“I’d do anything for love but I won’t do that.” Rachel Elizabeth looks back on choosing kink – and herself – over love.

Sometimes misaligned sexual needs and a lack of kink in a relationship can show us what our priorities are – and they aren’t always love.

Why I Chose Kink Over Love by Rachel Elizabeth

Pervert First, Lover Second

It can feel embarrassing to admit you’ve had great sex with people who didn’t love you. As someone who likes to make her humiliation kink an entire persona, I should probably first clarify that for once I don’t mean “embarrassing” in the hot way. Whether you’re like me and have an unfortunate track record of dating the empathetically deficient, 

 and find joy beyond the amorous, the social stigma around a lack of romantic love can cause a nagging sting of shame. This is a story about how I almost lost myself trying to relieve it.

[T]he social stigma around a lack of romantic love can cause a nagging sting of shame. This is a story about how I almost lost myself trying to relieve it.

Okay, so when I say I’ve never fucked someone who loved me, I am exaggerating a 

. Most of the kinky sex I’ve had has either been with casual partners uninterested in a romantic connection or the quintessential unavailable man whose treatment of me certainly didn’t meet the criteria for love (despite how theatrically they may have professed it in a series of 3am WhatsApp messages). Either way, whenever I would talk about these experiences (whether in conversation or writing), I was almost always met with a judgmental sort of pity.

“You deserve so much more than just sex, Rachel!” To be honest, I think a lot of that came from the fact that I’m fat. People tend to chalk up my chaotic sexual history to “settling” versus, well, me just being a 

 who can’t resist when a 40-year-old with a chiseled jawline says my name out loud. And for what it’s worth, I have no regrets.

In terms of feedback on my sex life, there was also the trivializing of BDSM. “You should try prioritizing love over kink for once,” people said. It was like being told I should try breathing without oxygen or orgasming without a laundry list of previously negotiated pejoratives being snarled into my ear. Kink had always been the source of my 

, everything else was secondary—including love. At least up until last spring, when a good friend I had long suppressed feelings for unexpectedly told me he felt the same.

Out of respect for personal privacy (and readability), I’ll spare most of the sappy details about the last year of my life. Just know that for the first time in my plus-size icon of an existence, I experienced true, reciprocal, transformative love. Ugh. Just seeing that written out feels so 

, Hallmark card, stay-at-home date night with Trader Joe’s charcuterie board, and everything else I act smug about not being into. As reluctant as I was to admit it, I finally understood what my coupled friends were on about and with each day it became increasingly clear what my world had been missing.

It’s probably bloody obvious already that the “catch” of this life-alteringrelationship is that the remarkable person I shared it with wasn’t interested in BDSM, or 

. Let’s be real, if this story had a happy ending, I wouldn’t be writing about it—I'd probably be bent over a piece of IKEA furniture or blissfully wolfing down lasagna. But whether it was simply bad luck or karmic justice for cheating on my college boyfriend outside a CVS many moons ago, the asymmetry in sexual preferences proved fatal. Just not as soon as one might think…

It only took a few weeks… for me to go from “there is no love without kink” to repeatedly convincing myself that sex isn’t all that matters."

It only took a few weeks of constant laughter and consistent affection for me to go from “there is no love without kink” to repeatedly convincing myself that sex isn’t all that matters. I think one reason that was easy for me at first was because our relationship was built on a three-year friendship. Also, I was experiencing so many new euphoric feelings that I was able to distract myself from the single element of dissatisfaction. For the first time in my life, I felt cherished by someone, someone whose love was gentle and patient. Someone I admired. But as our love grew and the world bloomed, my most authentic self sank further into the shadows.

While our relationship was not without its problems, it was overall healthy—at least in terms of optics. My family was thrilled I had finally found someone stable, my friends were thrilled I had finally found someone single, and everyone who saw us together urged me not to fuck it up. The more external pressure I felt to be grateful for love, the more I began to hate the part of myself that was screaming on the inside, begging me to end the relationship and text my rolodex of local sadists for a long overdue 

Finally, I decided the only way to shut that voice up was to abandon everything that nurtured her. I stopped writing, I stopped doing comedy, I stashed my collars and cuffs out of sight, and eventually I stopped masturbating. All while telling my partner that I felt myself changing for the better. I guess I hoped if I said it out loud enough times, it would become a reality—much like how I used to chant “Paul Giamatti, notice my thirst trap” before posting on Twitter. Needless to say, I manifested neither.

Throughout our year together, we “broke up” once, only to rekindle things two months later after cooling off from a rough patch. When we started up again, things felt better than ever and we began making plans for a future. I had never met someone so open to investing in me, and so certain about it too. Though he wasn’t in any way dominant, he nevertheless celebrated my kinky side from day one of our friendship. I do think my feigned ambivalence about BDSM not being part of our dynamic brought him some relief, but he did his best to hide it. He always made an effort to embrace every part of me—even the ones he didn’t understand.

Two months ago, I ended the relationship abruptly with a phone call. When he picked up, he thought it was to talk about a trip we were planning. As expected, there was plenty of crying on both ends when I broke the news. I was honest and told him how the lack of a D/s dynamic had drained the color from my life, but that I would always love him. He asked me with an audible lump in his throat how I could walk away from all the good we have, just because of the “

”; I told him the sub stuff is who I am.

I wish I could say that the decision to put my sexuality first was triggered by some profound moment of truth. Really, I just received a text earlier that night from the last man to make my mascara run and I remembered how alive I feel on my knees with smeared makeup. I haven’t fallen out of love with my former partner yet—I’m honestly not sure I ever will. Every cursed first date I go on now is a reminder of what I walked away from. Sometimes I wonder if I took the right path. But as I type out this last sentence to conclude my first piece of writing in over a year, I realize I already know the answer.