Dear Nikol,
I’m in a relationship with someone who is absolutely beautiful. Open, loving, trusting, supportive, everything you need for true love. For the first couple months, the sex was quite nice, but it’s turning out to be what so many of my relationships have been like: first few times with somebody, I think it’s all the pent-up passion that makes it so good, then the sameness kicks in after a while, and I start to get bored, feeling that something’s missing.
I want to stay with my girlfriend, and really love being around her, and so am trying to communicate, and trying to be inventive sexually. We’re both pretty open with each other, good communicators. And as far as vanilla is concerned, this woman is A+.
But that’s the issue. She’s vanilla. I’ve played a bit with the S&M scene, locally, met some good people, but for some reason I haven’t really entered into it yet. I don’t feel I’m quite ready, or maybe it’s that I haven’t met the right person. (Ever searching for that ever-elusive top who can force me to submit when no one else can.) I’ve explained to my girlfriend about my BDSM fantasies, and she was surprisingly open to it, to the point of saying she was gonna look into hiring a professional domme for my birthday. Birthday came and went, and she didn’t. And I just have too much going on, and too much going on in my head to try to push for that kind of thing right now..
And our sex life is getting worse and worse, I just can’t get into it, though I still love “her.” Is there something wrong with me that I’m with this beautiful, supportive woman, and all I can think about when we’re having sex is that I wish to God, for the sake of my own satiety, she had the ability to take it to a higher level? I’ve made sure not to push her but it takes a certain kind of person to top me in the way I know I need it, and she unfortunately doesn’t have it. And I feel like a complete idiot, feel like I’m sabotaging my relationship with her by comparing it to some elusive sexual/physical state I haven’t actually experienced yet, only read about and toyed with.
Pretty much, I’m seriously confused, and I don’t know what to do.
Dear Bored Date Sad Mate,
You are describing two issues here. The first is the all too common stale feeling of comfort and death of the shiny newness. This can be a really rough spot that a lot of relationships don’t live through. When we first bought the Wii, I played that thing like it was my job. Then I found that, sadly, I just couldn’t get into bowling and had to turn to the harder stuff, like Zelda. But no matter how many new games I tried, there was always the Wii Fit on my mind, and it was time to move on. Boiling relationships down to game systems may seem a bit harsh, but the passion of those relationships is so much like a new possessionthat. So, naturally, when things get boring in the sack, you introduce new games and different ways of playing.
Which leads us to issue two. Oh crap! You aren’t sexually compatible. Double Oh Crap! You value sex within the relationship at a higher level than your girlfriend does. Sounds to me like a frustrating case. You describe her as supportive and open, which leads me to think that there may be some way to at least let her know that sexuality and kink are very important to you. However, I have known enough tops and bottoms in my day to warily warn you that switching can be an extremely emotionally difficult thing for people to do. Think of yourself. You don’t want to dominate, you want to be dominated. While you could probably bring yourself to “top” someone, it would be for their pleasures and is not something you would be able to do every time and still feel fulfilled.
In her case, the switch would be even greater in difficulty. You’d be asking her to switch from missionary vanilla to kinkster in bondage gear. Call me a Doubting Thomas, but I don’t think it can be done without a very long, possibly frustrating period of learning and transition. Talk to her about it. See if she is ready to accept that you have some very important needs. If not, it sounds as if she would make an excellent friend.
Nikol
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Questions?
If you have a question for Nikol, you can reach her confidentially at nikolknows@milwaukeemagazine.com. Your anonymity will be protected.
