Kink Didn’t Burn You Out, Your Schedule Did: How to Reclaim Time and Prevent Burnout

written by Micah Brown

We’ve been focusing heavily on burnout over the past month or so, so let’s keep it going with another dive into the topic and the burnout epidemic. Previously, we’ve talked about how burnout can affect kink, how we can become burned out by kink, and how burnout in life can lead to burnout in kink.

But today, we’re going to look at those of us who are burned out, not because of kink, but because of our schedules and the demands on our time.

When Daily Life and Responsibilities Crowd Out Kink

Right now, just making it through the day can feel like a herculean effort. Making it from morning to evening may even feel like a miracle some days when you find yourself working more than one job to make ends meet and keep up with the finances, try to find time for yourself, and attempt to keep your social, romantic and kink life headed in the direction you want it to go.

It all can feel impossible.

The Scheduling Struggle in Poly and Kinky Relationships

First of all, being poly isn’t a problem, but it can create unique challenges to our schedules that can affect us on multiple levels. When you add kink into a poly schedule, things can get even more complex.

Not everybody gets to live in a magical house where all your poly partners are also living, making scheduling time with everybody much easier. In most cases, even in a polycule, people are spread out and have their own spaces they can go back to in the event they need to recharge. While that’s nice in thought, that space is also where one may host their partners some nights, other times an individual may not be home at all for days or weeks at a time because of all the bouncing around they do with their partners.

Having more than one partner is great! It’s fantastic that so many people are now beginning to have open discussions about love, relationships, and gaining an understanding that it is possible to love more than one person and have more than one healthy relationship.

Now, you’ve got a busy schedule already with work, responsibilities at home, possible responsibilities toward children, not to mention any commute you may have to partake in to get to work, getting groceries, making meals, getting to appointments, and all the other little things that come up just living your life. Add to that planning to spend time with all of your partners, organizing scenes for playtime with your fellow kinky partners, and making sure that there’s recovery time from the scenes before you end up in another one. Suddenly, you find you don’t have two seconds to yourself.

Early Signs You’re Heading Toward Burnout

Sign up for our newsletter to download a free workbook accompanying this article

It starts out feeling a little overwhelmed. Maybe work is especially busy, or something with the kids has brought up family stress. Maybe there’s some jealousy going on that needs to be addressed (jealousy can and does happen in poly relationships, and as long as it's addressed correctly, it’s not something to worry about—but it must be communicated and talked about).

Maybe you get frustrated with your partner over a scene that wasn’t perfect, or perhaps you feel a throbbing headache that makes you completely disinterested in the idea of play or sex, or maybe there’s no headache, but you’ve lost interest in the things that used to bring you joy and satisfaction.

The telltale signs of burnout are all there and you may feel them the strongest when you’re trying to have a kinky good time and you’re just not into it the way you used to be.

It is not unheard of for these issues to cause somebody to completely withdraw from kink because it feels as though it’s not something they enjoy anymore. Later, when life has calmed down, the stress is over, and burnout recovery is complete, they find that they miss that part of themselves and may not know how to find their way back.

How to Maintain Kink While Managing a Full Life

Your schedule has taken over your sense of self. You have become the Google Calendars that run your life. Keeping up with work demands, partner demands, children demands, kink demands…

Our hope to help keep you from falling into the well of despair that makes you leave kink behind while you attempt to get a hold of all the other aspects of your life.

Let’s be honest with ourselves: if you’re kinky, it’s more than just an activity. It’s a part of yourself that needs to be fed and nurtured. Even if the rest of society doesn’t fully understand or accept our needs, we need to respect ourselves enough to find time for them. While kink and BDSM are not registered as sexual deviancy in the medical profession, it is still often looked down upon by those outside of the kink community, which can add more pressure to ourselves to put it aside when the rest of life is getting hectic and we’re headed toward burnout.

We must focus on those parts of ourselves that help us to feel the most at home in our skin, even if those parts make others feel a little uncomfortable. That’s why, when you’re not facing kink burnout, it’s crucial to maintain your kinky self while the rest of the world burns.

That doesn’t mean you have to keep a busy play schedule. It means that you make your play sessions intentional. You want to make certain that your play sessions provide you with everything you need to satisfy that kinky little heart you carry in your chest, even if that means that your play sessions are fewer than they were before. For example, if you have four different partners, instead of trying to do a kink session with each of them every week, maybe only have one or two play sessions a week and rotate your partners on a weekly basis.

For your lifetime schedule, and I understand that it is easier said than done, try to find ways to reduce the amount of scrambling you are having to do.

Using the Obedience App for Structure, Habits, and Partner Support

While the Obedience App is great at creating tasks and schedules for a submissive, it can also be used as a task scheduler for yourself. Create a morning routine that sets out everything you need to do every morning before you walk out the door. Set an evening routine to make sure everything that needs to get done before you go to bed is done. You can create rewards for yourself in the app as well that allow you to give yourself screen time or reward yourself with ice cream. Your imagination if your limit for your rewards! The same goes for punishments, if you want to create those for yourself.

Worried that you won’t hold yourself accountable? Talk to your kinky partners and see if they will help you stick to your routine by using the Obedience App in partner mode.

It may feel impossible to get your schedule under control but remember that you are in control of your time and how you manage it. Always remember to take some time for yourself, even if it’s five minutes, and always make sure to make time for your kink – even if you’re being kinky by yourself.