Joining The Club That Wants You As A Member

swan recently wrote:

"I know that I long for "companions" on this path. When I get lonely, frightened, confused, lost... I wish there were others who could see what I am seeing, hear the voices in my head, speak to my heart with wisdom and experience and calm. I wish there were mentors and guides. That is the one thing that I have longed to find as long as I have written in the online universe. Those people are as rare as hen's teeth."

I'm sure many share or have shared swan's feelings on this, perhaps more strongly at times than at others.

And while finding someone who sees that one sees or "hears the voices" in one's head has to be exceedingly rare, in My experience, companions are lot easier to come by.

The first impulse, and it's certainly a sensible and useful one, is to be wary . . . . there are a lot of players and bozos out there. Potential stalkers, too. There are people who gravitate to D/s, esepcially on-line, for the wrong reasons. And obviously one needs to have enough radar to avoid those people.

The obvious evil types avoided, there's a large segment of people who are perfectly nice, apparently sane, but simply, well, not very dynamic. It's not a matter of intelligence -- I've met tons of very smart, very boring people on-line. Some people simply aren't particularly insightful, creative, funny, or sexy. Sometimes just it's the combination of two people that isn't right. For whatever reason, one will encounter a lot of people who one can be friendly with, but with whom friendship will never develop.

In the remaining small segment are the potential friends, companions, mentors, or guides. And here is where many people, I find, cut themselves off from the possibilities. The title of this post refers to the old joke (Groucho Marx?), chacterizing a person who "wouldn't join any club that would have him as a member." I find we do that a lot. Why does another person go down somehow in our estimation when it's apparent they want to be friends with us?

Now there are friends and there are friends. Perhaps no one will ever be in one's head to the degree swan wrote about, but there's a continuum there, that stretches from a person who one can casually talk about one's day with to a very trusted friend/mentor/guide, someone who understands and truly helps one navigate the complexities of this lifestyle. But it has to start somewhere. I think that often we're too picky, sometimes from fear, from the lingering pain of bad past experiences, or simply from holding others to an imposisble standard that we, perhaps unconsciously, are also holding ourselves to.

Mentoring/Guiding is more complex, especially for a submissive, since the mentor in question will almost always be a Dominant, and there can be a confusion of feelings there as the mentoring process (perforce) delves into sensitive, edgy areas. I consider Myself to have been a mentor to several people, in varying degrees, and in My experience finding a mentor is mostly a matter of dumb luck. Dumb luck and being open to the possibility that one might actually find one.

So consider that simple posisbility that the club that wants you as a member really really likes you, and that liking you is a rational, normal thing, since you have lots of good qualities and should be liked.

What a concept!