What Happened

I may never hit “publish” on this post, but I’m going to write it anyway. Maybe it’ll be password protected, or only for subscribers. We’ll see. But writing is how I process, how I connect, how I make sense of things. I think posting this now, will, maybe? help with the moving on, the absence of the closure I want and need and feel I’m owed.

So, what happened? What’s caused all the heartache and anguish the last year…and a half+?

There is some backstory and context and that’s this: when I was 18, I came roaring into the scene and met a lot of people. Two of those people were a reasonably well-known married couple. I am not going to name them, whether or not I publish this, but I’ll use pseudonyms to make this easier than “he” and “she” – since he already has a name here, we’ll stick with Elephant. We’ll call her…Firefly. They’d been together several years and married for a few, when I met them. Because I was 18, this was now half my life ago. I knew these folks (and many others that I’ve remained in touch with that I’ve known since the same time period) through the real “coming of age” period of my life. A lot of ups-and-downs – mostly downs if we’re honest, but they were there. They saw me. We were close. I visited often.

One year, Daniel and I even flew to LA a few days before Shadow Lane, stayed with them, and then drove to the party with them. It was a fun short road trip. I was always closer to her than him back then, but we still had a friendly rapport. One thing we’d do in Vegas was go to the converse outlet – a love for them was something Elephant and I shared. He was funny and quiet, introspective. We never played, it wasn’t about that. It was just good people being good friends.

A note on a lot of this: I have screen shots of text conversations (and the original text threads, of course, in my phone) that supports pretty much all of this and Firefly has blogged fairly openly about anything I am sharing that seems “personal” to her, so none of it is any sort of “outing” or sharing of secrets. She has also posted much of it publicly on social media (Twitter, Bluesky).

Fast forward to September 2023. Elephant and I had always primarily communicated via twitter – both tweeting at each other and via twitter DM. I’ve written about how this was a time period when my kink was coming back and with it, things I had denied myself even the thought of for a long time. One of them was specific to his kink, so I tweeted a photo, tagging him – flirting, yes, provoking. This felt very normal. I wanted to talk about it and I needed an in.

Talk we did. A LOT. As it turns out, we connected rather deeply on this kink thing: uniforms and discipline. What struck me the most is that I didn’t have to explain myself to him much, because it was something we shared, he just got it. This gave me a context and vocabulary for something I’d had in my head for so long. We talked about the possibility of doing this someday. He said he’d done this online (in both directions, as a switch) before and it could work. I was intrigued. We set a date. I had texted with Firefly a few times throughout the fall, about planner things (both of us sharing a love for notebooks, planners, pens, stickers, washi tape, etc), even telling her I was enjoying finding the joy in uniforms. Elephant said she knew we were talking. I made it clear to him her blessing was important to me since she and I were friends.

The play we did on that quiet chilly Friday in November was some of the most mind-blowing. Not because we had some dynamic and rules set out, but specifically because we did not, and the entire thing was based on conversations surrounding discipline as a broad concept, real life vulnerabilities, etc. I wrote lines, in a strict uniform that he chose, and inspected via both photos and “in person” – our play was via FaceTime – new to him apparently, despite all his online play. There was some directed spanking at the end, but it wasn’t the focus. The discipline was much more from uniform, tone, and vulnerability. It broke my brain a bit, in the best possible way. When we finished, I asked if Firefly knew – he said not yet, because she’d been traveling for work. She and I continued to chat about typical things. Elephant and I played again in early December, in a similar way.

A week after that second time, on December 8, 2023, he told me that he and Firefly had been in the process of separating since April 2023. He had told her then that he wanted to leave and return to the UK, live alone, and that what he wanted “wasn’t consistent with staying married.” They’d been in couples therapy since – primarily because she desperately wanted to save/fix their relationship, and he maintained the same goal of returning to the UK alone, while salvaging what he could of their friendship. After he told me this, I reached out to Firefly directly, and a few days later, on December 11, we had a zoom call for nearly two hours. Between these two, a mutual friend, we’ll call her Bunny, said she had also spoken to Firefly and mentioned Elephant and my’s play/chatting, and Firefly made it clear she was happy about it.

Of course, this complicated things, so I spoke to Firefly somewhat candidly on our zoom call. I asked if she knew Elephant and I had played virtually and she said, “No, but I don’t really feel like I needed to know. I just assume he has his stuff and online friends and whatnot.” <this is paraphrasing but the gist was that she did not, but didn’t feel she needed to, she wasn’t upset, etc. This was the first time I heard that she hadn’t known we played. Because she assured me she didn’t care, I didn’t push further, either to her, or to Elephant about why he had told me he would tell her and didn’t. I’ll touch on this again later.

