I want to want you to want it (that way)
December 21, 2014 11:39 PM Subscribe
I am having trouble directing my kinky desires towards my long-term partner. Help?
We are in our early thirties and have been together for five years. He is warm, enthusiastic, and sensitive in bed, and very vanilla in his tastes. I am much further along the kink spectrum. When we first got together, all my experience with kink was as a submissive. Initially, I was disappointed that he didn't seem to have any real impulse towards domination, but he was open to exploration and willing to let me indulge my kinky side. To my surprise, I found that I actually enjoyed dominating him. We had some amazing, scorching hot kinky sex in these early days, and domination became a core part of my fantasy life.
As the years went by and we grew closer, I found that while my fantasies continued to orbit around domination, my desire to dominate him waned and eventually vanished altogether. I'm trying to figure out how to say this and it's hard, because everything sounds so harsh, but...the thought of dominating him started to seem taboo and slightly squicky - like thinking about your parents having sex. I want to emphasize that I didn't find him, or vanilla sex with him, taboo or off-putting at all. I loved him, loved touching him, loved being with him - just not in that way.
I ought to have talked to him about it at the time, but I couldn't figure out a way to put it into words. This is my only long-term relationship, and I didn't know if this was normal, or if those desires would come back, or what. Because the interest in kink had come entirely from me, we started having vanilla sex instead, and for a while it was pretty much fine. I had a very active fantasy life, and I thought that maybe this was just what happened after a while. I liked having vanilla sex because it expressed love and affection, and I could make myself come with a vibrator, and I thought that was enough.
Recently, though, we've been having problems. These problems have been exacerbated for me by wave after wave of intense and painful crushes on other people - crushes that are powered by fantasies of kinky sex. This feels dangerous and makes me very unhappy. I've hesitantly raised the question of re-introducing kink into the bedroom with my boyfriend, and he has been semi-enthusiastic about trying to dominate me, and entirely lukewarm about letting me dominate him (although he hasn't straight out refused.) I've also asked him to try and share other kinks he might have - like showing me the porn he watches - but he hasn't been into it, and the truth is, deep down neither am I. I don't know if it's his indifference that is making me respond in the way I am, but as much as I try, I can't make myself want to have kinky sex with him - even talking dirty feels sort of uncomfortable. Sometimes I power through, but it feels like I'm playing a role and I don't enjoy it. The only really exciting sex we have nowadays is when I am very drunk (and even then, it's always him dominating me.)
I feel very guilty about this and it is wearing away at our relationship, and making me depressed. I love my boyfriend and the thought of not being with him breaks my heart, but it feels wrong to be so indifferent to our sex life. I feel like my boyfriend is picking up on my sexual dissatisfaction and it is making him unhappy as well. I don't know how to talk about it with him, because the problem so clearly lies with me. Sometimes I get to the point where I consider leaving the relationship but then I think - what if this just happens again, with the next person I'm with? After all, we had good kinky sex together before we didn't. Maybe I'm just broken, and love and hot sex can't go together in my head? My boyfriend is brilliant, handsome, kind, understanding, and good - I don't want to break up with him! I want to want to have hot, kinky sex with him. I just don't know how.
Does anyone have any advice for me? I am in therapy and I've raised the question but we haven't really gotten anywhere with it. I think that the most useful advice on here usually comes in the form of shared anecdotes so even if you don't have a lesson for me, if you've just been where I am (trouble directing your kinky desires towards your long term partner who doesn't share them) I would like to hear from you.
Thank you.
We are in our early thirties and have been together for five years. He is warm, enthusiastic, and sensitive in bed, and very vanilla in his tastes. I am much further along the kink spectrum. When we first got together, all my experience with kink was as a submissive. Initially, I was disappointed that he didn't seem to have any real impulse towards domination, but he was open to exploration and willing to let me indulge my kinky side. To my surprise, I found that I actually enjoyed dominating him. We had some amazing, scorching hot kinky sex in these early days, and domination became a core part of my fantasy life.
