emerging from self-bondage to shared play

this isn’t really a story, as such. I’m writing it following a suggestion by my wife, as she thinks it might be helpful to others in a similar position. First, a bit of history. I started messing about with self-bondage and cross-dressing in my youth, and that’s a long time ago! but got much more involved a few years ago, finally and with considerable relief, finding this site. Relief? because I found I was not alone in these strange pursuits. Moving on to more recent times, I decided to take the plunge into BDSM with a partner, a little over a year ago. I’ve posted here about some of my experiences. More recently I became involved in a Domme/sub relationship and by a series of coincidences and events, this led to my wife discovering my, to her unknown, kink life. You may imagine that all this came as a considerable shock to my wife, and she was understandably very hurt, upset and quite simply shell-shocked. We have had many hours of discussion, shed many tears but have come through it with a new-found intimacy and a realisation of our deep love for each other. A very welcome addition is that My Lady has joined me in the kink life, to an extent that is very satisfactory for both of us. So we have been to play-parties and Munches together, and of course have had some great adventures in private. We have an acronym here in the UK kink scene “YKIOK” perhaps it is world-wide? but it stands for “Your Kink Is OK” in other words, I make no judgement on your kink. Please bear that in mind when I make some of the following comments. Once I started playing with a partner, I stopped self-bondage, it had no appeal any more. As it happens, most of my play was as a Dom, so I did a lot of tying, but being a switch, I ended up on the rope end of things quite a bit too. I continued to cross-dress, though I found that it drifted from being a direct part of self-stimulation into simply being the way I dressed for play, a sort of low-level stimulation. My wife is happy for others to cross-dress, but she finds it unacceptable for me to do so, and as a compromise in our life together, I have also stopped that. Now, I mention stopping SB and CD because for me they were largely a substitute for what I now enjoy, an active kink life with another person, in this case my lovely wife. I’m going to take a guess and say that a fair number of you guys reading this are doing it for the same reason, you believe you have no alternative, for any of a number of reasons. Remember YKIOK, I have absolutely no criticism of those who are entirely happy with SB, CD etc, nor do I suggest in any way that what I am now doing is “better”. I know that we cannot all wave our kink from the mountain-top. Society in general is still very scared of kink and jobs and family considerations may make it difficult to admit to a kink side. I have “come out” only to my wife, I see no necessity to spread it further. Some of my kink friends tell anyone and everyone, and dress accordingly. However, for those who feel they would like to be doing their kink with a partner, I would urge you to do so. My wife has expressed great sadness that I did not explain my kink to her years ago. Neither of us can be sure what her response would have been, but it might well have saved the great emotional distress we suffered recently. Better to establish all this as early as possible. I also encourage people to get into the local BDSM scene via Munches. These provide a low-stress way to meet others of a kinky nature, not as a “dating club” although that may work out, but a place to acknowledge your kink (the big hurdle for me) and to share your interests with others. I now run a Munch, and tell any newbies to use the “meet-and-greet” service so they get to know me and a couple of regulars before the rest show up. In my experience, “scene” people are very friendly and happy to help newcomers, they do not judge - YKIOK again - and provided you make an effort to chat, you’ll get a good reception. The first step may seem enormous, but once taken, you’ll wonder why you didn’t take it earlier. And a voluntary and deliberate step is a lot easier than an unexpected discovery