How did you find a Partner?

[sarah thorne]

wow! Great question!

I was one of those who, only several years ago, was terrified of the Internet. I was certain that everyone on the Internet was a predator of some sort, just waiting to get any sliver of information that they could obsessively hack over until they found out your address, workplace, childrens' schools, etc so that they could come wreak all kinds of horrible havoc on your life.

When I first joined the Internet discussion community, it was in a vanilla forum and I set up a list of personal guidelines for myself that I said I would always stick to, regardless of how trustworthy I thought someone might be. This was to protect me against any bad judgement - I had kids after all, who were to be protected at all costs!

My guidelines were pretty much as follows: I was NOT to give any personal information about myself, including first name, that could identify me. Not the city or state I lived in, not my first name, not my occupation, not anything!

Because I would not reveal such things, I also did not ask these questions of people. This got me into a bit of a quandry at the beginning with one guy that I ended up chatting with regularly for about three years. He volunteered his own personal information after about 6 months of chatting, because he wanted to send me a Christmas present. I had given him my first name and the city and state I lived in, but that was it. I was tight lipped on the rest.

However, after getting involved on forums and realizing that there were people on there that were not simply faceless, nameless people, I started to rethink these things. I gave out my first name, and the state I lived in if asked. I realized there were people in our community who were 'regulars', had been consistent for years, and had also met amongst themselves. This led me to my first meeting of a group of vanilla chat friends - and subsequently, meeting one of the same people a year later as she passed through my town of dwelling on her way to meet someone.

Throw this into the spanking community. I became just as anal the first time I joined a spanking discussion board. It was an adult board after all! I expected everyone there to be secretive, completely hiding who they were to protect themselves from the psycho-predators who slithered around these boards for a thrill. I was there simply for the stories at first - and even made up a few of my own "real life" stories to fit in with this fantasy, thinking there was never a snowball's chance in hell that I would ever forge any kind of real relationships through this kind of venue.

How wrong I was! And once I realized how wrong I was, I became real. I was me. I have met some of the most amazing real people, who have become steadfast friends.

I met my first spanker through a forum and we met r/l after over a year of speaking regularly thorugh email and phone. He did not become my partner, per se, but we played some. We remain friends even today.

I met RG through a forum too. The same one.

I have also met VERY good friends - real friends even in a vanilla sense - through these forums. Richard Windsor is one. One of my BEST friends is a fellow moderator on another site, and with whom I have spent vanilla, family vacations with, visited with, and talk regularly about life with.

My advice for people? Take things slowly. There are a lot of people who so desperately want a partner who shares this kink and, out of that desperation, tend to rush into the first thing that seems promising. Almost everyone seems promising at first - but to truly get to know someone well enough to start to consider them a real partner, you must spend time and energy to get to know them on levels other than our shared activity.

Involve yourself in known forums. Many people who I know well in this community are members of various forums -- under the same names -- and we all see one another in different forums, being consistent and acting consistently with who they say they are. Many talk to one another privately, and in vanilla contexts. Watching this interaction can also clue you in to who is 'real' and who isn't. This is invaluable.

Pay attention to your gut instinct.

I know this was a longwinded post and not sure if it was the kind of answer you wanted. But there's my initial thought on your question.

[aurora]

should make a quick edit to my post... I have beend drifting a bit from my normal long waiting period. More recently I've met with people I haven't known quite as well. But for the most part, I did know them well enough by reputation to aleviate my concern about meeting. And NO, that doesn't mean it's okay to meet someone just because other's have said they were okay!

And then there's the whole party/meet thing. The SSC in Gatlinburg last summer was my very first. I enjoyed it so much, that I would really reccomend activities like that to other people. Of course, that was over 20 people that I didn't know nearly as well as my typical meeting standards, at least on an individual basis, but I had known them well enough from the forums that I was excited at the chance to meet them. Also, RG and Sarh and the others were so careful about the planning of it, that I never felt as if safety was a concern.

