Help! I’m Kinky? A mini-series of intros into The Lifestyle – Volume 1 : Now What? – Fetish Frenzy and FOMO

 In General Musings, Help! I'm Kinky?

Frenzy and FOMO – two terms we use a lot in “The Scene”, especially around newbies. What do they mean? Why do we feel them? What do we do about it? That’s what this post is all about.

Frenzy can be pretty self-explanatory even if we all feel it different or for different reasons – you basically get the overwhelming feeling of need-to-do-ALL-THE-THINGS. It’s most likely being caused by a good amount of excitement at having just found something that is indeed – very exciting. A lot of folks come to kink with this sort of back-of-the-mind knowledge or gut-feeling that they were always missing something, and when they discover or finally gain access to kink and the community of people also like them, it’s like the final puzzle piece clicking into place. Or maybe it’s like a locked door finally opening. Or maybe it’s like winning the lottery. Whatever the comparison – it gets the blood pumping with possibility. Like a kid in a candy store, people feel a strong urge to rush in and grab as much as they can as fast as they can. In kink, that can look like wanting to try all the activities and buy all the gear and wear all the sexy outfits and go to all the parties and meet all the people. It can also look like wanting to dive head-first into relationships – sometimes especially the ones some folks deem the most serious, like Total Power Exchange, Master/slave, Collaring, etc – and doing all the super involved rules and rituals and protocols that they’ve heard everyone else does.

Frenzy can be a lot of fun and feel quite good and there’s certainly nothing wrong with being excited. If you take the passion and thrill and joy out of kink it becomes decidedly less enjoyable, so you shouldn’t feel bad for letting yourself get a little carried away. The Frenzy eventually fades as whatever you’re doing in kink becomes a “new normal” for you and you find your footing, you aren’t cursed to forever feel like an eager puppy about to explode. In the meantime though, while Frenzy isn’t inherently terrible, if you’re not careful how you navigate it, things can get a little dicey.

So how do we manage Frenzy? First of all, we acknowledge that it exists, is super common, and is probably happening to us. I really can’t stress enough that I’m not trying to be the stick in anyone’s spokes – please be joyful and have fun – but be mindful of how that heightened sense of excitement and curiosity and desire might be affecting your decision making. We fuck with endorphins (the feel-good chemicals your brain makes) quite a lot in kink – it’s important for us to know when that’s happening and plan our actions accordingly so we make fewer mistakes.

Secondly we make a road map. Something that bogs down a lot of newbies’ first experiences is not knowing where to begin and jumping in to things that they don’t actually like – they just thought they had to try it because it was there. This is where FOMO often first pops up – FOMO is the Fear Of Missing Out, the feeling that this is your one and only chance at something, that time or experiences or people are just passing you by and you’re losing all of it. FOMO frequently causes us to over-extend ourselves or not fully think things through, especially when we’re also feeling Frenzy and every experience appears to be a once-in-a-lifetime deal. People find kink at all stages in life and that can have an affect on the severity of the FOMO – older folks, people who already have relationships and families, folks dealing with illnesses, loss, any kind of personal instability, etc can get a sense that they’ve already missed out on so much so if they’re going to have any fun, now is the time to do as much as possible. Again, this can cause us to get involved in stuff we don’t even really like, we just didnt take a minute to really think about it because it felt like in that minute the thing might totally disappear.

So we make a plan. We acknowledge the FOMO in the room and then we pointedly take a step back and do some real self-evaluation. Before we start racking up thousands of dollars of gear in our shopping carts or RSVPing to every single event in town, do some light browsing. Take a self-inventory of what would really tickle your fancy if you had all the time and money and resources in the world, if you could just float on down the lazy river of kink, what really makes you tick? Sort that to the top of the list. Stuff that piques your curiosity but you’re not dying for it? Wait till later, see if the interest dies down or sticks around. Stuff that just doesn’t seem to appeal to you no matter how popular it is with everyone else? You really don’t ever have to do it if you don’t want to. You’re an adult, if you don’t want to eat your broccoli then that’s on you to decide (you can give it to me, I think it’s delicious.)

