Who knows you're a spanko?

My wife knows. My kids know. Lost-established close friends know. A few people at work and church know.
Making indiscreet comments about "Fifty Shades Of Grey" on Facebook probably means a few more know by now. My wife asked her friends if they all had kinky husbands at one point, so that's a few more. Oh, and the people in the local writing scene, as I've taken one or two of the library stories there for critiquing. Might as well put an advert in the paper.

But not my father-in-law, he'd fail to understand.

Wow you are brave to get your stories critiqued by a presumably vanilla writing group. How did they react to them?

My husband told me, on our wedding day, my Dad came up to him and said "Well, she's yours now. Don't cheat on her. Don't you dare EVER hit her."
I'm pretty sure my Dad would fail to understand as well.

Like so many spankos I spent years thinking that I was a one-in a million-freak. The advent of the Internet opened up a whole new world in which thousands of like minded people made their inner feelings and their secret fantasies known to me and others like me. As most spankos do not make their obsession public, it's difficult to pick them out. An interesting question would be "how many of your (supposedly) vanilla acquaintances have "outed" themselves to you? In my case none at all.

Same here - "none at all."

I sometimes would like to be more open, but I think part of the problem is that society still has this very simplistic polarised view of sexuality - you're either straight or you're gay, or you're abnormal. (Previously it was "You're straight or you're abnormal!") The real situation is that sexuality is made up of a number of components mixed together in various proportions. In my own case I'd say I was more straight than gay and more spanko than either, I dont really feel either "straight" or "gay" would describe me at all adequately.

jools

The writing group are probably the safest people to tell - they're a very diverse bunch involving many gay/lesbian/bisexual people and we get some quite edgy writing. Funily enough I bumped into one of them at a munch.

I told my parents & 2 of my siblings 33 years ago - both siblings shared the same fantasies. And at about the same time, I told 100-odd people on one of those be-totally-honest 'enlightenment' seminars - nobody batted an eyelid (and they were awake - just). I've 'confessed' to most of my partners over the years (none of them, barring recent ones, remotely interested) but only one or two old friends know.

And I had the joy, two years ago, of discovering one of my brothers had been an active spanko for about 17 years! And I never knew!

I showed Chapter 1 of 'Cropton Hall' to my 88 year-old mother last year, after she expressed an interest in my creative endeavours, but she laid it aside when it got to the first (only obliquely described) spanking, and said, "But daaaaarling, it's torture!" I like to believe she didn't mean the style. But I couldn't help thinking, so why did you send me, aged 8, to a boarding-school where the first beating I got left my backside black and blue?

All in all, I think most people aren't nearly as shocked, outraged or judgemental as we spankos usually imagine they're going to be.

Well hubby and a couple of friends. None of which understand my complete passion for my kink - they think I'm bonkers. But good news is hubby doesn't have an issue with my online activity.

My darling vanilla wife has never mentioned my being a spanko ever since I outed to her, nor has she expressed a desire to spank me for keeping this a secret, I can only live in hope.