Elephant, Firefly, and I and Bunny, had a group chat. We discussed play, uniforms, life, etc. Nothing was hidden. In January 2024, I proposed visiting them in early March – I wanted to make sure Firefly was ok with it and comfortable and knew I wanted to spend time with both of them. She was on board. I went for a week at the end of February into early March and although she had to unexpectedly work a lot more than anticipated, I spent time with her doing gardening things, shopping, going out for meals, and doing planner stuff. I played with Elephant – formally in uniform, twice, and he spanked me nearly every day otherwise – sometimes casually, or at bedtime. Firefly was home during the bedtime spankings and had had a lengthy conversation with me and Bunny once about how much she hated bedtime spankings, so neither Elephant nor I thought she’d care, since she herself didn’t like them. He always made sure he had spent time with her when she went to bed, before saying goodnight to me. She was the priority, that vibe was clear.

When I got home, I texted with Firefly a fair amount – I acknowledged we didn’t get to talk directly about me playing with Elephant because she was at work so much, and asked if she wanted to know anything or to see any of the photos since I wanted to be able to share some of them, but wanted her to see them first. I had shared one on Fetlife, with Elephant’s permission, since Firefly was not on Fetlife at the time. She said yes, I sent her some – she loved them, expressed they were cute, etc. When she rejoined Fetlife shortly after this, I explained the previous photo shared at Elephant’s encouragement, and she said, “I’d never mind.” (that’s a direct quote) and she even commented on the photo (since deleted, when I later blocked her). We talked consistently over the next several months, including moments when I directly checked in about my relationship/friendship with Elephant, how she felt, etc.

Some of the things she said in response to these convos were (and I have screen shots to support all of these, so they’re direct quotes):

“I want [Elephant] to express as much kink as possible. And your kinks align really well.”

“I seriously could not be happier with you playing with [Elephant]. The more fun he has the better.”

After acknowledging a moment of jealousy she felt, surrounding him and I sharing some uniform information, “That doesn’t mean I want anything to change between you and [Elephant]. I think your playing together is beautiful and the closest thing I can have to playing together with either or both of you.”

After I checked in with her at one point, “It would only be a problem if he got infatuation energy. And that is only because our relationship work is hard and (I suspect) both of us would like to spend the time and energy in love (or lust?) with someone else. […] if that happened in terms of [Elephant] falling in love with you, I would not be upset with you.”

So, I was under the impression I had her full support in my ongoing friendship with him. We weren’t strangers, we talked regularly, we interacted in mutual online community spaces. Unfortunately, Firefly deals with serious mental health issues related to complex trauma she has experienced, and this makes her unpredictable, unstable, and I now know, manipulative. I don’t say this as judgement – I struggle with generalized anxiety disorder and ADHD myself and have a lot of serious mental illness in my family. I am deeply empathetic, but the impact her behavior has had on me at this point, is frankly, traumatic. In the lead up to the Labor Day 2025 Oasis party, things seemed fine. Unfortunately, I contracted COVID so I was unable to be a part of the social group (Elephant, Firefly, Bunny, and me) that we had constructed. I think we had all been hoping to rely on the social party events to pad the tension about this likely being the last party Elephant and Firefly attended together. Unbeknownst to me at first, Firefly didn’t have her medication for the weekend and that set the stage for chaos. I was pretty much confined to my room so I didn’t expect to see anyone much.

Each of them stopped by to visit with me – masked – on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, until I tested negative twice on Saturday afternoon/evening after taking Paxlovid for 4 days. I couldn’t attend the party but I could still spend time with my friends. The four of us and a few others went out to dinner at a local diner. It was lively, we all chatted, it was fun – I thought. [Later, she accused me of talking over her and ignoring her at this meal. I asked our other group of mutual friends later and they didn’t recall that.] When we got back, Firefly wanted to get ready for the Saturday night dinner so I did her hair (little French braids on top with butterfly clips) and Elephant and Bunny helped her with her dress. I couldn’t go, but I was able to find a cozy place to sit near the ballroom exit while I waited for them to all go inside and socialize a bit. Firefly came out first, saying she was going to another, different, mutual friends room to spend time with them because they were leaving Sunday while she was busy, and then Elephant and Bunny came out. They had played earlier in the day so they went to do some more aftercare and I headed back to my room to wait for a promised bedtime spanking.