As the years went by and we grew closer, I found that while my fantasies continued to orbit around domination, my desire to dominate him waned and eventually vanished altogether. I'm trying to figure out how to say this and it's hard, because everything sounds so harsh, but...the thought of dominating him started to seem taboo and slightly squicky - like thinking about your parents having sex. I want to emphasize that I didn't find him, or vanilla sex with him, taboo or off-putting at all. I loved him, loved touching him, loved being with him - just not in that way.
I ought to have talked to him about it at the time, but I couldn't figure out a way to put it into words. This is my only long-term relationship, and I didn't know if this was normal, or if those desires would come back, or what. Because the interest in kink had come entirely from me, we started having vanilla sex instead, and for a while it was pretty much fine. I had a very active fantasy life, and I thought that maybe this was just what happened after a while. I liked having vanilla sex because it expressed love and affection, and I could make myself come with a vibrator, and I thought that was enough.
Recently, though, we've been having problems. These problems have been exacerbated for me by wave after wave of intense and painful crushes on other people - crushes that are powered by fantasies of kinky sex. This feels dangerous and makes me very unhappy. I've hesitantly raised the question of re-introducing kink into the bedroom with my boyfriend, and he has been semi-enthusiastic about trying to dominate me, and entirely lukewarm about letting me dominate him (although he hasn't straight out refused.) I've also asked him to try and share other kinks he might have - like showing me the porn he watches - but he hasn't been into it, and the truth is, deep down neither am I. I don't know if it's his indifference that is making me respond in the way I am, but as much as I try, I can't make myself want to have kinky sex with him - even talking dirty feels sort of uncomfortable. Sometimes I power through, but it feels like I'm playing a role and I don't enjoy it. The only really exciting sex we have nowadays is when I am very drunk (and even then, it's always him dominating me.)
I feel very guilty about this and it is wearing away at our relationship, and making me depressed. I love my boyfriend and the thought of not being with him breaks my heart, but it feels wrong to be so indifferent to our sex life. I feel like my boyfriend is picking up on my sexual dissatisfaction and it is making him unhappy as well. I don't know how to talk about it with him, because the problem so clearly lies with me. Sometimes I get to the point where I consider leaving the relationship but then I think - what if this just happens again, with the next person I'm with? After all, we had good kinky sex together before we didn't. Maybe I'm just broken, and love and hot sex can't go together in my head? My boyfriend is brilliant, handsome, kind, understanding, and good - I don't want to break up with him! I want to want to have hot, kinky sex with him. I just don't know how.
Does anyone have any advice for me? I am in therapy and I've raised the question but we haven't really gotten anywhere with it. I think that the most useful advice on here usually comes in the form of shared anecdotes so even if you don't have a lesson for me, if you've just been where I am (trouble directing your kinky desires towards your long term partner who doesn't share them) I would like to hear from you.
Thank you.
That sounds really tough. I feel for you. It also echoes my own relationship in some significant ways.
My partner has been very adventurous with me and has tried things that were far outside her previous comfort zone, including some very intense submissive play. I thought for a while that this was an awakening for her that would lead to continued exploration and development of her secret life as a sub, but it turned out (so far at least) to be more of a high water mark, from which her sexual expression has since receded.
I have no doubt that I could keep driving it in that direction, but the knowledge that she isn't drawn to it as I am takes the wind out of my sails a bit. In the last 6 months (of about 3 years) we've been having far less kinky sex and far more of what I might call loving sex. Less the kind of sex you have with someone who drives you wild with desire and more the kind of sex you have with a dear friend to whom you feel sexually attracted. It's not lacking, by any measure, though I do miss the wildness of times past. Much more than she does it would seem.
