Help me find a long-distance partner!

July 30, 2012 8:03 PM

How can I find a partner for a very specific kind of long-distance relationship? (Mild kink inside.)

Backstory: I carried on a very intense LDR (phone/online only, never any face-to-face communication) with one person for the better part of 8 years. This relationship was based in D/s with an M/s slant. Both he and I were married for part of it, with our spouses' partial knowledge of our relationship. We basically let it lapse about 4 years ago when life -- marriage, kids, work, etc. made it too much. I miss this person and think about him a lot.

Present day: My husband, with whom I remain in a committed partnership (we are best friends and business partners, and have no plans to stop living together or raising our kids together -- we really are *together*) and I have decided it's good for me to once again pursue this kind of LDR. I have some very deep emotional needs that are not being met, and my husband and I are in 100% agreement that we each deserve to be happy and fulfilled, and are fine with other people being involved in that fulfillment. (In case it's relevant, my husband is also very deeply immersed into some of his own pursuits at the moment, which do not include me -- these are spiritual/intellectual, not emotional/physical.)

I have reached out to my old "friend" via email but have no idea if I will hear back from him. In the meantime, I'm interested in exploring other options for online/phone companionship. What I'm looking for is this:

- someone with a dominant slant, but with kind of a "natural order"/alpha perspective, *not* someone overly concerned with trappings and labels. In other words, someone who just "is."
- someone who is focused on the mental/emotional aspects of D/s and enslavement: mind control and strong emotional influence is good, bondage and other "external" stuff doesn't really do it for me.
- someone who is either single or in an open relationship, not someone who is going to be sneaking around.
- someone who is truly interested in an intense, ongoing relationship that will almost certainly never lead to 24/7 or any face-to-face contact at all. I want friendship, accountability, and perhaps a sexual element, but I'm not looking for phone sex only.
- someone in the U.S. or Canada, just so they're not in such a different time zone.
- someone smart, creative, discreet and deeply masculine.

I know this is a lot. And I have no idea where to find it. The chat "community" where I met my last friend (Yahoo) is no more, and I've just joined Fetlife and feel overwhelmed -- it looks like a great resource, but I feel lost in a sea of bondage pics and people looking solely for in-person meetups and play.

Any suggestions of where I could explore and hopefully find some like-minded people would be so appreciated.

(If it's helpful, I'm a female, 30s, U.S.-based with knowledge/experience with most elements of BDSM, even Gorean communities but not the roleplaying ones, more the philosophical ones.)

(Also, please take my word for it that this is completely and totally okay with my husband -- we decided this together, in fact it was his suggestion, and we are fine with our marriage not being as traditional as some if it works for us. This seems like a pretty open-minded community, I'm just saying.)

posted by anonymous to human relations (8 answers total)

The obvious answer to "where" is Fetlife (I linked to the People From Metafilter group there, where you should come say hi before heading off to search for your new partner). It's not a perfect place -- there are lots of internet kink-ninjas, too much drama, and some serious creepsters. But it's still a place where describing what you wrote above won't raise any eyebrows except for how, well, mainstream it sounds.
posted by Forktine at 9:09 PM on July 30, 2012 [4 favorites]

You are a hot commodity. I don't traffic much in the hetero half of the kink universe, but one thing I do hear is that there are not enough sub women. I think the additional bits about distance and a certain commitment would be very appealing to a variety of Doms.

Fetlife is the place to go. One thing I would be sure to add is how you want the relationship to work. You describe who you want very well, but to a lesser degree what you want. Be as open and honest as you are here, put in good effort on your profile, and your inbox should be on fire.
posted by munchingzombie at 9:30 PM on July 30, 2012 [2 favorites]

Reddit has a great community for this - /r/bdsmcommunity - it has a spin off, /r/bdsmpersonals, reposting your question in the former and a personal ad in the latter may work.

Good luck to you.
posted by By The Grace of God at 12:33 AM on July 31, 2012 [4 favorites]

I think you are in a tough spot, and you might consider that you will never achieve what you had previously.

I'm not trying to rain on your parade!!!

Tailor your expectations, because relationships like you describe are bloody rare (as a chef and former professional Dominatrix - pun is intended:)

There is a lot of "hit and miss" out there for you, and a lot of being lead astray, especially as you identify as submissive. But this is true for me, too, and I identify Dominant!

You were very very lucky to have someone trusted. You now have a partner and children. I have a partner and a child. I can't go back, because besides my one amazing awesome client who rocked, all of my other clients would not be people I would want even tangentially associated with my beloved family. My one amazing client was a once in a life time thing, more or less, as per other pro Dommes I have known.

I have played in the non-professional kink world. I preferred the codified professional relationships because so many lifestyle kinksters that were not the type willing to seek professionals were, to put it politely, emotionally messy. Good clients eventually made better friends, solid trusted friends. Lifestylers? After 5 full in years of both - I'd take a serious kinkster willing to pay a professional regularly ANY DAY over some self-styled Dom(me) or submisive.

You have a marriage and a family. I do, too.

Should the awesomest, safest, and risk-free masochist land at my feet one day - IN A FUCKING HEARTBEAT.

Am I keen to re-visit the years of trying to find a suitable kink-partner for me in the lifestyle realm after trying for 5 years previously? NO. I have a husband and child. And we have a business together to protect. That all takes a lot of energy I don't have for kinky freaky people trying to find their way.
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Yes there is a hole in my life. I get you.

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Find another way. What you propose will bring madness into your life.

Try it if you must, but do it anonymously and safely, and be prepared, always, to Cut Bait at the slightest hint of danger or unease.