That all went well – again, or so I thought. On Sunday, Firefly had to work in the morning and Elephant and Bunny had plans. I was on my own (and struggling a bit, since I already felt so isolated) so I relaxed and spent time with other friends having brunch. Elephant texted me that that afternoon, we’d finally get to play and do a formal uniform scene, what time, etc. All was not well, though. Firefly had lost her stuffed bear, taken up with the hotel sheets, and she was beside herself (not unreasonably) about it. She needed Elephant’s support, but no one but them knew the bear was missing. I was in my room most of the day until my scene with him. When we finished, about two hours later, we chatted about grabbing something to eat and decompressing a bit, since it was intense play. We decided to head to the hotels pub and made our way through the casino.

We ran into Bunny and Firefly, who had just finished eating at the cafe themselves, and when hearing we were headed to the pub, Firefly said “oh great, we’ll sit with you.” At this point, having just played a bit intensely, I said “Actually, I could really use some 1:1 time if that’s ok.” Firefly said yes, of course, and seemed fine, but wanted to talk to Elephant first – she needed help navigating talking to security about the missing bear. I found out about the bear finally when he and I got to sit down. He also had a time limit because she asked he be back to their room by a specific time. My aftercare was cut short. We all planned to watch a movie later that night so there was that to look forward to. Only not. Firefly didn’t want to come because she felt I didn’t want her around or to spend time with her. I found out weeks later that she took my request for 1:1 time earlier in the day as “helping Elephant reject me publicly.”

This is when the real mess started. The three of them took edibles and were high – this was planned. I was having a drink but not really partaking since I was still recovering from being sick. I thought the movie went well but also found out later that Firefly felt I had “talked over her” during it – as well as all weekend apparently (the above dinner included). I didn’t get the continued aftercare I felt I needed, and went to bed crying and feeling isolated.

Monday was an absolute shit show. I was droppy and felt I needed some time with Elephant to connect and process because our scene had been intense. Firefly however, made flyers for her missing bear and required Elephant to drive her to the FedEx store to have them printed. On top of this, a work issue had hit the fan for him, and thus the entire morning was shot. We did eventually meet for lunch/brunch which was awkward and uncomfortable. Bunny and I moved our bags to their room (we had late evening flights) and went to find some space to talk. I was a mess. Crying, droppy, sad. I also went to find some coffee and ran into Elephant. He was in the cafe working, but called me over to him. I didn’t want to interrupt his limited alone time but he insisted I sit with him for a bit. I was grateful for it but it wasn’t enough or what I needed. I felt bad for that but I couldn’t control the drop, of course. It helped to connect, though I spent the entire time sobbing.

At this point, Firefly started texting me. She wanted to talk – she felt I’d ignored her all weekend, abandoned her when the only reason she came to the party was to see me, that I was actively avoiding her and talking over her, etc. I was not in a place to have this conversation, given my own emotionally droppy state, but Bunny and I talked and I decided to try, out of a good faith effort. I went to their room and she immediately started to verbally attack me. I told her I was droppy and didn’t have it in me for a full conversation but because I cared about her I wanted to try and talk a bit.

I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I was scared. She wasn’t being physically threatening, but she was standing close, not stopping. I sincerely thought it was never going to end. I texted my husband, asking him to call me in 5 min and tell me I needed to FaceTime our kid, so I could extract myself. That worked. I bolted. I went back to the cafe and ran into Bunny and Elephant. Firefly texted Bunny that she felt the conversation “went well” meanwhile I was having a panic attack. Elephant took me to walk a bit so I could calm down, we chatted, stopped by a friend of mines room to pick up some candy she’d brought me from abroad. He was empathetic to my panic attack because Firefly had been this dysregulated with him countless times, and he was actually “glad someone else had finally seen it” also.

It was late by this point, and getting closer to the time we needed to head to the airport. We ended up back in their room. I needed to change for my flight and rearrange some of my bags. He hugged me a bit, that helped. Before I got my stuff together, Elephant told me to go over the back of the chair in the room. I did and he fetched a tawse. He knew what I needed and was trying. It was hard but over denim shorts (did I mention that during all this, I got my period, too?!) and short. When I stood up, I grabbed my bottom out of reflex, and he scolded me for not having permission, then smacked my thighs. His hand caught a soft spot just right and I had a large hand edge shaped bruise for 2 weeks, that I coveted. He drove Bunny and I to the airport and I cried the entire time. It was a long flight home but luckily the crying lead to sleep and I woke up in NYC.