I think the shift tends to happen in LTRs because the fire can take a while to die down, plus deep friendships take a while to form, so there is a transition from the roaring flames to the comforting coals that can be a bit disconcerting if the timing isn't just right. Most people will experience this if they stay in a relationship long enough, but there's perhaps an added layer or two for you - the kink, which maybe feels a big part of your identity and the fact that you've not been here before.
You can probably make it work with this man, though something will need to change; either in you or the relationship. Time can do it on occasion, frank discussions (always good as long as they're calm and respectful), shared explorations - there are lots of ways it can happen. The way it has worked for me in long relationships has been where we both had a strong desire to keep exploring, though I'm sure there are other ways to do it.
On the other hand you could leave because, more than what you have, you want the fire that can come from exploring the outer limits. I doubt that many would begrudge you that quest and you may find your desire in a man whose foibles you can accept; and that may last. Or you might not. There's no way of knowing.
flabdablet is on the right track with intimacy driven sex, which I think is where things tend to go in good LTRs, and it's true for me that some of the most powerful sex I've ever known has been utterly vanilla, but with someone I deeply loved and knew intimately. Those times are also, in my experience, quite different from fetish based sex, which I find extremely intense, though not as profoundly satisfying.
I think you should talk to this man you obviously love. Share these thoughts with him at a time that is good for you both. Make sure he knows that you're doing it because you love him and because you want to be with him. If, once he fully understands where you're coming from (which may not happen straight away), it brings you closer together and heralds a new and productive phase in your relationship then you've got something worth fighting for!
posted by mewsic at 3:04 AM on December 22, 2014 [4 favorites]
My partner has been very adventurous with me and has tried things that were far outside her previous comfort zone, including some very intense submissive play. I thought for a while that this was an awakening for her that would lead to continued exploration and development of her secret life as a sub, but it turned out (so far at least) to be more of a high water mark, from which her sexual expression has since receded.
I have no doubt that I could keep driving it in that direction, but the knowledge that she isn't drawn to it as I am takes the wind out of my sails a bit. In the last 6 months (of about 3 years) we've been having far less kinky sex and far more of what I might call loving sex. Less the kind of sex you have with someone who drives you wild with desire and more the kind of sex you have with a dear friend to whom you feel sexually attracted. It's not lacking, by any measure, though I do miss the wildness of times past. Much more than she does it would seem.
I think the shift tends to happen in LTRs because the fire can take a while to die down, plus deep friendships take a while to form, so there is a transition from the roaring flames to the comforting coals that can be a bit disconcerting if the timing isn't just right. Most people will experience this if they stay in a relationship long enough, but there's perhaps an added layer or two for you - the kink, which maybe feels a big part of your identity and the fact that you've not been here before.
You can probably make it work with this man, though something will need to change; either in you or the relationship. Time can do it on occasion, frank discussions (always good as long as they're calm and respectful), shared explorations - there are lots of ways it can happen. The way it has worked for me in long relationships has been where we both had a strong desire to keep exploring, though I'm sure there are other ways to do it.
On the other hand you could leave because, more than what you have, you want the fire that can come from exploring the outer limits. I doubt that many would begrudge you that quest and you may find your desire in a man whose foibles you can accept; and that may last. Or you might not. There's no way of knowing.
flabdablet is on the right track with intimacy driven sex, which I think is where things tend to go in good LTRs, and it's true for me that some of the most powerful sex I've ever known has been utterly vanilla, but with someone I deeply loved and knew intimately. Those times are also, in my experience, quite different from fetish based sex, which I find extremely intense, though not as profoundly satisfying.
