How Do You Keep The Kink Going In A Long-Term Relationship?

For the first few years that we were together, my partner and I had a very free and wild lifestyle, and by that I mean, we were free to fuck at 6 PM and wildly go to bed by 9:30 PM. I know. It sounds like a sad life, but it wasn’t, it was wonderful because what that actually means is we had a lot of time to give each other and to ourselves. We were the only ones who lived in our house, and besides work, we had absolutely no other responsibilities, so we fucked all the time. He could whip me for three hours on a Wednesday evening and we could still get eight hours of sleep, no problem, because what else were we going to do? We didn’t want to do anything else either, but then, at different points in time, some things started to change. I started to have more responsibility at work, i started studying again, we got one pet after the other, we got married and the biggest change, of course, the child.

I didn’t birthe this child, he was already seven-years old when my partner got custody of him, but I believe I faced a fear that a lot of people who are about to become parents face, i was worried I would have to change everything about my life for the child. To be quite honest some of my concerns may sound selfish, like I didn’t really love that I couldn’t walk around naked anymore nor that I wouldn’t be able to have a free schedule to fuck and get beat whenever I wanted. I was genuinely concerned that the child meant that the kink was over, and I thought that because the most commonly associated stereotype with parents is that they are always too tired, and the sex-life is the first thing to be sacrificed to the fatigue. I understand that is worse with infants and toddlers, and in that regard, I have no experience so I cannot say what happens when you are dealing with one of those, but parents in general, seemed to me to be ensconced in this stereotype.

I discovered that I was wrong in assuming that a child meant the kink was over, but I also discovered that I could have been right. My life didn’t change but my lifestyle changed a lot. I stopped leaving town whenever I wanted and started living a more routined existence. I had to spend a lot more time in the car because children have commitments and schedules like the rest of us but they can’t drive themselves there. We started to pay for school tuition and clothes that get too small too quickly so we had to adjust how we spent our money (and also make more because kids are expensive to raise). We started living with another person so I stopped walking around naked and fucking on the couch. And yes, because we were spending more time with the child, we had less time for kink and sleep.

And at that moment I realised how it could happen, how two people who have uncontrollable passion for one another could lose their sex-life. For me, kink is my sex-life. I cannot 20-minute missionary unless it’s at 7 AM and it is made very clear to me that I am just a masturbatory aid. My sexuality is vast and all-encompassing, and sexual communication (what you could call fucking or flogging but it’s more than that) is the way I connect with the people I love, but even I could see how two people in love could get to that place. People often explain that stage by saying that they just have no time or energy, but it’s not that, it’s not that we don’t have free time, it’s what we choose to do with our free time. This is not even d/s or kink-related, I am completely convinced that a majority of couples who stop engaging sexually after kids don’t do so because of the kid as much as because it’s easier to spend your free-time with Netflix instead.

I’m not shaming anyone, not at all, I love Netflix. It’s where all the stand-up comedy is, but I believe that visual stimulation can sometimes take over the recreational role in a relationship that used to be fulfilled by your partner. I think a lot of the romanticism associated with the honeymoon phase has to be do with the entertainment-value of getting to know a person than the value of fucking someone new, but over time, you start watching more stuff together than talking to one another because it seems more fun, or at least, easier, and you forget that this person is the same person you once stayed up all night to talk to. They’re the same person who once excited you so much you couldn’t shut up about them. I guess it’s human tendency to be less excited by things that are no longer new.

But I found that resisting the urge to think that way was the answer. In general, I am a person who is very excited by things i truly love, on a daily basis. I can write as much poetry about my temperature-controlled water bottle, my morning coffee, my comfortable sneakers, my lamp or my beautiful bed as i could about the man I love. No one would read it, but I could write it. I express excitement about these things on a daily basis, and I find that the practise of continually appreciating the things that bring me the most joy ensures that I value those things most. The act of appreciation reminds me what I really want and need in my life, and it keeps the excitement alive. Now my husband’s no temperature-controlled water bottle, but the principle applies to him too. Upon realising that responsibility meant less free and wild time, we had to determine what we value most and prioritise it. Sex and talking. Essentially. Maybe I’m supposed to say that sex isn’t so important, but honestly, Netflix isn’t important. To me sex is connection, and talking is communication. It is far more important i do that with my partner, than watch Micheal Che. I can do that on my own time.

I think sometimes we have a tendency to sacrifice the wrong part of our relationships to make space for something new. Maybe it’s the point at which we realise something about ourselves, and maybe for some of us the realisation is that kink is not so important, and we are happy to have it as a casual occasional indulgence. I am not that person, and neither is he, so the response to the challenge was to modify our lifestyle to accomodate the things that were important. He can flog me at 9 PM in our bedroom, instead of 7 PM in our living room. Those details are not that important, not as important as deciding whether you still want to do that. And if you do, you continue to indulge in one another. With the child, establishing routines and boundaries really helps carve out time and space for everyone involved.

We can’t break into force-and-fuck scenes whenever we want anymore so we weave our dynamic into our daily interactions in a different way. In the way we communicate with one another, in private rituals, in the way we talk to each other, in the way we address one another. The key to keeping the kink alive isn’t as much about how many times a week do you tie up your partner, as it is about how you interact with one another, and if your dynamic is a daily part of your life, like my morning coffee, it sometime doesn’t even matter that he hasn’t whipped me in ten days. A lot of people who have asked me about awakening the kink in a relationship that is struggling with it expect to do so by planning scenes and more elaborate rituals, but I honestly believe it’s better to do it through miniscule messaging in interaction. You don’t have to play master and servant only when you’re strapped to a table, you can do it anytime. You don’t have to do it for hours at a time, you can do it for a minute. It doesn’t have to be so rigid and structured. It doesn’t have to look a certain way to be real. It doesn’t have to be exactly as it was when you first met. None of that matters.

The only way to keep kink alive in a long-term relationship is to want to do it. That’s it. If you don’t want to, nothing can fix that, and it’s really okay to not want to do it. We don’t have to be who we used to be in order to be happy, if kink isn’t important to your happiness and you need to make cuts, cut it. It’s about pleasure, after all, and if you’re working at pleasure, just let it be. Kink is the Netflix of sex to me, it is purely decadent and needlessly elaborate, but if doesn’t entertain you, stop watching.