I hope this is the right place for this.

Until a few days ago, I (a 33 year old woman) would have considered myself quite vanilla. I'd done what I now know is lightly kinky things in the past, but I had no name for it. Furthermore, I would fantasize kink but never looked into it due to shame.

With the forced isolation and nothing to distract me, I've had a lot of time to examine who I am and what I want out of life. A chance encounter with an online stranger (nothing even sexual, just chatting) started me on my new journey. The word sub was dropped, which I vehemently disagreed with. I'm a very headstrong, independent woman, I'm not a sub!!

Or so I thought...

Tons of reading and a kink quiz + more research later, I've found out that I have kinks! Who knew? LOL not me. And the more I was reading, I was like YES this is IT, this is exactly what I want! I want to explore the side of me that craves being a bratty sub with age play and experiment with so much more.

The next day, swiping Tinder, I matched with a man who is a daddy Dom. He was so patient in answering my questions. We've been chatting a bit. All of his answers so far line up with what I've seen as a healthy Dom. But how do I know for sure??

Also isn't it too good to be true that I've matched with a man that's totally in line with what I'm looking for, mere hours after I acknowledged and learned about this side of myself?

I'm terrified of putting myself as a total noob into a vulnerable situation because to me this could potentially go either really well or really horrible. It's so scary to even peer into the arena (exciting too! but scary.)

I'm not sure what my next steps are. I'm not sure how to make sure I stay safe. Any thoughts?