The Lull: Searching Without Settling
by Queen Ketzeleh | Jan 23, 2026 |
There’s a strange quiet that happens when you’re doing everything right and still waiting. I’m in it now, this in-between. The pause after clarity, before connection. I’ve been explicit about what I’m looking for. I’m not casting a wide net and hoping chemistry will magically organize itself later. I’m searching for a submissive with intention, structure, and mutual accountability.
In the meantime, I find myself making compromises I didn’t expect to make. Turning toward pick-up style play because I have needs. Submitting an ad on a hookup message board. Me. It feels strange to admit that out loud. Not because desire is wrong, but because it highlights the gap between what I want long-term and what’s immediately available. The lull has a way of making you negotiate with yourself.
People love to say “don’t settle,” as if holding the line doesn’t come with doubt. As if clarity is painless. What people don’t talk about is what happens when you actually stop settling. The room gets quieter. The noise falls away. The misaligned offers slow down. And what’s left is space. Space can feel peaceful, but it can also feel deeply unsettling, especially when the messages that do arrive keep offering things you didn’t ask for.
I say I’m looking for lemonade, and they offer coffee. Or root beer. Or a fantasy that centers what they want to give instead of what I’ve clearly said I’m seeking. I’m expected to be grateful that they showed up at all, even when they didn’t show up in the way I asked. That’s where the fatigue lives. Not in rejection or mismatch, but in the constant experience of not being listened to, followed by the quiet pressure to soften the refusal so no one feels uncomfortable.
When I first joined FetLife and the lifestyle, I handled this differently. I engaged more. I explained myself. I softened my edges and gave people opportunities to pivot. I thought that was kindness. Looking back, I see how much emotional labor I was doing just to keep conversations afloat that were never aligned to begin with. The shift in how I show up now didn’t come from bitterness. It came from pattern recognition. From compassionate burnout. From realizing that patience, when endlessly required, becomes depletion.
I haven’t gone cold. I’ve gone clear. Still, in the quieter moments, the worry creeps in. What if I don’t find someone? What if this level of discernment leaves me alone? I don’t have a tidy answer for that. But I do know this: being alone is not the same as being unseen while partnered. And loneliness is not worse than slowly abandoning myself just to say I’m not waiting anymore.
This lull is uncomfortable because it’s honest. There’s no distraction. No illusion of momentum. Just me, my standards, and time doing what time does. Clarity hasn’t closed me off. It’s narrowed the doorway, on purpose.
If you’re in this place too, holding the line while everyone tells you to be patient, I see you. The lull doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’ve stopped entertaining what doesn’t fit.
I’m still searching. I’m still open. I’m just no longer willing to accept coffee when I’ve been clear I want lemonade. And if waiting is the cost of not settling, then for now, I’ll pay it.
Persevere!! Believe. In another life in krissi’s past there was a famous saying about “tenacity.” I don’t remember it now but picked up on it then and it’s helped many times over the years.