Domination & Submission: The BDSM Relationship Handbook (15 page)

The bottom line is: 
You are never as
anonymous online as you think you are
.  My intent in telling you this
is
not
to frighten you to the extent that you are tempted to avoid
any
involvement at all
in internet relationships or the online BDSM
culture.  No,
not at all.
  My intent is to encourage you to go
into it with
open eyes
.  I want you to know how to take proper
precautions when you
can
, and to understand the possible consequences
when you can’t, or
choose not to.

We’ve discussed the
virtual line
that many
people use to keep their virtual world and their real lives from spilling over
into each other’s domain, and the many good reasons for establishing those
limits.  The existence of that line
shouldn’t,
however, prevent
anyone from acknowledging and appreciating the fact that there are
real
people
behind those engaging little cartoon characters we call
avatars
. 
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with expressing your wildest fantasies in an
online virtual world, as long as you don’t forget that
other people are
doing precisely the same thing
. 

Unfortunately, it is maddeningly common for some
people to
completely reinvent themselves
online while simultaneously
expecting
everyone
else to be
scrupulously honest
about their age, gender,
body type, relationship status, location, finances, and other kinds of personal
information.   Not only is this sort of rampant deception generally
the rule rather than the exception, but there are many who seem to be
completely oblivious to the inherent improbability of establishing a meaningful
relationship based on their
bogus online personas
.  Ironically,
there are people who spend months,
even years
, carefully crafting a
phony online persona and searching online for that special someone who is
real,
only to discover after finding that person that he or she was looking for
someone real,
too
.  Whoops.   

Let me reiterate the point I’m trying to make,
here.  I am
not
advocating that you should make your online avatar
a virtual mirror image of your real-world self in every way.  After all,
most
people are drawn to online virtual worlds primarily for entertainment and for
the exploration of their fantasies.  Making our virtual world and our
virtual selves look and act exactly like our real selves would seem to be a
sure way to suck all the fun out of what would otherwise be an amusing
activity.  What I
am
saying is this:  If you’re using a
virtual world environment to search for a
real-life partner
, your
probability of success will be
directly proportional
to the amount of
reality that
you inject into your own profile and behavior.
 

It won’t do you any good if someone falls in love
with an artificial construct that
isn’t anything like you
.

Major League Baseball manager Yogi Berra once said,
“If you don’t know where you’re going... you might not get there.”  This
is never truer than when it comes to online BDSM relationships.  It’s
incredibly easy to find yourself entangled in an online relationship before you
even realize what has transpired.  If you find yourself waking up or going
to sleep with thoughts of your online paramour, spending time online simply in
the hope of seeing that person log on, or putting real life responsibilities
off to spend time chatting with that person, it’s time to face the awful
truth:  Surprise! 
You’re in an online relationship.
      

The question you
should
ask yourself is: Is
this a relationship that is destined to go anywhere I want to be?  It
helps, of course, to have some idea where you want to eventually end up; the
operative word being
eventually
.  You may not be able to make
certain changes in your life
right now
, but choosing any path that leads
in a direction that doesn’t move you
closer
to your goals would be
counter-productive, at best. 

It’s been said that men often marry expecting that
their spouses will never change, but women marry expecting that their spouses
will.
 
Both strategies are completely unrealistic, but they handily demonstrate the
prevalence of denial and self-delusion that is common at the start of many
relationships.  If you think online relationships are particularly
susceptible, you’re right.  And online
BDSM relationships
are
doubly
so
.   As we mentioned earlier in this chapter, the odds of your
online BDSM relationship lasting two years or more are roughly
1 in 50.
 
For the math-challenged, those are
not
great odds.

How can you improve those odds?  The first step
is to take a long hard look at yourself and to conduct a critical
self-assessment.  If you don’t know yourself, and are not comfortable in
your own skin, you can’t possibly expect anyone else to be able to get to know you,
either.  If you don’t know what you want, or what you need in a mate,
chances are you’re not going to find it.  If you can’t differentiate
between what is good for you and what isn’t, you’ll probably end up with a lot
of the latter, and less of the former.  This self-assessment isn’t always
easy to do on your own.  You may need to enlist the help of a trusted
friend or associate, or perhaps even a trained counselor or therapist to help
you to see yourself more objectively. 

It’s often easy to convince ourselves that we’ve
simply been the victim of “bad luck” when it came to our past relationships,
but more often than not, the seeds of those failures can be traced to
misperceptions or misconceptions which, in turn, produced a series of
bad
decisions
.  If insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over
and over while expecting different results, then when it comes to
failed
relationships
, we all may be just a little
insane.     

