My girlfriend and I are both avid listeners of your podcast. Admittedly, I am always a few episodes behind her because I have a fairly demanding work schedule, but it’s great to hear your thoughts on sex and intimacy issues. I had to email rather than call because she would definitely recognize my voice if you wound up playing the call over the air.

Okay, we are both very open and open-minded people. We’ve known each other for years, but only have been dating for four months or so. And the sex is great. We’ve both had our share of experience in the bedroom, which certainly helps. When talking about what turns us both on, I feel like we do share a good amount. However, she’s made a few comments recently saying that she “doesn’t want to scare me away” with her sexual fetishes and interests. I don’t think she realizes it but that makes me a little nervous. What could it be? What did I do to make her feel that she can’t share this with me? What should I do?

Thanks For Reading

Sometimes people with perfectly mundane, ordinary, non-scary, and easily realized sexual fetishes/interests will say something like "I don't want to scare you off" early in a relationship because they've been pretty badly kink-shamed by previous/shittier partners for their perfectly mundane, ordinary, etc., kinks and/or it takes them longer than [however long you've been together] to feel comfortable sharing their kinks. But sometimes people will say something like "I don't want to scare you off" because their kinks are objectively, well, not scary, per se, but things that would give even the GGGiest partner with kinks of their own pause, e.g. ABDL play, hardcore vore, sensory dep scenes, etc. Which is it with your girlfriend? I have no idea, TFR. Only she knows the answer to that question and she's not ready to talk about it.

So what can you do? You can't force her talk about her kinks before she's ready, TFR, but you can make it clear that you're not going to kink-shame her when she's ready to share her kinks with you. Promising not to kink-shame her before she lays her kink cards on the table and then refraining from kink-shaming after the big reveal doesn't obligate you to explore her kinks with her if indeed she does wanna be swallowed whole or mummify you. We can affirm our partners' kinks without having to indulge them. If you're not into it, whatever it turns out to be, you can cheerfully hammer out a reasonable accommodation that allows your partner to have her kink(s) and her relationship with you too, TFR, and those can range from simply allowing (read: not being a dick about) your partner to indulge themselves via porn up to encouraging your partner to find some casual partners who share their kink for occasional play.

But that's the worst-case scenario. Best case, DTF, your partner's kinks will be something you've always wanted to explore or that you're suddenly excited to explore because, as sometimes happens, you're so into her that you're turned on by whatever the hell turns her on.