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Dear Elizabeth,
I am a well-adjusted guy in a long-term relationship with a loving girl. We share a lot in common, but what we really bonded over was our shared love of travel and all things (well most things) kink.
I am 35. She is 40. We have a great sex life, or had a great sex life, until I had major surgery a little over a year ago. Thankfully, I am now fully healthy.
My problem is that I may be TOO healthy… I lost my kink! Like entirely lost my kink. I still have a libido but otherwise Zip. Zero. Nothing.
I know you probably deal with a lot of people who want to save their marriages because one or the other is a bit of a freak. But have you ever helped anyone who wanted to get their kink back?
I’m stuck… and too straight
Dear T. Straight,
What you’re experiencing is a different variant of a common theme for couples: people meet and fall in love, they build a relationship, life happens, people change, and those changes have an impact on the intimacy in the relationship. Your letter includes a lot of good news. You’ve beaten a serious health challenge. You and your partner love each other, have common interests, and a healthy (if not terribly kinky) sex life after your recovery. Even better, you are aware of what your intimacy challenge is, you can verbalize it, and you are interested in taking steps to affect positive change. All of those things are huge and should be commended.
You’re correct that I work with a lot of couples who have a mismatch of desire in some form or another. It’s probably the single largest topic that drives couples to therapy or coaching. Up to 80% of couples struggle with this issue. Typically the mismatch is about sexual libido, but it can certainly be about other things. Couples mismatch about overall energy levels, about how they want to devote their time to different activities — “My hubby is always out fishing!” — or in your case, about kink. Often one partner is way kinkier than the other, so solving the mismatch is about managing the eager partner’s enthusiasm while helping the less eager partner find areas of interest they can enjoy sharing together.
You don’t say specifically what you enjoyed together before your health hiatus, so I’ll do my best to offer some general advice based on your letter. You know the expression “fake it till you make it?” There’s some scientific truth behind that for erotic activities. I’ll elaborate.
Traditionally we think of intimacy (whether sexual or kink or something else) as following a specific pattern. We have a desire or a drive for something sexy. We do some foreplay (it could be kissing or putting on a collar), we touch each other in the ways that turn us on (this could be nice touches or sadistic ones), and we find ways to please each other that are fulfilling, whether that’s orgasmic, ecstatic, or suffering. Whatever works for you. The challenge is human brains and human arousal don’t necessarily work that way. Desire doesn’t always come first, so if we wait for it to happen, we may be waiting a long time and stay disappointed and disconnected from our partners.
Desire that happens on its own, the way we are socially conditioned to expect, is called spontaneous desire. The challenge is that while 70% of men have this experience, only 20% of women do. On the other hand, responsive sexual desire happens in response to something you are seeing or doing that causes arousal. For a great many people, they have to start playing first, then get turned on, then the desire happens and they enjoy themselves. It’s counter-intuitive to what we are taught, but quite common.
While you may have initially had spontaneous desire for kink, something in your body or brain changed so now you may experience responsive sexual desire for kink instead. What changed? Who knows. It could be surgical complications, hormones, stress levels, aging, external life factors, or the alignment of the planets. If I had an answer to that question, I’d be rich.
Once you understand how pathways to arousal can work, it’s easier to grant yourself some grace for not having the same drive you once had. If you have a robust drive for non-kinky sex, then slowly incorporating some small forms of kinky play into your already happy sex life is a great first step. Keep it small. One challenge kinky couples often face is overzealousness – they think that an intimate encounter has to be an enormous production with lots of fetish wear, lots of toys, and must go on for several hours. It doesn’t. Pick one or two small things you used to enjoy and simply toss those experiences into your existing happy sexual escapades. Sneak up on yourself. It will take the pressure off and your responsive desire may take over.
E.R.B
Elizabeth R. Busbee earned a doctorate at Yale and specializes in issues of gender, sexuality, and communication. She has been helping people explore and enjoy intimacy for over 20 years. Her private relationship and intimacy coaching practice can be reached at alternativeintimacy.com
Have a question you’d like answered? Write to Elizabeth at UnconventionalLoveCoach@gmail.com