The weeks that followed were a mess. Firefly was demanding to talk to me, she was apparently completely dysregulated at home and Elephant was overwhelmed by it so we didn’t get to chat much. I told Firefly I needed some space after our conversation in Vegas and wasn’t ready to talk. She kept pushing. So I sent her an email. I worked on it for hours, spoke with my therapist about it, she helped me work through it to make sure I was being honest and also taking accountability where Firefly had pointed out things she felt hurt by, etc. I sent it and Firefly texted saying she felt I was missing the point. She wrote her own email to me at 3am CA time – a 4000 word systematic cutting down of my character that ended with a gaslighting, “I love and care about you.” and followed it up with a text message to me saying if I had an email from her, to please not read it. Clearly, I did. I told her if she felt the way she said she did in the email, that I didn’t think there was anything left to talk about because surely she wouldn’t want to be friends with or salvage a friendship with someone she felt that way about. She kept pushing for us to talk verbally, despite my saying this and telling her I needed time.

Elephant and I continued to talk, but less, because she was clearly making their home life increasingly difficult. He told me a few weeks later that he didn’t feel we should play at all – or that he should play with anyone – until he had formally left her. This made me sad, because I had hoped we could do online play like we had in the past, but I understood his reasoning. I respected it and didn’t push at all. In November, I planned a trip to see different mutual kink friends of ours in southern CA in early December, since I hadn’t gotten to spend any time with them in Vegas, and asked Elephant I he and I could get lunch at least. He said yes, of course, “I should at least be able to do that.” Well, when he told Firefly, she asked if she could come with him and he told her he’d ask me. Aside from the fact that he didn’t have to tell her that at all, I was astounded by her boldness. I was still baffled by the things she had said to me in her email and why she’d want to be my friend at all. I said no, absolutely not. He respected that.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, I received a hand written letter from her, apologizing for the email and asking again, but me directly this time, to get lunch. After a lot of deliberation, I was hopeful that this was a good faith effort and agreed, but I told Elephant only if he and I got a 1:1 lunch also, during my trip. When it came time for my trip, I landed, picked up my rental car, and immediately drove to meet them for lunch. She showed up in a school uniform – not because he’d told her to, but because she wanted to wear one and frankly, it felt like a power move. Her way of saying “This is MY thing. Our thing. I hold the power here.” It set the tone for me. That said, it felt like the conversation actually wasn’t bad. I apologized – again, in person – for not being more direct and honest when I realized she didn’t know about our early online play. She tried to insist that lay only with Elephant but I am an adult – when I realized she didn’t know, out of respect for our friendship, I should have said something. I felt strongly about this. I walked away from that conversation – early December 2024 – thinking it wasn’t perfect, but hopefully we could continue on more even footing. Elephant had told me about his plans for when he officially planned to leave (in April) and take a road trip and stop to see me – so I was hopeful for that.

He and I had some good conversations that weekend, after that lunch and during our 1:1 lunch. I was so hopeful, which I am sure is contributing to why I still feel so acutely bruised by all of this. Because on January 2, 2025, after days of very unusual silence, Elephant texted me that he was cutting off contact with me “at least until” he left Firefly, and he “hoped we could reconnect” when things were “different”. I was distraught. The depressive spiral I entered took over a month to abate. I begged him to explain himself to me, but he just ignored my texts. Eventually, he responded to one, saying he knew it was difficult but he was asking me to trust him. I always had, and he’d never given me a reason not to, so, I decided to trust him. I assumed I wouldn’t hear from him until he left in April or whenever that might be. He unfollowed me on Twitter, which broke something in me, given it was our primary connection point for over 15 years. The whole situation broke me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Firefly had somehow manipulated him into all of this, and that was confirmed when he reached out to me on February 21, not even two months later, and well before he left the US. He asked if we could talk the next day. I said I’d like that. I asked the call to be FaceTime – because I wanted him to tell me whatever it was, “to my face”.

That conversation, two hours and very difficult, confirmed my suspicions. Firefly claimed we had had an affair, that not only had she not known about our play, but never consented to it. That in fact, she saw us as having violated her consent, because she wasn’t made aware of the play in advance so she could give “informed” consent. She interpreted a Fetlife status post that was unrelated, as indicating that Elephant and I had a discipline dynamic, when they had an agreement that neither of them would do that with anyone else, and because he used a thermometer in some of our play (which she knew about) that counted as “penetration” and thus meant we’d had sex, and ergo, we had an affair. She gave him an ultimatum that New Years Eve basically, cut off contact with me or he had to leave immediately. Now, leaving immediately would have seemed like a good idea to me, but he had felt so guilty about wanting to leave her to begin with, he felt he owed her whatever he could to make it easier on her. So he agreed.

