Although there is no real statistical evidence, experience from support groups and “community watchers” indicates that as much as fifty percent of the BDSM-dating attempts fail, either as early as during the initial dating process or in the early stages of what was supposed to grow to a rewarding relationship for all parties involved. There seems to be no real prime cause for this rather dramatic figure, but research by the POWERotics Foundation as well as several European print magazine publishers indicates that there are quite a lot of things, people can do to boost their success: predominantly by trying to steer clear of various obvious and not so obvious traps.

In this course we will try to show you where these obvious traps are and what you can do to avoid them as much as you can. And, we will teach you some aspects that may be critical factors to your success.

In fact, effective dating is a combination of effectively “marketing” yourself and avoiding the traps. Not everything in this course will be applicable to your individual situation. Every person is different, every situation is different, hence it is difficult – if not entirely impossible – to try and come up with general advise and solutions. However, having said that, avoiding the traps will certainly boost your success or – at the very least – help you with some “damage limitation” by avoiding as much potential disillusion as you can.

Three key factors

So why do people have so much trouble finding a partner?

Well, one of the key factors is that it just is not that easy.

You just cannot go to a bar, discotheque or party, address someone and say something like “hey, I’m into bondage, are you willing to share that with me?”
First of all, doing that will probably quickly lead to a very embarrassing situation.

Secondly, depending on where you are, it may get you in legal or social trouble. For example: recent research shows that just about 25 percent of the average relationship develops in a working environment. In other words: colleagues dating colleagues. That as such often creates tension on the workplace. Introducing power exchange in that environment is probably next to impossible.

And another thing is “a little thing called love”. Hormones already shift into overdrive when you meet someone you fancy. The pretty hefty overdose of adrenaline and endorphins that occurs, when you start to think about sharing your darkest, most secret fantasies with someone else is very likely to shortcut your entire brain. End result: you end up doing everything wrong, or in the wrong order. Nobody can blame you for doing that. You just cannot control your hormones. Nobody can. But ….. it still IS counterproductive.

Finally, the BDSM dating process itself – due to the secrecy around it – is usually totally different from other dating processes. It is much more concentrated within “the community” itself and done through personal ads, internet dating, telephone dating and visiting munches, groups and parties, hoping that people will find like-minded counterparts there.

Traditionally, people tend to look for a BDSM-oriented or kink-friendly environment first and next concentrate their dating on that specific environment. This as such is no surprise, because at first glance anyway this sounds like the logical thing to do. Surprisingly though, the vast majority of successful BDSM-relationships started off in a non-BDSM situation, usually simply as a result of the fact that partners where open and brave enough to share their BDSM-emotions with each other, despite the fact they had not indicated such emotions before.

The above article is a reprint from our information/educational site Kink Culture.
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