A letter in a recent Dan Savage column got me thinking about the risks of confessing kinks to partners. The letter’s author is writing about her previous boyfriends admission that he liked to be peed on.
I’m GGG, so I mulled it over and decided that I am not comfortable with that. I was able to explain that regardless of how sanitary it may be (one of his selling points!), I am not down and he deserves to be with someone who is. Couple weeks later, I started talking to my future husband, who has the same kinks as me. Thanks for teaching me that being GGG does not mean doing whatever your partner wants but to always be respectful, even if it eeks you out.
I’m not really sure why the author felt the need to write the letter to Dan. I don’t think she comes out of it well. Having a limit on what you’re prepared to do is right and proper. But dumping the guy and making it sound like she did so for his benefit seems to be pretty poor form. As Dan points out in his reply, she can’t be certain her new love doesn’t have similar or worse kinks. After all, he’s going to be very reluctant to confess anything now he knows what happened to the last guy she dated.
While I was pondering this I came across this recent post by Miss Troy Orleans, where she commented on the sharing of kinks in a relationship.
I don’t think the men give their spouses enough credit as far as what their wives desire or what they might be open to as far as kink. I believe every marriage has room for some kink — perhaps it’s not the kind of heavy bondage, degradation, or skill-driven play typical of professional sessions — but with patience, communication, cooperation/accommodation, and an open heart, any couple can incorporate some kind of kink into their sex life.
I’ve never been married, so this is not a problem I’ve ever faced. However, I’ve read enough personal accounts of kinky confessors to realize there are many possible outcomes. Everything from kinky heaven in a newly rejuvenated relationship to divorce, despair and the fighting of wild dogs for a pork rind in a seedy back alley while the local hobos bets on the outcome. You should aim to steer clear of that last option if possible.
The one thing that always seems true is that predicting how a partner will respond is incredibly hard. I’ve yet to hear anyone say “I always thought my wife would like me to wear a fireman’s outfit and pee on her while making siren sounds, and it turns out I was right!” Complex internal sexual wiring doesn’t often manifest itself in obvious ways via someone’s personality or behavior. People will talk about indicators that seem obvious in hindsight, but they are never describing predictors they were aware of beforehand. It seems that the only answer for existing partners is to try and start with the kind of relationship Miss Orleans describes, and then hope they can find common ground.
Given I started with a letter on watersports, it seems only fitting to finish with some photographs featuring some liquid loveliness. Both of these are from the Felm Cyber Tumblr.
Hi paltego,
After two failed marriages and two additional failed SO relationships, I had just about given up on finding happiness in a long-term relationship. Almost as if I’d written the story myself, Em entered my life and I decided just to come clean right from the first. I liked her and felt really comfortable with her but I figured it would be better to get all the skeletons out of my closet before we’d grown attached. I was sure she would balk and then walk but for some reason she liked me AS I WAS and chose to stay.
We’re extraordinarily compatible and finding each other may have simply been dumb luck. But we recognized the potential and have tried to nurture it.
In my experience, radical honesty upfront is the best choice. After all, if you’re thinking about playing house all the pretenses will come tumbling down sooner or later.
Best,
scott
Mrs. Kelly’s Playhouse
Hey scott,
I have to agree with you about upfront honesty. I can’t imagine now starting a relationship without BDSM being a part of it in someway. I think there are a lot of ways it could manifest itself, but it’d be discussed early on and then in there somewhere from that point on.
I think the tricky bit is when you find yourself past that point. i.e. It’s an established vanilla relationship. How does someone deal with that? There seems to be a multitude of approaches, and a similar number of outcomes. And, as far as I can see, there’s no way for people to figure out which path they’re going to end up going down when they start discussing things with their unaware partner. Just start from a good place and hope to get lucky seems to be it.
-paltego
I’ve been married for a bit over 10 years so I’m pretty far removed from the dating scene, but my advice would be to talk about kinks very early on. When you’re still in that “you’re so cool!” phase. Might she run away? Sure, she might. But better that she should run for the hills before you’ve invested much in the relationship.
