Fuck Gary Chapman. Those Are Not My Languages

I don’t know which buttons got switched when they took me out the box, but I don’t interpret romance the same as most. Sadomasochism is starlight and roses on my planet. I’d rather be dragged to a public bathroom with bruises in the back of my throat than to a white tablecloth establishment with flowers on my wrist. (They still do that in vanilla land, right?)

They say there are five love languages, but they forgot about people like me. There’s a scene in (trigger warning) Fifty Shades where (‘nother trigger warning) Christian Grey takes Anastasia to a masked ball wearing ben wah balls under her swathe of lace. The spanking he gives her upstairs might be decidedly short and uninspired, but that scene gets one thing right: Kink is romantic. So romantic that I keep that (trigger warning) movie on my (trigger warning) computer. It reminds me of days when my favourite dom used to hide things under my swaths of lace so that he could watch me suffer in a crowd.

Romance is made of one tablespoon of passion, one cup of mystery, and a generous sprinkling of excitement. It leaves a charge in the air around you, as though a thousand fairies left their spells in the ether. What achieves that better than BDSM?

If you subscribe to Gary Chapman’s views, quality time, affection, and words of affirmation make your heart bloom in your chest. I think Gary needs to try hitting things with belts. I’m pretty sure he’d find it far more interesting.

In Chapman’s world, you have to work hard to keep romance alive in a long-term partnership because euphoria is finite. Obsession must eventually give way to stability, and with it goes your interest in your partner. With BDSM in the picture, though, euphoria is just a secret room away. You’re forced to keep looking at your partner, to keep pushing through to the next layer of intimacy. As long as you’re not trying to hide or exploit, connection is well-nigh automatic in this world, and two constantly evolving sexualities have their way of keeping romance from evaporating. 

Before I found BDSM, kink felt like so much distance. It never quite fit me because it felt paper-thin and dehumanising. Power exchange felt purer to me somehow because it required me to recognise a deeper truth in the men I loved.

Maybe truth is my love language, but BDSM is its conduit--and it’s a magical one. Chapman’s words of affirmation seem so Grey in comparison.