Anton Fulmen - How to Find Partners on FetLife

By Anton Fulmen

Copyright 2018 AntonFulmen
All Rights Reserved
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www.consensualdominance.com

So youve madeyourself a profile on FetLife and youre hoping to make some kindof connection with another person to do the kinky stuff youvealways dreamed of doing. Maybe youre looking for a one-time,anonymous hookup. Maybe youre looking for a lifelong monogamousrelationship. Maybe youve been trying to find a partner for awhile already, and youre feeling frustrated about how hard itseems to be.

If you go into oneof FetLifes groups and ask about finding partners on FetLife,someone is probably going to jump down your throat saying FetLifeisnt a dating site! But people date through FetLife all the time.People find hookups and new friends and life partners on FetLifeevery single day.

Its more accurateto say that FetLife is not designed to be solely for dating,like OKCupid or ALT are. FetLife is designed to be a community. Ithas features for keeping in touch with friends, sharing stories andpictures, promoting get-togethers, and having conversations. Itintentionally does not have some standard only-for-datingsite features, like the ability to instantly retrieve a list of allwomen under the age of twenty-six in a hundred mile radius of yourlocation. Lots of people using it arent interested in finding newpartners at all, which is part of why they seem so grumpy about it:theyre tired of getting hit on by people who assume that everyoneon FetLife is on the market.

On the other hand,one thing that people do in their communities is find other peopleto date, hook up with, or build families with. Community isactually really good for that. Community creates opportunities forgetting acquainted, for low-pressure social interaction, forintroducing friends and building a reputation. All of that can leadnot just to one date, but to a life of kinky abundance. So FetLifecan be a far more effective way to find partners than theonly-for-dating sitesbut only if you treat it as a community.

Who am I to begiving this advice?

Im a person who hasachieved a life of kinky abundance. Ive been able to make a lot ofmy fantasies come true, and to build the kinds of relationshipsthat are fulfilling to me. I get to play in the ways I want toplay, with people I enjoy, often enough that I feel fortunate. Ihave friends I can talk to about kink, who get me and supportme.

Beyond that, I havea life where more kinky friends and partners are going to keepappearing. Searching for kink has ceased to be a daunting challengeand become natural and fun.

If youre lookingfor more professional credentials, Im also a longtime sex educatorin the San Francisco Bay Area and author of the criticallyacclaimed power exchange guidebooks, TheHeart of Dominance , and The Dominance Playbook .

It was a journey forme to get to this placesometimes a lonely and frustrating one. Myjourney began well before FetLife existed, but FetLife has been asignificant part of it for the last several years. When I lookaround the site now, I see so many people asking some variation ofHow do I find partners here?

This guide is ananswer to that questiona roadmap to kinky abundance. Itll showyou the steps to go from posting lonely personal ads and notfinding what you want, to being part of a community where kinkypartners are all around you.

The path thatsworked for me doesnt require being good looking or rich or famousor an expert with ropes or whipsthough of course any of thosethings make it easier. It does help tremendously to live in a placewith a lot of people, and where kinky people can be relatively outand open about what we do. I have the great advantage of living ina place thats bursting at the seams with kinky social activity.Ive successfully found friends and partners in less thrivinglykinky places also, though, and Ill share strategies for findingconnection where kinksters are thin on the ground.

The first thing todo, to get yourself on the path to kinky abundance, is to slowdown. Slowing down is the single most valuable piece of adviceI have to give about all kinds of sex, kink and relationships ingeneral. It applies to everything from flirting to penileintercourse to creating D/s dynamics.

If you go straightto the personal ad forums and start posting for partners, thendepending on who you are and what youre seeking youre likely toget either no responses at all, or responses from people who are nogood for you.

I see so many peoplefall on their faces trying to go too fast. Some people get trappedin a place of scarcity and desperation for years by their ownimpatience.

They find some poolof kinky people, whether online or face-to-face, rush in andimmediately proposition every person they find superficiallyattractive. Getting no immediate takers, they conclude that no onewants them or that the group is useless. So they never go back. Orthey lurk on the fringes, coming back around to hit on people againevery once in a while, but never taking the time to make afriend.

Some people havesuperficial qualities that enable them to get dates orrelationships easily and quickly. Young, thin women are the obviouscategory, though not the only one. When they wade into a new poolof kinky people they are likely to be showered with offersimmediately, but the rule of slowing down still applies. All thoseimmediate offers are coming from people who dont know you, dontknow what you want, and dont particularly care. All they know isthat youre hot, and theyre looking for a hot person to imposetheir fantasies onto. Many peopleeager to exploreleap into hardplay or a deep relationship with the first swaggering domly dom orbig-talking Ill do anything for you bottom to scoop them up,then have a terrible experience and never come back.

The strategydescribed in this book is slow. It wont get you a date tonight. Itinvolves spending time doing a lot of things that arent directlyfinding a partner, in order to build a foundation for finding goodconnections later.

Theres one dramaticexception to the rule of slowing down. If what youre looking foris casual, sexual play with men, if the kind of play you want isnttoo challenging or unusual, and if you arent too particular aboutwhat the men are like, then you could probably post a personal adright now and have several eager cocks on your doorstep withinhours.

There are a milliontangled reasons for why cock is so readily and abundantlyavailable, but most of them boil down to fear and entitlement.

People raised as menare more likely to have been taught to enforce our boundaries andbe confident in defending ourselves. We also tend to learn to feelentitled to get what we want from others, and to not take no foran answer. Cisgender men tend to be physically bigger and strongerthan those with more female-pattern bodies. People raised as womenare usually taught that they are cheapened by sex, and fear beingshamed for having it. Trans and queer people learn to fear violencefrom transphobic or homophobic dates. And that's just a fewexamples.

These factors andmany more all conspire to give cisgender men a very differentperspective on sex and dating compared to people of any othergender. Were the only ones who arent afraid, and were also themost likely to feel entitled to get what we want. Like most thingsthat can be said about human behavior, this isnt true of everysingle individualbrazen women and fearful men certainly existbutits true often enough that it creates powerful culturalcurrents.

Among men who playwith men, the absence of fear and brazenness in pursuing desire hascreated a hookup culture thats unlike anything available to peopleof other genders. I imagine some men read the beginning of thischapter and thought Whats this nonsense about having to go slow?Whenever I want to find a guy to spank my ass and fuck me I justfire up Recon and find a hookup. Easy as that. Though if yourelooking for commitment, for chemistry, or for kinks that are lesscommon or require some skill, then the searching experience goesright back to the same long-haul process that everybody else dealswith.