‘Coming Out’ in BDSM

It’s been nearly five years since my Daddy Husband and I stumbled into BDSM and began a relationship-transforming journey. Make that a life-changing journey. Those early days – which I have been writing about here on this blog – felt like a spiritual conversion to a new way of understanding ourselves and each other; indeed, a new way of understanding life. Our sexual relationship was of course, the most obvious beneficiary; we went from having great sex to ecstatic sex. We experienced a kind of fiery hot, transcendent sex that my imagination would have never been able to come up with on its own, no matter how many romance novels or sexy movies I fed to it.

But power exchange gave us far more than just fuel for incredible sex. It swept us up in a wave of more honest communication, deeper intimacy, unbreakable trust, more liberated love. The practice of surrender in D/s also instilled in me greater trust in my body, in the designs of nature, and in the experience of being alive.

It made us both a little crazy that we hadn’t discovered the D/s dynamic sooner and been able to reap the benefits earlier in our lives. It made me, in particular, almost angry that this code to unlocking my sexual self had been so deeply buried under myths and taboos and fetish porn that I only accessed it by accident. That is why I began turning my journals of our early days into posts on this blog. I felt almost morally obligated to leave a trail of bread crumbs for other natural submissives like to me to find. And yet …

I never tried to put the blog ‘out there,’ never linked it to anything, never talked about my secret project. In fact, over the first four years we practiced it, we’d never told anyone at all about our BDSM ‘orientation.’ First, because it’s not so easy to buck conventional wisdom that one’s private sex life is no one else’s business (although we are all terribly curious about others). But other reasons also seemed important: saving my adult children and family members from embarrassment, fitting in with my circle of vanilla friends, protecting my job with a conservative company famous for its brand of “traditional values.” And then there was the glare of the #MeToo movement and the fierce cultural rejection of men imposing their sexual will on women. Women were suddenly feeling empowered to protect themselves from being treated as sexual objects, and that, more than anything, made me reluctant to boast about the benefits of my own BDSM-style of sexual surrender to my man.

Yet, as our D/s relationship has matured over the years, evolving from the early red hot and bumpy stage, to a more calm and sustainable way of being with each other, I longed to be able to talk about our dynamic with other like-minded people. And so, earlier this year, we sought out our local kink community and tentatively attended our first munch. I didn’t know what to expect, but I certainly wouldn’t have guessed how wonderful it would feel to finally introduce myself as my husband’s submissive. Or, to be able to talk and laugh with other people who were enjoying the same kind of life. Or, to join a support group in which I could get other perspectives on challenges with the dynamic. Plus, they were just generally nice, fun, open-minded people to hang out with.

But something else really caught my attention at that first munch. A submissive woman was there, and the dominant she had devoted herself to had just died. She talked sadly about how she had not been invited to the funeral because her dominant had never felt comfortable informing his family about his D/s relationship with her. The leader of the group said, “Maybe in the future, when more people come out as BDSM, heartbreaking things like this won’t happen.” 

From that moment on, my long-standing desire to leave a trail of bread crumbs for other potential submissives to find has been evolving toward a determination to “come out” as an enthusiastic BDSM practitioner. I still face the same challenges and risks of doing so, but I am taking slow, careful steps in that direction. My first step was going to that munch. My next step has been to turn the posts from this blog into a book that will require me to be a more open and public advocate of D/s. Well, I should say a semi-open advocate, because I am publishing it under a pseudonym. I do still work for a conservative company, and I do still have children I want to protect from an embarrassing excess of information about their mother’s sex life.

Yet, for the first time, I am about to reach out to others in the online BDSM community, and find out if this book can contribute to the effort to inform and educate people about the joys of power exchange, and the many benefits that come with the D/s way of relating to one’s partner. I believe, as I have from the beginning, that BDSM can help create happier, more satisfied people and happier, more contented relationships, and thus, a happier world.

If you agree with that premise, and have been reading this blog or have just stumbled upon it, then I invite your thoughts on “coming out” as BDSM in the comments. I also invite you to check out the book – it’s available for free with a Kindle Unlimited subscription. I would especially welcome feedback on its contents (or reviews on Amazon!). Do I present the submissive experience accurately? Do I answer questions many of the uninitiated may have? I very much want to make it easier for the BDSM curious-but-hesitant feel good about undertaking an exploration into this rewarding way of sexual relating. In the meantime, I am forever grateful to anyone who has sent me comments and encouragement through this blog. It has meant the world.