I think you should talk to this man you obviously love. Share these thoughts with him at a time that is good for you both. Make sure he knows that you're doing it because you love him and because you want to be with him. If, once he fully understands where you're coming from (which may not happen straight away), it brings you closer together and heralds a new and productive phase in your relationship then you've got something worth fighting for!
posted by mewsic at 3:04 AM on December 22, 2014 [4 favorites]
Hmm. I've been part of the kink community (though never as an active participant) for a long time (decade or so) and my partner (LTR) describes himself as 'vanilla'. It can work. Generally being very shy about this stuff, and incapable of articulating my thoughts at first (which didn't help; it was awkward), something that has helped us navigate this in our relationship is open, honest communication about our wants, expectations and fears. And so I'd say first you need to figure out what it is that you want from your partner so that you can clearly articulate that to him. But you're very right to take responsibility when you say that "the problem so clearly lies with me". You shouldn't expect your partner to match your enthusiasm for these kinks (these are your kinks after all, not your partners'), nor should you expect your partner's participation -- they are free to not like these things and to not try them at all.
That said:
Discuss exploration. Keep it lighthearted and without expectations of participation or matched enthusiasm. This is sensitive stuff and you're asking someone (who's not really into this stuff) to be just as eager as you are -- that's enormous pressure on them (they'll likely balk) and it's just going to make you miserable. And what if they do enjoy it but are simply never as enthusiastic about this stuff as you are? YMMV, but even if my partner and I are enthusiastic about the same thing, our expression of that is so different. Perhaps re-frame this as: you have a vanilla partner who's willing to step outside of their comfort zone and explore some kink with you. That's huge. Try not to sabotage it by making them feel as though kink (even just the exploration of it) is suddenly required/expected in your relationship.
Find a sex-positive kink community. I followed this advice based on replies to another Ask. FetLife seemed to be the most recommended place to go. So far, I've found being able to discuss kink with others (who share your enthusiasm) can be very beneficial in discovering the 'why' of the kink and how important it is to your identity. Just discussing your thoughts/fantasies/kinks with others may be enough. There are also online role-play groups, if that is something you're into and allowable in your relationship. It's how I initially explored kink.
Create something. For me, this means drawing or writing kink-based erotica. I find this is a safe, especially therapeutic way to explore all those thoughts and fantasies. As a result, it largely satisfies my need for kink.
But if you feel those aren't enough for you and you need to actively participate in the community, perhaps, depending upon the climate of your relationship, you could broach the subject of opening your relationship? I know some people that are able to express their kink in sex-only relationships often feel its benefits spill over and improve their romantic relationship as well -- especially when one person is into kink (and/or more sex) and the other is not.
If no compromise can be made (ie: no/disliked exploration, talking/creating doesn't cut it, no open relationship possibility), I think the only thing left to ask yourself is whether never being able to explore this kinky side of yours is a 'deal breaker'. It would be for me.
posted by stubbehtail at 5:59 AM on December 22, 2014 [2 favorites]
That said:
Discuss exploration. Keep it lighthearted and without expectations of participation or matched enthusiasm. This is sensitive stuff and you're asking someone (who's not really into this stuff) to be just as eager as you are -- that's enormous pressure on them (they'll likely balk) and it's just going to make you miserable. And what if they do enjoy it but are simply never as enthusiastic about this stuff as you are? YMMV, but even if my partner and I are enthusiastic about the same thing, our expression of that is so different. Perhaps re-frame this as: you have a vanilla partner who's willing to step outside of their comfort zone and explore some kink with you. That's huge. Try not to sabotage it by making them feel as though kink (even just the exploration of it) is suddenly required/expected in your relationship.
Find a sex-positive kink community. I followed this advice based on replies to another Ask. FetLife seemed to be the most recommended place to go. So far, I've found being able to discuss kink with others (who share your enthusiasm) can be very beneficial in discovering the 'why' of the kink and how important it is to your identity. Just discussing your thoughts/fantasies/kinks with others may be enough. There are also online role-play groups, if that is something you're into and allowable in your relationship. It's how I initially explored kink.
Create something. For me, this means drawing or writing kink-based erotica. I find this is a safe, especially therapeutic way to explore all those thoughts and fantasies. As a result, it largely satisfies my need for kink.
