I just wanted to let you know
My mind refuses to let you go
I want to hypnotize you so
You will remember me
– Muse, Easily
I have this type of relationship in the last few years that I haven't had in my life before: kink playmates. It's a bit like fwb, I guess, if I need to label it; not romantic, but intimate, and sexual.
Of course, that sort of interaction over time leads to attachment. It's no surprise: we're friends, and we get to know each other, and provide emotional support now and again, and we end up talking very frequently, sometimes every day. My partner has pointed out I tend to talk to my main playmate(s) more frequently than I do my irl vanilla friends.
These are intense relationships, and they mean a lot to me. Thus far, they've also only ever lasted around a year or so.
It's easier to unwind a play relationship than a romantic one. Easier in a sense, I mean. In another sense it's hard, and that's why I'm writing this. But it's easier in that the stakes are lower: my life and my playmates' lives aren't intertwined in the same ways my life is intertwined with my partner. That's one of the distinguishing features of our relationship, which allows me to have these play relationships at all.
There’s no moving out. No closing shared bank accounts. There’s no bringing over a bag of the other person’s stuff that was in your apartment. There’s usually a conversation, and, hopefully, you stay in touch. That’s usually been the case with my playmates—not always.
Because most of my play relationships have ended amicably, there’s room for some closure: we can have a final conversation, or a future conversation, about what we did, and what it meant to us, and why we stopped. At the same time, the fact of how easy it is to end a play relationship stands in the way of a certain type of closure. It’s obvious, when you stop seeing an IRL partner, and especially if they move out, and double especially if you move out, it’s obvious your life is different now in a tangible way. When online playmates move on, you wake up the next day and your life is the same as it was the day before—you might even still talk to the person—there’s just... something missing. An empty spot, a lack. A sense of anticipation of what was to come... that will no longer be.
I was going to say this, or do this, or make this and send it to you, I imagined us getting to thus and such a place in our dynamic. But not anymore.
So when these things end, I find myself emotionally unmoored for a while. I’ll imagine the sorts of things I would have eagerly shared with them yesterday, and instead realize that, depending on how it ended, I should just keep it to myself, or not contact them at all. Or share my kinky ideas but not expect the same reaction. That’s tough in its own way, even though it seems nice—and IS nice—to stay in contact: it’s hard to shake the thought, unfair as it may be, that if they don’t respond to something now in the way they did before, then maybe the way they responded before wasn’t genuine; they never cared that much, they were just humouring you.
That sort of anxiety, about being inadequate, unwanted, tolerated at best, cuts deep and it always has. It’s how my own brain functions, I can’t blame my ex-intimates for it. I name it to try and understand the shape of my feelings. Most of my psyche trusts and believes the relationship we had mattered to my playmate as much as it did to me—the other part is what I’ve heard called “the dark voice... from junior high”, which is perfectly appropriate: the little part of you that whispers,
You’re bad, no one loves you, you’re going to die alone.
Feeling rejected always opens those wounds, and when someone tells you they don’t want to / can’t play with you anymore, it does feel like a sort of rejection, it IS a sort of rejection, even if the mature adult part of you knows their choice isn’t about you.
Heh, in a way, knowing their choice isn’t about you is its own type of knife, again. It’s what I’ve heard described as a “narcissistic injury”; it knocks you out of the protective bubble we all have (some of us to a pathological extent) that we are the most important thing in the universe, that the world—and, more importantly, the people in our lives—revolve around us... that we are the main characters in the movie of our lives.
Being told, hey, you’re great but I have this other relationship I need to invest myself in at the expense of ours, forces that realization to the surface: you’re not the only person in the world with wants and needs, and this other person isn’t just your supporting cast.
Which is correct and proper to realize, but it’s another part of the pain of ending.
Fact is, while we can argue about when and to whom the term “narcissistic” applies, I do want to feel special to someone else. I want to know I’m important to them. Kink and D/s relationships are a powerful way of obtaining that. Having a sub choose to call you by an honorific, or hearing about what a top wants to do with you, those are big forms of validation, ways of saying, “you matter so much to me.”
Maybe I feel that particular need more keenly than other people do, I don’t know. We all want to matter to others, I expect. To know our existence made a difference, even to one other person, even if that difference was you said something that made them want to touch themselves, and they couldn’t get it out of their head for the rest of the day.
For play relationships, just like other forms of intimacy, the pain of endings doesn’t outweigh the benefits of having the relationships at all (though it sure fucking feels that way when you’re in the middle of the ending). One could consider all the ways I’ve described the ending of a play relationship being painful and wonder if I’d be better off just not having these additional relationships in my life, but the fact is they’re additive. Having them end has been painful, but the last few years have been brighter and more fulfilling than they would have been without my playmates.
Some people, when they break up, delete all the photos and text messages they had with the person. They might hesitate to ever speak of them, especially with future partners. I’ve never been a fan of this. My past relationships are as much as part of me as every other experience I’ve ever had, positive and negative. Why disavow and cut away a part of yourself? Better to enjoy, in retrospect, the good parts of what came before, because even a relationship to which you’ve committed your whole life won’t last forever—nothing will. And even the painful parts of those past relationships, the endings... better to sit with them and accept what hurts. That, also, made you who you are.
At one point, I thought, “now all I have is memories about what we did, and my fantasies about what we might do.” But the truth is, it was always fantasy—they were just fantasies we created together.
That’s overstating it, perhaps: even online play via text message, the most removed you can get from seeing and touching someone, is intense and meaningful.