Kinky partners

GreyWanders

GreyWanders

New member
I'm in a triad, and I just learned that my partners sometimes do kinky things together. What kinds of kinky things I don't know exactly - not because they're uncomfortable telling me, but because I'm not sure I'm comfortable hearing about it.

Kink is a very delicate topic for me. It could encompass so many things, some of which I'd be fairly indifferent about my partners doing, some of which could really upset me. I feel like I have to make peace with what they're doing, but I can't do that unless I know what it actually is that they're doing. However, I'm not sure how comfortable I am learning those details. I don't know how to proceed.

I've tried to be brief here, but may have been too brief. Clarifying questions are welcome.
 
Why does it matter to you what they're doing? Are you concerned about their health or personal safety? Or are you concerned about judging them, not feeling comfortable with them as your partners, once you know what they do?

I can tell you that I definitely wasn't comfortable with a few of the things that Jon and his ex Lora did that were kinky. However, that wasn't my relationship. So I took that tack that my job was to own my shit and ask them to either not do certain things when I was in earshot, or give me a heads up, so I could put earphones on/go to a different part of the house where I couldn't hear it.

Had the things they did not involved sounds that were uncomfortable for me to be around though, I'd have entirely taken it as "This is my shit to deal with. I have two options. I can be OK with it, because it's not my relationship, or I can not be OK with it, and stop having a relationship with Jon".

In the end, after some thought and processing, I got to the place I am now, which is that I firmly believe that they had a right to do those things, I had a right to not hear them, and it was OK that I wasn't totally comfortable with those things for myself and would never do them with Jon.
 
That's a good question, LizziE, and the answer is complicated and confusing, even to me. It's not a health or safety concern, at least not in an intellectual way. They're smart people and I trust them to take care of themselves and each other. It's also not a judgement as in "that's gross/wrong/weird". Sure there's kink stuff that squicks me out, but my partners do other things I find squicky and those are fine as long as I'm not exposed to them directly.

No, it's closer to a safety concern, but it's not a rational concern, it's an emotional one. Many kink things don't feel safe to me personally, and because of the way I relate to my partners, I extend my own feelings of what is safe and not safe to them, so when they do something that doesn't feel safe to me it's upsetting because I feel like they're not safe, even if I understand intellectually that they are and that they feel safe. We've run into this elsewhere as well, and I haven't found a solution.

Right now I don't know what they do, so I don't know to what extent it would upset me. If I ask them what they do, I might find out that the things they do don't cause me any trouble, or I might find that they cause a whole lot of trouble, and then I'd be stuck. Stuck because I don't know how to fix the problem where one of my partners does something perfectly reasonable, but it upsets me because it feels unsafe.
 
Same. I think you have to ask yourself why these things upset you. They are two consenting adults. If you think the details would bother you, why ask?

I have a partner who absolutely does not understand kink (read:BDSM) at all. She doesn't want to understand it. I'm not asking her to embrace it, just understand what it really means. It puts a strain on our relationship. Perhaps it would help you to try and understand that people actually enjoy those acts you deem upsetting to you.
 
I agree with the previous posters...what consenting adults do behind closed doors is between them and I'm not privy to (nor do I care to know about) said things unless they have the potential to affect me.

My suggestion would be to make a list of the things you consider a safety concern and then really examine why each item feels risky to you. For those items where it's solely an emotional concern on your part, if you can't work through that, could you just assume they don't do it and let it go? I don't generally believe making assumptions in relationships is a good thing, but if you understand that your fear is somewhat irrational, making an assumption might help you move past it?

That just leaves the things that may be risky...in those cases, you may just need to ask and let the chips fall where they may.

I consider myself 'kink lite' with a decent amount of hard boundaries. Some are things I could care less whether my partner(s) participate in, some I don't want to know if my partners participate in because they're triggery for me (breath play/erotic asphyxiation), and some that could potentially affect me and therefore, I would want to know about even though it makes me squeamish (blood play.)

Fortunately, I've never dated anyone who participates in anything on my last list but I do ask my partner(s) to notify me if they ever do participate in it...same as I ask to be notified of new sexual partners.

Depending on the length of your list, it's quite possible you're worrying over nothing...but you won't know until you ask :)
 
I like pinkpig's suggestion of making a list and working through WHY they upset you.

For me, what really worked to feel better was a lot of positive mental re-enforcement. I would think about something that bothered me. I would take note of the physical reaction I'd have, tightened muscles, faster breathing. I'd let that flow through me, and then work on relaxing it. Slow the breathing. Relax the muscles. Be aware of the air, cool on my face. My clothes, comfortable against my skin. Feel those comforts, while also holding the thing that bothered me in my mind.

Then let it go. Rest a minute.

Then go back to holding the thing that bothered me in my mind again. Relax, breathe through it. Keep doing that until I felt too tired or like it was going on to long. Take a break. Do it again in a day or few, depending on how it was feeling.

I guess you could call that my own desensitizing trick. As I did it, I also thought about how much they enjoyed it. That it felt good to them. That it was OK.

And I kept thinking those thoughts until it was OK enough for me to feel...well, I wasn't going for 100% comfortable. But not bothered and stressed.

It took a few months. And sometimes, it took some revisiting. And by the by, it was a useful trick that I learned in cognitive behavioral therapy, when I was working on boundary stuff, and how to both maintain good boundaries of my own, and respect those of others.

Maybe that could help?
 
Thank you for these suggestions. I like the idea of sorting general things into general categories. Categories could be "I already know this happens and/or am indifferent about it", "If this happens I don't want to know about it", and "If this happens I need to know about it because I'm seriously not okay with it and we need to talk." I hadn't actually realized that there's a category of things which I have really hard concerns about in addition to the category of things which I know are okay but feel unhappy about. Categorizing things in this way would give us the chance to talk about any really concerning things that they do (or leave me secure in the knowledge that those concerning things don't happen), while leaving the stuff I think is okay but don't want to know about under the rug.

Finding a list of general things to sort is difficult, because any lists of kink things tend to be very specific, but one of my partners agreed to make me a list of more general abstract things which includes everything they do but also other things so I don't know which is which. This is enormously helpful. Categorizing things and making lists is a very good way for me to process things and communicate.
 
That sounds great! And who knows, maybe you'll get really lucky and none of the things on your partner's list will be on either your DADT list or your hard line list? ;)
 
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