Getting back into BDSM is harder than getting into it in the first place. This sounds counterintuitive – you know the safewords and one another’s fetishes, you’ve done your research, you just took a little break. Turns out that little break for a few months actually has a major impact on your kink relationship.
For those of you who regularly follow my posts, my partner and I took a step back from our kinky lifestyle for a few months. We were going through a huge transition period in our lives and our relationship and suddenly he wasn’t super invested in kink. I rolled with it, I told him I still wanted the sexual component of it and while he met me on these needs, occasionally choking me or spanking me, we were definitely not ‘in the game’. And honestly, my desire to be hit or grabbed faded because there has to be passion behind his eyes for it to feel real, and there hadn’t been.
All of a sudden last night during sex he suddenly became very dominant. As much as I had been passively craving domination my first response wasn’t ecstasy, it was fear. I pulled back away from him and told him I didn’t want that. He thought I was being coy and pressed on, but then I got up, walked to the other side of the room and said “You earned being my Master the first time, you have to earn it again.”
Now here is where many subs and slaves will probably begin to judge me, assume I am not truly a submissive, or some other nonsense because I spoke to Chief that way. But I think that was entirely appropriate. We forget that people need to earn their position in kink. BDSM is all about trust and while I trust Chief so much in the day-to-day life things, he hasn’t asserted himself like that sexually in a long time, so the trust that I had in him regarding dominance had diminished.
He took the statement well. He was taken aback, of course, because he thought that I would just bow back down, but he totally respected my statement. The signs of a good master – not going past boundaries. So we incorporated bits of kink into our sex last night. In reality, though we used handcuffs, and he choked me a little, and he bit me, that wasn’t the truly kinky aspect of sex.
I saw the dominance in his eyes again and could tell that he wanted to dominate me. Seeing that look brought out my inner submissive. That’s what I had been needing. And the more that I see that look when we have sex, the more that I will trust his dominant instincts.
Of course, the trusting process will be faster this time around than when we first got into kink. But we have to re-learn some things, we have to hone in on our instincts.
If you were a sailor and didn’t go out on a boat for a few years, your instincts would be there, but you should probably take some time to remember how to do things and acclimate yourself to the sea before you set out on a major sailing expedition. I think this is pretty much the same thing.
It loops back to comfort levels and SSC. BDSM is about pushing the limits for things and while there is an aspect of fear involved (adrenaline pumping when you see a belt or a knife), when you experience genuine fear you are not in a sane mindset and there is a chance that you are not being entirely consensual.
If you took a break and are trying to re-enter the scene, give yourself time to do so. Take the space you need and make sure you are keeping up an active dialogue with your partner. If you aren’t talking about how you feel about the kink and the relationship and all of the in-between, then something will give eventually and you’ll end up emotionally or physically hurt.