Category 18+

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

One of the great things about the life my partner and I lead is that we are both able to have separate interests.

There are one or two hobbies we share that bring us together (watching Formula 1 or going to ice hockey for example). But there are also things that we are interested in separately.

We’ve been together over 11 years now and having your own space and time to go and do your own thing, I’ve come to understand as very important. When you are younger and you’ve first met, the feeling is that you must be together, sharing exactly the same things every waking moment – but I can tell you from years of experience, this is a trap. You won’t always be interested in each others hobbies. You’ll want to do your own things.

I often come across couples who haven’t worked this out and it gets ugly very quickly.

I can summarise it as “time apart to do your own things – come back together to share some things” as the winning formula.

When this isn’t allowed in a relationship, what often ensues is either a “points” game (“I’ll go to that yoga thing she wants me to go to because then I can insist we watch the new Top Gun movie on Saturday!”) or the more horrific battle of wills scenario where one partner resents the other for not liking and enjoying the same things they do.

You’ll usually only hear one side of this of course, presented as the other person not being “supportive” or “investing in the relationship” or “not wanting to spend time together.” At it’s worse “they are not committed to me” is thrown about.

So I recommend strongly, having your own hobbies and interests that you peruse yourself or with friends.

However, this in itself is not fool proof and I’ll explain why and how below.

Photo by Katie Harp on Unsplash

You’ve been doing findom on Twitter a while and you are starting to get concerned it might be a problem?

Maybe it’s not as exciting as it once was?

Maybe you’ve had financial problems as a result of over doing it, or other problems in your life such as relationship issues or sexual dysfunction?

Or maybe you’ve realised you are actually fully addicted and you really want a way out?

Whatever the case you – want to stop, or at least cut back? But you aren’t finding it easy?

Stopping findom can be HARD.

The (tragic) truth is, findom can easily become just another addiction, absolutely as difficult as cigarettes, alcohol or drugs to kick.

Actually, maybe its even harder?

Where as the outside world knows about addiction to those things, findom is still relatively unknown and somewhat taboo. This means information about it and support to kick it can be harder to find.

Rather than writing about theory further (which is what I normally do), I wanted to actually write some tips that *might* help you stop or cut back.

Photo by Daniil Onischenko on Unsplash

My colleague is drunk.

We’re at a work night out. I hate these events but if you don’t keep a minimum appearance at some of them, no matter how good you are at your job, you soon find your life getting harder. A work world ruled by shallow thinking extroverts means things have to run this way it seems?

I’ve mostly given up on ever hoping it will change.

We’ve started talking about a mutual friend who has been questioning her sexuality. For as well as being drunk, my colleague is also a lesbian.

More than 15 years ago, when in her early 20’s, she finally decided she wanted to understand her sexuality fully and through a series of experiences, understood what she wanted. Shes now been with her girlfriend for over 10 of those years and is engaged to soon be married.

Shes jabbering at me incessantly in the way only really drunk people can.

Photo by Yeshi Kangrang on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about wokeism, conspiracy theories and why people (especially those online) often feel so unhappy and lost. A jittery feeling of discomfort? Of not being or doing enough. A feeling that, everything is wrong, bad or fake? Does any of this sound familiar to you?

If so, I’ve got a theory. I think people in Britain, especially those in the middle classes, are often wracked with an existential feeling of guilt and shame.

The feeling stems from the idea that our lives are “too good” , “too easy” or “too comfortable” and that we aren’t entitled to the lives that we have.

This society wide feeling of “guilt” expresses itself often subconsciously. It’s promoted in our media and thoughts/philosophies and becomes a self re-enforcing feedback loop.

Photo by Daniil Onischenko on Unsplash

Please note that what I’m going to write here relates heavily to the United Kingdom and is not about other countries, regions or cultures, which may be very different. It also contain things you might disagree with. So if you get very upset when you don’t hear your own exact opinions echoed back at you, then please don’t read on.

As I explained in a previous series of articles (“changing gender roles for men”) over the last 100 years, women have been successful in getting to a place where they can shift in and out of their gender roles as they desire, MOST of the time.

I’m not saying there isn’t still sexism and there aren’t people around who’d dearly love to push them back into their traditional gender roles as they were in 1961 (more on that later). But for the most part, women now flick between traditional/new as they wish it seems.

At 10am a “normal” woman can be the caring and nurturing mother, feeding their child and taking them to nursery. By 12pm, a C-level executive, making decisions about enormous budgets in the corporate world. At 7pm, a kick boxing expert at their local gym. At 9pm, demanding the help of their husband to kill a spider.

British society now, for the most part accepts this. The above wouldn’t be a massively unusual story. There are people who don’t accept this of course and I’ll come to some of those soon. But I’d expect those people are mostly shouted down and disagreed with.

The above would seem extremely normal in 2023.

The conclusion in the series I wrote was that men really need to get to the same place. I don’t believe, as a group, we are yet. Not quite anyway.

8th March 2023 is International Womens day.

I’ll admit, I don’t normally do a lot for this day each year, other than keep my head down, avoid social media (it’s normally even heavier on the misandry I find) and wait for it to pass.

Twitter is normally full of this :-

The idea that we can build women up by dragging men down.

However, in pursuit of being fair and perhaps trying to make it a bit positive, given I wrote a couple of articles for International Mens day, I thought, just for once I’d try and do something here for International Women’s day too.

If you’ve ever read any of my other writing or tweets etc, you’ll know I’m not at all a “feminist” (whatever that means now) and I don’t subscribe to any of the critical social theories which might surround gender.

What I’m going to do here instead then, is just give you a list of “public facing” ladies, that over the years, I’ve found inspirational.

A “thankyou” perhaps in a way – or a sign post to go check out some great things done by some great people.

Photo by Ollie Jordan on Unsplash

The weekend just gone, I was out and about in a local town and went to the chippy for lunch.

For non-Brits who don’t know, a chippy (or a chip shop) is a classic British food takeaway outlet.

These are the places that serve the traditional, mythical dish of fish and chips. But they also do a good line in other foods too. I had battered sausage, chips and gravy for example.

This one would be considered a “posh” one. Again for the non-brits this means, upmarket. Fancy.

Most chippies are only take away venues but this one had a small seating area on the side. And very nice it was too.

Why am I telling you this? As usual, there’s a bigger picture to my story. Let me unpack.

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Scrolling Twitter recently I came across a rather interesting blog post which a mutual follow was commenting on.

The blog is “It’s more fun in your 30’s” by Kelly Jackson (@Kelly_Jackson88) and can be found at https://itsmorefuninyour30s.blog

I should start by owning up, this is not the sort of blog (nor Twitter user) I’d normally be interested in reading/following.

It appears to be the usual diet of recipes, restaurant reviews, reality TV and some personal journey/life improvement stuff.

As with most blogs like this, the majority of the content is acting as a thin veneer for money making from product placement and getting free tickets for Alton Towers (or something of the like? I think this is the influencer/blog game?)

And fair enough? It’s 2023 and this is what people do? It’s not like my blog is any more interesting! And to be fair, I don’t really think it was intended for my demographic.

So why am I talking about it?

Photo by Stefan Spassov on Unsplash

Interview was conducted over Direct Messages on Twitter on 19th February 2023.

“Tom” is a pseudonym used for anonymity reasons

Demographics

Photo by Stefan Spassov on Unsplash

Interview was conducted over Direct Messages on Twitter on 19th February 2023

@GoonGoddessLuna is a catfish user (a male who presents and acts as a dominant female) and presented as a sub when the interview was conducted. His account has since been deactivated.

Demographics