I appreciate all of you who continue to view this site and particularly those of you who comment and e-mail. I also appreciate the fact that the community as a whole seems to be thriving, which makes me happy. Since I remember a time, years (decades?) ago where I felt like I was one of a very small number of maskers that were making themselves public out in the anonymous space of the internet. So it's good to see that this fetish is alive and well!
Updates:
Ironically, the relationship that had ended when I last posted started back up again. She came back to me apologizing for leaving me and I certainly didn't make it easy for her to come back, but she stuck it out and did. This has been a good thing for my personal life, however it's not to say that everything is perfect. This relationship starting back up is a central reason why I haven't been updating/dressing/posting, etc.
As for masking, I've done basically none in the past year and a half, apart from the daily donning of surgical masks, ugh. However, I have been wearing rubber (1-2x/month) with my partner. I've been introducing her to the fetish and she seems to be taking to it reasonably well. She seems to sometimes like it, other times is a little afraid of it.
whenever she dresses up, there's always a point where she says, "I look like a doll now," however I've never referred to the fetish as a 'doll' fetish, which I find sort of interesting that she makes that jump, because I think it's an accurate one.
It's been interesting to try to see the fetish through her eyes. She often asks me, "when you started liking latex, how was it?" or "what do you like about latex?" both are hard questions for me to answer, since leather/latex/PVC was my first love, even before I had my first crush. So to me it feels like she's asking a fish to describe how they figured out how to swim or what it's like to live under water, both seem completely inherent and in a way invisible to me. She asks because she says that she thinks that she's starting to like it, but somehow feels conflicted about it. We seem to have a communication breakdown around these conversations, but I'm glad that she's taking to it more than tolerating it.
A point of (almost) conflict that we often reach is that she says that she would like to wear latex out in public. I always have a negative response to this, which has been interesting to experience. I almost feel like being out in fetish-wear (for me) would be like walking around in public naked while reading my personal diary through a megaphone. So I have this feeling of, if she were to wear it out, it would be same experience, yet I'd have no control over it. It's odd that I'm such a fan of the material and fetish, yet once it leaves being behind closed doors, I somehow have a very different view of it. It goes from this ooey gooey lovely personal sexual thing to this sort of showy, 'try hard' or 'look at me, I need attention' thing, which I know it's not, but I can't seem to shake.
There's not final point here, just something odd I've been experiencing.
I'm hoping to further her experience in latex and down the road, am hoping to get her into sharing some things online, hopefully with the two of us together. If that does happen, I'll surely make this clear here and on social media (but who knows if this will ever happen).
I've been mostly talking about latex here and not so much masking.
Masking I've been having a harder and harder time rationalizing in my brain as something that can co-exist with a romantic relationship. I did have a partner briefly about 2 years ago who was interested in all my masking and gender things and we played together on a few occasions while masked/dressed. Of all the people I've been with, this was the person who I felt would be most accepting of my fetish. After our play sessions, it felt more and more like they were tolerating it, but not enjoying it.
It helped me see more clearly that masking to the masker is something inherently erotic (to some it may be more about identity, however I fall more in the camp of eroticism when it comes to masking), but to the non-masker, masking can be 'scary' or about how one cannot accept their identity. So whoever one's partner is, they are with you for YOU, not for some alter-ego. So it sort of feels as though it's viewed as a denial of self that encourages the thought of, "who is this person really?"
This is a major reason why I haven't tried introducing masking to my partner, because I don't want to scare her off and go from 10mph (latex) to 100mph (masking) too quickly, since she is still digesting latex/rubber. I honestly don't think that I need to mask with partners, I truly believe that for me masking is a solitary activity where I'm not consumed with the thoughts and considerations of others. However, there's always going to be a part of me that would like to blend these worlds, but every time I have, it hasn't quite gone the way I wanted it to.
I also think that even if one were to have a partner who was a good play-partner and into and up for all the rubber and masking activities, it still brings up the question of family and having children (which I have not yet). I know through much of my masking exploits I would get messages from men with families that would talk about how they lived vicariously through my videos and images. I always felt sort of bad for them, that they couldn't express their true nature in their lives. However now, I sort of envy them, ironically.
I can see how latex fetish can exist in a relationship, but I still see masking and hetero-romantic relationships being something very difficult to reconcile. It's not that I am no longer into the fetish, I certainly am! However, I don't see how I can blend the two worlds. I've also noticed that the more sex that I have, the lower my desire is to mask is. However, if/when I have some more time, I will endeavor to share more of my back-log of pictures and videos. If I have enough free time, then I can hopefully get to dress and mask again!
Thank you all to those reading, commenting, and messaging me. I do appreciate it a lot! Even if I'm very slow to respond
