Following the last installment of Tales of a New Kinkster, E.B. Hill now talks about how BDSM helped him through the transitional period after a break-up.
Breakups inevitably lead to a swath of sexual experiences often necessary for breaking through the emotions and other stuff associated with losing someone. Being the recipient of infidelity doesn’t help the matter, as I found following mine. Although my ex and I had our fun post-rupture, the notion of her with other dudes was not something I wanted to think about, and the obvious solution was, as an older European fellow said, to sex up a whole lot more ladies.
This proved difficult, not because of my ability to find willing sexual partners, but to encounter ones into the same sort of kink that I had discovered. And as kink tends to be more a mental venture, seeking girls for one-night stands did not appeal to me. Imagine, if you will, trying to approach a girl, drunk or not, and saying that you’d like to tie her up. Cue an awkward silence or a particularly awkward storm-off.
I tried to date one girl early after the break-up that was very much into loving, tender sex. And she was rather good in that context. However, my need to use ropes and aggressive tactics seemed a bad move. I hid them and over a short period of time realized how much I needed these kinks. They became items in my conscience I needed to hide, and hiding in a relationship had been the death of the one previous. So, it ended.
What surprised me, then, was the willingness to try kink on a girl I was good friends with. All of a sudden, one morning after a drunken mess she decided she wanted to start sleeping with me. As an able-bodied man, I consented, however dubious this friends-sex arrangement seemed. Since this girl was not a girlfriend, but a buddy who dug bumping uglies with me, I wasn’t as afraid to propose ropes in the bedroom. She was completely enthusiastic, and requested it on more than one occasion.
It would seem, then, that kink worked better when sex was seen as an enjoyable activity between trusting friends, not as part of passionate lovemaking. The second girl saw it as an aesthetically pleasing and challenging addition, where the first would have likely seen it as scandalous and a technical mood breaker. Of course, the over-romantic nature of the first relationship made it hard to have serious talks about sex, as anything technical or logistical would break the mood. The second partner compartmentalized sex as a not so emotional activity, and the game of sexually charged text messages made honest communication easier. Sex became itself communication as opposed to symbolic of anything other than what it was.
As mentioned before, this was all during a transitional period after a breakup, so the ghost of my incredibly kinky ex pervaded all the above experience. Kink was also a way of shifting the cosmic balance; if my ex was a cheater, then at least I was a kinkster. This is definitely not to say that kink is a negative desire, quite the opposite. But my interest in it was not only based in what I really enjoyed, but overcoming emotions that were still messing with a healthy understanding of sex and relationships.
Mostly, though, during that time kink was explorative and explosive. Being asked to dominate and tie someone up is a great pleasure, and means that not only does the partner in question find you attractive, but is willing to give you an amazing amount of trust. You couldn’t tie up someone or be tied up by someone without that trust. The second girl in my equation had never tried it, and trusted me enough to introduce her to rope bondage. That showed an amazing trust and an understanding of sex as a sharing of personalities and techniques, rather than a boiled down, visceral expression of one emotion.