And no worries, Sarah, apparently I'm just as long winded as you :-) Heck, look at me, I'm still going. I didn't blow enough hot air the first post, apparently.

[sarah thorne]

aurora, you've brought up another good point, really.

A good way to meet people - maybe someone who ends up becoming a partner -- is to attend a reputable fetish party, or several of them.

This is one exception, I think, to meeting people you don't know. If you know someone well (like you did, aurora, you knew Rich) who knows the other parties well and you go with them, it's a bit different. (Altho you did end up stuck with all of us people you didn't know cuz Rich got delayed - but you knew us by proxy)

Group situations are generally safe(r),I believe, if you know the reputation of the group from our community as well as know people who went. Meeting one on one, in private, is obviously more risky because if one person is nutso, there's not really anyone else around to intervene.

sarah

[RG_]

Originally Posted by sarah thorne

I met RG through a forum too. The same one.

Strange thing was, neither one of us was looking for a partner, either!

It was on SIN, on the discussion board. Even though SIN has a large personals section and is known for the feature, it also has/had a very good discussion forum, one of the best on the net. We had both been members for a long time. (In fact, I had been on SIN since the earliest of days, back when it was little more than the simplest of message boards and called "Spanking Memories").

Sarah was a very frequent poster while I was much more occasional. Nonetheless, we both knew the other's IDs from our posts, and on occasion it would be apparent that our political views were aligned with one another because they weren't with almost everyone else on the board. Other than that we really knew nothing about each other, including whereabouts. One day a member from England posted a question asking if anyone lived in Louisville, Kentucky, because they had seen something online about a shop there. They were hoping that someone could actually stop by the shop. I was going to reply that while I was not in Louisville I was in Kentucky, and often went there. Before I could post, however, I noted that Sarah had already replied that she lived in Louisville. We were only 90 miles apart. We e-mailed for a long time as just net friends, and came to know each other better. Much later, we had a meeting over lunch, again, as friends only, and disovered that the other was just as nice in person as them seemed online. (Well, I better not speak for her! SHE seemed as nice in person as she was online. ). Later, circumstances changed for both of us and after we had parted ways with our previous partners, a romantic relationship began sparking and then began to slowly grow. The rest, as they say, is history.

[persephone]

my "real" partner, my fiance chris, was a vanilla that i met before i really started exploring my spanking interest. he explored everything with me and took a lot of it on so i wouldn't really call him vanilla anymore. but almost a year ago he and i decided that we wanted to meet other people to explore with sexually, and i can talk about that a little bit because we had a very successful experience.

we met this other couple on a bdsm personals site and we actually moved a lot faster than people have talked about here so far. we exchanged emails obsessively for about 3-4 days, talked on the phone on the 5th day, and met up for the first time (not just vanilla meeting up either, i was submissively laid out naked on their coffee table) within less than a week from the first email.

now, the whole thing is very different because there were four of us, not two. and i knew that if anything went wrong that my big burly and very-smart chris would protect me easily. plus we had both of our intuitions to work with-- i think that following your gut is probably the best advice overall-- and we both had good feelings about this other couple.

it was seven months ago that we first started talking with the two people that i now call my owners, and they are now VERY close friends even outside of our very fulfilling D/s relationship... they were with us when we got engaged, they are the people that i call right after my family when something big and important happens. they know us inside and out.

i think that when you're searching for a partner, in any venue, the best thing that you can be is secure with yourself. then you know you're looking around with your eyes open and you can really trust your instincts to guide you. caution is always smart, and having back-up plans to ensure safety is too... but i think the most important thing is to follow your instincts.

[sarah thorne]

Originally Posted by RG_

It was on SIN, on the discussion board.... We had both been members for a long time. (In fact, I had been on SIN since the earliest of days, back when it was little more than the simplest of message boards and called "Spanking Memories")

My dear -- it was still called Spanking Memories when we met. Your old age must really be catching up with ya. ~ahem~.

sarah