Food for thought.
October 30, 2011Belle and I had a long conversation last night. She is reading a book on SM for a review and it is scaring her a bit. The infamous slippery slope is what concerns her. She explained that while reading, she has attempted to see where she fits in and thus far she has been unsuccessful. On the other hand she can totally see me fitting in rather well in the SM lifestyle. She fears that when we reach the point that she can not pass, I will be longing for something 3 miles beyond that wall.
This took some thinking…a dangerous pastime, I know. On one hand, she is right. I’m sure that I will crave acts far beyond her desires. We have run into that kind of thing already. Not everyone has the same kinks. Belle is…or at least once was…as vanilla as they come. In practice I was too. The difference was, kinky things intrigue me. Belle seems to be indifferent, leaning towards the “no thanks” side of the fence. A lot of the things I ask her to do, she does to humor me. Every once in a while she gets into it. Often she does not. The times she does not are unfullfilling to me and leave me feeling a bit embarassed.
I explained to her last night that the core of my fantasies do not revolve around specific acts. They are centered on a strong, confident woman. A woman that lusts after me, and knows what she wants. She doesn’t need whips or chains, she has a look that I dare not defy…nor would I want to. Nobody needs to be hanging upside down with a hook in their ass. Nobody needs to wear a leather hood with electrified clamps on their nipples. All these things that frighten Belle are unnecessary.
The attitude is the most important part. It is the only toy you need. It is the sexiest thing I can imagine and it is free. You just need to learn how to use it.
So read your book Belle. Pick up a cool idea or two and dissregard anything you don’t care for. You are the boss afterall.
-Jnuts
Nuts 4 Belle 
“The attitude is the most important part. It is the only toy you need. It is the sexiest thing I can imagine and it is free. You just need to learn how to use it.”
Yes, you are right with that. Except for the “just” in the last sentence. I don’t know what it is like for Belle, but I, for one, find it anything but easy to find the right attitude and maintain it over a longer period of time.
By saying “just”, I wasn’t implying it was a simple thing to do. I guess the word “only” would have been more appropriate.
I’m sure it’s not uncommon for the female in a relationship to be less interested in kink than the male, in fact I would suggest it is rather the norm! There are lots of things that I would probably do that my own Mistress wouldn’t, but you just have to weigh up the relationship as a whole and if you are with the right person then you’ll probably come to the conclusion (as you have) that your love is worth more than any sex game.
If you think about it, relationships where there is an imbalance are probably the ones that have the most natural progression over time, since if you are both mega-kinky then you will probably rush to do everything and burn out, and if you are both too reserved then things will never get anywhere.
Also, I know from my own experience that a lot of times Mistress R has enjoyed things once she’d initially done them ‘for me’, and wanted to do them again. A bit like someone who doesn’t want to do a parachute jump but as soon as they hit the ground they can’t wait to get back in the plane…
Very good points. I guess it is best that we balance each other out.
Or you could put it to her that she could dive in, safe in the knowledge that your pool of kink is wide and deep enough to cope with any splash she might make.
This is a very interesting analogy. I don’t know that I have a huge pool sized kinky side, but she could probably wade in it without much trouble. 😉
“She fears that when we reach the point that she can not pass, I will be longing for something 3 miles beyond that wall.”
Of course I can’t speak for you or your wife, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you always longed for something “3 miles beyond that wall” (I know I do). So if she dares (coming from 3 miles on the other side of that wall) to go near that wall, it’s still so much better for you than if she had stayed on the vanilla side of her personal kink-spectrum…
What I forgot to say in the first post:
If the reason for Belle’s fear is that she might one day reach the point where she can’t live up to the perceived pressure to “perform” your kink, then the knowledge that it’s not about fulfilling all of one’s partners fantasies, but about taking them serious, might help to overcome that pressure to perform and therefore alleviate the fear.
This might be true as well. I would much rather she take my one or two big fantasies seriously than go through motions on every little thing I haven’t ruled out doing. Quality over quantity.
Jnuts – I can completely empathize with your situation since it pretty much describes mine. I think my wife’s main fear in the beginning was just where all of this was leading. One way to manage this was to be very careful about the reading material I gave her. Many otherwise very useful writings, like Sarah’s book “Be Careful What You Wish For,” could not be given to her because they contained discussions or mentions of kinks that were far distant from simple male chastity. Instead, I gave her carefully screened blog entries from Sarah’s and Dev’s blogs. She said the writings didn’t make much of an impression on her (“I really don’t care what other people do.”) but I have seen that she has become increasingly more comfortable with male chastity and the idea of exercising control over my orgasm since I began introducing this material. In addition to the information those writings provided, the fact that the articles were from women that were in many respects similar to her in age and marriage relationship may have had an even more important effect – it demonstrated that male chastity is “okay.” It is not some kind of weird, disgusting perversion. “Normal” women do this and enjoy it.
I completely agree that attitude is far more important than toys or outfits. I also agree that it is very hard to consistently manufacture that attitude if it is not there to begin with. One thing I have done is to introduce some elements of a Female Lead Relationship on every day things that are important to her. I had hoped, and have generally found, that getting experience exercising dominance in real life makes the role much easier for my wife to play in the bedroom.
