I am what one could call an "online graduate".  I discovered the lifestyle when I fell into a BDSM chat room.  I had no clue what BDSM meant - all I knew is it had "adult content".  I watched the chat room posts for hours - flabbergasted.  Women were leashed, were kneeling and were being beaten up. All I wanted to do was help them back up onto their feet and tell them that there was no reason for them to feel so repressed - not in this day and age!  Someone took pity on me and pointed me to some web sites where I could learn more. And learn I did - I was a sponge -thirsty for any knowledge I could absorb.

I went from online to offline too early.  I didn't know enough to notice that the Dominant I chose to go to was a few days behind me in his online studying.  He didn't get to the chapter of "where not to hit" before he met me.  I was not badly hurt, but it was enough that I categorically insisted that I did not do pain of any kind for 5 years after that meeting.

I ventured out into the ehBC community a year or so ago, at the picnic.  I have seen and experienced many things in that time that have both validated and refuted much of what I learned online.  The dynamics of a Power Exchange or D/s relationship are similar to what I read online, except that the intensity is much greater when seeing instead of reading.  Play or scening however, is completely new territory in spite of having been online for years.  For play, particularly S&m, the boundaries of cyber play are limitless - an active imagination is all that is required.  Play is much easier online, the skills required to master a tool or toy are completely immaterial when the true toy is the keyboard. I now have a much greater appreciation for a flogging scene that doesn't involve an internet connection.

I believe there is a place for the online world.  I believe there is a place for online fantasy role play.  I also believe that some can be very happy with an online lifestyle relationship.  There is some crossover into the offline world, although less than I had imagined, and at a much slower pace than I had envisioned. 

I for one am grateful that the online side of this lifestyle exists - it showed me a world I would have otherwise never known. I also know now that there is no turning back for me.  I am happiest when I am kneeling before my Dominant, collared and leashed, and not waiting for a response from a keyboard to appear. 

Oh, and by the way.....  that categorical insistence about not ever doing pain? I was dead wrong.

dove