But if you feel those aren't enough for you and you need to actively participate in the community, perhaps, depending upon the climate of your relationship, you could broach the subject of opening your relationship? I know some people that are able to express their kink in sex-only relationships often feel its benefits spill over and improve their romantic relationship as well -- especially when one person is into kink (and/or more sex) and the other is not.
If no compromise can be made (ie: no/disliked exploration, talking/creating doesn't cut it, no open relationship possibility), I think the only thing left to ask yourself is whether never being able to explore this kinky side of yours is a 'deal breaker'. It would be for me.
posted by stubbehtail at 5:59 AM on December 22, 2014 [2 favorites]
the only thing left to ask yourself is whether never being able to explore this kinky side of yours is a 'deal breaker'
I honestly think you need to decide that first. Because that's going to be his concern if you go to him with this as a serious thing.
I can't make myself want to have kinky sex with him - even talking dirty feels sort of uncomfortable
The nature of intimacy changes over time and that can make it a challenge to still feel sexual at all about your partner (especially if you have taken on relationship dynamics that are non-conducive to sex because they mimic parent or caretaker dynamics), much less do so with the kind of complexity kink requires. Of the small pool of people I've known for a long time who were more 24/7 types at some point, the ones who are still together are not like that anymore. Things change over time, that's the only guarantee.
And a lot of people arrive at indifferent over time - that's why it's such a cliche - and it takes quite a bit of effort for many people to keep it going at all, especially if age, health, stress, or general inclination takes the edge off your libido so that it takes effort just to want to want to do anything at all.
It may be that it's time to try to examine things as they are now with fresh eyes rather than try to get back a period of the relationship that's passed, separating "I used to get him to do kinky things he wasn't super into" from generalized "lost that lovin' feeling." This might be happening because the relationship is transitioning into a deeper stage and you're scared, or it's wearing down to its natural expiration date, and you're muddying those waters with the kink aspect, which might not be a dealbreaker for you so much as a symbol of a previous enthusiasm you don't know how to re-invent in a framework that's legitimately enthusiasm-worthy to both of you.
I've come to realize as I get older that while I am still kinky in my brain, I used to use it as a shortcut to hot. The kink was a sort of playbook everyone could use, a shared language, and we could replace emotional trust intimacy with physical danger intimacy and then nobody had to worry about getting hurt, only about getting injured. Kink in the presence of emotional intimacy, especially with the baggage of time and seeing each other with the flu and the accumulation of occasional fights and scares and little triumphs? That is hard as shit. That is probably why you don't want to do it like that anymore.
But that's assuming two kinky partners, and yours is not. He tried it, because new relationship energy and wanting to please you, but it's not ethical to expect someone to engage in power play with you when they do not actually enjoy it and freely choose it for themselves.
Finding a new way is hard, especially when it's become hard to talk about, and you can't force him to talk about it. I think if you guys can't find a path to communication about it, you probably do have to look at moving on if you don't want to live that way. It may just be a mismatch, at the end of the day, but make sure you're assessing that on the actual facts across the board and not just that you got him to try something for a brief period and he turned out not to like it.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:37 AM on December 22, 2014 [2 favorites]
I honestly think you need to decide that first. Because that's going to be his concern if you go to him with this as a serious thing.
I can't make myself want to have kinky sex with him - even talking dirty feels sort of uncomfortable
The nature of intimacy changes over time and that can make it a challenge to still feel sexual at all about your partner (especially if you have taken on relationship dynamics that are non-conducive to sex because they mimic parent or caretaker dynamics), much less do so with the kind of complexity kink requires. Of the small pool of people I've known for a long time who were more 24/7 types at some point, the ones who are still together are not like that anymore. Things change over time, that's the only guarantee.
And a lot of people arrive at indifferent over time - that's why it's such a cliche - and it takes quite a bit of effort for many people to keep it going at all, especially if age, health, stress, or general inclination takes the edge off your libido so that it takes effort just to want to want to do anything at all.
