Reader Q&A: Languages & vanilla relationships

I’ve been answering questions on my Ask Me page for AGES now, and that page is getting hellishly long. For real. Go look. I’ve been busy, yo!

I’ve not been creating individual posts out of them because I generally bang them out quickly with little real introspection (or editing!), so I had this idea that they weren’t somehow *worth* their own post. But some of the questions are really thoughtful, or quite common, and I suspect that you good folks might have something useful to add that I haven’t thought of, or an experience to share that might help.

So I’m going to start posting them here instead of hiding them on my Ask Me page.

I might reconsider if I get to “Reader QnA #gazillionty”, but let’s see how we go.

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In how many languages can you count to ten? There may be a cake in it for you if you can beat me… :-)

I have a sneaky suspicion that this comes from a multi-lingual reader who is going to be unreasonably smug about being able to beat me *suspicious squint*.

Without *any* cheating, I can do three: English, Dutch and French. With a bit of a ‘duh, of course!’ memory jog, I’d probably be able to mangle German, Italian and Spanish also.

I think you should bring me cake anyway.

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Do you think it’s impossible for someone into D/s and all that jazz to be satisfied in a vanilla relationship? I know this is a complex question with a likely complex answer, but I guess what I’m asking is that in your experience, is it possible to be happy in a relationship (with someone you really love) without the D/s aspect?

Do you think that sexual satisfaction of being in control in the bedroom (in your case, for example) overpowers your love for a vanilla partner?

It *is* a complex question, not least because ‘into D/s’ covers SUCH a huge range of different behaviours and expectations.

Is it possible? Sure. For some it totally is. For others it’s not. And I know that’s not all that helpful to you.

BUT given the number of people (mostly men) who say that they are in a vanilla relationship with a woman they love, but who come into the BDSM community to satisfy an urge of some kind, I think suppressing it in a lot of cases just doesn’t work.

I think it’s a lot more likely to work if someone’s desire for BDSM is limited to bedroom activities and they have a partner who is willing to indulge them with role play from time to time. I think it’s a lot LESS likely to work if someone’s desire for BDSM is about decision making in the relationship in a wider sense (that is having authority over how they live their lives together).

For me, your last question about ‘sexual satisfaction in the bedroom’ doesn’t really apply because that’s not where my D/s lives. How my D/s works is that when my man does what I want with pleasure and happiness, I see, hear and feel that as love and affection. That’s how it works for me. For me, the problem with a vanilla man is NOT in the bedroom (frankly, there are very few vanilla men who wouldn’t be up for all sorts of sexual games in the bedroom), the problem is that I don’t feel his love the way I need to when I am fighting for control *outside* of the bedroom.

My last vanilla relationship was generally a happy one for a long time. What wore it down was an endless set of little power struggles day in and day out over every little thing. I resented doing things ‘his way’ just because, and I resented that my choice was to either do what HE wanted or to have to argue to ‘win’ and get my way. Both made me increasingly unhappy and we couldn’t resolve it.

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Want to ask me something? Pop on over to my Ask Me page and do it! It’s completely anonymous, even to me, so nobody will know it was you…