Since November of last year, I haven’t been having much sex with my boyfriend. This has been one-sided. He seemed to have lost interest and I thought perhaps his sex drive went down because he is approaching 40, which from what I understand happens sometimes with men. A side note, I’ve heard some women get hornier around the time some men start to lose interest, but this hasn’t happened for me yet. I’ve always had a good sex drive and it hasn’t gotten higher or lower. It turns out the reason my boyfriend is losing interest isn’t a mystery to him and it isn’t about his age. He is clear on why he lost interest and he tried to tell me a few months ago, but it didn’t sink in for me until he repeated the reason when we talked last week.

My boyfriend has a dark side, mostly when it comes to his sense of humor. He is also pleasantly open minded. But overall, he is a straight-laced, mostly vanilla sexually (which I don’t mean in a bad way at all as I have no issues with those who hardly stray from the norm, I’m just not one of them) and the kind of guy who always wanted the white picket fence sort of life. I am not that way. I have always been attracted to dark, mysterious, out of the norm kind of things in all aspects of life, but most notably when it comes to sex. Much of my attraction to the odd things in life start and end with learning about these things but when it comes to sex, I actually want to do many of these odd things and when it comes to BDSM, it is a part of who I am.

I have had fantasies about control since I was young. The fantasies became sexual and included pain play when I grew up and became a sexual being. I met my boyfriend when I was 24. A few months before he proposed to me, in 2010, my sister introduced me to Fetlife. I like to call it the kinky Facebook. It’s a social networking site where people can explore BDSM, polyamory and all manner of kink and fetishes. I started reading about what people were doing through Fetlife and continued to do so while I was planning my wedding. I don’t understand or even remember the exact progression of things, but a month before the wedding, things came to a head. I got freaked out about the idea that I felt I might be submissive sexually and romantically and that I might never get to explore it. The feelings of submission, which included a nearly daily session of fantasizing at night to help me fall asleep since I was about five years old, were powerful. It was terrible timing. I didn’t want to break my fiancé’s heart, but I had to do it. I broke off the engagement.

Over the next two years, I did things in the BDSM community including giving myself over to two dominant men (one who was extremely sadistic and the other who was into pain as well, but was more notably interested in exploring the dynamic of a D/s relationship), had a few trysts with other kinky people, met a service submissive with a strong foot fetish who I topped for several months and got involved with some kinky women including my girlfriend, Aubrey. In that time, my boyfriend and I got back together and broke up twice (both times because I decided to explore kink some more) before getting back together and staying together a little over two years after the first break up.

A year into our newest reunion, I told him I’d like to start exploring kink again, but this time with him. This was in November of last year. All I had to do was say it. It was enough for my boyfriend to lose interest in having sex with me. He isn’t withholding as punishment, it’s more organic. He still looks at me and is attracted to me, but he sort of doesn’t feel it, if that makes sense. He knows he likes my big, round ass and breasts. He thinks I’m beautiful. And he’ll smack my butt, squeeze my breasts and pretty much behave in all the ways he used to, except when it comes to sex. He is afraid I’ll leave him because I want to explore BDSM again and it’s because this is the reason I broke up with him the last three times. For whatever reason, this fear is affecting his desire to fuck me.

We are actively looking into ways to fix the issue and we are still having sex, it’s just far less frequent. I am confident we’ll figure this out. My boyfriend and I have been together for twelve years (minus the two years after the engagement ended). We have been through more difficult trials in life individually and as a couple than this. I’m just glad that we’re both clear on the reason our sex life has slowed down. It’s a start. I question whether or not I should post this to my work-related blog, but I have decided I will because, as I’ve said before, I want to be authentic on my blog. This is not very sexy, but it is the truth.