While I’m on a break from Fetlife, one thing I’m conscious of is that I tend to post things about looking for someone to go for cups of tea with, visit graveyards, go to bookshops and then snuggle up for reading. It’s pretty silly, but it’s meant sincerely. While I have to stop myself from adding “apply within”, in the end, it reflects how I would like a relationship to start. A thing of meeting for tea, visiting graveyards/taking quiet walks, and sharing a love of books and reading. Of course, it isn’t everything I want, and I hope that’s obvious as this is a kink site. It’s just that, as I’ve probably said so much that people are sick of it, I want to make a connection on a vanilla level and then grow the kink side of things. I’m looking for a band that takes more than just a love of kink, and I want to go slowly and surely. Eventually, I’d want things to develop into something more committed, and deeper, and to bring in other elements. I just don’t want to rush it. I don’t want to be someone’s mistake. I also want to be sure that most of our mutual needs can be met, and that both of us are working on whatever we need to work on - trauma is being addressed, patterns of behaviour are being broken if they’re negative, and so on. I want to be sure that the connection with this hypothetical person is strong, and that it can withstand a lot of shit - because I think life is going to get more, not less, difficult in the next few years. Any relationship is going to have to be strong enough to ride out the coming storms.Adding to this, I suppose I should expound on what I actually want. Before I go on, I should ask that the reader remember that this is me putting things out into the universe, so of course it’s selfish as fuck - I imagine yours would be too… Isn’t that sort of the point? (It strikes me as odd that we both castigate the “I have no limits” people, but also defining what you want can lead to you being accused that “you’re trying to control things and reduce me to a fetish dispenser” - the point is to talk things through and get to a happy medium, surely?). This is my “moon on a stick” list of things I want to have in a relationship. Vanilla: I want a relationship based on love, trust, communication, and sharing, and that reflects shared values. I want something where we can have separate bedrooms, though, in part because I snore horrifically and I feel guilty if I disturb people’s sleep. I also have restless legs - no idea why, but I suspect it’s anxiety related - and so I want to sleep alone to avoid kicking my partner. I also want to have a space that is mine (mine, all mine, bwahahahaha), because I want somewhere I feel I can go to write, create, and study. Or even just curl up if I need to be by myself because sometimes I do. This isn’t a slight against a hypothetical partner, it’s just how I am. I’m very introverted, think I may be an HSP, and there are times when alone feels like bliss - not because of who the other person is, or anything they’ve done… just because I need that time by myself for my sanity. Touch is, however, very important to me and is probably my primary love language, so I would like a lot of that. I enjoy acts of service too and supporting the person I’m with. I like giving massages and other forms of body worship too. I am happy to take responsibility for housework, cooking, and other domestic chores. This being said, I am a writer and I do need time to work and I expect that to be respected in a relationship. I hope my partner will have their own passions outside of kink and that they can be things we can share (books, board games, cats - you know, stuff like that). I value creativity, so I’d love it if they were also a writer or an artist, or something like that.  I know we don’t have to be completely in tandem, but at the same time, I have learned that shared passions are very often the key to a relationship and that losing that common ground can spell disaster. I’m not sure how I feel about having children - I used to be very opposed but now, I just don’t know.