Why we brought BDSM into our 25 Year Marriage

I just turned 50 and I've been married since I was twenty-three years old.

That means I've spent more of my life with this man than without him. I know how he takes his coffee, what mood he's in from the sound of his footsteps, and exactly which conversation topics will send him into a twenty-minute tangent. We finish each other's sentences so often it's become a joke between our kids.

For a long time I thought that closeness was the whole story.

Turns out we had barely scratched the surface.

We were watching something (I don't even remember what) and a character made a reference to BDSM. Not a big deal, just a passing thing. A few years ago one of us would have made a joke and we'd have moved on. But that night, for whatever reason, we didn't.

My husband said, "I've honestly always been curious about that world."

I looked at him. "Like, actually curious?"

"Yeah. Aren't you?"

And the honest answer, which took me a second to admit, was yes. Vaguely. In that way where you've wondered about something for years but quietly decided it wasn't for people like you.

We talked until midnight. It was the most interesting conversation we'd had in a long time, which is a strange thing to say about twenty-five years of marriage, but there it is.

My mental image of BDSM was basically what movies like Fifty Shades of Gray had given me: dark rooms, intimidating equipment, people who had chosen a very different life than mine. That's not what we found when we actually started reading and talking.

What we found was a community that takes consent more seriously than almost any other I've come across. People who communicate with a level of honesty and intentionality that most vanilla couples never bother with. There's a whole vocabulary built around checking in, setting limits, and making sure everyone involved actually wants what's happening.

For two people who had spent decades sometimes just hoping the other person would figure out what they needed without having to say it, that was kind of a revelation.

Somewhere in all this exploring, the topic of pegging came up.

My first reaction was to laugh. My second reaction was something more like genuine curiosity, which surprised me.

What surprised me more was my husband. He wasn't weird about it, wasn't defensive. He just said yeah, it was something he'd wondered about, no big deal, and what did I think?

There was something about that moment that felt important. Not the specific topic, but the fact that he could say it out loud without shame and I could hear it without flinching. We'd built something over twenty-five years that could hold a conversation like that without breaking.

What is pegging?

Pegging is when a woman wears a strap-on dildo to penetrate their male partner anally. Although some men might shy away from anal play, the anal area has many nerve endings and anal penetration could stimulate the prostate gland which is often called "the male g-spot". There are also psychological reasons that many couples enjoy pegging such as the reversal of roles of a typical sexual encounter where the man penetrates the woman. This can be a very big turn-on for some couples.

We spent time together shopping the internet and landed on Spicerack Market in search of the the perfect beginner pegging dildo and a comfortable harness for me to wear. there were so many quality handmade leather harnesses to choose from and body-safe silicone dildos of all shapes and sizes. We made our selection and waited anxiously for our packages to arrive so we could start our new adventure!

Once our pegging tools arrived, we anxiously set up a time for our first anal exploration. We took it slow. It was almost a spiritual experience for us and we felt renewed and enlightened from it.

I spent a long time carrying around ideas about what a normal marriage was supposed to look like. What men are supposed to want. What women are supposed to want. What you're supposed to stop being curious about after a certain age.

Most of those ideas, when I actually examined them, had no real basis. They were just the water I'd been swimming in for so long I'd stopped noticing it.

Peeling that back together did something to us. We got more honest across the board, not just about sex. Old resentments that had been sitting quietly for years got named and dealt with. We started asking each other what we actually wanted instead of guessing.

That, more than anything, is what I'd want someone to take from this. Not the specific choices we made, which are ours and won't be right for everyone. But the willingness to stay curious about the person sleeping next to you, even when you think you already know them.

Twenty-five years in, and we're still surprising each other. If you think your relationship is ready for some new experiences I suggest you research and have an open discussion about BDSM and then strap-in (or strap-on:) for quite an adventure!