I’ve never really given or asked for a lot of advice. Cynically maybe, it feels like when I’ve been asked for advice, it isn’t really that they want advice. They want me to tell them that what they want to do is right rather than really wanting advice.

And I’m a researcher by personality and by job. This means that I tend to go looking for ideas and answers myself more than asking for advice. Some of this might have come from my mother who passed on the words of her father:

Your helping hand is at the end of your arm.

Not in the sense of never needing help, but more that I had to at least try to solve situations on my own instead of looking for someone else to fix things for me.

From my dad:

Learn something new every day

He was a voracious reader and passed that on to me. He always insisted that people got old because they stopped learning and growing. He taught me to love learning just for the sake of learning and I still take random classes just to learn about something new.

During the crazy days of babies, my mantra that I used was

This too shall pass

I’ve brought that back a lot in the past year. It’s not working nearly as well as it used to, but I still try to keep some perspective that life will not always be like it is now in the world. I can’t live believing that the things that we want won’t will never be within our grasp again.

For BDSM, and particularly D/s, some of the above actually work. I still try to learn more about what we do and new ideas and things to try, and to remember that life interfering one day doesn’t mean that the next day won’t be better.

But, I think the best advice I’ve ever seen is that you have to be yourself and there is not only one right way to do any of this. It all depends on the relationship and the people involved and the kinks and so much more. If anyone tells you that their way is the “only” way?

I just would move on. And find your own way. That’s Charmer’s advice.