The point is that, even with all the fucking AB Pride in the world, it's never that easy to tell someone else about your kink. Not early on, anyway. Full disclosure: I'm still young and I'm still learning about the best ways to do all this kink-in-relationships stuff. Finding someone else to share your AB side with isn't easy. Yes, there are online AB communities, which have their uses, but frankly, can prove off-putting and weird just as often as they are (positively) eye-opening and helpful.
A lot of ABies, however, are going to end up sharing their kink with someone else who is not at all AB-inclined.
This can be freakin' tough as, yeah, it is a weird fetish. I mean, remember that shame I mentioned up there? Get over that! But yeah, seriously, it's still there and it affects me and I just wish it were easy to get over but yeah, telling people who aren't into this about it is a bitch.
That's why I want to share a recent amazing experience.
For a while now (the best part (as it were) of six months) I've been dating this woman who is kinky as anything. It isn't my first time dating a hella-kinky woman, actually. As a matter of fact, it isn't my first time dating a kink-positive sex worker. Still, I know from experience that even if someone is super duper kinked-up, they can have weird-ass reactions when it comes to the whole AB thing. Trust me, I know. I first told her that I was into "ageplay" (a great term for pulling out when you worry that "adult baby" has too much stigma attached, I suppose) fairly early on in the relationship. What's great is that, since that first mention, we have discussed it a lot. Some of the discussion has left me happy, some has left me very defensive and some has left me incredibly worried by the fact that my girlfriend is clearly struggling with a lot of these concepts. Sometimes I put up my hands and just wished that she 'got it'.
However, the point is that she is struggling with it; in the most positive way possible. She hasn't just gone "no, I don't understand this at all" and ignored it, which would just leave that side of me frustrated and ignored, she is working through her ideas about it with me. Sometimes this doesn't have the icecream-and-rainbows ideal result that I'd like, but fuck it, what does? Sometimes she admits to finding it all a bit incomprehensible, but the point is that we are working on it, thinking about it and - more importantly - thinking about ways to make AB play fun for the both of us (but heh, that's a post for another time, methinks).
Anyway, relationship talk and doom and gloom and we'll-work-it-out-someday-somehow aside, I just want to share that, sometimes, I get these amazing little reminders that I have the most amazing girlfriend and that, even though she doesn't completely 'get it' right now, she loves seeing me happy and loves doing what she can to help me explore that side of me.
So yeah, I walk into her room one day and she has refitted her 'puppy nook' (a cubby-hole type space in her bedroom that was there when she moved in; we both immediately decided that it can have no purpose other than 'boy hole') had been converted into a playpen, complete with books made of cardboard, giant cuddly toys and that sort of infant mobile type thing I can't quite remember the name of.
You know what? My face fucking lit up.
I had had one hell of a day and was as tired as anything, but seeing this thing that she had put the time and effort into putting together just lifted my spirits no fucking end. We'd been out and bought ageplay-related stuff together before (namely some niknaks for a 'toybox' themed party and some super cute clothing from vintage shops), but this was the first time that 'little me' had a space all of his own.
I could go on and say what else we did that night, but I feel that that's the subject of another post (on how to make your ageplay work for both you and your maybe-not-into-it-for-the-same-reasons-you-are partner(s)). But look, if this post has any message at all, it's this: negotiating AB stuff with your non-AB partner can be tricky and tiring at times, that's no joke, but here's the thing, if they're even discussing this stuff with you then they're interested, and they're interested in making you happy, and sometimes they show you that they're interested in making you happy.
I'm not shallow. I may kink hard for fetish items but this isn't about that. This is about the fact that my girlfriend went out of her way to make a space for me to play in, and I fucking appreciate that.
Ok, mushing over for now. More practical posts in the future. Maybe.