Q&A: How Do I Move Past Bad Memories to Enjoy Old Kinks?

by Kayla Lords · Published September 16, 2024 · Updated September 16, 2024

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This week, we’re answering a question from a submissive who wants to get back to a more primal, CNC, sadomasochistic way of playing with their partner but old memories from another relationship are holding them back.

Here’s the question:

How do I rekindle the Sadistic spark in my kinky nesting relationship, and move past some difficult associations these kinks carry for me?

Hello! I’m a 32 year old submissive, masochistic woman in a lovely long-term relationship with my husband and Dominant. I’m poly but not dating anyone else right now. Our relationship has kink and D/s sprinkled in, among the other things we’ve poured into it for the last 12 years of building our life together. We’re very compatible, and we explored kink from when we first began dating in our twenties.

Probably due to NRE and how much simpler life was back then, we did a lot more robust and brutal S&M of a primal, CNC variety. I really love this, partially because I have a very busy ADHD brain and I find that being overpowered and overwhelmed with the right kind of sensations and words lets me be in my feelings rather than a superhighway of thoughts. I’m very pliable and servile when I’m in sub space, and lucky for me, my husband loves holding and directing that power.

There have been two factors that have led to a tapering off of our more sadomasochistic play over time. The first is that life is very full now — we have old relationship energy and more on our plates. The romance, sex and D/s are still there. We’ve speculated that because we know one another so well, it can be hard to delve into more roleplay style CNC or torture scenes where we’re still us, but there’s a bit of “acting”. The familiarity of our own home might even be a factor.

The second factor is a bad experience I had with a shitty Sadist Dom a few years ago. He wasn’t abusive during scenes, indeed he was very controlled and intense. He connected through Sadism in a way neither of us had felt in some time. Even back then, I observed that part of what facilitated the intensity of our scenes was that we weren’t embedded in one anothers lives, so there was anticipation and (for me) the feeling of being out of my element when I visited his home.

One day he (newer Sadist Dom) revealed that he had lied about a lot. He dumped me almost instantly, and I never saw him again. It had been a year of knowing him and roughly 6 months of dynamic, so I was very shocked and hurt, but it turns out that I’m not the only woman he’s done this to.

It took me a while to get over being “discarded” by a Dom I trusted, but I’ve healed in most ways. However, there’s a lingering association I still have between certain Sadistic acts and him, and sadly it’s the primal, CNC torture style of play I want to rekindle with my husband. This stuff isn’t triggering like a reminder of abuse, but it’s almost like those kinks were last done with him, had all those intense D/s feelings poured into them, and then there was betrayal and abandonment without any closure.

I’ve discussed all of this with my husband, who is very supportive and wants me to find closure first and foremost, but also wants us to spark up this style of S&M, CNC play again if possible. These interests existed long before the shitty Sadist Dom, I’d like for them to stop being something I flinch away from because I fear that the intensity of those circumstances is something I can’t create anew with my husband, and that it’s not an option for me anymore. The thought of that saddens me deeply.

I’m confident that I’m doing this for the right reasons, but then my anxiety kicks in and tells me that I’m using kink to cope with the fallout of shitty Sadist Dom, even though I’m not. I just want to reclaim what was already mine to begin with. I’ve been to therapy and have a good grasp of my mental health, I’m looking more for pointers about framing, actions and even rituals to reclaim and respark.