Awkward Stages of BDSM Relationships

By RedWarrior

Even the most magnificent animals have a developmental stage where they look utterly ridiculous. Male lions with patchy manes, a young Arabian filly growing into her legs, most human adolescents…you get the point. There’s always a stage where you question how it’s going to turn out…or if a huge genetic mistake was made.

I think relationships have similar stages, except it’s harder to see how they will turn out or if they will.

This happens as the crazy NRE ebbs and you finally begin to be able to think clearly and really see each other for the human beings you are. To me, this is when things get interesting, but often messy.

I had a poly former friend who, like clockwork, would add a new partner at this point, avoiding the messiness of the partner whose NRE had faded. He’d let that relationship starve until the woman left him. He was only in relationships for the heady days of NRE and then he lost interest.

I’m the exact opposite. I wish I could skip the chaos of NRE and head straight for the cuddly, mature relationship. I think where we could both agree, though, is that we’d both prefer to skip over that awkward part between NRE and that mature, cuddly bit.

But you can’t skip it anymore than you can skip being a teenager just to get to adulthood.

And there really are a lot of parallels between human adolescence and this gawky period in a relationship’s lifespan. Both are a time of confusion mixed with hormones, and with a healthy dash of uncertainty and self-doubt. Both can lead to excess chocolate consumption, moody music, and an urge to write bad poetry. Both can be embarrassing to look back on.

And both are important, crucial stages.

It’s in this time period that we look more critically at our partners to determine if what is there is more than just chemistry, if there is a foundation there we can build on. In BDSM relationships, we may be testing out power exchange and making those awkward steps to giving up and taking control, stepping on each other’s toes as we learn that dance together.

It’s a time of questioning and doubt as both try to gauge how the other feels and what they want. It’s a time of determining whether the compromises needed to fit lives together are worth the cost and if the other person is willing and able to meet our wants and needs.

It’s a scary, fragile time for a relationship, much like an adolescent trying to make those first big leaps of independence.

In the animal world, most creatures do not survive past adolescence. It is a time of thinning out numbers. Similarly, in the BDSM jungle, I’ve watched at least half of these fledgling relationships die. Some were simply because one or more people involved really were more about the hunt, the heady rush of NRE and pursuit. The rest ended in their own unique ways.

Sometimes it was because NRE masked fatal incompatibilities. The relationship was doomed before it began, incapable of life. Other times life happens and the young relationship becomes prey to any number of challenges that come to devour it. Sometimes it’s aborted out of fear.

Sometimes, it’s for the best that the relationship does end at this point, before too many compromises are made and lives enmeshed.

I feel like those relationships that do survive the chaos of NRE and then this awkward adolescent stage, those relationships often find a place of stability and equilibrium, a state in which they can deepen and mature. For me, that is always the goal, the reward, the place where power exchange can really be explored and life can settle into something resembling normalcy.

But to get there is often a battle against myself and a fight to make sure I’m also not settling into something that ultimately isn’t a strong foundation.

And there’s the rub. With animals and humans, during the awkward adolescent stage we can look to the forebears of that animal for some idea of what the mature version will look like. As awkward as this stage might be, we have hope of getting through it to that thick flowing lion’s mane or strong mare’s legs. In relationships, it’s much harder to guess at what the mature version might look like. We have to search for clues and trust in what our partners tell us.

And just hope, if we do hang on through all the awkwardness and uncertainty…it will be worth it.