Living with Kink or Being Vanilla?
This is a common question that gets asked time and time again on various site forums and though countless offline and online groups - once you have found out that you are kinky and experianced it can you ever go back to being vanilla?
The question is as complex as it is simple, because the answer depends on the person cause there is no one size fits all answer to this complex question, thus its up to each person to figure it out for themselves as they grow and learn more about themselves.
From my own point of view I use to believe that I couldn't live without it that it was part of me so deep that I had to have it in my life - I had left kink and almost everything to do with it do to abuse within it, but I came back because I first though that it was all I had known on a sexual level (I'd never had sex without a kink connection to it) and in regards to relationship I'd never been in a healthy one and I'd never been in a vanilla one all I'd known was M/s based relationships that where more on the abuse side of things.
But that thinking like a lot of things was flawed and unfounded since I was still young in many regards for all that I was in my late 20s (still young enough yet by many standards old enough to know better and be smarter about the partners I was choosing). I get back into kink and the person who helped me get back into it wasn't an abuser, wasn't bad for me (but he wasn't compeltly good for me either) and in general was a good person (though not as ethical as I'd have liked). He taught me a few things that have stayed with me, such as I am worth wile person and that what I wont within a relationship does matter and that my own needs do have a right to be taken care of just as the rights and needs of my partner to be taken care of on a consentual basis.
I'd forget those lessions when I meet someone who talked the talk and I thought at first walked the walk - but it would be a good year plus before I'd understand that he was all talk and very little walk. It was though that relationship that I'd start to understand more about myself and start breaking out of the mentality that had been drilled into me (he was trying to program me into his ideal and ya I was fighting it since I'd started to reach a point that enough was enough) that I was "used goods" and that "no one would wont me" and all that other crap that went along with being raped and what not.
Though online friends who would become real life friends I learned to trust myself again - I still wasn't sure of myself competely but I was getting stronger. He had gotten asked to leave the place we where living in (I was welcome to stay, but he wasn't) and in the moving process things got worse between us (we'd also passed the year and a day of dating and for what ever reason I was seeing things differently and wasn't going to take it anymore), many of the things he had promissed he'd do he kept putting off or out right not doing.
During all this I still had the thinking that I needed to have kink in my life, that I couldn't live with or be with anyone who was just vanilla based that kink was such a large part of me that I just couldn't settle for anything less with anyone. So I entered into another realtionship of a non-romanic non-sexual based deal that was also poly based with another member of my local community but this time it was with me in charge.
We where a good M/s based couple and shared a lot of things in common with each other enough that I got use to being in charge and started feeling more confdent about myself and other things that had been an issue up to this point in my life. We started out as just friends within the community and in time became Top and bottom, until one day she asked if I would be her Mistress and I agreed a year later I offered her my first collar and she agreed to it.
Fast forwards a few years and now we're online on Second Life togerher as an M/s couple and into my online life comes someone that I wasn't expecting or looking for. We connect on so many different levels that I am floored. For the first time since becomeing active in kink I actually think about not being active within it and just going "vanilla" that maybe it could work that way with the right person. Little did I know that hir is also into kink but also a fellow switch though without the experiance to back it all up save though virtual stuff on second life (as in K had never dun anything in real time, all hir experiances had been within second life).
Thus with the knowedge that I felt that I could give up the kink part of me I knew something else about myself - that I didn't NEED kink to be happy in a relationship, yes it helps and yes it still part of me but it wasn't the need that I first thought it to be. K and I explored kink on SL together in a reserved roll of hir in charge and me following, then switched it around with hir following and me leading and it worked out between us on both sides very well that I was game to meet hir in person.
During this time of getting to know K my slave and I grew appart in many levels she was having internet issues and her and I getting together as we once had wasn't happening mostly because of funds on my end and the ability to get out and about on both our ends - so talking at night on the phone was about the only communication point we had and with K in the mix I'd started to voice with hir and couldn't have two head sets on to talk to both ppl at once as a result talked with my then slave started to out the window.
I know that relationship was hurt with bring in K into the picuture and that I could have handled things a lot better then I did, but the past is the past and well things happen as they do for reasons. Time passed K and I connected and my ex slave got pushed to the side though little to no fault of her own - I payed more attention to K and in time (within a year of meeting face to face) K and I got married which further drove that wall between my ex slave and I to the point that within two months of K and I getting married she bailed on the relaitonship to find someone else she could have what she was seeking. The parting was not great and hurt me a great deal since I had at that pointin time though I was juggling the two deals rather well but in hind sight that was anything but the case.
Settling into married life with K taught me that as much that kink might be in my so called blood its not something that I have to have day to day in my life to be happy and feel content. We do have a form of it in our day to day lives yes, but its more what we've fallen into over the years we've been married that have developed into a deal between us. We don't switch much anymore and even on SL we've stopped swiching things around and are mostly Mistress and boi on there because its what works for us.
So for my own answer to the Q of Living with Kink or Being Vanilla, its both I can live with it or without it but elements of both have their place within my life in a balanced setting of love and life.
