NOT ALL EXPERIENCE IS EQUAL

I realize the title may sound a little judgmental, but it’s not meant to be. Hold on with me for a few minutes, and I’ll explain. When it comes to life, we have, what I like to call, narrow experience and wide experience.

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You have two people. They are both the exact same age—let’s say 60 years.

Now, person Z has spent their entire life living in the same state, in the same country, and has been working in the same job since they were a teenager. They’ve never really traveled, and they don’t really care much about the outside world. They are happy with their life and don’t need anything more.

They still have 60 years of experience at life, but all of that experience is in a very narrow range. If you want advice about their state, or their job, or how to be happy with a simple life, then I’m sure they’ll have plenty to tell you, but you wouldn’t go to them for advice about travel, or other careers, or world politics, right?

On the other hand, Person X was born in Canada, then moved to the United States. They grew up in Georgia and then spent a few years in NYC. They got a nursing degree, but then went to art school. They started their own business and since then their life has taken them all over the world.

Person X has wide experience. They are the one you would go to for advice about a number of topics, because they have at least a little experience in a lot of different things.

The kink world, is pretty much the same. You have people who have narrow experience, and people who have wider experience, and even though they may both have been living a kinky life for the same amount of time… the level of experience is not equal.

If your kink is over-the-knee spanking, for instance, and that’s really all you want to do, then it’s totally fine to just do that and be happy. If you like a little degradation during sex, but you don’t like physical pain, you have every right to stick with just that.

You don’t need to try other kinks if you aren’t interested. You don’t need to add bondage, or role play, or butt plugs, or anything else unless you want to.  The idea that you have to continue to branch out and try new things constantly, or else you’re not a real Dom/sub is bullshit.

You can carve out your own happy niche and just enjoy yourself. Lots of people do this.

Many Domestic Discipline relationships, for instance, tend to stick to the same routines. Dom sets rule. Sub breaks rules. Sub gets spanked. It’s a cycle that continues because people enjoy it or find it useful in their life. The only exploring they want to do is maybe try a new spanking implement, and overall things remain the same.

This is what I would call ‘narrow experience’ when it comes to BDSM. You are definitely living a kinky lifestyle. You are incorporating BDSM aspects, but you are limiting your activities to just a few things that you enjoy in your own home, with your partner.

This is not a bad thing. As long as the people involved are happy and content, that’s all that matters.

The only time this becomes a problem is when people who have happily settled into one small nook of the Lifestyle, decide that what they know and live is the only thing that matters. I do find that a lot of ‘one true wayers’ tend to be people whose kink experiences are narrow. In effect, they think their way is the only way, because it’s literally the only thing they’ve ever experienced. So anything else seems wrong to them, and they will be highly critical of people who play or live differently.

They’ll go on and on about how much experience they have, and how they ‘know better!’ because of how long they’ve been playing. “Well, I’ve been playing for ten years, and I know how things are supposed to be done, so you’re wrong!” And they do have experience. There are people who have been doing kinky scenes for years, decades even. But they’ve been doing the same thing, with the same people, in the same places for that entire time and they haven’t really ever branched out beyond that.

Again… there is nothing wrong with having a narrow experience of the Scene. If that’s what you enjoy, then it’s absolutely fine… right up until you start being critical of other people in the Lifestyle, because they don’t play the way you do. Or snarling about how other people clearly don’t understand how things are supposed to work. Or accusing them of abuse.

Unfortunately, those voices are often the loudest, especially on social media, and people listen to them. I’ve even run into this with authors. And I’m not talking about how they write their books, but about them using their Social Media author platform to criticize people who follow different rules, or use different rules in their books.

There was an author a couple of years ago, who is now banned from pretty much every reader group and BDSM group on Facebook, because of her highly critical hot takes on anyone who didn’t play the way she did. And she didn’t just talk about how her way was the best, she jumped on people who didn’t play the exact same way—insisting that they were wrong.

She was very vocal about all her experience, so vocal that everyone knew she’d had exactly one serious D/s relationship, which, for multiple reasons, was sending up red flags to a lot of people. She’d been to one club, which was owned by a friend, and on the basis of this one club confidently told people that all clubs served food, so there was no excuse for not feeding your sub after every scene. (That sub apparently didn’t get a choice either. It was simply mandatory.)

If you’ve only been to one BDSM club, and they did ‘this thing’, then it might be natural to assume it was common. If you’ve only been with one Dom and he always had this ‘rule’, then you might assume that all Doms have the same rule. And you can come off as very confident in your knowledge, when, in fact, you are entirely wrong.

For those who haven’t been to any BDSM clubs, they typically don’t serve food. Some of them don’t even allow food inside, aside from maybe packaged candy, because of the potential mess. But she was unwilling to hear that because in her narrow experience it was true.

So when you are out there listening to people’s advice, you’re going to want to consider where it’s coming from. Is this someone who has wide experience? Have they been to clubs and parties? Have they had different types of dynamics, played different roles? Or is all of their experience coming from the same narrow place?

You also want to make sure you’re listening to someone who is still growing themselves. Are they open-minded and willing to learn about new things. Do they read up on kinks they haven’t explored, instead of judging them for being outside their realm of experience?

Learning and continuing to grow is really important in all parts of your life, and the Scene is no exception. Things change. The social rules of how to interact with each other shift over the years. The BDSM world that we have now, is not the world it was ten, or twenty, or thirty years ago, so you have to be open to accepting changes.

There are way more educational resources out there now. There is more structure, more healthy behaviors, and a much better understanding of why people want to live this life now. All of that is really important.

So when you choose your sources, make sure you’re choosing those with wider experiences, and an openness to growth. And don’t limit yourself to just one resource. With thousands out there to choose from, it’s okay to listen to multiple opinions. Accept that even when you find a favorite blog, or website, or educator, you won’t agree with everything they say, because we all view things through different lenses.

Feel free to look for a second or third opinion. Heck, gather as many opinions as you can, before you decide where you stand on things. I think too much information is rarely a bad thing.