It may be that it's time to try to examine things as they are now with fresh eyes rather than try to get back a period of the relationship that's passed, separating "I used to get him to do kinky things he wasn't super into" from generalized "lost that lovin' feeling." This might be happening because the relationship is transitioning into a deeper stage and you're scared, or it's wearing down to its natural expiration date, and you're muddying those waters with the kink aspect, which might not be a dealbreaker for you so much as a symbol of a previous enthusiasm you don't know how to re-invent in a framework that's legitimately enthusiasm-worthy to both of you.
I've come to realize as I get older that while I am still kinky in my brain, I used to use it as a shortcut to hot. The kink was a sort of playbook everyone could use, a shared language, and we could replace emotional trust intimacy with physical danger intimacy and then nobody had to worry about getting hurt, only about getting injured. Kink in the presence of emotional intimacy, especially with the baggage of time and seeing each other with the flu and the accumulation of occasional fights and scares and little triumphs? That is hard as shit. That is probably why you don't want to do it like that anymore.
But that's assuming two kinky partners, and yours is not. He tried it, because new relationship energy and wanting to please you, but it's not ethical to expect someone to engage in power play with you when they do not actually enjoy it and freely choose it for themselves.
Finding a new way is hard, especially when it's become hard to talk about, and you can't force him to talk about it. I think if you guys can't find a path to communication about it, you probably do have to look at moving on if you don't want to live that way. It may just be a mismatch, at the end of the day, but make sure you're assessing that on the actual facts across the board and not just that you got him to try something for a brief period and he turned out not to like it.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:37 AM on December 22, 2014 [2 favorites]
If you love each other, and it sounds like you do, I suggest waiting for the tide to turn while talking about it as best you can. My partner and I have undergone a big improvement after 3-4 years of really boring sex.
As for fantasies and crushes, I hear you, I really do. There's no way to get good numbers, but there are a LOT of people in LTRs who get off to others at least some of the time. As I understand it, it's part of life. One thought that helps me: *even if* you narrow it to people with whom there's a friendly/emotional connection, if I ran away with every person I wanted to fuck, I'd have a really, really long list AND a new domestic partner every six months.
posted by 8603 at 11:44 AM on December 22, 2014
As for fantasies and crushes, I hear you, I really do. There's no way to get good numbers, but there are a LOT of people in LTRs who get off to others at least some of the time. As I understand it, it's part of life. One thought that helps me: *even if* you narrow it to people with whom there's a friendly/emotional connection, if I ran away with every person I wanted to fuck, I'd have a really, really long list AND a new domestic partner every six months.
posted by 8603 at 11:44 AM on December 22, 2014
It sounds to me like
a) you used to consider yourself submissive, but you became more of a Dom as you got kinky with your boyfriend,
b) your boyfriend was vanilla but up for playing s to your D, but
c) things changed, and it doesn't feel right to D your boyfriend, while it's sounding like maybe your boyfriend might be quite D himself - but isn't doing much with it, perhaps because he's been vanilla and so hasn't ever really embraced the whole D/s paradigm?
If this is more or less on-track, two things come to mind:
1) can you go back to being s and helping your boyfriend develop the D side of himself? Or
2) if you and your boyfriend are both D, can you deal with working a third s person into your sexual relationship? (I think that stubbehtail was hinting at this above).
Obviously, there are a huge number of pitfalls and caveats about opening up your relationship in this manner. It simply might not be an option. I can tell you that, in another life, I did this: my partner and I were both D, and we both developed an odd discomfort with Domming each other - but we had a great time "co-Domming" a submissive third. For [reasons] my partner and I knew that we weren't headed for marriage or anything long-term, so my only thought about the stability / sustainability of such an arrangement is "probably not". Although when things inevitably ended, it was due to external factors, not a breach of trust between my partner and I. All in all, we kept things humming for a bit more than a year.
posted by doctor tough love at 11:12 PM on December 22, 2014
a) you used to consider yourself submissive, but you became more of a Dom as you got kinky with your boyfriend,
b) your boyfriend was vanilla but up for playing s to your D, but
c) things changed, and it doesn't feel right to D your boyfriend, while it's sounding like maybe your boyfriend might be quite D himself - but isn't doing much with it, perhaps because he's been vanilla and so hasn't ever really embraced the whole D/s paradigm?
