During my past several months of interviewing potential subs I've heard countless stories of men and women who married vanilla hoping they could deny their true desires. Hell, I'm a real life example of this as well. I've been in several long term relationships but only a couple of them were D/s and less than a handful were kinky.

I think the first and most important aspect is to define who you are and what you want. What will you settle for and what won't you?

I have a friend with two lovely children and a husband who adores her but they're vanilla and mono and she wants to be kinky and open. We had a difficult conversation yesterday because she only has a few choices. She can tell her husband she wants to be open but she's tried this before and he was not on board. She can cheat but she says she doesn't want to do that and I personally advised against it. Or she can deny her desires and stay in her relationship. Her situation is made more complicated by a 3rd party who has professed his love for her and who she is extremely attracted to. She can't stop obsessing about this man. I told her that it's not the man, it's something bigger, a need she's not getting met in her life. She asked my advice and I told her to run the other way and cut off all contact with the new object of her obsession. But I doubt she will. I suspect she'll cheat and stay, feel guilty and then it will come out and she'll lose both men - her husband and her amor. 

I use this as an example. Settling and compromising is not wrong. And timing is everything. She chose to marry a mono, vanilla man so she either has to let him go and pursue her own dreams and desires or wait until her kids are grown to do that. It's a common choice. The sub I'm currently seeing had to make the same one. He's now divorced with two kids that still live at home. But he's happier and I think kids sense that. If we're happier and more present and getting our needs met, so is our support group and our families.

The one thing that stands out is that it's never too late. It's never too late to become who you truly are, to settle into a new you, to try new things and to live your life to its fullest.

Most of us are not supported emotionally if we choose to come out as kinky and proud. But we can have both. We can have our cock and we can eat it too... or not.

​~ Rain Star

I look at most relationships in the real world through the lens of D/s. This goes for couples who have never heard of D/s to people’s pets.

Before I embraced the lifestyle and my Dominant self, I was in a long-term marriage. One that was highly abusive and in retrospect a non-consensual D/s relationship. It took me years to unpack it all but when I finally did; I realized I was the submissive and my ex-husband was the Dominant except that I didn’t have a choice. Everything I did was criticized and torn apart. If I wasn’t earning money to support him, then I’d better be cleaning the house for him or getting him off sexually. He never cleaned the house, not once in 20 years. He hardly even showered (maybe once a week after two days of begging from me). He rarely contributed to the household finances. And he almost never got me off. I can count on two hands how many orgasms he gave me in the two decades we were together. Sad? Yes! Worse than sad, it was horrible. And yet I stayed, far too young to know better. Until I finally realized what was happening, and left.

This was my first backwards look into non-consensual D/s. But in reality I had known it all along. I’d grown up with it. My father was Dominant over me and my mother. He made me kneel or lay face down at his feet, while he pointed and laughed. He screamed at my mother but he kept the corporeal punishment for me and he loved it. A true sadist, in the sickest sense of the word. He would laugh gleefully as he beat me, naked, splayed over his lap, night after night after night.

In his third marriage and my mother’s third long term relationship, they’ve continued the pattern. My mother is the Dominant in her relationship and my father and his wife fight for Dominance in theirs. Both relationships are extremely abusive with each couple calling their significant other’s horrible names.

My mother often says to her boyfriend, “you’re such an idiot. You can’t do anything right. You’re a waste of space.” And so on.

My father and his wife put each other down incessantly. Both couples do it in public, seemingly unaware of how uncomfortable other people feel around their constant outbursts.
Staying unconscious is easier. It’s uglier, and it’s detrimental to all but it’s easier than taking responsibility for your own shit and consciously choosing a different way of life. Thus my sister carried the torch. She is Dominant over her husband, also in a highly abusive manner. Screaming at him and calling him “useless” on a regular basis. One time my mother tried to intervene and her husband said, “no, it’s fine. I don’t mind.”

It took me years to understand. My mother’s partner and my sister’s husband are submissive men. But they don’t know how to be in healthy submissive relationships so they both picked domineering, abusive women. Do I think they’re actually happy? Not at all. But I do think they’re getting some type of fulfillment and I also know that it’s all unconscious. They probably can’t even face the truth of who they really are, let alone seek out a healthy Dominant FLR.
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I have another friend who is happily married, knows nothing of kink but has told me that her husband is happy to take a back seat to her and let her lead. She doesn’t yell at him or abuse him but they both know she’s in charge! I call this an unconscious D/s relationship and they can be healthy.

The other day I was speaking with a sub and mentioned that I think cats are Doms/Dommes and dogs are subs. Because I can lay this context over pretty much everything and it will fit. What other wonders will we discover?…

~Rain Star