Another reader writes in: I have an insatiable mommy kink, which my girlfriend hates. What should we do?
You've come to the right place: the normalmaxxing sexual neuroses consult inbox managed and answered by me, transmasc freud.
Happy Monday — once again coming to you a day late and a dollar short. Maybe one day I will learn how to manage multiple tasks in one day, and not get distracted so much. Meatspace check-in: my joints are acting up (especially in my hands, which is making typing harder than I wish it was) because it’s cold and I’m low-T I think, and also I need a shower. I’m stimmed out with a full stomach though and have downed three cups of coffee so I’m ready to f o c u s. Let’s dive right into the letter sent to me that will be the topic of today’s issue, once again coming from the normalmaxxing neuroses consult inbox.
I’m really excited about this one actually, because it gives me the chance to talk about mommy kink, which is one of my favorite kinks to think about. I am obsessed with how popular incestuous fantasies actually are, and how the really ubiquitous stuff (like calling your dominant male partner daddy, step family porn, etc.) is seen as totally normal, but the minute someone makes hard eye contact with you and says “I want you to roleplay as my mommy in bed” everyone gets the heebie jeebies.
Not me of course, given that I am the fucked up kink normalizer. I’m normalizing, and if you’re a follower of normalmaxxing, I imagine that you’re also interested in normalizing. Or maybe just gawking… but that’s okay too, because I believe that gawking can lead to normalizing, which is my agenda. I think that if you can jack off to a video of a guy boning his stepmom who is stuck in a dryer, then it’s okay for some people to explicitly have mommy kink. Both of those things are a lot to unpack, but I think unpacking can be a lot of fun, if you allow it to be!
I have this HUGE mommy kink and my partner is NOT for it WHATSOEVER. I know the mommy kink is more of a problem because the desires go well beyond outside of bed and grow stronger when I’m upset at my mom. I’ve tried other things but nothing really ticks me the way the mommy stuff does and my partner hates hates hates that. Any tips?
I need you to understand, first and foremost, that I am riveted by the second sentence of your message to me. We are, I assume, strangers. If you don’t know me, you might not understand how deep my interest in the psychology of kink runs. You might not understand that I am transmasc Sigmund Freud. I need to know so much more about your specific mommy kink, and mind. I have so many questions for you, because I need more context to chew on.
What is your relationship to gender (I’m getting transfem vibes off of you, just fyi)? What was your childhood like, and your relationship with your mother? What is your mother like, as a person? Was dad in the picture? If so, what was your dad like, and what was his relationship with your mother? Why do you often get upset with her? When you are having mommy kink, are you picturing your literal mother, or are you pretending you had a different mom? I’m also wondering if an element of this includes ageplay. What age are you roleplaying in these fantasies? Are they explicitly BDSM mean-mommy themed, or are you looking for a gentle mommy femdom… or, OR— is this one of those rare situations in which YOU are the dom, and doming the mommy? That’s not usually the case, but I’ve heard of that.
God, I have so many other questions about this. I’m dead serious when I say this: please feel free at any time to tell me more about yourself and infodump about your sexual proclivities and childhood trauma to normalmaxxing@proton.me — I will never tell a soul anything you said to me, I just desperately need to know more about your mommy kink. That’s my solemn promise, as an internet life coach™.
Now that I’m done being autistic about kink psychology, let’s talk about the problem you’ve written to me about: you and your partner are at a sexual impasse because you have a non-negotiable mommy kink and she wants absolutely nothing to do with that. I’m going to go ahead and assume that your mommy kink has been discussed explicitly and your girlfriend said “no way” as I extrapolate on the rest of this response, but I am also going to just say really quickly that if this is a situation in which you’ve brought up mommy kink in general and she responded negatively in a generalized way, you might have more luck just talking to her about your actual fantasies and sexual needs, and explaining them to her.
This really sucks for the both of you. It’s sad to me, that you cannot get your sexual needs met at this time, in this relationship. However, I also feel sad for your girlfriend, because if you’re not into the sex you’re currently having, she’s not getting her needs met either, because nobody has satisfying sex with a person who isn’t really all that into it all of the time. This is also assuming that you two are still having much sex at all, because often when these kinds of issues come up, most couples respond by just becoming kind of sexless. So the way I see it, logically, is that you have a few options here:
You break up and both look for other partners who can meet your respective sexual needs.
Do nothing, and maintain status quo (although if this is what you wanted, I don’t think you would have written in)
Lengthy conversations about why your girlfriend is so averse to mommy kink (if she’s open to discussing her feelings very frankly) and trying to figure out what the issue actually is here, and why she can’t engage in it with you. This of course does not mean that you should try to coerce your partner into trying something in bed she doesn’t want, but I don’t think that talking and asking questions is “coercing” — you’re trying to resolve an issue and understand fully what the issue actually is.
