Age, but not age play

[quietlisten]

Two age-related questions for the members:

1)  Is there a point in a person's life (not defined by years, necessarily) beyond which they are unlikely to be open to BDSM and/or power exchange if they have not been exposed to it already?

2)  Are there couples on here in which there is a significant (say, 15-year) difference in age between partners?  Has the age difference flavored the relationship in general and in a BDSM context in particular?

Yes, I know "everyone is different."  I'm just wondering out loud about tendencies.

Thanks, all!
Quietlisten

[RichardEvansLee]

2)  Are there couples on here in which there is a significant (say, 15-year) difference in age between partners?  Has the age difference flavored the relationship in general and in a BDSM context in particular?

Alexandra is twenty-something years younger than I am (as was my last vanilla lover: I never seek younger partners but have always tended to have them).

No, I don't see it as relevant. My requirements for a significant relationship are intelligence and empathy: they do much to equalize the difference in life-experience.

[femelle]

Normally I would say no to Question 1..however...A few months ago my dad and I were on the topic of master/slave relationships because an old roommate fled to another state to be a "master". We were discussing him, and my dad made the claim that people into this type of thing were weak minded (slave) and manipulative (master). Later when I was sure of my own orientation, I let my dad know that I, his sweet little baby daughter, prefer such relationships. A little background: My dad is gay. He's had several issues in his life because of it. He's been treated differently, some members of our family are ashamed and ask him to hide it, etc. When I brought it up I asked him to liken it to being gay before the revolution. Unfortunately this just didn't click with him and he was obviously uncomfortable. More background: My dad and I are very close, and talk about everything. Sex, drugs, rock n roll. It doesn't matter. I'm convinced, because of this, that there is a point where people become too set in their ways to accept anything different, even if they might have the proclivity.

As for Question Two.. I'm not in a relationship currently, and haven't had one with a significant age difference where BDSM was concerned. I was, however, married to a man 12 years older than me. I'm still young (mid 20s) and I have a lot to discover and explore. What I found in my marriage, and in subsequent tries with older men, is that they aren't so willing to re-live the things I still want to do. I was also intimidated by the years of experience that they held over me, which I admit is a personal issue and probably not true for most people.

[quesera]

I don't know if there is always an age beyond which one cannot become kinky.  I would hope not.  Open minds can occur at any age, I think... unfortunately so can closed minds.

My ex was 27 years older than me.  Like all of my partners, I chose him and that was that.  I don't think the BDSM dynamic was much different than with lovers my age or younger -- differences were more about how our personalities and interests meshed and seemed to have little to do with age.  I would have no qualms about a partner 15, 20, 25 years or more older, as long as the relationship things were right.  For that matter, I wouldn't have a problem with a younger partner either.

OTHER people tended to make a lot of assumptions about our relationship based on our age difference.  For example, people thought he was the breadwinner (I made more than he did); or that I was a "trophy wife" (he was more like my trophy, in our private life); fellow BDSMers sometimes figured we had sought each other because of some kind of mutually compatible age related fetish (not at all); and in vanilla life I was often assumed to be his daughter!

bbenn is three years older than me; but as I looked for potential mates last year age was not really on the radar.  I met men as old as 71 and as young as 23 that I considered potential partners. (I was 37 when looking).

Health, attitude, and submissive nature are more important than age, IMHO.

[RichardEvansLee]

What I found in my marriage, and in subsequent tries with older men, is that they aren't so willing to re-live the things I still want to do.

I may be guilty of a little of that. Probably something I should try to think about in case I am.

I was also intimidated by the years of experience that they held over me, which I admit is a personal issue and probably not true for most people.

Ideally that experience should be something that can be tapped since it seems a sad life that isn't enriched by the years.

And life experience is certainly offset that having it doesn't stop us from making the same stupid mistakes.

I've been lucky in that it doesn't seem to have made a difference. I was very wary of becoming involved with someone significantly younger at first.

[switch]

In answer to question one.  I do think most people, myself included become less open to new things the older they get.  I had great luck in converting young men to BDSM when I was younger.  I never had a refusal (being a switch helped I'm sure).  I don't think that my luck would be as good now that I'm in my forties.  Men in their forties seem more set in their ways and I'm sure this includes sex.  That doesn't mean a person  can't be converted/introduced to BDSM at this age.  I just think it grows ever more unlikely .  

However, you are looking for a dominate women.  We women are taught to be gentle and obedient even in these more enlightened times.  Most of the women I know become more sure of themselve the older they get.  So maybe time is on your side here.

In answer to question number two.  I am four years older than Pete which doesn't make any difference at the moment.  When we first married it did, but not in a sexual way.  I had already signed on the dotted line for two mortgages before  Pete and I bought our first home together.  Naturally dealing with the paper work and the the negotiations were mostly my responsibilty, ditto negotiating with car dealorships etc.  Life experience tends to  put the older person in charge whenever you are dealing with life experiences that the younger one hasn't had yet.  If you want a woman to take charge of the relationship as a whole an older woman might not be a bad idea.  Certainly I think it would be harder for a younger woman to do so.

In the straight world (or straight as far as I can see from the outside) I know of several older woman/ younger man marriages.  In all cases, the wife is more in charge of the couples affairs than is usual.  I know it mpre typical for young women to marry older men.  I don't know many of these couples well so I can't coment on them.

[Tormentress]

Oh interesting questions..