I enjoy your blog and toy reviews. Keep up the good work.
kelmag
Belle here, thought I should chime in. The kinks and even extreme kinks don’t scare me in a “Oh my God how gross” way. It is more of a I don’t want to go there because that isn’t me sort of way. I have a degree in human behavior, and studied sexual behavior. I am fine reading the SM stuff from an academic standpoint. My struggle is that Jnuts enjoys much of this and I know he would love to go farther. Everyone is different, and I am very vanilla in nature. He was to, but experimentation has shown him that he is not. That same experimentation has shown me that I far below him in the kink factor. I under the concept and correlation of power and attitude. It is hard to break 15+ years of being submissive in all aspects of my life. I am trying, and hopefully Jnuts understands this.
As for sensoring what I read, wouldn’t work. I am on line all day long.
“kinks and even extreme kinks don’t scare me in a “Oh my God how gross” way. It is more of a I don’t want to go there because that isn’t me sort of way.”
It may not be you *now*, but that doesn’t mean it will remain that way. As time goes on, you may find that some things change, or rather, your attitude toward them does. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit for that to be the case.
My wife is also far below me in the ‘kink factor’, and has been for all of the 25+ years it has been since we began to ‘walk on the wild side’, starting from some very mild ‘tie and tease’. But lately, she has been surprising me. She usually tends toward the “Ewwww, gross” thing regarding activities that are beyond her kink comfort zone. There is something that she has always insisted had no appeal for her but in the past two or three months she has done a couple of things that suggest to me that her attitude towards it is changing. (I won’t go into a detailed description of it, and what has occurred because this is *your* blog and I shouldn’t be hogging it with my own stuff.)
I’m not sure that she herself is aware of the change that has been indicated by her recent actions, but suffice to say that I think she is well on her way to instigating something that I never expected of her. It is something that is fairly high up on my own kink scale.
But what has changed? I have not pushed her into doing it, nor have I even told her that I might have had fantasies of it. It is just that she did something one time, a ‘spur of the moment’ sort of thing, and she discovered that she liked doing it, in spite of her assertions that the sort of thing that this activity represents did not appeal to her. She liked it, and has done it a number of times since and it is evident that she is enjoying doing it.
Very recently, she did something else which also relates to the activity that she previously said had no appeal. This reinforces my suspicion that her attitude is no longer what it was, at least in regards to me, if not in general. I can see where it is leading even if she doesn’t (or won’t) recognize it herself.
So, how does this relate to *you*? Simple, just do what you like now, what is fun. Maybe experiment a little here and there if the mood strikes, taking one step further. Enjoy yourself and the opportunities you have available. Don’t worry about what you are going to think about X, Y, or Z somewhere down the road, around the bend you can’t see yet. Maybe you’ll get there, maybe you won’t. If you get there you can see what you think of it then. If you don’t ever get there, you will have been fretting for nothing.
Thanks for your comment Belle. Unfortunately, my wife has an “Oh my God how gross” to many things. She also seems to lack the curiousity to research male chastity or any other sexual kinks. It’s astonishing to me but she does not feel compelled to find out more about it on her own. I have not censored material as much as I have simply carefully selected material that I thought she could relate to. I think it has helped but it’s difficult to determine cause and effect when it comes to this.
kelmag
I do get this entirely. I’m very open to new stuff but there are some things that I’m just not wired to get my head round so have tried stuff just “to see” and don’t get anything from it. That’s going to be true in all areas of life though and it’s all compromise in a working relationship isn’t it. It’s just that guys are so much more sex obsessed generally that the delta us going to be greater when considering anything sexual. I did a brief review on my blog about “Uniquely Rika” recently that I thought was the most every day female friendly Domme type book I’ve read to date. I read all manner of stuff when we first started out to try and understand what my hub was thinking and this was the first one that intelligently approached it from a completely vanilla direction. In essence she says that if your husband needs your control and Dominance then it’s not about you becoming something you are not ( eg a whip wielding vixen) but being more of what you are ( an effective woman, the boss of the household etc). He then moulds to you….not the other way round and you design his behavior to fit in with who you are. It made so much sense to me. She calls it service oriented submission and personally, I think it’s the most sustainable model of lifestyle BDSM that I’ve come across.
You don’t need to cleave unto the man, he needs to evolve into what you want and need from your man if he wants to submit. If that’s the big strong man you fell in love with, then here’s your chance to recreate that man (with tweaks!). It’s a world away from the stereotypes of cringing submissives that turn the stomach- well, mine anyway but you know, each to their own!
If it’s the Jay Wiseman book you are reading, just see it as a manual to do corporal punishment in such a way that JNuts doesn’t get seriously hurt when you treat him to a session. And when you do “treat” him, make sure he damn well takes you shopping after – it’s a great quid pro quo and inflicts more pain on a man than any flogger 😉
CQ
Yes, that is the one she is reading. We will have to check out that “Uniquely Rika” one. It sounds like it may be a little more suited for us.
Something we sometimes loose sight of is that we grow over time. The slippery slop is not necessarily a bad thing. She may be afraid that you could crave something “3 miles beyond the wall” at some point in the future but when all is said and done she’s already conquered that fear before. When you started out, what you wanted was probably “3 miles beyond” her wall at the time. Yet, she seems to have dealt with that very well. If you both enjoyed the journey so far there really is no reason to fear going further – just make sure common sense prevails.
I would argue that most relationships that have a BDSM element have an imbalance of needs versus desires. It’s rather rare for two people to make a perfect fit. All relationships are about compromise and about trying to please and pleasure the other. And we do it gladly because we love the other person.
But I think a lot of relationships stumble over knowing exactly WHAT the other person wants. We become very good at not asking for fear of upsetting when in actual fact, the other person often as not, WANTS to please and needs to know our desires. So don’t be afraid to ask for things and encourage your partner to do likewise.
Great blog.
sex