From Dad Mode to Dungeon: My Double Life at 50

by Mark Haines

I’m a dad.

A PTA-attending, mortgage-paying, barbecue-hosting, emotionally semi-stable father of two.

And twice a month, when my kids are with their mom and the house finally goes quiet, I turn into someone else entirely.

From Dad Mode to Dungeon: My Double Life at 50

In my basement, there’s a locked door. Behind it: a small, soundproofed room that smells like leather, sweat, and something older than shame. That’s where I keep my gear — ropes, restraints, paddles, a Saint Andrew’s cross I built myself in 2019 when the world went to hell and I needed to feel something.

That’s where I stop being “Dad.”That’s where I become Sir.

How It Started

It didn’t happen overnight.

In my twenties, I was a guy without many secrets — a little awkward, always dating women who said I was “nice.” I got married at 31. Had two kids. Built a career. Stopped asking myself questions about what I wanted because it seemed selfish to do so.

Then around 45, something cracked.

Not a midlife crisis — those are for men who buy convertibles and chase women half their age. Mine was quieter. It started with porn tabs I didn’t understand, late-night Reddit threads about dominance, and one day, a random message from a woman who called herself a brat looking for control.

She asked, “Do you like to give orders?”

I said, “Yes.”

And then, “I don’t know.”

It was both the truest and the dirtiest thing I’d said in years.

The Split Life

People think kink is about extremes. Pain. Leather. Drama. But most of it, at least for me, is psychological.

I spend most of my days being reliable — spreadsheets, deadlines, family logistics. I’m the guy who fixes the dishwasher, who pays for braces, who remembers birthdays.

Then I go downstairs and become the man who says, Get on your knees and ask nicely.

It’s not about cruelty. It’s about finally not having to negotiate my every move. It’s about clarity. Power stripped down to its bones.

Sometimes I’ll spend a whole day pretending I’m normal — dropping my son at football practice, buying groceries — knowing that later that night, I’ll be wiping candle wax off my hands and washing rope burns off someone else’s wrists.

It’s not hypocrisy. It’s survival.

The Rules

My play partners know the deal: I’m not leaving my family. I’m not looking for chaos. I’m looking for control — but the kind that’s consensual, aware, contained.

We negotiate everything. Every bruise, every word. I check in. I debrief.

You don’t get to 50 without realizing that most men mistake power for permission. I learned that the hard way. So I built boundaries. I keep everything discreet. I don’t text when I’m in “Dad mode.”

It’s a strange balance — the guy who packs lunchboxes by day and straps someone down by night — but it’s a balance that keeps me honest.

Why I Don’t Feel Guilty

People would call it a double life, like it’s some shameful contradiction. But I think it’s just two parts of the same man.

The dad in me knows how to care. The Dom in me knows how to take control. Both sides come from the same place — a need to protect, to create structure, to see someone fully.

In a world where men are told to be either stoic or savage, I’ve found a space where I can be both — deliberately, as I am given that space by my sub.

“Respectable” doesn’t mean repressed.“Decent” doesn’t mean dead inside.

Maybe that’s the point.

What I’ve Learned

I don’t romanticize it. I don’t pretend it’s therapy. But I will say this: the dungeon saved me from disappearing into fatherhood entirely.

It gave me a place where I didn’t have to be nice. Where I could be messy, loud, in control — and still, somehow, gentle.

Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror after a scene — older, sweat-drenched, rope marks across my forearms — and I think: this is the most honest I’ve ever been.

I don’t need to be understood.I just need a space where I can be real from now and then.