As 2025 winds down, I want to be real with you before I start talking about what next year will bring. December did not end the way I planned. Instead of pouring my energy into writing, connecting, and creating the kind of content I love, I was knee-deep in damage control. Earlier this month, my site went down in a major way and what should have been a routine restore turned into a lesson in misplaced trust.
I don’t want to dwell on the negative but here’s the short version. I was my web hosting company Hostinger for daily backups. Turns out… they weren’t actually backing anything up. When their server failed and I needed those backups most, they simply didn’t exist. I do most of my work on Google sheets so I can work offline so I had outlines and notes for a few of the blogs that needed to be recreated but weeks of stress followed, rebuilding, restoring what I could. I am committed to keeping the site alive instead of letting it grow. To say that it is a huge bummer doesn’t quite cover it. And yes—before you ask—it burned me out a bit. I won’t sugarcoat that.
I’m choosing to see it as a hard but necessary learning experience. Multiple backups. Redundancies. Never trusting the future of my work to a big company that sees customers as ticket numbers instead of humans. What stings is that Hostinger refuses to refund the backup service they didn’t actually provide. Even better? I’m prepaid for another year, so jumping ship right now isn’t an option without yet another disruptive move. That part still makes my eye twitch.
A large number of my supporters chose to discontinue their support of the site and honestly, I don’t blame you because I felt like I let you down. When the site went dark, it wasn’t just content that disappeared, it was the sense of community we’d been building together. Restoring the site was well beyond my skillset, which meant hiring a programmer to step in and save it. He wasn’t cheap but he did save the site and I’m deeply grateful he got the core of the site back online. At this point, I couldn’t afford to restore the forums, which was a painful call to make. It was one of those moments where my passion met real-world limits, and I had to choose survival over perfection.
But if there’s one thing this year reinforced, it’s ownership, and taking control when something that matters to you is threatened. So before I dive into the wins, the growth, the erotic evolution, and where Evolving Your Man is headed next year, I wanted you to know what this ending really looked like behind the scenes. Messy, frustrating… and ultimately clarifying.
In the spirit of transparency, I’ll lay it all out there for you because after it is readers like you that make this site what is is. As of this writing on December 31st, the site had 4.1 million views, 10 million blogs were read so far this year and if my math is correct, that’s about two and a half blogs per visitor to the site. I think that’s pretty amazing. In terms of active users, there are about 340k of you and I appreciate each and every one of you.
As you can see from the graphs, there is a massive dip at the end of the year as the site went down and so did the search engine ranking. I turned off summary emails and also stopped posting past blogs on social media.
I’ve always been an open book here, and that’s not changing anytime soon. If you’re curious about site stats or any of the nerdy backend stuff, I’m genuinely happy to share what I can. I find it fascinating but all of the numbers probably mean more to you than they does to me. Don’t get me wrong, it is all fascinating and I’m continually learning about it. From what I’m seeing, things are slowly but steadily coming back despite the mid-December hiccup, which is reassuring after a pretty shaky few weeks.
With that said, I need to make some intentional decisions about what the blog looks like going forward. One interesting suggestion that came up was starting completely fresh with a brand-new forum on a different platform. I won’t lie, the idea of starting over doesn’t exactly thrill me, but I do like the opportunity to move to something newer, cleaner, and more future-proof if I’m going to rebuild anything at all.
I also briefly flirted with the idea of moving the content to a platform like Medium.com, but their content policy wouldn’t have worked with the content of my site. It is surprisingly difficult to find mainstream sites whose policies genuinely support sexual content without constant fear of moderation. Independence and free thought matter to me even when it’s more difficult. As many of you remember, I removed ads from the site in 2024, and I’m going to wait as long as I reasonably can before bringing them back. They cluttered the reading experience, pulled focus from the writing, and honestly made the site harder to take seriously. When you’re trying to have thoughtful conversations about relationships and power dynamics, it feels off to do it with flashing dildos on one side and “single moms in your area” on the other. This space has always been about depth, reflection, and real dialogue, and for now, keeping it clean and readable matters more to me than trying to get a few dollars from ads.
One change that is happening, I’m setting up a secondary backup server so this never puts me in that kind of vulnerable position again. My programmer is handling the second server setup, and honestly… these are things I should have done a long time ago. When I zoom out, going from four visits a year in 2018 to four million visits a year in 2025 is mind-blowing. I don’t take that lightly for a second. Thank you for reading, for commenting, for sharing, and especially for those of you who continued to support me even when the site stumbled. That loyalty to a random blogger means more to me than I can properly put into words. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here as long as you want me, sharing my ideas, my life, my curiosity, and my ongoing journey into modern marriage dynamics… and whatever deliciously unexpected chapter comes next.
