To be Romantic or Not be? That is the Question

"Many vanilla people are surprised to learn that S/M includes erotic spanks, scratches, and bites, which are amazingly common forms of erotic expression. They are also surprised to find out that S/M practitioners can fall in love, and that they enjoy conventional sex acts such as oral sex and intercourse."
~ Laura Goodwin of United Leatherfolk Of CT

The other day M and I ventured into a conversation on relationships and the topic of Romance came up. He made an apology to me for not being a very romantic person. That took me a little by surprise but it also got me to thinking. The quote above came to mind. At first I internally questioned why it would be such a shock, I mean outside of the normal “Well what’s romantic about whips, chains, floggers, rope??” But in essence, for many in TTWD…that’s it.

In normal, vanilla relationships we’ve all done the typical things. Candle light dinners, picnic in the park, perhaps rose petals in a bathtub with Barry White playing on the stereo. Whatever. But then, take our relationships. When viewed by the outside world, we already know we are stereo-typed. We could never do regular vanilla things. But the point is…we do. We all live normal lives, we venture out into society, we date, we get married, have children…you get the picture. So why would we not do romance as well?

My point of view, when looking at the world M and I are building for ourselves, we have all the vanilla aspects just as we do kink. Probably even more so than some others. We are starting out already with a child living in the home. So things will tend to run more on the “normal” or vanilla side of things until bed time. Before 9 PM, we are just M and J. Sure I will still call him Sir and will do my wifely/Submissive duties of serving his dinner, cleaning our home and making sure he has what he needs but there really will not be any “High Protocol” until after Ding is in bed.

But even still, we do the normal things such as cuddling on the couch or lay in bed and watch movies together. We still take showers together when we are able to do so. He still opens the door for me. Just our idea of romance doesn’t exactly run “Vanilla.” While it’s entirely possible to come home to find Ding out of the house for the night, a nice dinner planned out at a quiet restaurant only to return home to a candle lit bedroom and a nice hot drawn bath…sounds vanilla I know but that is where the “other side comes in. Ding is out of the house so we have the freedom to scene without having to wait for her bedtime or worry about her waking. The bath is so that I can ritualistically bathe us both before we play and the candles…well…who doesn’t like a little wax play? Hehe.

You get the picture, but it all boils down to the fact that we do indeed enjoy romance as much as our vanilla counterparts…just our view of romance is a little unskewed when in comparison. As with everything in TTWD, it is all a matter of perception.