It sure beats the alternative of forming a long relationship and then being forced by your own period of self-repression to come clean. She’s not going to be very happy to know that you’ve been lying to her the whole time about something important like sexual compatibility. She’ll feel insecure, wondering if she ever turned you on since you haven’t been having sex the way you really want to have sex. It would be very disorienting and disconcerting for her, I’d imagine.
As for my wife and me, we met in a vanilla setting, but the second time we ever hooked up involved rope and blindfolds, so I didn’t waste much time. In all, I’m definitely kinkier than she is, but she can hold her own, and I’ve definitely learned a lot from her, all the same.
Sometimes I find myself wanting more, but on the whole, the kink side of our relationship is about as good as you can expect. It’s hard to find someone that you click with in all of the important areas of a marriage (financial, child-rearing, how to spend free time, etc.) including having compatible kinks. Folks in our local kinky community say they have an easy time meeting kinky people, but a hard time keeping a relationship going long-term.
I agree. As I mentioned in my reply to scott, I think any relationship I start will have to involve an early discussion on kink. Better to figure this stuff out early than run into all the issues later on.
Thus post was really just about me pondering what happens when that’s not an option. When you’re already deep in a vanilla relationship and now want to let the kinky cat out of the bag. It might be better to do it at the start, but for a lot of people it’s already too late for that. I could easily have been in that situation, as for 10+ years I kept my kinky side very separate from my dating/relationship life. In the end I came to BDSM during a gap in relationships, so never had to face the issue. But that was more by luck (or my relationship failure) than any planning or good judgement.
I think if you’ve got rope and blindfolds in the mix from hook-up number 2, then you’re off to a great start! And yes, kink is just one part of life. No good having someone who pushes all your kinky buttons but is insanely annoying to live with in every other respect. Congratulations on finding that someone who clicks with you in all the important areas 🙂
-paltego
I’ve given it a few minutes’ thought, and I think taking a long-standing vanilla relationship kinky is a really tricky thing. Not saying it’s impossible, but I think it has to be approached with sensitivity to the non-kinky partner’s feelings. I mean, put yourself in her shoes (saying “her” just to pick a pronoun and stick with it, but obviously the woman could be the kinky one and the man, vanilla). You’re telling her, in not so many words, “Hey, honey. You know all the sex that we’ve been having all these years? How you thought you rocked my world? Well, actually, for me, it feels closer to masturbation, than it does to ‘driving me wild’. I mean, masturbating is entertaining and all, don’t get me wrong, but that’s all it is for me. I’ve completely concealed from you who I am sexually because I didn’t trust you not to kick me to the curb when you found out. These years, you’ve pretty much been living a lie. Could you pass the string beans, please?”
I think that a guy stuck in that situation has basically two choices:
1. Start to talk his feelings through with her, gently, and with acknowledgement that he shouldn’t have concealed this from her and that he feels awful for having done it. It’s a dick move, if you think about it, no? Remind her that he loves her and didn’t feel right about continuing not to share this with her, and that he hopes she can share it with him, little by little.
2. Compound his lie with another lie: claim to have had his curiosity piqued by seeing some movie or reading some book or talking with his buddies or what have you. See if she’d want to try something a little kinky and see if they both like it. I know, telling more lies is generally a bad thing, but I’m willing to give him a pass on this one since he’s moving toward a new reality of living authentically with her, and at the same time, not subjecting her to insecurities. It also involves his not admitting fault, when there is plenty there, so maybe I’m just rationalizing, but it’s an imperfect world.
In either case, they should read some of the basic advice out there for BDSM newbies, even if the guy isn’t quite so new. They should start small, and not try to make a scene that’s kink.com-worthy. Especially if the vanilla partner is the one that is going to be called upon to top (this is an F/m blog, after all), blindfolds are really, really helpful. It takes a huge amount of pressure off of an inexperienced top if the bottom can’t see her fumbling around.
Which I think brings us back to where we started, and that’s that it is plainly the right think to do to just be honest and up-front about your kinks right away. It avoids being trapped in a vanilla relationship, and she’s much more likely to be more adventuresome at the very beginning, than after you’ve got a house in the suburbs, careers, kids, a dog, etc.