If you had to go back and start over again -- but got to keep the knowledge of yourself that you have now -- when do you think you would have started being kinky?
Jz sent me this question. It doesn't make me uncomfortable, but my first response is that I have absolutely no idea. Which feels like an easy out - the kind my son would give.
So i thought about it some more - or i stepped back and looked at how i really feel about it all...
I think i wouldn't change anything.
When we did start was such a tough time to do so - I was so close to the finish line of a huge thing i had undertaken. Starting something so new and potentially (and in actuality) overwhelming could so easily have completely derailed years of effort. Our family and life was about to move, change, undergo a major upheaval, one more huge change to our lifestyle at the same time was stupidity.
But it worked, it worked out well, and in fact helped us through the other transitions and stressors at that time.
"But what about the opportunity costs?" Wouldn't it have been even better if i had found out and we had explored even earlier - for just kink, maybe just bedroom, maybe the whole tpe.... Think of the years we could have been having so much more fun, better sex, better marriage. I don't know.
But i still believe that I wouldn't go back and change anything. I think I was ready when it happened. I'm not sure i would have been any sooner. Maybe not mature enough, maybe too fearful, not open enough.... Maybe I would have been, just no way to know.
I have an odd way of viewing things sometimes - seems to be a theme lately. I don't really plan far ahead. I don't have a 10, 20, 30 year plan for where i want to go, what i want to do, where i see myself when.... I look at choices and forks in the road when they present themselves and i try to make the best, most honest decision of the choices in front of me.
The flip side of this is not regretting the path my life has taken. That sounds arrogant (i did everything right) or ungrateful, or like i don't take responsibility for poor choices. It's not those things. I do take responsibility and have remorse for poor choices, especially if I've hurt people along the way, but i don't stew in wanting to go back and change the past.
So - i also don't think 'wouldn't it be great if i had done this, that, or the other sooner. It's a strange way to approach life, I know, but for better or worse, that's me.
Thank you for the question!
Ha! I made the thinker think!
ReplyDelete(just teasing)
It's absolutely true that there are times and places for everything and it's a waste of time to look back and regret our choices - if we even have regrets. I had just been wondering this for myself, so I thought I'd share! :-)
Oh sweetie - you do that all the time - make me think - it's part of the love. I think we have to look back enough to learn from our past - mistakes and the good stuff - but your're right, wallowing in regret isn't useful at all.
DeleteLiving in the present is a way of having peace sometimes. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. It would be far too overwhelming to try to live in the regrets of the past. Even trying to live in the glory of the past, if that's what you focus on, would be taxing i think. I have enough trouble looking back at the good and the bad to help inform my decisions without getting sucked into regrets...
DeleteAnd on the other side of it, for me, if i focused on a 5, 10, 20 year plan and was obsessed by my future, i think i would be paralyzed by fear and never be able to make a decision, never accomplish anything, and certainly never have any peace.
This is one to make one think, its like i have moments wishing/wandering what it would have been like if Master and i had started off vanilla, i get a little envious of those that have because i think there is all so much already established, love, trust etc...but it is what it is...and the grass isnt always greener on the other side..why dwell on what is past and cant be changed...sorry im rambling.
ReplyDeleteBut i loved your reply.
x
I'm kind of the same, but reverse that. What if we'd started off with this dynamic, how many things would have been easier, how much longer we could have had THIS? It's not a winning argument either way, more of musing.
Deletetori,
DeleteI've had so many moments of wishing and wondering the reverse. If he had been in this already when i met him it would have been so easy, he would have known it all, no learning curve, no mistakes, no false starts, no angst, no me second guessing what i've forced him to do, etc, etc, etc.... So yea, the grass looks greener, but its all the same grass everywhere. Like ancilla says, i know its not a winning argument, but sometimes..... There are advantages on each side, and the costs too. Thank you.
Loved reading this post so much...sometimes it is nice to ponder the what would have been's but regret can be such a murky pool to climb out of...taking things as they come is hardly arrogant...Obviously, it worked for you when it did and I like your point about transitions.
ReplyDeleteBleuame,
DeleteThank you so much. I create enough murky pools of other sorts to get stuck in, i guess it's good i can avoid one or two of the other ones. I truly do think the foundation we gained made a lot of things go more smoothly than they might have.