I think your advice was really on point! Obviously LW's discomfort is valid, but I don't think the text is that out of left field. I think this will vary a lot depending on how different people approach these things! I meet people on apps explicitly to have kinky sex with and there's preferences I'd like to check are compatible even before we meet. I think there’s something really powerful in LW’s inner conflict though. When they mention that the text was more detailed than stuff they’ve shared in the past with exes…maybe this is an opportunity to reflect on how they communicate about sex in general. Are they happy with it? Are they uncomfortable with certain words, concepts, acts? If this goes further, it could be an opportunity to experiment with being okay saying no to things. Because that’s what the text was! It’s okay to not be into anything on the list. Maybe the person will still wanna hang out, maybe that’s not what they’re looking for. It’s also okay to ask for something else! This sort of communication in a low-stakes platonic relationship can be a way to learn to be assertive with your desires.
One time i sorta hooked up with my neighbor coming back from karaoke and then tried to schedule another time to hang and basically got stood up bc she was seeing some guy instead and ended up talking to my OTHER neighbor (her roommate and bestie) who was like "oh yeah, she's...complicated" and then proceeded to basically vomit up everything about this girl that made her kind of crazy and and impossible to deal with and by the end of it i was like "my guy you need to move out".
but long story short i told her i wasnt interested if she was gonna always flake, and i almost never saw her after that, even tho we were like next door neighbors in a little apartment cluster.
It’s WILD that you hooked up w someone and then ended up playing therapist to her roommate. I know the body adjusts but this would stress me out so much…or force me to work on my conflict avoidance!! I guess I did go to women’s college lol so I should be used to living amongst my hook-ups and lovers and exes
LMAO ok i will say i was friends with the roommate and we had all hung out together more than once. but it was like "omg i didnt know ANY of this shit about this girl like this was not my perception of her at all wow this is a lot of info"
Ok detailed sexual intake form sent with no prior discussion is a nutty thing to do lol….would be very curious to know how that’s typically received. Letter writer, at least this person has given you the beautiful gift of a crazy tinder story
I’m not sure but it kinda seems like part of the letter writer’s conflict is that originally they thought they might BE into other-than-vanilla sex and found the other person’s experience w kink a little intriguing, but that the intake form was just really intense and extensive and intimidating and caught them off guard. Like it’s a double whammy of confusion bc it’s something that might have worked for the letter writer if presented really differently, maybe in person like you described. To me it seems like LW actually might want to try some of the stuff on the list, but is
confused about if the list itself was a bad sign, and that is making the decision of how to respond even harder than like, telling the other person that’s not what they are into.
Sending a pre-work Excel to fill out before your hookup is such a corporate meeting move, lol. I’d be like, “Thanks for the proactive approach, but I thrive in more collaborative, dynamic hookups. I’ll circle back in a few days where our calendars sync to talk next steps.”
Reading this letter I mostly just want the LW to start making an effort to form some friendships with folks in the kink community who they can go to for gut-checks on unexpected things they may run across in their explorations of this side of their sexuality. There is definitely a much stronger culture of blunt, straightforward negotiation in many kink-oriented spaces then most people will have encountered in "vanilla" experiences (scare quotes because so many activities that probably should be negotiated beforehand, like choking, have become so normalized in ostensibly vanilla hookups). That said, there are also serial predators in kink communities who take advantage of newbies' lack of knowledge, and having a robust group of trusted platonic friends with more experience is an important safety measure. It's so helpful to be able to go to people and ask, "Hey, is this sketchy?" and have them say, "Oh, actually checklists are super common, it's just that it's nice to ask first before sending one," or, "Wow, no, it's not cool that when you showed up to their place there was someone else there you didn't expect," (this last one taken from my own personal experience-- don't worry, everything worked out fine, but I definitely wish I'd had a good group of pals to gripe about it afterwards!)
I think your advice was really on point! Obviously LW's discomfort is valid, but I don't think the text is that out of left field. I think this will vary a lot depending on how different people approach these things! I meet people on apps explicitly to have kinky sex with and there's preferences I'd like to check are compatible even before we meet. I think there’s something really powerful in LW’s inner conflict though. When they mention that the text was more detailed than stuff they’ve shared in the past with exes…maybe this is an opportunity to reflect on how they communicate about sex in general. Are they happy with it? Are they uncomfortable with certain words, concepts, acts? If this goes further, it could be an opportunity to experiment with being okay saying no to things. Because that’s what the text was! It’s okay to not be into anything on the list. Maybe the person will still wanna hang out, maybe that’s not what they’re looking for. It’s also okay to ask for something else! This sort of communication in a low-stakes platonic relationship can be a way to learn to be assertive with your desires.
yes to all this!!
One time i sorta hooked up with my neighbor coming back from karaoke and then tried to schedule another time to hang and basically got stood up bc she was seeing some guy instead and ended up talking to my OTHER neighbor (her roommate and bestie) who was like "oh yeah, she's...complicated" and then proceeded to basically vomit up everything about this girl that made her kind of crazy and and impossible to deal with and by the end of it i was like "my guy you need to move out".
but long story short i told her i wasnt interested if she was gonna always flake, and i almost never saw her after that, even tho we were like next door neighbors in a little apartment cluster.
It’s WILD that you hooked up w someone and then ended up playing therapist to her roommate. I know the body adjusts but this would stress me out so much…or force me to work on my conflict avoidance!! I guess I did go to women’s college lol so I should be used to living amongst my hook-ups and lovers and exes
LMAO ok i will say i was friends with the roommate and we had all hung out together more than once. but it was like "omg i didnt know ANY of this shit about this girl like this was not my perception of her at all wow this is a lot of info"
I just love this story ty
Ok detailed sexual intake form sent with no prior discussion is a nutty thing to do lol….would be very curious to know how that’s typically received. Letter writer, at least this person has given you the beautiful gift of a crazy tinder story
I’m not sure but it kinda seems like part of the letter writer’s conflict is that originally they thought they might BE into other-than-vanilla sex and found the other person’s experience w kink a little intriguing, but that the intake form was just really intense and extensive and intimidating and caught them off guard. Like it’s a double whammy of confusion bc it’s something that might have worked for the letter writer if presented really differently, maybe in person like you described. To me it seems like LW actually might want to try some of the stuff on the list, but is
confused about if the list itself was a bad sign, and that is making the decision of how to respond even harder than like, telling the other person that’s not what they are into.
Sending a pre-work Excel to fill out before your hookup is such a corporate meeting move, lol. I’d be like, “Thanks for the proactive approach, but I thrive in more collaborative, dynamic hookups. I’ll circle back in a few days where our calendars sync to talk next steps.”
Reading this letter I mostly just want the LW to start making an effort to form some friendships with folks in the kink community who they can go to for gut-checks on unexpected things they may run across in their explorations of this side of their sexuality. There is definitely a much stronger culture of blunt, straightforward negotiation in many kink-oriented spaces then most people will have encountered in "vanilla" experiences (scare quotes because so many activities that probably should be negotiated beforehand, like choking, have become so normalized in ostensibly vanilla hookups). That said, there are also serial predators in kink communities who take advantage of newbies' lack of knowledge, and having a robust group of trusted platonic friends with more experience is an important safety measure. It's so helpful to be able to go to people and ask, "Hey, is this sketchy?" and have them say, "Oh, actually checklists are super common, it's just that it's nice to ask first before sending one," or, "Wow, no, it's not cool that when you showed up to their place there was someone else there you didn't expect," (this last one taken from my own personal experience-- don't worry, everything worked out fine, but I definitely wish I'd had a good group of pals to gripe about it afterwards!)