Gandhi said that if you want to change the world, you have to be the change you want to see. To that end, Insatiable Desire brings you No Stupid (Kink) Questions, a series of questions asked by novice kinksters around the web. If you have a question for us, leave it in comments, or send it to rayne (at) insatiabledesire (dot) com with “NS(K)Q” in the subject.

Question 55:

My dom and I have been living together for a couple years. We were local to each other but neither of us has ever been very active in the local community so we ended up meeting on Fetlife. I read his profile and posts on Fetlife, and talked to him before we met and talked to other submissives he’s played with in the past before we met up. I was pretty sure he likes the same things I like. We dated for a while and then we started playing and then I moved in with him and all of a sudden nothing. We hardly even have sex anymore, and when we do it’s way vanilla. Is it something I did? How do I fix it?

First of all, why the hell have you let it go on this long?

He doesn’t do well with confrontation. If I tell him I have a problem, he gets really upset and nothing gets solved.

Okay, so don’t couch it as a problem. Simply tell him something’s changed, and you’re wondering why.

Ultimately, the only one who can tell you if you’ve done something to cause this change is him. It could be any number of things that have nothing to do with anything you’ve done, though.

For example, it’s easier for some tops to play with bottoms for whom they don’t have romantic feelings. The main reason given for this is that once love is involved, they can’t bring themselves to hurt or try to control the bottom. Is it possible he’s found himself with a bit of Dominant Guilt?

Another thing that can occasionally cause a dom to play less is their personal stress level outside of the relationship. Has he changed jobs? Acquired a particularly difficult boss or employee? Are there any money problems, or family problems? All of those things will affect libido, mental health, and interest in kink.

Aside from that, though, how often are you initiating?

There’s this thing that some of us submissives do when we find the dom of our dreams. It’s like we get collared, and we decide we’ve been absolved of all responsibility of keeping the passion and play going. If they wanted us to initiate kinky play time, they’d tell us to do it, right? They are the dominant, after all.

Except no, that’s wrong. I mean, for some relationships, absolutely the dominant has no interest in the submissive prompting play time. They are The Ruler Of All Things and that includes when and how play happens.

If you’re not in that type of relationship, there are some things you can do (and probably should be doing) to prompt him to be more dominant, like bringing him a toy you’d like to play with and asking him to use it on you, or laying over an ottoman or chair and remarking on how much fun it would be to be spanked in that position, or playing with yourself in front of him–and I don’t just mean masturbation. Using kink toys on myself while my master watches kicks his dominant/sadistic streak into overdrive; especially when it comes to things he’s never done to me before. I think it’s partly because if he can watch me do it to myself, and see that I really, actually enjoy it, and see how I do it, he feels more comfortable doing it.

Or he just really likes to watch me hurt myself and it makes him want to hurt me more. Who the fuck knows, really? Dominants are weird.

Bottom line, though, is you gotta use your mouth place and let him know that you could really use some lovin…and not just of the cuddle variety.