This week Keith told me that he had joined FetLife, to try and gain some advice from other people “in our situation.” I had heard of FetLife through OffbeatHome, in one of their posts that suggested the supportive environment for people of all kinky walks of life, including polyamory. While I’m not typically drawn to online forums (with the exception of one that I moderate, lol), I decided to give it a try and see if I could find anything useful (or anyone cool to provide advice) in our area.
Um. . .
I feel like I should have stuck with blogging. And reading books off Amazon. Because I don’t know about you, but the website navigation is terrible. And because of their security (which I appreciate) policy, you can’t just search for people in your area. You sorta have to stumble upon them, and with over 21,000 people listed in the Seattle area, and no discernible way to connect without reading hundreds of profiles or joining random groups, I got internet social-anxiety and left. Not to mention, I’m not super excited about clicking around and seeing surprise dicks in my face. Yes, I know, it’s a kink website, what was I expecting?
Lots of dicks, tho.
Keith agreed, though he has managed to connect with a couple and has a good vibe going with them, getting some questions answered, and building a friendship (they’re not looking for more boyfriends, and neither is Keith). But when we chatted about it, he too felt it was hard to engage with the material because clearly there’s a lot, but navigating is hard. And I have no idea what to even classify myself with all the titles they have going on over there.
So my question to ya’ll is, how do you go about connecting with other like-minded people? I know about munches, and maybe someday we’ll go out in person and socialize outside our little budding poly experiment?, but for now I’m inclined to simply meet and chat online. I’m not really into kinky, at least I don’t think I am (I would know, right?), and so that part of the website doesn’t necessarily fit. I’m fine with meeting kinky people, but preferably would like to meet other people who’ve turned monogamy into successful polyamory. Ya know?
poly pocket of love 
I’m glad to see that somebody agrees with me about the navigation on FL. Sooo frustrating!
There must be a local meet-up or social group for poly people in Seattle. Have you looked into that? And honestly, I just use OkCupid because it is so easy to filter through people and find the non-monog types. Still some work, but much easier to do.
The one thing I notice people do wrong in OKC is not answer the questions “correctly” – this lowers your chance of filtering the open-minded folk properly. I know when I get a 90% match that it’s a almost certainly another non-monog person. Send me an email if you want more details! 🙂
Just stumbled onto your blog from a repost on Professor Polyamory. Fetlife would make a terrible way to find hookups, though judging from numerous threads complaining about random proposition messages, there are plenty of people who try.
You should think of it more like facebook and as a useful tool to communicate and keep up with people you have met in real life. In the bdsm community, the process of meeting new people often seems backwards from vanilla life. You might discuss your deepest kinks and sexual interests with a complete stranger, but you are unlikely to provide your real full name, or where you work, etc. until you know someone much better. Instead you give them your fetlife handle.
It is also a great way to find events in your area where you meet those real people. The key, though, is getting off the computer and getting out into the real life community. At that point Fetlife is a great tool.
Ooh, great suggestions Tim, thanks!!