We are all individuals! We are all different!

When I first found kink on the internet, it seemed as if it opened up a whole new world of People Like Me. Outside of those whispers with my childhood friend, I’d been pretty much alone. I’d had slightly kinky boyfriends, of course, but none of them went as far as me. It was rather to exciting to find that there were people out there who felt the way I did, and to meet them in real life and to be able to talk about this forbidden stuff.

But several years later, I’m finding that I still haven’t met anyone who is exactly like me, sexually. I’ve recently got back into reading people’s weblogs, and I’m finding I’m a bit of an oddity. Maybe it’s not just me, maybe we all are. Maybe our kinks are so individual, that it’s unlikely we’ll come across anyone who is exactly the same.

So what’s so special about me? What sparked this post off today was reading the latest instalment of Bitchy Jones’s diary. I love reading her posts, and very much agree with her idea that ‘femdom’ is misrepresented. When she describes what it feels like to hit a man, I feel so glad that somebody else can explain how sexy and compelling this thing is. But then I read about her opinion on stockings and strapons, and realise that I’m out on my own again. Yes, only men are supposed to like stockings. But my stocking fetish goes right back to childhood, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Recently I’ve been reading some posts about humiliation, and again, I’m reminded that nobody feels quite like me.

This is why it’s impossible for me to leave my boyfriend (I still haven’t thought of a name for him), of course. We don’t have exactly the same kinks, but we’re so close that it works very well. It’s more than that: he understands and doesn’t question my kinks. There’s no ‘why on earth would you be into that?’. I could have ended up with somebody who liked being hit, but didn’t like the other stuff I like. I say ‘like’ as if these things are mild preferences, when in fact they are more like cravings, obsessions, compulsions.

And that’s the huge challenge for kinky people, isn’t it? Finding somebody who is compatible enough, sexually, to practice our kinks with. (If they’re compatible as a partner in other ways, we must treat them like the precious rarity that they are and never let them go!). Nice as it would be to have someone other than your lover understand you, it’s probably too much to expect to find friends, acquaintances and fellow bloggers with exactly the same kinks too.

Obsession

In other relationships, at some point, I’ve found myself attracted to other men. Sometimes a vague attraction, sometimes an all-out crush. It’s not a big problem – either I avoid the person I’m crushing on, or I take it as a sign that I’m not getting what I want out of the relationship. I do think it’s inevitable that if a relationship carries on long enough, the chemistry is going to be there with somebody else. I did think that, anyway.

But I’m starting to wonder, because it’s been years since I’ve had a crush on anybody other than my boyfriend (I really do need to think of a name for him). I haven’t even been particularly attracted to anyone else since I met him. Is that because of him, or me, or because this is my first relationship with somebody who’s as kinky as me instead of just playing at it? Maybe it’s a mixture of all three.

I obsess about him still. The feeling is a bit like constantly falling in love (rather than just being in love). It comes and goes. Sometimes it’s comfortable and in the background, whereas sometimes it is like a compulsion – as if I can’t stop thinking about him. I’m not complaining – I love that it still feels that way for me. But it seems strange, after all these years.

Maybe it really is just because I wasn’t being satisfied, sexually, in other relationships. Maybe this glow comes from finally getting my sexual needs met. Maybe the reason I’m still obsessed is because he does the things I want. He’s the kind of person I would fantasise about being with if I wasn’t already with him. So it makes sense that being with him, I fantasise about him.

10 thoughts about switching

Although I tend to think of myself as dominant/sadistic/a top (wish I could find a word I liked), I do switch, wholeheartedly. In fact, when I dated vanilla guys I was more likely to be on the bottom. I think that even men who are not particularly kinky can get some pleasure out of doing ‘bad’ things to their partner, because they enjoy their partners’ response, or perhaps enjoy the visuals of somebody tied up, etc. They can also get some fun out of being dominated a little, if it doesn’t involve pain. But pain is the sticking point – if someone doesn’t naturally eroticise receiving it, then it’s not something you can do to them sexually. So as a kinky woman, dating vanilla men, you’re stuck with getting them to hit you, not vice versa.

This became frustrating for me, to the point where I decided I was never again going to seriously date anyone who didn’t want to be hit. I think it was a very wise decision.

However, now that I’m in a very happy relationship with someone who wants to be hit (and don’t I love him for it!) I find that I sometimes want to switch back and be on the receiving end. I’ve been thinking about why that happens, and what it means to me.

1. I think that I’m basically kinky, rather than basically sub or dom. I have a kink which involves people hitting each other, and the details of who is hitting whom is less important than the kink itself.

2. Sometimes I feel sadistic and sometimes masochistic, but sometimes I’m floating in the middle, happy to do either.

3. My boyfriend is not only happy to switch but very good at it. He’s very sexy when he tops me and I love seeing that side of him.

4. I lean more towards sadism and masochism, rather than towards dominance and submission. Pain is important. However, the dominance comes to the fore more when I’m topping. On the bottom, I think I’m much more masochistic than submissive, although I can enjoy being submissive for my boyfriend in particular. The things I particularly like to experience are pain, restraint and sensory deprivation – things which aren’t necessarily tied to submission.