Lastly, and I can hear in my mind the booing, hissing, and tut-tutting of others as I type this out: Consider opening the relationship, sexually. At least have a serious and open-minded discussion about it.
Let’s focus on options one and four, and compare and contrast them against each other. I don’t think you would have written to me if you actually wanted this relationship to end, because you would have just broken up with her instead and looked for someone else, or cheated on her. You are looking to me, ajc the normalmaxxing™ life coach™ for a different solution. Given the nature of this substack and other things that I’ve said before on here, it should probably come as no surprise to hear that my husband and I have an open, polyamorous™ marriage. I don’t often like using that p-word or discoursing too much about this online, because I genuinely understand why so many people are averse to polyamory. Most people who take on that label and practice it are really, really shitty partners. This is endemic in the trans and queer community, specifically.
Oftentimes, I think the problem is not a matter of relationship structure, but of people’s priorities and the way we all objectify and use each other. Our current sexual culture here in present-day America is all sorts of fucked up. Everyone is completely mentally ill about sex, and relationships. If I’m being so real, I don’t think monogamous people are having a much better time out there trying to find love. Look at the state of gender relations between cis-hetero normie men and women. It’s a fucking disastrous wasteland for all, out there!
When it comes to poly toxicity specifically, the big issues that people run into are usually the following (and I’m starting with the most common complaint, and working my way down):
The average poly person tends to lack sexual boundaries in all relationships, including ones that have never been (and never should be) sexual, because they have not unpacked the way that they use sex as an emotional crutch.
The average poly person struggles with both verbal and non-verbal communication, and doesn’t have the emotional maturity to set healthy, logical boundaries in their multiple relationships.
Many polyamorous people who talk about it a lot online are very smug about their relationship structure, and radiate that sense of superiority when talking to others who are not on board with this lifestyle, who understandably balk at a deeply annoying person attempting to crudely neg them about their sexual boundaries and desires in intimate relationships.
I am not an annoying advocate for the polyamorous lifestyle™ for this exact reason. I have been, in the past, the person on the other end of these polyamory conversations who can feel the poly person’s condescension as they rattle on about how much more sexually evolved they are compared to me, while completely lacking awareness as to what role my sexual trauma and past relationship issues might be playing in my desire to have a monogamous relationship, and avoiding relationships with the type of person who labels themselves as polyamorous. It’s a similar feeling that I’d get when relatives in AA (who very noticeably skipped step nine when it comes to me) would feel bold enough to lecture me about my own drinking after a bad night. I simply just didn’t want to hear that shit, not from them.
That said, I *do* want people to understand that polyamory can be an extremely fulfilling way to live your life — but I think it’s more effective to do that by demonstrating to them that I’m doing it myself, and very happy with it. My marriage is strong and healthy, and my sexual/romantic relationships with others have clear boundaries and expectations. There are always hiccups and conflicts that need to be ironed out, but that’s true of all relationships; they’re work!
My honest advice to you is that you should have a serious conversation about opening up the relationship with your girlfriend if breaking up simply is not an appealing option. If neither of you was getting something important out of the dynamic, one of you would have ended it already. Clearly, there’s something there that you’re still both holding onto. Opening the relationship might make what it is that you get out of staying together more obvious, if the answer is not sexual satisfaction.
That said, there’s a common dynamic in relationships that go from monogamous to poly that is a pitfall you’d want to avoid: a lot of people hold onto primary partners that are not actually good for them for far longer than they should, because when the relationship opens, they can just fill the void of the unfulfilling relationship with the new ones that they tack on. This is not fair to you, your primary partner, or the other people that you get involved with who you’re using as a crutch. This sucks, so try not to do this if you decide to try being poly. When a committed relationship is healthy, the opening of the relationship should make your primary partnership stronger, not weaker.
If you think this might be the case, that the relationship simply just needs to end and you don’t want it to because you’re codependent, then don’t open the relationship, just end it as amicably as possible. I don’t believe that it’s healthy to stay in fundamentally sexually dysfunctional intimate relationships. It’s okay to just be platonic friends with your exes if you like talking to each other and hanging out.
This could really go either way for you though, sometimes people find a secondary sexual relationship to meet certain unique needs (this should be understood and desired by both parties in the relationship) and then find that they suddenly enjoy more vanilla sex with their other partner, because they are getting the other need met elsewhere, which reduces their psychosexual focus on it. Other times, you might have a kink or fetish that is more intense and fixed, and you will never particularly enjoy sex that doesn’t incorporate it. If this ends up being the case for you, I suggest searching for a primary partner who wants this kind of a sexual relationship with you exclusively, or at least very predominantly.
I don’t know if this answer satisfies you or not. I’m reasonably sure you didn’t want to hear “you can open the relationship or end it” but unfortunately it is truly that simple, I think. I wish you the best of luck as you ponder the details of my answer, and think about your next steps. And seriously, email me and tell me more about your childhood and mommy kink.
With love from transmasc freud,
ajc