Relationships

There is very little research on kinky people in relationships. Indeed, the conception of kink as a highly antisocial psychopathology probably steered early researchers away from even pursuing this possibility. When Ullerstam (1966) suggested that sadists and masochists could seek each other out to form a mutually satisfactory relationship, Beigel's review (1966) treated this idea as self-evidently ridiculous.  Stoller (1975, p. 58) even suggests that sadists and masochists would be incompatible, as their fantasies don't actually overlap.  Lee (1979) finds no long-term relationships in his sample of kinky gay men, and concludes that the theatrical elements of kink preclude love, romance, and humor—and therefore any sort of lasting relationship.

So we do not have many answers for what should otherwise seem to be very obvious questions. Are kinky people in relationships usually in relationships with other kinky people? If so, do they maintain fixed D/s roles, or switch? Do the relationships last? Do they marry? Do they have children? What aspects of their life as a couple affect, are affected, or are irrelevant to their sexuality?

We don't know yet.

When kink has been discussed in the context of relationships, it is usually viewed as a problem which one partner brings to the relationship. The DSM-IV, for instance, points out that 50% of sadomasochists are married. Moser and Kleinplatz (2005) both question the validity of this figure and ask why it is being mentioned, when marital rates are not listed for other psychological disorders.

It seems germane to point out that the scope of research into BDSM covers a time span in which normative non-kinky marriages have changed considerably. Marriage styles that were considered normal and healthy in the 1950s and 1960s are now being re-envisioned as (non-erotic) D/s relationships (Doyle 2001, etc.). Perhaps the unwillingness of early researchers to contemplate D/s relationships was, in part, an unwillingness to critique the power relations of conventional marriage in their era.

In all events, we have relatively few studies on the relationships of kinky people.

Relationship Status

Richters et al. (2006) could find few significant associations between BDSM practice and relationship status. Kinky women are somewhat more likely to be in a committed relationship with someone who they don't live with. They also found that kinky people of either sex are substantially more likely to be in sexually non-exclusive relationships. Otherwise, though, the relationship status of kinky persons seemed indistinguishable from their non-kinky peers.

Bienvenu and Jacques (1999) find about 53% of their survey group are legally married, 28% have never married, and 13% are divorced: there is some variation between genders.   Kinky men are more likely than kinky women to have never married, kinky women are more likely than kinky men to be divorced. Brame (2000) finds 38% of kinky people are married or “permanently partnered,” and another 17% are in a commited relationship; 26% were formerly in a relationship (she does not look at divorce per se); 14% are never married or partnered; and 5% are polyamorous. Comparable US statistics for the adult population put those figures at 56% married, 34.7% never married, and 9.8% divorced (Lugaila 1999).

Tomassilli et al. (2009) find no association between kink and relationship status among lesbians and bisexual women.

Children

Brame (2000) finds that 51% of her survey group have children. Bienvenu and Jacques (1999) put that figure at 41%, with women being somewhat more likely to have kids than men. These findings are not unusually high or low for the United States.

Relationship Issues with Kink

Nichols (2006) reports that a common psychotherapeutic issue for kinky couples is “bleed-through” of D/s dynamics from the erotic sphere into other arenas. That is to say, the sexual submissive may also becoming the domestic submissive, or the sexual dominant may take on non-sexual decision-making responsibilities.  Either or both partners might feel dissatisfied with these new roles.  This is complicated by the fact that many D/s couples seem to eroticize at least some aspects of this bleed-through, and others (see below) embrace it completely.

Dancer, Kleinplatz, and Moser (2006) point out that kinky people in relationships often feel they have to be furtive about the power dynamics of their relationship, perhaps hiding their D/s dynamic from friends and family, or even their children. This seems a likely source of stress. (Note that this is probably subcultural, as well. D/s that is considered shocking in one setting (such as strict gendered division of labor) might be viewed as normal in another setting.)

24/7 Slavery

Dancer, Kleinplatz, and Moser (2006), focus on couples identifying as practicing “24/7 slavery.” Here the emic term “slavery” is used to mean a relationship in which, ostensibly, the dominant partner controls the submissive partner in a lasting and unlimited fashion; following the authors, I am not placing the term or its cognates in quotation marks. Anecdotally, this is only a small subset of all kinky people, but there has never been an attempt to determine how large this group actually is. The researchers uncovered a number of ways in which limits do exist even within these relationships. Just over half of these couples employ some sort of safeword. They write:

“Although these relationships are reportedly without limit, the process of deciding to enter into the relationship is such, that the submissive partner rarely finds the dominant’s desires incompatible with his or her own.”

Nevertheless, 74% of the slaves in their sample report activities that they would have found “inconceivable” at the outset of the relationship.

Among the male slaves, 77% were in a relationship with a man; among the female slaves, 93% were in a relationship with a man. This would strongly suggest that kinky gay men are more likely to practice 24/7 slavery than heterosexual F/m couples. It isn't clear if kinky lesbians are unusually likely to practice 24/7 slavery or not.

Subjects in this survey ranged in age from 18 to 72, and had been enslaved for anywhere from three weeks to 22 years; three and half years on average.

Some slaves in the Dancer, Kleinplatz, and Moser survey reported having had earlier 24/7 relationships. In a majority (69%) of those cases, it was the slave who decided to leave, and the most common reasons have to do with fear that things were going “too far” in some sense. This suggests both a risk of escalation beyond mutually acceptable limits, and also the capacity for these “slaves” to terminate their enslavement at will. This is not necessarily always the case. The 1980 Commonwealth v. Appleby case (discussed in Ridinger 2006), and the "Delia Day" case in 2003 both involve 24/7 slaves (one male, one female) who fled or killed their partners, respectively. In both cases the courts seem to have accepted an interpretation of events in which the slave wished to leave, but was being coercively prevented from leaving.

Updated 5/15/2010