I am 47 and until the end of last year had no experience and very little interest in anything other than a vanilla relationship. I have been married 20 years and together 2 yrs previous to that. For the last 5 years I have become increasingly despondant at my 'lack-lustre' marriage and although I felt I had tried everything to liven things up and get the attention / affection / companionship I needed to feel complete, I became very low and ended up on anti-depressants and 'opting' out of married life. After numerous attempts to let my husband see how desperate things have become for me I 'met' a man online who I as we became friends and involved told me he had submissive desires. We have become dear friends, lovers and he is my submissive. We both only have experience online, but use the phone, webcam etc for contact. To complicate things we have fallen in love (actually we did that very early on  :oops: before we really got to grips with the D/s thing at all) We are having great fun with it and will very soon be taking it to real time play. So here's an older person who is very up for learning and taking on board new experiences  

My sub also happens to be 12 years my junior and at the moment it has caued no problems at all, there seems to be no age difference at all. How long this relationship will last I have absolutely no idea so I will not hazard a guess as to whether I shall still have the desire to paddle his gorgeous arse when I am 60!  :shock:

[Thorney]

I'm 62. My wife is 83, just over 20 years older.  When we met, I was 33; we married when I was 38 and she was 59.  

       Perhaps because I was an identifiable nerd by about 3rd grade, I always identified more with my teachers than with kids my own age.  So while my first marriage (ended in divorce) was to someone close to my own age, I was always just as comfortable with people older than myself.  When I met the future Mrs. Thorney - we were colleagues teaching computer science at a college - we found many interests in common, not least strong interests in comparative religion and church history. (We still like to read lives of Jesus in bed together, naked and playing, before lovemaking.  We are very respected members of both a church and a synagogue and also regularly attend our neighborhood mosque).
     
         When we got into bed, early in the acquaintance, things clicked immediately.  We didn't marry for another five years since I was freshly burned / divorced and gun shy. She was very patient.

         The relationship was originally very highly-sexed and we developed play rather tentatively. In discussing thinking about sex, I confessed to having harem fantasies.  She started a bit of role playing - the wife, concubine, dancing girl, etc.  

        I suggested the role of slave girl; she didn't like the idea. (She had little exposure to pornography, being of a different generation, and "slavery" to her means old US-style chattel slavery, not an attractive model.)  I said no, what I needed was someone to spy on the other members of the harem and tell me anything they liked but were too shy to tell me about. She liked that idea, and rapidly let me know that the "wife" wanted me to be more assertive, wanted her bottom swatted more often, wanted me to run a hand in her panties more often.  We were off and running.

       The rest of our D/s play has developed very slowly, over a period of years. We read of or hear of new ideas and try them, and keep the ones that turn us on.  When we went to a Hindu wedding and saw the bride kiss the bridegroom's feet, we came home and she kissed my feet. It turned me on a great deal, and she liked that, so it became a regular thing. I said I preferred it when she was naked, she said fine.

      Well, more stuff will come in other posts.  But we are one couple where the fact that she is 20 years older doesn't interfere either with sex or with D/s play in which she is usually the sub.

      Oh - she is much better at finances. I do the scut work of paying bills and filling out tax returns; she makes the major financial decisions.

[Raymond]

My wife and I are 14 years different. I was going back for my second degree and she was a more traditional aged college student. I found myself recently divorced and rooming on a college campus just crawling with co-eds, so I guess it was bound to happen.

We are both switches and seem to have no trouble doing it. I woulod have thought that she might have a mental hang up about Topping me due to my age, but she has yet to express it.

Before meeting her, I had at one time started a LDR with a girl on line who wanted a scene Daddy. I was ten years older than her and would have been happy to oblige, but when she saw my picture, she rejected me because of my young looks. Not bragging, but I don't look nearly my age, and she said that she could never look at my youthful face and take me seriously as a Daddy, no matter how old I was.

[Fledgingwings]

I am 13 years older than my pet.

I take more of a "sugar momma" role than I might with someone closer to my own age.  

Some of that behavior is due to a wild income disparity between us.  Though I used to do the same thing with a lover, and the feeling was completely different.

In addition, I believe there are things he needs to know to do well in life, and I might be less insistent on this, or find it inappropriate, if we were similar in age.   I made my last pet, similar in age to me, take vitamins.  This pet got that, lectures on proper personal habits, and was walked through such essentials as opening a checking account.  

It does mean that when I call him "boy," I mean it.  And that I have the occasional "ack" moment when I do the math and realize the boy was X years old or not born yet when A, B, or C happened...

[Mule]

To answer Quietlisten's original question: Is there an age after which BDSM becomes unlikely unless you've had previous exposure.

The women of my generation (about 10 generations after Austrlopithicus) grew up in the "traditional" style. They were sugar and spice and everything nice and daddy's little girl. It wasn't until their teens or early 20's that "women's lib" became a thing.

So there was this strong implant in their personalities to get married and have babies. They had to struggle to adapt to the changes in society around them.

The bottom line is that however they did turn out, they did marry and did have babies which consumed much of their lives until their babies started spending more and more time out of the house. At this point, they started to change from mommy to woman and started to discover things about themselves that they did not have time to explore before.

One of these things is their sexuality. I've seen a resurgence in Mrs. Mule, and from the accounts of some of my domme friends this is how it happened for them too.

So short of saying there is an age too old, I'll say that for a certain generation of women at least, life begins at 40. BDSM is like a dormant seed that sprouts later in life.

[Missjane]

1) I think it depends on the personality of the person. Some people want to do new things until the day they die, and some people prefer to do what they've done for the past 10 years and keep it at that.

2) Rich is over 20 years older than me. It's something that usually doesn't ever even cross our minds, because we have similar interests and habits.. but every once in a while it does rear its head and we have to deal with it. It's definitely altered the BDSM context - when he was younger, you couldn't go online and look up information about fetishes and bondage. A lot of the things I'm really interested in are things he may have heard of, but never explored.
It also gets hard because there are things I want to do and experience that he's already done, finished, and gotten over.