Motivations

I'd be interested to see if this rings true with any other subs (particularly older) on here, and if it chimes with masters.....

On and off I've been part of OF a good few years now, and while never very high profile, have had some amazing experiences from it. I have a deeply submissive streak to my personality that is difficult to explain to others, or even myself. But I also seem to have become very lonely in recent times, one of these middle aged men often in the news, single, whose friendship group seems to have evaporated without me really being aware of it, part of the 'loneliness epidemic' that seems to be part of our modern life. Findom has always been an illicit thrill for me in the past, but recently I'm wondering what my motivation is, whether I am in fact using it to pay for attention and contact with other men, other men who would not look at me for any other reason. A way of fulfilling fantasies that I couldn't hope to realise for free, and to be honest, filling empty hours when there is nothing else going on in my life. I think for me part of this is the retreat of the realtime world in the face of the online; I used to be very much part of the fetish scene in London when I was younger and more self-confident (and when there was more of it) but now much of my life is lived through a screen and contact with other men is much more transactional, I think that is just the nature of the beast. But I wonder where I'm going with this, whether I'm just paying for an immediate thrill and to stave off unhappiness and fear of growing old, and how sustainable that is.