Once you’ve done your critical self-assessment, you
should take inventory of your needs and wants, being careful to differentiate
between the two.  Then go back down those lists, item by item, and rate
your own willingness or ability to compromise on each.  It might be useful
to use a numeric scale ranging from one to five.  A
one
means that
you’re a
complete pushover
when it comes to this issue; if your heels
were any rounder, you’d probably just keep rolling.  A
five
indicates
that you have
no willingness compromise,
whatsoever:
 
“Stubbornness is your
superpower
- you were bitten by a radioactive
mule.” 
(Hat tip to author Shannon Hale.  I just love this
description.)

The next step is where things get a little more
complicated.  Attempt to do the very same thing for your potential
partner.  While it would certainly be helpful at this point if you were a
mind-reader
,
chances are pretty good that you aren’t.  Therefore, the next best
strategy is to simply
ask
your potential love-interest.  There are
lots of different ways you can phrase these questions, but the easiest is
typically something like, “Wow! So, you’re into foot-worship! Have all your
past lovers been into that, as well? Or is this something you are able to
compromise on?”  When you phrase it that
way
, it just sounds more
like rapt fascination and less like a
job interview.

Once you are able to compare these two lists, noting
your abilities to compromise on key relationship issues, it becomes relatively
easy to know if the two of you are traveling along
intersecting paths
,
or moving in
opposite directions
.  If it appears that the two of
you are moving in opposite directions, it doesn’t mean your potential mate is a
bad person. 
It simply means that your time would be better spent
talking to someone with whom you actually have a
sliver of a chance
of
success at a lasting relationship.  Focus your time and energy where it
has the greatest potential for success. 

If you are
already
in an online relationship,
and you’re beginning to wonder if it’s a good place to
stay,
then I
would recommend learning to spot the early warning signs of an impending train
wreck.  It’s always frustrating to look back
after the fact
and
realize that the danger signs were always
right there in front of us,
frantically waving big yellow flags but, at the time, we were completely
oblivious to them.  Chances are actually pretty good that you’ll ignore
them the next time around, as well -
even after reading this
- but at
least
now
, you can’t say you weren’t warned.  As always, my use of
the masculine pronoun
“he”
is
not
intended to suggest that any of
these characteristics apply solely to the male gender.  It’s simply a
grammatical convenience.  If the shoe fits -
male or female
- drop
the romance and
back away slowly.
 

Here are some of the yellow flags you might want to
be on the lookout for: 

He continues to be overly secretive about his
real
name
, even after you’ve been in a committed relationship for months. 
No one should be giving out their real full name to
strangers
over the
internet, but once you’re
officially a couple
and you’re allegedly
making plans for a lifetime together, it’s a pretty safe bet that the need for
name secrecy has passed.  While there may actually be legitimate reasons
for a certain level of caution, he should be able to articulate those reasons
to you, and they should
make sense. 
Don’t let him get away with,
“I’m
a secret agent.  If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.”
  After
all, intelligence agencies go to a great deal of time and trouble to create
believable
cover identities
for their agents, just so they’ll be able to
give you a plausible name and occupation.  Don’t let your tax dollars go
to waste!

His profile photo has a
copyright
mark on
it.  The same goes for a trademark, corporate logo, or website
address.  You’d think this would be a
huge
yellow flag that would
be pretty hard to ignore, but you would be absolutely
amazed
at how many
people find nothing unusual about it.  Let me just spell it out for those
who don’t understand why this is weird. 
Normal people usually don’t
copyright or trademark their personal photos
.  The presence of that
little symbol, or logo, or URL on the photo
usually
indicates that the
photo was simply
right-click stolen
off of a random website. 

His photo is posted to a photographs-only site like
Flickr.com, but
not
anywhere else.  Why should this be a yellow
flag?  Simple.  Because, as a general rule, people discover the
utility of certain internet sites in a
certain sequence
, starting with
the simpler ones and graduating over time to the more complex.  It’s
relatively
rare
for anyone to
start out
with complex photo
sharing site without having
first
tried out more user-friendly social
media sites, such as Facebook or Tumblr.  In other words, someone with a
Flickr photo-sharing account
almost certainly
has a Facebook or similar
account.  So, why might someone want to conceal his Facebook page from
someone with whom he is in a committed relationship? 

He doesn’t have a phone. 
Really?
 
We live in an age where
elementary schools
have to establish rules
forbidding
8-year-olds
from taking their cell phones to school, but
he
doesn’t have a phone.  Your friendly neighborhood Wal~Mart sells
pre-paid cellular phones for $10, but
he
doesn’t have a phone.
 
It’s
far, far more likely that he
does
have a phone; he simply doesn’t want
to give
you
his number.  You probably won’t even need to use up all
three of your guesses to figure out
why not.
  

