What do you do if your partner just is not interested in kinky sex?
You probably got married before you really got interested in the steamy stuff. For most young couples, frequent sex is good enough. But over time, things cooled.
Maybe not just the intensity, but the frequency of the sex. Or maybe you just never had much of a sex life to begin with.
You started wanting to spice things up. And maybe you introduced the idea to your partner.
And each time, your partner wasn’t interested. The reasons could be anything… some of which were discussed in the previous post.
But in this post, let’s say that your partner just is not interested in kinky sex, and it’s been settled.
It’s a tough situation. What do you do?
First: are you still having sex at all?
If not, then you have bigger issues. If you’ve tried to talk to your spouse about it, and they won’t, then you really need to consider marriage counseling… because things often don’t just get better on their own. And a healthy marriage absolutely needs a healthy sex life as part of it. If you don’t have that, then one or both partners will be getting frustrated, resentful and angry, and may go looking for sex somewhere else.
Or possibly, the partner that doesn’t want sex may be getting it somewhere else. Possibly even with a member of the same sex.
Whatever the case, these issues need to be surfaced, and worked out. Relationships can’t survive dishonesty and lack of no connection. Or perhaps they can, but I personally don’t wish that kind of relationship on anyone.
Assuming you’ve worked things through and understand that your partner just doesn’t want kinky sex, but loves you and wants to continue having sex with you, what other options do you have?
There are some, such as Pamela Madsen, who feels okay going outside her marriage. That’s not for me, or us, and I find some of her rationalizations for her actions a… great stretch. But she kept her marriage with her husband even while taking on a dominant lover who fills her need for raunchy D/s sex, and her marriage to her husband seems strong.
But personally, I don’t think most of our marriages can survive spitting our attentions and affections beyond our spouse or partner, especially sexually. Others disagree. But in this blog, we’re looking at strengthening monogamous marriage.
You can read
How many wives read 50 Shades and suddenly found themselves desiring a more spicy relationship? Many, that’s how many. Much of our sex lives are in our brains. You can continue to read, and try to introduce small items into your vanilla lovemaking. “Hold my wrists.” “Tell me ‘I’m yours to do with as you please.'” “Let’s try this position.” Small things that your partner shouldn’t object to. Then, be diligent about verbally and physically expressing your pleasure and appreciation. Build that positive feedback loop. It pays off.
But he / she just can’t…
I had a lot of trouble getting over treating my wife like anything other than a lady and an equal in the bedroom.
In my case, it was that I was programmed as a child with a very feminist worldview. I don’t regret it… but it did impact our roleplay, and deep down, my wife hungered being taken and roughly used by a dominant man overcome by her sexuality and focused on nothing but satisfying his own urges.
It took me a long time, but finally I figured out the flip-side of the old trope, “submission gives her permission to be a dirty girl.” In my case, her acquiescence and desire for my dominance gave me permission to treat her like a dirty girl. That was huge, and the Rosetta stone for me. Because, frankly, I did want to. I wanted to see to my own needs and desires. But it had been drilled into me that you treat women as equals and not objects at all times.
But, one of the crazy revelations about BDSM –and why it’s getting so popular– is that deep down, at a primal level, we still have urges to treat each other in ways that aren’t politically correct. To quote the Eurthymics “Some of them want to use you / Some of them want to get used by you / Some of them want to abuse you / Some of them want to be abused.”
Some of us crave to dominate, some of us crave to submit… and sometimes, we even want the opposite when we’re with someone else.
There are theories that these are primal things wired into our brains, and while most of us are in the middle and generally just get along, some folks are more dominant and hunger to compete, win, and be in control, while others hunger to submit and serve.
There’s an interesting yin-and-yang. I have read that the person most interested in BDSM in the scene is almost always the powerful alpha male who craves submission, usually to a powerful woman. He seeks relief from his position of authority. And I think the same thing holds true for the many successful, strong women nowadays, who are always “on,” and seek an occasional respite from their heavy mantle of responsibilities by submitting in the bedroom.
Do you need it?
And if you’ve tried everything to get your spouse interested, and they just aren’t, you need to ask yourself if this is a need, or a want, and if you can satisfy your needs for connection, intimacy and sexual satisfaction in other ways. If you can’t, then there may be some hard conversations in your future.
Read the next post in the Spicing Things Up Series: The Spicy Internet: The Good, the Bad, the Great, and the Awful…
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