If this is more or less on-track, two things come to mind:
1) can you go back to being s and helping your boyfriend develop the D side of himself? Or
2) if you and your boyfriend are both D, can you deal with working a third s person into your sexual relationship? (I think that stubbehtail was hinting at this above).
Obviously, there are a huge number of pitfalls and caveats about opening up your relationship in this manner. It simply might not be an option. I can tell you that, in another life, I did this: my partner and I were both D, and we both developed an odd discomfort with Domming each other - but we had a great time "co-Domming" a submissive third. For [reasons] my partner and I knew that we weren't headed for marriage or anything long-term, so my only thought about the stability / sustainability of such an arrangement is "probably not". Although when things inevitably ended, it was due to external factors, not a breach of trust between my partner and I. All in all, we kept things humming for a bit more than a year.
posted by doctor tough love at 11:12 PM on December 22, 2014
I think you should look up the books "Mating in Captivity" and "Passionate Marriage." While not precisely addressing the question of a relationship where one person has kinks and the other is more vanilla, both books address the question of maintaining desire inside longer term relationships. Both books make the case that maintaining a different kind of interpersonal boundary is the key to erotic desire -- that inside intimate relationships we get all mushy and boundary-blurred and that this muffles and kills eros. As one reviewer put it, for the spark to fly across the gap there has to be a little gap. To pine or yearn there has to be a little space to yearn across. From what you wrote (about how it feels wrong to have "dirty" sex with your partner) I wonder if you haven't blurred yourself with him a little. I also wonder if you might have created a bit of a male virgin/whore dichotomy in your mind and classed him as the former? Anyway, check out those books, they are much more eloquent than I am being here :)
posted by feets at 12:57 AM on December 24, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by feets at 12:57 AM on December 24, 2014 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
These thoughts are key, as I see it:
I'm trying to figure out how to say this and it's hard, because everything sounds so harsh, but...the thought of dominating him started to seem taboo and slightly squicky - like thinking about your parents having sex.
This makes perfect sense if you allow yourself to consider both sex-as-game and sex-as-serious-business as equally valid perspectives.
Maybe I'm just broken, and love and hot sex can't go together in my head?
I don't think you're broken. I think you've allowed yourself to pine so hard for the kind of sex you remember that the pining and comparison is distracting you from the sex you're actually having. I think you're in a transitional state between your relationship being something you have in order to support reaching peak experiences via sex, and sex being something you do in support of reaching peak experiences via intimacy - which, despite often being mistaken for sex by people who have not experienced it, is in fact very much its own thing.
I also think you're probably a little dubious about the possibility of intimacy-driven sex being able to offer peaks comparable to role-play-driven sex. Personally, I recommend going there and checking out the view.
it feels wrong to be so indifferent to our sex life.
Being indifferent to sex is a mistake. So is confining yourself and your imagination and your expectations and plans to the use of methods within your existing experience.
Really, it's the peak experience that matters; the exact path you take to the top of that mountain is secondary, and heavily dependent on where you're starting from.
If you can talk yourself into focusing less on the methods for getting there that worked for you when you hadn't been in a loving and committed relationship for five years, and instead start to experiment with an intense focus on being fully present in the moment, I expect you will find a way to have peak sexual experiences and a loving, supportive, stable relationship with a wonderful partner.
It's not supposed to be easy, by the way. Making yourself utterly vulnerable while remaining fully present will feel fundamentally dangerous in ways that play-acting at submission just doesn't. Knowing another person intimately is simply not something that can be pulled up short with a safe word.
posted by flabdablet at 1:41 AM on December 22, 2014 [12 favorites]