Day 13: Explain as best you can what the appeal of kink/BDSM is to you? Why are you drawn to what you’re drawn to?
For some people, the road to becoming kinky is paved with choice. Submission or dominance is developed, learned, nurtured, and crafted.
For others, it’s just in their blood.
I’m of the second camp. I wasn’t drawn to kink. It didn’t hold appeal. I was into kink well before I heard the term BDSM. Before I knew what kink was, I fantasized about submitting. I craved pain, bondage, humiliation, all the good stuff.
Scot, of TheDomNextDoor, wrote an interesting post some weeks/days ago about how he and his wife, Leigh, ventured into their kink journey. For them, their trusting, committed relationship came first. BDSM is an addition. A hot addition (check out their blog), but it’s just an add-on to an already fantastic marriage.
He writes:
I can remove D/s from my relationship with Leigh and still have so much to share with her for the rest of our lives. But can the same be said for a collared D/s couple who met as a result of that interest? I doubt it.
That’s cool.
For me, if I take D/s out of the relationship, I’m removing a really important dynamic. I would even say that it is more important that my partner be dominant than it is that my partner be male (and I’m pretty fucking het).
This is the depth of my kink.
Could I have a vanilla sexual relationship? Probably not. It wouldn’t be fulfilling. It would neglect to address many things I crave. Might I, one day, wake up vanilla? Highly unlikely, but I know people change. It would be a paradigm shift for me, a completely different worldview to face. It would be like waking up as a devout Mormon.
One thing that is important to address is that, while the 24/7 thing is well and good for some, no long term healthy relationship will survive without occasionlly (and I’d argue, mostly) acting as peers. Two people who spend lots of time together will speak to each other as equals. They will debate politics, or contemplate philosophical shit, etc. Dominants will ask their submissives for advice and thoughts because that’s just what you do when you’re in a relationship. For dominants looking for doormats, and submissives hoping to be doormats, I would venture to guess that there is an unhealthy psychological aspect to that dominance/submission that should be addressed before delving into a kink-centric relationship.
Dominants cannot act dominant all of the time. Submissives cannot act submissive all of the time. To ask for that, or expect that, is not only unreasonable but completely unrealistic. So when I say I’m submissive and born into that role, there is nothing about this that says I cannot hold my own. My submission is not a negative thing or a changeable thing. I am not a weak or fragile person. I’m capable of making my own decisions and dominating my own life.
But if I’m going to invest the time into building a relationship, I am going to be very fucking sure that the dude is willing to step up, be a man, and take charge.
(Aside: Sigh. I realize that men don’t need to be ‘alpha’ or ‘step up’ to be men. For me, I need that in a partner. It’s just a phrase, PC police.)
Scot eloquently describes, in respect to his marriage, that it was important to have a solid foundation while incorporating BDSM into their relationship.
For me, the solid foundation and the BDSM are so intertwined that starting with a vanilla (or vanilla-ish) foundation is an impossible concept. My kink is not my choice, it’s part of me. It is so much a part of me that attempting to build a foundation without that D/s dynamic would be fruitless.
Sexuality is a personal thing. Everyone has their own. Identifying my needs was liberating. And there is just no ‘Why am I the way I am?’ I can contemplate evolutionary psychology and the potential advantages for dominance and submission, sure. But I don’t need an explanation, really. I was born submissive in the same way I was born right-handed.
And I can train my left-hand to work well (and have), but if you chuck a baseball at my head, guess which hand will fly up to catch it?
xoxo
Sadey
p.s. More 30 Days posts here.
