Is there any trick to reducing your partner's dependence on kink? Or is there a way to make that kink more interesting for yourself, i.e. "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"?

My husband and I (cis straight male/bi female couple) have been married fifteen years. We are in our early forties. When we met, he was inexperienced and crippled by shame from having grown up in an extremely sex-negative atmosphere with a prudish, religious parent. I have no hangups about sex and was happy to get him involved in some more adventurous stuff, but he quickly became obsessed and shows no sign of slowing. I used to consider myself a cheerful experimenter but by now I feel like he's taken a lot of the fun out of it. I'm happy to play along with fantasies and role play, bondage, domination, foot play, anal sex/pegging, going to events, having moresomes, etc., but sometimes I'd like to have gentle, slow, "unadorned" sex with an attentive partner who calls me by name, compliments me, makes me feel loved, does things to my body he knows I enjoy.

My husband has been seeing a sex therapist about a porn addiction for some years; we went also went to him for couples therapy and he gave us some "exercises" to try to tone down my husband's expectations of perfectly-scripted, extreme-kink-only sex "scenes," but my husband either was not able or not willing to try them, and I gave up. We've had many conversations where I've begged him to work this—I'd just like some compromise and variety!—but he's on an unstoppable path in the other direction. He now basically cannot maintain an erection without either 1. a complicated script with roles and props and costumes and toys (my husband's ultimate sex life is one where two blindfolded people in impenetrable costumes stand at opposite sides of the room and throw massive butt plugs at each other) or 2. going through the motions of romantic sex as long as I keep up a constant stream of "in character" dirty talk, which is exhausting and makes it impossible for ME to be in the moment.

And I've urged him to go see a Dominatrix or to get more involved in local kink scenes with or without me. But he's obsessed with this imagined moment where I suddenly "awaken" and join him in all of his obsessions. At that point I'm supposed to lead us into his fantasies and organize it all for him, as well as only be turned on by exactly the same things that turn him on. I find this condescending and stupid. Just because I can enjoy kinky play now and again doesn't mean I'll ever be someone who is brought to her knees with gasping excitement at a woman on a leash being peed on or someone dangling from the ceiling by the clamps on their nipples. It doesn't shock me or disgust me, Dan, it just kind of BORES me. It feels like watching someone fill their kitchen with every gaudy, expensive, chrome radish peeler and strawberry diddler when they can't even boil an egg. Any tips?

Bored By Obsessed Kinkster

You must feel like you created a kink monster. But you didn't!

I mean, you did meet this sweet, inexperienced, sexually-repressed guy, BBOK, and you did encourage to let go of the shame and give him permission to be a little more sexually adventurous... and fifteen years later you're stuck with this selfish asshole who's so obsessed and/or dependent on his kinks that you've come to dread having sex with him. And now you're writing to me in the hopes that I can magically cause your husband to become less dependent on his kinks or magically "awaken" in you an all-consuming, obsessive interest in the same suite of kinks he has. And we both know neither is gonna happen because we both know people don't change. Because even when your husband went from sexually repressed to sexually exhausting, BBOK, he didn't change. He was always the elaborately twisted kinkster he is now; he just needed someone to give him permission to be who he always was—or to get in touch with who he always was—and that person was you.

Anyway...

Neither of the fixes you propose are gonna work. You're not gonna get kinkier—which is what he wants—and you've already tried to get him to rein his kinks and that didn't work. (That's what couples therapy was about, right?) Both fixes are pipe dreams, as I think you know, and I further suspect that you're not really interested in either of these fixes. Because what you really want is right here: "...sometimes I'd like to have gentle, slow, 'unadorned' sex with an attentive partner who calls me by name, compliments me, makes me feel loved, does things to my body he knows I enjoy." (Emphasis added.)

I don't think it's an accident that you wrote about wanting "an attentive partner" to call you by your name and do all sorts of vanilla things to your body that he knows you enjoy. I don't think it's an accident you didn't use "loving husband" in that sentence, BBOK, because deep down you know your husband isn't interested in doing those things. And that he won't be any good at doing those things. And that even if he could fake an interest in doing those things for twenty fucking minutes—which apparently he can't—you wouldn't be able to relax and enjoy his half-hearted attempts because you would know the only way he could stay hard doing those vanilla things was by concentrating on the BDSM sex he'd rather be having. And I'm guessing that would ruin it for you. It would ruin it for me.

You want to have the kind of sex that your husband isn't interested in and/or capable of having. And you wanna have that of sex with someone else, BBOK, with someone who isn't asking you to be someone you're not each and every time you have sex with him. Or her. Of course pretending to be someone you're not can be wonderful, as you know, as you enjoy kinky sex and role playing. But the resentment you're currently feeling about the disappearance of vanilla sex from your life is ruining the kinky sex you could be enjoying with your husband—not all the time, but from time to time—and the fix, the workaround, the accommodation... well, it's obvious, isn't it?

Basically, BBOK, you need take your own advice, the advice you've been giving your husband, and go find yourself a play partner or two. For vanilla sex, not kinky sex. If you can find someone who can give you the kind of simple, passionate, emotionally-connected sex you no longer get in your marriage, perhaps you'll come to resent your husband less and your desire for kinky sex with him will rebound. Good luck.