9/24/2009

When Vanilla Isn't Enough?

A question I have been pondering and working through lately is how much vanilla should be a part of a kinkster's life.



Of course, there is no right or wrong answer here; we all have different tastes. One couple may engage in FT M/s (fulltime Master/slave) 100% of the time, while another is vanilla 99.9% of the time and engages in occasional rough, kinky sex to spice things up. If that works for them, it's all okay.



But what has worried me is where exactly I fall in this spectrum. I always pictured myself as being an even 50/50 split between BDSM and vanilla. I wanted the rough, painful, scary, exhilarating scenes, but I also wanted the calm touches, the tender moments, and the slow lovemaking. I pictured myself doing a full-blown scene one day, then being made love to as equals while my Dom looked lovingly into my eyes the next.



What I'm discovering, the more we delve into BDSM, is that I may not be that exact 50/50 split of vanilla and kink that I had envisioned as being my "ideal." The more we get into kink, the more kink I need. Sometimes I want my Dom to push me higher and faster than he does, because he is worried about pushing me too far and hurting me, but I am craving something more than last time.



The result is that I'm losing the ability to enjoy vanilla sex. Regular, day-to-day things like making out and calm sex are becoming boring for me.



Okay, they were always somewhat boring. I could do them, and enjoy them, but I've always wanted something more---my wrists pinned above my head, being called a name, a face slap, rough screwing.



But now I can't even enjoy them. I can't get turned on. It's just totally... boring.



I'm having to re-craft my self identity. Whereas I pictured a nice, safe life of kink and vanilla, it seems I'm leaning more toward the kink side now. Whereas once a slap from my Dom turned me on and got me into the scene, now that doesn't do it for me anymore. I have experienced more, and I need more. That limit has been pushed, and so it isn't a limit anymore. I can go into my head, retreat into that space in my head I used so often when my mother was abusing me, and it is getting harder and harder for him to pull me out.... it requires more and more violence for him to get me out. And yet I want him to get me out.



This brings up lots of scary questions and looming possibilities for me. Am I not as vanilla and safe and "normal" as I thought? Am I losing the possibility of making love? Can I not enjoy tender, loving sex? Why do I need to be hit and beaten and scared to get into sex? Why does regular making out bore me to tears? If I need more and more to have my limits pushed, am I eventually going to hit a wall where either my Dom seriously injures me, or I'll just never enjoy sex again? Why can't I feel connected to him anymore through regular making out and sexual activities?



I've talked about a lot of issues on my sex blog, but this is one thing I don't have the answers to. It is scary, even for an adult, to wonder these things about yourself. To not know where the path ahead leads. To change your idea of who you thought you were. To wonder if your partner and you can keep finding new and higher heights of kink, higher limits to push, stronger boundaries to cross. To wonder if you are normal, or a total freak, that you can't enjoy kink AND vanilla.



A cursory glance around Fetlife seems to reassure me that I am not, at least, a freak. There are lots of women on here who seem to have settled happily into the knowledge that they are not what society tells them to be, they are not who our culture calls "normal." And they seem okay and happy with that. So I hope I can follow their lead. But it is still scary.

It's something I'm trying to figure out.

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