy at the local sex club. Trying to categorize makes less and less sense as we travel down this rabbit hole. What we have found are relationships that come in various shades of grey.