With over 900 published blogs live and more than 700 drafts sitting patiently in the wings, there’s truly no end in sight, I’m not running out of things to say anytime soon. We’ll cross the 1,000‑blog milestone within the next few months. With that said, I want to set expectations honestly – I won’t be posting much in January while I focus on making sure the site is stable, secure, and built to last for the long haul. I’ll also be putting a pause on the newsletters since there won’t be new content. Tora has a couple new stories that may or may not be posted during the month. This is a great time to catch up on some of the older blogs and even take a moment to share them with the special people in your life.
I’d love your thoughts in the comments about how to move forward with the site and with the forum. Should we start fresh on a new forum platform, or when I can afford it, should I have the programmer make an attempt of restoring an older backup? I have a strong hunch the old forum platform itself contributed to some of the site issues in the first place.
Going forward, I’m making a very intentional effort to protect my energy. I don’t want to dwell on what went wrong but I do want to learn from them and move forward smarter. I’m choosing to harness the positive momentum instead of letting frustration pull me into those heavy, borderline depressive days that can sneak up when something you love gets shaken. My therapist actually helped me name something important here, this site is a major source of my positive energy. Writing, sharing, and connecting with each of you gives me a sense of being part of something bigger than just myself. A very real purpose beyond my own head, caring for my loving pup Bella, my wonderful marriage to Kev and my amazing boyfriend Erik. That perspective matters. So I’m recommitting my energy to the joy of creation, to curiosity over resentment, and to letting this space continue to fuel me rather than drain me.
Your feedback matters here more than ever. Thank you for sticking around, for your patience, and for believing in this little space. I’m already looking forward to an incredible 2026 with you. So lock up those chastity cages and hold on tight… it’s going to be a great year.
I’m still here and will be for a long time…… Or until you kick me out 😂 …. I to have hit a few crazy moments but God dam it’s new years I’m getting all the Nutcrackers together and we are going to blow out the year property to you and yours and all here happy new years …… Oh and if you need me tomorrow I’ll probably be passed out in someones hedge 😂
I’ll probably see ya in the hedge!
So to recap I didn’t wake up in a hedge but I did end up chasing someone through a holly bush ….. Don’t mess with my guests parked cars …. Who ever that was he’s lucky he was fast 🤣
Very sorry about your tech issues, this seems to be universal problem for content creators – no matter what they’re creating, hopefully those are behind you now.
The positive: Thanks for getting back into some other content regarding male chastity and other FLR subjects. For awhile I thought this site was limited to cuckolding.
The not so positive: Women “feel the fire” based on what they feel on their heart, men “feel the fire” based on what they see. Since your audience here is primarily male, I would ask you to consider toning down the fat women in your illustrations. They don’t need to look like voluptuous models, but they don’t need to look repulsive either.
Thanks – david
Thank you so much, I do plan on being more diverse but I also need to go wherever the creative juices take me. With regard to the women in the images, Tora said something similar but I’m intentionally trying to make the site more accessible to women by using images that don’t make them feel insecure. The images are intended to be a wide range of body types and cater to “any woman” and “any man” because modern marriage dynamics can be wonderful regardless of your weight, race, gender or shoe size.
Super bummer that the forums won’t be coming back. Dammit. But I get it. We do what we can. I’ll be here, though, going forward and look forward to what is coming in the new year.
Sorry this all happened. I have lots of experience with WP and Forums, reach out if I can assist or even validate what you’re technology plans.
Thank you! I might reach out and I appreciate the offer.
I joined this site recently, about a week before the crash I believe (it’s all my fault, sorry everyone. Haha). Thank you, Emma, for battling through this chapter. One small facit I really liked was being able to listen to the blog as I drove to and from work. With a one way commute of 50-60min, spending that time learning from you and then reflecting on my marriage (especially on my way home) was a good way to disconnect from work and turn to my attention back to my wife before I even arrived home.
Welcome! I forgive you.
Hi, I hope all will turn out well. It would be nice to have the forum or a new one but, understand if that is not possible. All best wishes for 2026.
Good luck with the site! Sorry it has been an ordeal. It always makes me think, and I always look forward to reading your posts. Happy New Year!
Don’t feel bad about the site problems. I noticed it was down, but automatically thought it was a technical issue. At worst it was a learning experience. Overall I think your site is near perfect. It is very clean looking with many posts with fun AI photos. Best of all the posts are separated into categories.
My advise is keep doing things as you have been. I have enjoyed reading and learning. I think the photos reflect reality. People come in different sizes, but there is always a dominant leader and her loving partner. Keep up the great work and Happy New Year!!
The glitches were all quite frustrating
Hi Emma, I have been a reader of your blogs for a few years and deeply appreciate all of your content. Thanks for taking the time and energy to share what happened and I am happy to see that you are back rather than disappearing. I am not technically oriented and my only suggestion would be to keep it simple until you can stabilize and gradually follow your creative energy! Wishing you all the best for 2026 and beyond.