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My advice is to weigh your life against this urge... and then seek saner ways to fulfill this urge.

You're right. Your life has changed. You can not go back, I can't either.

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I want to leave you with something uplifting here, but I can't think of anything, other than reminding you that life offers infinite possibilities, and that it IS possible for you to find something both satisfying and safe for your family as you explore this trajectory. It doesn't necessarily have to involve kink to be satisfying - that is just what you found satisfying before.

Get me here?
posted by jbenben at 1:26 AM on July 31, 2012 [3 favorites]

Blogs? Several of the sex blogs I have read from men mention requests from readers, and the bloggers have them perform tasks - the reader calls a Google Voice line and masturbates on the phone, the reader has to do a sex act with their partner, or the blogger chooses the reader's outfits for the day.

So find some good sex blogs from doms and maybe contact them with your request? The advantage to this is you can read their back posts and find someone who suits your needs, and you can ease into it by requesting a task, then another, and have a trial period before you go all in with your request.
posted by I am the Walrus at 6:14 AM on July 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm not quite as pessimistic as jbenben. But I agree that trying to find The Exact Same Thing is going to be a recipe for frustration.

Imagine someone told you, "Years ago, I dated a German painter who made wonderful waffles for breakfast and had an incredibly caustic sense of humor" or whatever, and then said, "I'd like to do that again." You'd be like "Hang on, every relationship is different. You can't just recreate one out of the past. You need to broaden your sights." And that's true here too. Every kink relationship is different. Every kinky-ass friends-with-benefits situation is different. The dynamic is not going to be the same with someone else.

Which doesn't mean you won't be able to find a good, satisfying dynamic with someone else. Just that it's likely to be different.

Another thought: If you want someone who is going to be emotionally reliable and trustworthy and so on, I'd start by looking for a real close-knit online community that's into kinky stuff. (Okay, "community" is ambiguous here. Fetlife is an "online community" in the sense that they're a website and they run discussion boards and so on. But it's not a real community community — people use it because it's convenient, and not because they feel an intense sense of loyalty and connectedness to the whole website. That said, there may be individual discussion groups on Fetlife that are communities in that sense.*) Basically, the more mutual friends and interconnections you have with a guy, the more likely he is to be who he says he is, to treat you reasonably well, to not up and vanish when things get difficult emotionally, and so on.

It sounds like you met Long Distance Dom #1 through a discussion group. I'd be willing to bet money, based on your description, that it was the sort of discussion group where everyone knows each other's birthdays and favorite foods and thinks of each other as genuine friends instead of "those people on the internet." (If it wasn't a group like that, you got incredibly lucky, really won the lottery, by finding a guy who you could trust that well without any shared social context or any face-to-face interaction!)

So I guess putting all the pieces together: If I were you, I'd start out by looking for a real genuine community of online perverts, and then once you have some friends and an identity there, ask yourself whether any of those friendships might be worth turning into something deeper — probably not the exact same kind of deeper relationship you had with L.D.D. #1, but maybe something equally satisfying in its own way.

I think that approaching things this way might also help you avoid the sort of catastrophe that jbenben is trying to warn you against. If you go out there with the mindset that gosh darn it you are going to find a man who will do X, Y and Z for/to you, then you're running the emotional risk that you'll meet a man who's into X, Y and Z and is an unstable asshole and you won't think to say "no thanks." If you take your goal to be "Develop real meaningful friendships with kinky people and then see what happens," then it will be easier to convince yourself to avoid assholes who happen to have the "right" kinks, and to spend your time and energy on decent people.

*I should maybe add that the People From Metafilter fetlife group, while awesome, isn't really that sort of community. So you should come by and say hi, for sure, but don't count on it to be what you're looking for.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:32 AM on July 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

I wish you had included an anonymous email address. I tend to answer these type questions via email. There are some things best said privately. So realize this is a somewhat PC version of my thoughts.

I mainly want to suggest that you rethink some of your criteria. On the one hand, you don't want to meet this person face to face, you want to keep it LDR. On the other hand, you want them in North America where you are. That might be a bit in conflict.

My experience has been that it is easier to keep an LDR relationship LD if they are very, very far away. Men who were only a few hundred miles away were more likely to happen to be in the area one day and want to meet me. Furthermore, your reason for wanting them in the US or Canada is basically in hopes of having a compatible schedule.

I have had online relationships, both romantic and platonic, with people in very different time zones who happened to be online at the same time as me. I have also had acquaintances IRL who never became close friends even though we really hit it off because they were a morning person and I was a nightowl. So geographic proximity does not automatically equate to compatible schedules and, in the online world, geographic distance does not necessarily equate to incompatible schedules.

If you have some idea of when you are likely to be consistently available, maybe put that in Greenwich Mean Time with a link to a time zone map and look for someone with similar availability. (I have seen online discussions about the growing need for a universal time for a more global/online world. I mention that to try to drive home my point while avoiding a long tangent. Consider it food for thought.)

I will also briefly suggest that your criteria of "single or open relationship, not sneaking around" might be in conflict with your desire for discretion. Some cultures give more of a wink and a nod to discreet affairs. The wife may know but not really approve. I will leave it at that for now.

Best of luck.
posted by Michele in California at 10:08 AM on July 31, 2012

I was talking to someone yesterday who suggested South America as a very far away place (assuming you are in North America) which has the same time zone. Bonus: Hispanic culture has a tradition of machismo. A South American man might be a good fit for some of your criteria.

Best of luck.
posted by Michele in California at 8:34 AM on August 2, 2012