Charlie J Forrest

[N.B. I have absolutely no qualification and little knowledge of psychology, Psychiatry and neuroscience and advise anyone interested in these to seek out reliable sources of information including qualified professionals.]

Over at The Kinky Brits we’re contemplating putting together a ‘Kinky Brits guide to spanking’ (or similar, the title, along with everything else is rather up in the air at the moment). Amongst the different areas to cover is a proposed chapter on “how to meet kinky people” and as designated singleton it’s fallen on me to look at penning the bulk of that chapter.

I’ll wait a moment for the laughter to settle down.

You see, I try to avoid falling into the trap of giving advice either to people who are already happier than I am, or that I am wholly unable to stick to myself. Put simply I don’t think I’m the right person to ask.

But then again it simply wouldn’t occur to me to send someone a picture of my penis; so maybe there is some kind of a market out there for men needing basic tips on what to Definitely not do! [N.B. this isn’t the sum total of it but clueless guys is a big portion of the issue]

This line of thought got me onto a realisation that a lot of these issues come down to a sense of entitlement, which is a horrible thing in terms of the way it makes some men behave, and also royally fucks with their prospects whichever way you look at it.

Let me expound.

You are God’s gift to the opposite sex. Either because you are a physical Adonice, are incredibly intelligent, have a wonderful personality, or can do that thing with your tongue. For whatever reason you know full well that any prospective partner would be delighted to have you.

Except they don’t.

I’m not going to go into why, because that’s not what I’m interested in right now. What’s interesting is that at this point there is a huge gulf between what you expect and what you get. Your sense of entitlement hasn’t been validated. this kind of discord can be extremely tough to handle and typically leads to two responses (ego defence mechanisms? Is that what they’re called?).

1) Externalise the rejection.

You were absolutely right to feel entitled and the world at large is at fault for not appreciating you. Unfortunately this doesn’t often help matters and usually leads to being compounded with further rejection leading into what I call the ‘runaway self-denial reaction’ in which, in order to justify the gradually mounting evidence that maybe you aren’t as utterly wonderful as you think you need to construct larger and larger persecutors, ultimately heading towards accusations of “Feminazis” and getting interested in being a Male Rights Advocate.

2) Internalise the rejection.

You were rejected because you weren’t entitled. This is absolutely fine by and of itself (entitlement is a dangerous, pervasive and destructive notion, of which more to come), but a common scenario is to take on the idea of not being entitled, whilst still seeing others as being entitled. This can set up a similarly destructive and unhelpful feedback loop of rejections re-enforcing the feelings of worthlessness. This is the “You’re OK, I’m not OK” scenario described by Thomas A Harris.

The point I’m trying to make is that neither response is healthy and both can lead to very unhelpful paths of thinking. The most helpful thing to do is to attack the root cause of this, the very notion of feeling entitled in the first place. If you let go of expectations, then anything positive that comes your way is a bonus.

Except things are stacked against you on this front. Our society perpetuates the idea of entitlement and ready gratification. Consumerism and objectification are rife and overtly encouraged. This shit needs to stop. It needs to be recognised and fought. Because it fucks up everyone it touches and everyone they meet.

My number 1 dating tip? Start a cultural revolution!