He continued to insist to her in their (ongoing) therapy sessions that he and I had not had an affair, she had known, etc. and he pushed for being able to have that conversation with me. He also told me during that conversation that he was still taking his road trip, would not be seeing me, and needed at least six months or so to complete his move and get settled, before he’d reach out. Frankly, this sent me back to the spiral and being distraught. I was in no place to really have a conversation or be prepared for any of what he said, and there wasn’t going to be a follow up. He asked me to send him the screen shots where Firefly had told me the things I quoted above, about he and I playing and her acknowledging it, and I asked if I could send a follow up email with them. He said yes. I didn’t get any answers to any of my questions in that follow up email. His response, when it came, said “This reply won’t be as much as you want, but it has to be it for now. I’m sorry for that. I wish all of this was easier. I am asking you to trust me, and it’s a big ask, I know.” and listed a few of my points, but not the most crucial (to me) ones and had this line, “If you ever feel open and brave enough to make an overture towards patching things up between the two of you, don’t assume that it would be unwelcome. But it would need to come directly from you, and not through me.”

Patch things up? I honestly laughed through my tears. But a week or two later, in early March, I wrote her an email. I was tired of hearing things via Elephant, or through her social media (where she was very openly posting about this apparent affair and how horrible it was for her to have her consent violated). Her response was another bucket of lies and laid out how she wasn’t manipulating anyone – sure, Elephant could contact me whenever he wanted, but only if he told her so she could cut off contact with him. But that’s not coercion, that was his “choice”. She also laid out exactly why she felt her consent had been violated and that several kink aware therapists had affirmed this. I think most of what this email did, was confirm for me how unstable she really was. I felt Elephant was doing the right thing to keep his head down and do whatever he could to mollify her until he left, given all of this, but I was also angry at her baseless accusations and continued petty anonymous cutting down of me via her social media accounts.

The summer sucked. Watching Elephant travel across the country, stop to visit Bunny, spend over a week within one hour of me, and not reach out, watch him leave, broke another part of me. I just wanted to have a conversation with him. One that wasn’t hampered by coercions or manipulations. I had bared my soul to him in ways that made me very vulnerable, and he to me in some ways, although maybe I was wrong? I knew a lot of this was to protect himself emotionally, that he had spent decades enabling Firefly’s instability and in turn being verbally abused and manipulated by her. She weaponized consent language against me, she weaponized their kink for years to manage her own life when she couldn’t, all sorts of things. But the “six months or so” came and went, and he ghosted me. After asking me to trust him, he ghosted me. After asking to have an honest conversation in February, after literally leaving the country to get away from the toxic relationship he had felt trapped by for decades, he decided that trust wasn’t worth anything, and ghosted me. I reached out well after the six months and got silence.

That was six months ago about. It’s been over a year since our last conversation. I have to assume that they’re getting back together, given her social media posts about “us” and “we” and “our” and I am left with the realization that trusting someone I had known for 18 years was the worst decision I ever made. It’s completely broken my kink, as well. Something I had finally let myself explore and come to terms with, has been destroyed. Two of my longest and most preciously held friendships, have exploded. A few weeks after that final email from Firefly, I found an old junk journal with a page where I spoke about visiting them and her buying me a ticket to HP world in LA for my birthday. So many core memories include these people because they were so important to me. The glint of a Waterford crystal bowl (now packed away) that was a wedding gift from them. Losing that friendship has been the most difficult part of this overall. Knowing that she resented me and kept it to herself for a year, before using everything she knew about my own childhood and trauma, to hurt me, will probably sting forever. Knowing he asked me to trust him, only to break that trust and not even see me as worthy of an honest conversation or explanation of his choices after that? That may never heal.

I’m back to not trusting myself, kink wise, or really anyone else, for that matter. Baring your soul to someone who promised to hold that knowledge and keep it safe, only for them to completely disregard it, feels like being thrown away yourself. He owes me a lot better than that, and I deserved a lot better than that, and knowing she was part of manipulating him through it all, has just really set me off kilter. Combined with other circumstances, it’s left the kink parts of me (rather big parts and significant) feeling very much like a burden – like they’re not worth seeing or holding, and that they’ll never be seen. I never will be, not like that, again. Those kinds of kink connections are special and they’re rare. I am hopeful that I’ll make it more comfortably back to my kink in time, since time typically does help such things, but I hope this explains – for now – why and how my outlook changed, and where my head has been for a long time.

I wish I could be gracious and say something like I hope they’re happy together, but knowing what I do about their relationship, because they both confided a lot in me, separately and together, I hope Elephant eventually finds his way back to himself – his sense of self, his autonomy, his ability to do things for himself without her manipulation, and I hope she gets the mental health treatment that will most help her thrive. I loved these people for a long time, the grieving will likely take a while.

-M