Vanilla Anyone

It’s double post Wednesday I guess because I feel compelled to share this. Recently I was talking with a dominant female friend of mine who is active in the local BDSM club scene. She has a vanilla boyfriend and now that they have become serious he is having a bit of a hard time accepting her continued involvement in the lifestyle. She shared with me that…

“I am having a hard time getting him to understand the role, beliefs, and behaviors of a submissive man. He can understand how a woman would submit but he seems to keep thinking that male submissives are only in it for the sexual aspect of it. He can’t separate sexual fantasies from actually being sub. He has insecurities and he is trying very hard to be open and learn more about the lifestyle. He was well aware of my kinks and beliefs prior to us seriously dating and I guess he thought I was going to give it up once we got serious. I want him to understand the lifestyle and be okay with me participating even if he isn’t interested.”

She went on to say that she doesn’t expect him to become her sub as she can satisfy her dominant needs through the local scene where she plays but she wants him to understand the dynamics from a male submissive point of view to ease his insecurities. She wants to preempt problems from occurring in their relationship as a result of her filling what is an important need for her and an expression of her nature. She asked to allow him to contact me directly to ask questions and see if he might gain some insight into what being a submissive man is really about.
Obviously I am flattered that she would choose me as someone she trusted to talk with her boyfriend about an issue important to their relationship, yet I am wondering exactly what I can say to him. Obviously since I am a submissive man I “get it” because I feel it and understand that aspect of my nature. But that’s just the thing, it’s a feeling thing not a knowledge thing. I can impart to him my beliefs and philosophies and explain how submitting makes me feel but he can’t feel that through me. So will sharing my perspective really help him understand?

Herein I think lays a major problem with what I shared about earlier this week about the question of whether there is a shortage of dominant women for submissive males to submit to or a shortage of authentic submissive males who really want to submit. I know from my own experiences, I have in the past sometimes felt lonely and got involved in relationships with vanilla females only to find every time that after a while I become disenchanted, unhappy and I invariably lose interest and start again to search for the assertive, dominant female I know will be the answer to my needs. The last serious relationship I was involved in was with a truly remarkable woman. She had a terrific body and I felt extremely attracted to her physically. We had so many interests in common and yes, the sex was seriously the best I have ever had. She wasn’t in the least interested in the D/s scene and I never pressed the issue with her, but if she were I have no doubt she would be submissive. In the bedroom she wanted her man to take her and use her in a totally dominant way. For a time I was able to do that but I was only filling a role and it was never something I found terribly exciting or arousing. Soon I had those same old feelings of feeling unsatisfied, unfulfilled and unhappy, so we broke off the relationship. Even though it isn’t the easiest thing in the world for a submissive to find a dominant or for a dominant to find a submissive, perhaps it simply opens up a whole new set of problems when we in the lifestyle settle with getting intimately involved with vanilla people. Is it really fair to them for us to expect them to explore D/s because it is a need for us or expect them to allow us to be with them but scratch our D/s itch outside the relationship?