Why we aren't drowning in playmates. Playmate/ submissive playtoy - someone we like enough to interact with, who either comes to provide service, or kink, or some combination of both. I was asked how often I get this. Someone else asked "where are the success stories?" Why I have so many stories about the failures. If we have a fun playmate, that's private, unless they are comfortable having their kinky fun splayed all over the net. I post about the failures, usually in my group, to help future readers figure out what NOT to do. What my limits are and why, and ideally how to avoid fucking up with Dommes in their own searches. Now, the first question - how often? Seldom. And here's why - We have spent a lot of time working on ourselves on many levels for many years, to become better, mentally/emotionally/spiritually healthier human beings in general, which unfortunately has the problematic side effect of causing one to have a lower tolerance for people who haven't done that work. And as was said in Star Trek Next Generation - "the higher, the fewer." The more you level yourself up, the higher the standards you try to live by, the better the human being you try to be, the fewer people you will be able to be around. The fewer people will be tolerable. The fewer people will be able to understand you when you talk about anything more than the weather. The more you work on yourself, the more alone you will be. Then again, the more you work on yourself, the more you will like your own company, and the more you will prefer being alone to being with the wrong people. People who aren't automatically honest, who don't work toward direct, open communication as the default, people who don't make every effort to say only what they mean, and stick to what they do say, people who don't self-analyze and self-correct and so on. People who can't or won't set healthy boundaries. And so on. All of these things create practical problems, (lying, STDs, flaking, anger issues, failure to respect limits or requirements, etc) as well as emotional stress. All of these things impact consent, safety, and trust. All of these things are solely under the control of the individual, and while we can set the boundary that we won't engage in interactions with them unless they commit to them, the average person isn't actually interested in or concerned with being a better person beyond lip service, or even to getting their kink on enough to make the work worth it for them, even if it would make their entire lives better in the long run. It's almost impossible to have real conversation with people like that, too. We just don't seem to speak the same language anymore, and we get people telling us how we are "taking (ourselves) too seriously" or accusing us of being stuck up and putting on airs. The reality is that we just don't want to deal with the problems that dysfunctional people bring with them anymore. And if we never find another really awesome people to play with because of that, we still come out ahead, because we won't have trash people fucking up our lives. Not to put too fine a point on it.