He’s only online very, very late at night, and into
the wee hours.  Translation:  He has to wait until his wife is
asleep.  Award yourself extra points if he has to log off unexpectedly and
without warning for no apparent reason, or because
“something came up”
at 3 AM.  I don’t know about
you
, but there’s not a whole lot going
on in
my
life at 3 AM.  Here’s what that abrupt late-night log-off
really
means:
“Whoops. Accidentally woke up my wife.”
  

He isn’t involved in any significant way with
real-life local BDSM groups or activities.  And
what a surprise,
he
doesn’t want
you
to get involved in any, either!  Typically, he
will justify this restriction by characterizing everyone in these groups as
jerks and phonies, and claiming that he simply doesn’t want them to teach you
any bad habits or take advantage of you.  Translation:
 
“I
have no idea what I’m doing, and if you start hanging out with people
who do
,
you might figure that out.  If
anyone
is going to take advantage of
you,
it should be me.”
      

He has long spells - some lasting weeks or longer -
where he simply seems to drop off the face of the earth.  There’s never
any warning before it happens, and
nothing at all
during the
dry-spell.  No phone calls, text messages, nor even an email.  When
he returns, the explanation strains credulity.  It’s usually something
like his laptop stopped working, or his grandmother died.  The explanation
makes very little sense, since
most
people these days have multiple ways
to stay connected, including their telephones or friends with phones or
computers.  Even if he claims to be completely
phoneless and friendless
,
there are
always
computers with free internet available for use at the
public library.  As for granny’s untimely death, she’s been dead for
three
weeks now. 
He couldn’t find
thirty seconds
in his busy
schedule to send you a message saying, “Grandma kicked the bucket?” 
Please
. 

It’s
far
more likely that his absence was
caused by one of two scenarios.  The first is he is a cheater who got
busted by his spouse and had to
lay low
for several weeks, until she let
her guard down again.  The second is he simply didn’t want to be involved
with you anymore, but didn’t have the balls to
tell
you so.  If
this second scenario turns out to be the right one, you shouldn’t be surprised
if you learn that he’s been
online the whole time
, but on a different
account or under a different screen name.  

His remarks about the time, local news events or the
weather don’t match up well with
reality.
  There are lots of things
people can be
expected
to be inconsistent about, but
the time
is
rarely one of them.  For most people, meals, work shifts, and sleep
generally occur at fairly regular and predictable times and intervals. 
You can fool your body (and even your gullible online friends) for short
periods of time, but eventually it all catches up with you.  Anyone who
claims to be in a time zone that differs from yours by six or more hours, and
yet is
miraculously
able to keep exactly the same hours that you do, day
after day, for weeks or months at a time without any ill effects, is most
likely being deceptive about his actual location. 

Local culture, customs and news is another easy way
for deceptive people to get tripped up.  It’s one thing to
claim
to
live in London, but it’s another thing
entirely
to have any idea of what
is actually
going on
in London.  While chatting online, it’s very
common for people to talk about what is happening
where they actually live,
rather
than what’s happening in their
fictional community.
 They tend to
forget that you have access to the news too, and can actually check out their
stories.  They also sometimes assume that everyone is as ill-informed
about the rest of the world as
they
are, which makes sniffing out their
cultural blunders all the easier.   A Londoner who isn’t familiar
with
“bangers and mash”
probably
isn’t a Londoner at all. 

Don’t forget to talk about the weather. 
Deceivers typically forget that
anyone
can pull up a national weather
map in order to see what’s happening in their supposed neighborhood.  If
someone tells you about a massive storm front pummeling his area, but the
national weather maps show nothing but
sunny skies
where he
allegedly
lives, something’s not right.

If a story doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of
sense, it’s not just because the storyteller is odd or eccentric; it’s usually
because the storyteller hasn’t sufficiently thought things through.  An
online friend once told me that she had been
shot in the arm during an
attempted armed robbery
while working at a bar the previous night. 
Several hours later, she was talking about
going back to work that very
evening
.  I don’t care
how
tough you are, or how superficial
your gunshot wound might be - nobody goes right back to work the next day after
being shot. 
Nobody. 

Another online friend, who allegedly lived half a
world away, mentioned in one of our conversations that she was downing a few
shots of tequila as we chatted.  A quick glance at my world-clock told me
that it was 7:00 AM on a weekday where she was
supposed
to be. 
Considering the fact that she supposedly had a twelve-year-old daughter that
she drove to school daily and a job where she allegedly worked
banker’s
hours
, it’s not hard to see how the entire flimsy concoction immediately
began to fall apart under its own weight.

There are no silver bullets that will work in every
situation, every single time.  The important thing is to
pay attention
to the little things
.  When something doesn’t make sense, there’s
usually a
very good reason
.  Take note of the
inconsistencies.  One or two may turn out to be nothing at all,
but
dozens?

A person who is telling the
truth
doesn’t
have to have a good memory, but a
liar
has to have an
exceptional
one,
and most liars
don’t
.