Domination & submission _ the BDSM relationship handbook ( PDFDrive )

Mistaking Love for BDSM
People confuse sex with love all the time; they also often confuse BDSM with
sex. Neither of those statements should come as much of a surprise to anyone.
What might come as a surprise to many readers is the fact that, sometimes,
people confuse love for BDSM, or confuse BDSM for D/s. Let’s take a look at a
few examples of how those scenarios can occur.
Ian and Natalie were both in their late twenties when they were married, and it
was a second marriage for each of them.
They each went into this marriage determined to avoid the mistakes of their past
marriages, and to do whatever it would take to make this one
work. Things went swimmingly for the first couple of years. Then,
one night, Natalie awoke at 3 A.M. to find Ian’s side of the bed empty.
Curious, she got up and walked down the hall, where she saw Ian in the den,
masturbating to internet BDSM porn. Her immediate emotional reaction was
as if she’d caught him cheating with another woman. She felt betrayed and
inadequate. Physically, it was as if she’d been kicked in the
stomach. In that moment, Natalie feared that everything that she believed
about her relationship with Ian might be a lie. She was, in a word, devastated.
They fought until the sun came up.
Finally, exhausted and angry and frustrated, they called a truce and pretended to
sleep for a few hours in separate rooms. When they spoke again, it was
with cooler heads, and Natalie asked Ian the questions that had kept her
awake. “Why couldn’t you just tell me that you liked that kind of stuff? Why
did you have to keep it a secret? I am your wife, for crying out loud. You’re
supposed to be able to tell me shit like that!”