(To the tune of “All the Single Ladies“…)

I was talking to one of my partners recently and she said that if she had told me she only wanted to be play partners from the get-go, and nothing more, we wouldn’t have the relationship we have now (probably because, despite whatever feelings I had, I would have respected the boundary she’d set). But because we didn’t put a label on it, we were able to grow into the relationship we are currently in.

I used to be very into labels — play partner, boyfriend/girlfriend, lover, mentor/mentee, daddy/girl — and that backfired on me from time to time. I’m thinking specifically about a woman I used to play with 12 years ago; once I became single, I asked her if she wanted to date, and she declined. I had made it weird because I’d gone beyond what she wanted from the relationship — a play partner and FWB. Eventually we stopped seeing each other. Meanwhile, someone else I was into around the same time, we decided we’d try to date, when we really should’ve just stayed play partners — but we fell in love and put a label on it (long-distance girlfriend; she lived several states away). However, when it became clear that we couldn’t be what either of us wanted when it came to being boyfriend/girlfriend, the relationship fell apart. (We tried again a few months later, but it still didn’t work.) And when I became close to my friend who is a former spanking model, we decided to relabel our relationship from friends to dating after we added benefits to the equation. The benefits were great*, but the dating portion of things didn’t work and we’ve been kind of estranged ever since.

The label I use most frequently with play partners is “friend” — as in, “I have friends I see only at spanking parties, and I spank them there.” Friendship can cover a wide range of emotions and feelings, from the casual to the intense. There are some people I play with at parties who I chat with only right before and right after the party, and they are my friends. There are people I talk to once a month or so but only see at parties, and they are my friends too. My long-distance partner started out as a friend, until we became something more. But even using the “friend” label can be misleading, because it can trap you in a situation you don’t want to be in — for example, if LDP and I had remained “just friends”, we never would’ve become intimate and probably would still just be chatting every now and then, most frequently around the times spanking parties were occurring.

Humans label things. It’s just the way we are. But the longer you can go without putting a label on something, the more open to change that relationship can be — whether it’s a casual, intimate, platonic, romantic, or whatever kind of relationship you want it to become. Conversely, if you put a label on something, you can more easily set boundaries. So there’s really no right answer here. And that’s what makes all of this so difficult. (And yet so rewarding when it does work.)

* To this day she still talks about how she felt when I finally had the chance to go down on her, and at the time she told several of her friends, who were reportedly quite jealous. It’s always nice to be appreciated for my skills.