Why Do I Prefer to Pay

Back in my twenties I had time to court women online. Fetish spaces were smaller. There was no Tinder, no OnlyFans, and the market felt intimate. I was also single, so putting my face out there, flirting on message boards, chatting on MSN or ICQ—that was normal. It wasn’t easy, but it was viable.

When Friendship Was the Default#

Two decades later everything is different. Domination became a subscription, a polished service packaged like Netflix, Photoshop, or anything else with a monthly fee. Findom turned into a paradigm and the networks I once used to meet people—FetLife, Twitter—became billboards instead of communities. In the first generation of social media friendship was mutual: if I added you, you added me. Nowadays the follow button is one-directional. I consume the persona, but it doesn’t know me.

Choosing the Transaction#

So I did the math. If I want the kink experiences that keep me alive, I have to seek call-girls. They are transparent about the exchange. I’m forty now, financially comfortable, and paying for these encounters barely dents my life—except when I splurge on something extreme.

For a while I stepped back from BDSM companions. The pandemic crushed the community events I cherished, and the scene became more “profes$ional.” In the middle of that shift, I found my current fiancée. She’s the person I see a future with, even though she doesn’t fit the “slutty dominatrix” mold that keeps nagging at my fantasies.

Holding Two Worlds at Once#

Maybe that’s why I keep writing confessions like this. I’m living between generations: one foot in the raw, old-school kink community and one foot in the sleek, transactional world of today. I’m still working out how to be honest with myself—and with her—about the needs that never went away.