Thank you. That is kind of my thought with using January to regroup. Some blogs are missing photos so I’m trying to find those in the backups and correcting. I also want to get it to be as stable as possible before trying to add other things. I absolutely loved the conversations that we had in the forums so it would be a great loss to lose them. I had someone reach out and offer to look at the forums for me free of charge so there may be hope.
“I had someone reach out and offer to look at the forums for me free of charge so there may be hope.”
Would be the best news EVER!
I was wondering what happened, but after the logging didn’t work i assumed you had some technical difficulties. Glad you could overcome them in some way. Sorry for all the lost hours you have put into articles that are now gone (for the moment).
I wish you a happy new year and hope 2026 will be great year for you.
If I may say : Bring back the ads. Not because i love them, but because it helps you. I don’t care about some add blocks in the text, we are all adults enough to get past that.
I think there’s only one missing article and I have my notes/outline from writing it. For some reason a few of the pictures were damaged but I’m getting those back individually. Part of the reason for the temporary blogging hiatus.
Bonjour Emma et Kev,
L’idée d’un serveur Maître où et Miroir sous Linux à domicile (Red Hat pour le support Professionnel), peut vous permettre de garder un contrôle et de faire des sauvegardes de votre Site et Blog.
Juste une question, qui est Bella ?
Bonne année à tous et toutes
Hi Emma,
Your content is amazing, and I’m really glad you didn’t give up on your website (and on us) despite all the technical issues.
I’ve been reading your blog since June 2025, and even when I don’t fully agree with one point or another, your writing has helped me see different angles on some very delicate topics. Overall, I genuinely think I’ll be a better partner because of the thoughtful, insightful, and respectful discussions you create.
If I may offer a suggestion: have you considered using a Discord server while the official forum isn’t working? It could be a nice temporary space to keep the community connected.
As for feedback on the site itself:
Glad you are back up and running. Remember, the past is the past, focus on the future and what builds you up. Learn from the past, but don’t dwell there. Im looking forward to what is in-store with this site. I’ve grown a lot from this content. Happy New Year.
Hey Emma. I’m aware of how vulnerable it feels to be at the mercy of a hosting company that thinks they’re ‘doing you a favour’ with reasonable uptime. I’d be looking for a solution that has brand risk in getting it wrong and guarantees of 24/7/365 technical support. This can be more expensive, but the downside risk of a repeat of you being offline is too high to risk anything less. Plus, your legion of fans miss the fuck out of you:-). Kev is in technology. I’m sure he’s been amazing too. Finally, beware the ‘fallacy of sunk costs’. The cheapest time to make a change is now. All the best for 2026.
Best of luck with reconstructing the site and I understand if you will need to use ads to reclaim a source of revenue for the site. You had been doing a good job screening and removing the worst of them IMO.
I can’t believe Hostinger was charging you for backup service and not actually backing things up. That’s fraud, plain and simple, but companies will get away with that kind of stuff because it’s more difficult and expensive to take them to task than it’s really worth. I hope you now keep backups of everything yourself.
Looking forward to 2026! Both here on EYM, and in my own relationship situation.
Hostinger admitted/acknowledged that their backups didn’t work and hadn’t worked for some time and refunded me a grand total of $46.62 which they should have been embarrassed to even suggest.
Thanks for the update! I know this takes way more time than most of us realize . Please know we appreciate all your efforts.
I can feel the passion, hard work and care you have put into in this blog through this post. I love that you shared these hardships and details. As an ordinary member who hasn’t given much thought beyond just the content in a post, this has given me a new respect and fresh understanding of both the women behind the blog and the effort that goes into making it. You have created something beautiful and impactful with this blog. I am really glad to see that you are recovering and taking these difficulties with optimism. I find that life always works out in our favor if we let it. Lots of love.
So sorry this happened. This is such a wonderful, unique site. I always enjoy and get so much out of it. Cheering for you and wishing you a 2026 free of these troublesome tech issues.
Anyhow thanks for all the effort and this wonderfull site! X
Wow.A real committed Empress in action.Best wishes on the way forward.
So sorry that you experienced all that. Hang in there and do what’s right for you. You’ve delivered so much fun and positive provocation here! Hope things are bigger and better than ever for you in 2026 😍
Since you asked for feedback, I’ll offer some based on a career that included a fair bit of ‘crisis management’.
Rebuilding what’s lost, as in any other place in life, will take some time. You’re already done that with many of the posts. Rebuilding the community or participants would also be valuable.
From your post it seems like a move to a newer platform is inevitable, so why not now? Seems like a great time to make it happen; you’ll be doing it in a year anyway it would seem.
Also, while you may lament the drop in numbers at the end of December, that might actually have been the best time for this to happen. You would know better than I, but I suspect your numbers drop in late December anyway as people are focused on family, friends, and events. I know we can enjoy the holidays and visit your site but, speaking for myself, I didn’t even know you had an outage till today, because I was off enjoying the holidays.
Good luck. I’ll be here! (just not during the holidays 😉