Why a Dead Bedroom isn't "dysfunctional" (and why kink might be all you have left)
Evolution's a bitch, so it's a good thing if your wife is one too...
Years ago — so long ago that I was strapped into a home-made chastity belt — Xena said to me, “I prefer you this way.”
A few months later, she said, “Would you consider always being locked for sex?” (And I, like a fool I basically said, “OMG no”.)
Then a couple of years into our Female Led Relationship, she said, “I can’t imagine ever going back.”
Five years later, and here I am, sealed into a permanent chastity device.
How did all that happen?
It came about because, like — I suspect — most educated western couples, we had a Dead Bedroom.
During our first few years together, we mixed kink and vigorous shagging. But, as work and life became more demanding, the sex just… faded. What sex we had left was pretty much passive Xena and Giles using oral to earn penetration. Sometimes I persuaded Xena to do some kink, but she turned out to be the world’s least enthusiastic service top.
It was like that moment when you’re in a car crash, and you have your foot on the brakes but it’s not enough to avert disaster and yet there’s nothing else you can do.
OMG! I thought, We have a sexual dysfunction.
So, I did my reading. I got through several “How to Revive The Sex In Your Marriage By A Real Doctor (With A Diploma and Everything)” type books.
None of them worked.
At some gut level, Xena had simply lost interest in pleasuring me. Invitations to sensual mutual exploration just ended with her nodding off after a back rub.
Even so I soldiered on. I consciously retrenched. I emphasised the vanilla and no longer pushed the kinky. All the advice was that you had to get a good normal vanilla baseline before you could properly explore kink.
Kink could wait until I’d fixed our sexual dysfunction.
Except, as I read on, I started to realise that the term "dysfunction" wasn’t applicable to us, nor is it applicable to most couples with a fading sex life.
The Dead Bedroom is "supposed" to be the norm; that that's how our sexuality is "supposed" to function. We're evolved to desire each other long enough to make a baby and then raise it. It’s keeping the desire going for decades on end that’s unnatural, but we want to do it because we are also evolved to strongly pair bond, which our culture also encourages.
The Vanilla Sex Revival Industry is only so big because it doesn’t work!
If there was an effective way to keep the sex going, it would be an established part of the culture. There’d be a handful of books. The Best Selling author of “Keeping the Spark Alive in Married Life” (made up title) wouldn’t also have a therapy business focussed just on ordinary couples. Nor would he be running lucrative regular retreats for his clients, because his short therapy courses would have fixed them.
I also discovered only about 20% of women get off on penetration alone, and about 20% don't really like it — looking back at old relationships seemed to confirm this. There was also evidence that many women go off penetration as they get older.
Evolution, it turned out, didn’t care about our happiness.
Anything that maintained the erotic bond going was going to be a hack, or a workaround, whether it was couple retreats or romantic weekends, or kink.
After a year or so hiatus, I was desperate enough to produce a new version chastity belt and to then present myself in it and offer my services to Xena.
She got off, I didn’t. About two years later, we entered a Female Led Relationship and I threw out all my relationship books.
Kink was not just our way of keeping the spark alive, it was the only way we could sexually relate to each other.
There’s not just no going back… there’s no wanting to go back, either.
People who say, “Careful what you wish for” forget that the alternative may be worse.