5. I do wonder if there might even be some physical basis for that – after a while, I often feel very relaxed and calm, and don’t even feel the pain. Presumably that’s something to do with endorphins, and maybe it’s the way I’m wired. It’s like being in a trance and very soothing.

6. Because of that, bottoming is just the thing if I’m stressed. I’m more likely to want to switch if I’m having problems at work, for instance.

7. I love the attention of being on the bottom. It’s very flattering to have someone put all that effort into doing things to me. It makes me feel attractive and desirable.

8. Because I switched yesterday, I’m feeling a longing to be sadistic now. Although I said that I have that particular kink, and it doesn’t matter too much which side I’m on, even an amazing experience on one side won’t satisfy a craving for the other side.

9. I don’t know how much sexual fantasies tie in to real life, as my fantasies are usually much darker and nastier than real life (a topic for another post, I think). I do have fantasies about both sides, although I tend to have more sadistic fantasies.

10. I’ve sometimes read that it’s a good thing for a top to experience things on the bottom so that they know what the sub is feeling. I think that’s probably true in that it’s useful to know what kind of sensation you’re giving when you do x to your man. But I don’t think I experience things the same way as my boyfriend does – if we switch, it’s not just a case of him doing exactly the same things to me as I’d do to him. We work differently.

Of course, now I’ve got a number 11 in my head, but I don’t want to spoil the list of 10 things.

The wisdom to know the difference

One thing I’ve found out about kink over the years, is that, like parents, you don’t get to choose it. You like what you like. It doesn’t matter how much you don’t want something to turn you on, how un-PC it is, how repellent, how sexist, racist, ageist, sick, unhygienic, dangerous, immoral, unethical, unfeasible, socially unacceptable or uncomfortable it is. If it turns you on, it turns you on. You can try hating yourself for wanting it, try denying it, try rationalizing it or try converting it into something more acceptable but it’s still going to turn you on.

This is such an important point, that I have a feeling it’s one I’m going to keep coming back to.

I do feel sorry for people whose kinks are beyond the pale – to themselves or others. Sometimes they have to be. There are some things which just shouldn’t be acted out in real life – lots of things, in fact. And some things are just not acceptable to many people. Having a kink which really is too dangerous, immoral, ridiculous or whatever must be pretty lonely and isolating. For some it will mean forever giving up the hope of fulfilment and always carrying a dark secret. For others it will mean guilty, furtive, lonely indulgences, tentative confessions and repeated rejections and humiliations.

Why do I care? Well, because I’ve been there in the past. There was a time when I thought my kink was wrong, morally wrong, and that I must be pretty fucked-up and basically immoral for having it. Luckily for me, it turned out that it wasn’t wrong at all, nor was it weird, disgusting, unacceptable, evil, particularly dangerous or anything negative really. It could be acted out safely and enjoyably and there were plenty of people willing to help me do it. But I do remember the lonely torment of feeling it was wrong and rare. I feel for people who are in that position – either because they can’t accept their kink or because their kink really is unacceptable.

The internet is for porn

The internet is for porn (mainly) and I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to find it. It’s not as if I haven’t looked, but so little of what I found was appealing. I’m pretty much a straight woman, and porn isn’t usually aimed at straight women. Oddly enough, even the porn that’s supposed to be aimed at straight women doesn’t really appeal. And I think I’m starting to work out why.

I’m kinky (if you want to make it sound light-hearted and fun) or sado-masochistic (if you want to make it sound nasty and dangerous – which I maybe prefer), not so much as a sideline or foreplay but as a sexual orientation. It’s how I do sex. So if I fantasise, I don’t fantasise about sex, but about the elements of my kink – pain, humiliation, force, restraint, blood, sweat and tears, etc. If that’s my fantasy material, then that’s what I want to see in porn, isn’t it? So watching sex doesn’t do it for me. Perhaps it does it for me a little, but not very much. Whereas watching men being tied up, beaten and so on … does do it for me.

I’m also sexually attracted to men not women, in general. So looking at women doesn’t do it for me as a rule. Looking at men does.

Put the two together, and you’ve got gay bondage porn, basically. I wonder why I bothered looking at anything else.

But there was never enough free stuff that I liked on the net, so I’ve ended up signing up and *gasp* paying for porn. Yes, I’m a woman, who is paying good money for porn to watch on her own (not with her boyfriend). Porn just for me. My porn. Am I the only one? Because I haven’t heard of any other women doing it – but I’ve done it, other people must have.

If anyone’s interested, I signed up with JT’s Stockroom (link on the right somewhere, I think). I don’t know if it’s any better than any other site, but what pulled me in was a very nice free clip (of a very attractive man being tortured) and the opportunity to buy minutes rather than sign up for a monthly fee. You can just buy a couple of quid’s worth it you want to check it out. And the other thing that’s kept me there, now I’m there, is the huge amount of choice – a quick browse through found all sorts of stuff for different tastes, including vintage porn. I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg and so far, much to my surprise, I’ve found lots of stuff which really turns me on. It turns out it wasn’t me that didn’t ‘get’ porn – it was the porn’s fault.