These steps also apply to relationships. Nobody is going to drop dead if in your first day, week, month, year into kink you’re not locked into someone’s collar or chastity device or getting their name cut and burned into your ass cheek or signing slave contracts or being their live-in or whatever. Especially if you’re still referring back to my last post trying to sort out your roles and labels and not really sure what you’re even into – getting wrapped up in really serious relationships right away can sometimes quash people’s abilities to find their own way and discover their truest selves. Unfortunately shitty people rely on newbies being filled with the Frenzy-FOMO combo and lure them into unhealthy/disappointing/abusive/all of the above relationships by promising to “mentor” and “train” and provide the highest level of fantasy, and it works because it really does sound amazing and feels like the biggest mistake to pass up an offer like that (that’s your FOMO talking.)

Likewise if you already have a partner who is exploring alongside you, moving too quickly can wind up just making both parties frustrated and disappointed. We see a lot of folks decide on a power-exchange relationship, for example, and on their first day they try to implement 30 new rules that may or may not even fit within their already established lifestyle together. They choose things they see other people doing regardless of how practical or desirable they actually are to these two specific people and then there’s hurt feelings when shit goes sideways on them. A lot of Doms find out that they don’t actually give a shit what color socks their sub puts on every single day and the task of dictating their sub’s daily outfit is more annoying than fulfilling. Or a lot of subs find out that things like daily journaling doesn’t actually “help them on their journey of discovery” or whatever other people choose this task for because not everybody is a writer, not everybody expresses themselves well that way. When we pick stuff that doesn’t fit us or doesn’t actually act to enhance the relationship, it can backfire and make us bad communicators, hurt our feelings, make us doubt and feel like we’re failing, not behaving in our roles correctly or not “doing kink right.” Since this is all brand new, people often fail to talk this out and instead roles and rules and rituals start to go ignored. This further hurts our feelings, makes us question if our partner really want’s this or cares about it, or even cares about us, because they’re not keeping up their end of the bargain. Right about here is where people turn to the internet forums and ask “is this really for me?” because conforming to other people’s lifestyles doesn’t work, and trying to take kink from zero to a hundred in ten seconds flat is just too much. The answers to that question usually fall into two categories – 1) we’re not you so we can’t tell you if this is “for you” or not, you gotta work that out yourself. Or 2) I AM THE SOLE ARBITER OF WHAT IS AND IS NOT THE RIGHT WAY TO DO A KINK AND YOU ARE FUCKING IT UP YOU IMPOSTER. Neither is incredibly helpful, I strongly recommend trying really hard not to wind up there by taking some mitigating steps earlier on. The whole go-slow thing I’ve been talking about in this whole post. It really does help.

Frenzy and FOMO can manifest and impact your experience in a ton of different ways and I can’t make a comprehensive list for how to avoid all of them. I can tell you that I know a lot of folks who did things like spent a ton of money on gear and clothes and toys that never made it back out of the closet after the first try because the gear-clothes-toys aspect just wasn’t for them. I know a lot of folks who spent a lot of time in the beginning trying to get in with certain crowds (or the entire crowd) only to find that they didn’t really click with most of them and they weren’t building fulfilling friendships. I know a lot of folks who seriously burnt out trying to hit up all the parties and workshops and conventions and munches and left no time for anything else enriching (or restful) in their lives. I sadly know people who jumped into heavy relationships without first having a solid support network and understanding of themselves and what would be good for them, and when those relationships eventually died, they felt soured on the entire kink experience and left the scene. The Frenzy and especially FOMO can be a real beast and there’s no perfect way to completely avoid them, but knowing that’s what you’re up against can help a little. I still get hit with intense feels of “I’m wasting my youth” every time I don’t make it to a party or convention, every time I see other people in my feed doing things that I can’t, in relationships I don’t have. My brain behaves like it was just told I’m going to die tomorrow and I start taking stock of what I’ve done and what I have and all I can see is all the stuff I’ve missed. It fucking sucks. But it goes away (before it comes back again) and when you know that’s what your brain is doing to you, you can manage it a little better.

So slow down – you have time. Consider your options – what are they, what do you actually know about them (and do you need to learn more first) how does the possibility of them really make you feel when you sit with it for a minute, would you actually be better off waiting or not engaging with it at all, or can you maybe just dip your toe in instead of doing a cannon-ball right into the middle of it. Don’t do things just because it’s what someone else is doing – figure out if it actually makes your experience better. Scrap the stuff that does not make your experience better. Try not to measure yourself against others – there will always be someone whose experience appears to be sexier and kinkier and fuller and with all the shiny bells and whistles, but like in any other aspect of life, you’re not getting the full picture and not everything is perfect. You have time. You still have so much time. Take a breath.


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