Ask Rachel Johnson: It’s not feminist friendly but I want a man to spank me
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Dear Rachel,
I am a 39-year-old divorcee living in the south west but holding-down a senior role in London. My problem is that I have a penchant for assertive men and I have found myself on a seemingly endless carousel of wannabe dominant men from BDSM websites who turn out to be either married/far too weird/not into commitment.
I am seeking a man who “tells” rather than “asks”. I dream of being thrown across the back of his charger but I also want to be loved and cared-for. It’s not feminist-friendly but I go weak-kneed when a man chooses to spank me. But it’s not all about the bedroom anymore – the clock is ticking.
There is a guy I work with who has a wonderful sense of humour, who has flirted with me openly and appears to have the kind of assertive confidence that makes me swoon – but how do I go about raising the question of whether he likes to take control both in and out of the bedroom before I waste another few months trying to lure him on a date? Perhaps I should tell you that I am his senior and tantamount to his boss, so admitting that I prefer a submissive role to a younger office subordinate becomes even more problematic. Help!
– Divorcée
Dear Divorcée,
On the BDSM, I am going to be honest. I don’t get it. I never read Fifty Shades. Any time any man has ever suggested spanking or suchlike, it made me collapse weakly in hysterics, which is, you will find, not an aphrodisiac for most proud males. (Always bear in mind, when you are “out there” in the dating Wild West with what nanny used to call “strange men”, what Margaret Atwood said: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”)
You write from the south west, a place I know far better than Kinky Under Bottom. It’s wild and woolly and full of real men who wrestle bulls and sling women over the back of a “charger” after a Hunt Ball and a few pints of Exmoor Beast. Knowing my own tragic limitations in this sphere (honestly the term vanilla barely hints at my lifelong all-consuming lack of interest in BDSM, maid’s costumes, whips, gimp masks, wax, red rooms of pain etc. I just don’t see the point in overcomplicating things) I turned your letter over to the therapist Sophie Haggard, who asks why your marriage ended and your part in it. “Long-term relationships hold up a mirror to our peculiarities [neuroses] in a way that friendships and flings never can,” she says. “She might wonder whether, having decided against BDSM encounters with ‘weird’ men she meets online, she is enacting something around a need for (a different sort of) risk in seeking to be spanked by a professional subordinate. This smacks not so much of masochism as self-sabotage,” she advises.
Imagine your colleagues found out, or the relationship went Pete Tong. Think of the potential professional repercussions if you were found in flagrante in a full-on and fruity Sex, Lies and Videotape scenario over your office desk. “A desire to be loved and a desire to be spanked shouldn’t prove irreconcilable or mutually exclusive. Perhaps she could try other non-BDSM dating apps?” Haggard says. I agree. Cast your net wider, and turn your lustful gaze away from the younger office subordinate you want to turn the tables on and dominate you even though you are his boss. This is the stuff of a soft-porn film, not a sensible life-plan.
Dear Rachel,
Hi! I am 57 years old, divorced and reserved – the only thing I really enjoy is sport. Since my divorce I’ve avoided social contact. The only “friends” I have are three or four guys I see every Saturday at my local parkrun.
Recently, at the start line of one such event, a woman spoke to me, out of the blue. I managed some sort of inane reply but do remember thinking that she was quite attractive. The next week I glanced up and saw this same woman looking straight at me – but she lowered her gaze and wandered off. I was determined to look out for her the following Saturday but she wasn’t there. Nor the next week.
I found myself thinking about her quite often. I started going through old results and photos from the events to try to figure out her name. For me to make that sort of decision is revolutionary – I’ve never gone up to a girl to “chat them up” in my whole life. Anyhow, a search soon revealed her identity as an academic at the local university. Obviously way out of my league but I remained undeterred. To cut a long story short, I sent an email. She replied by text the next evening, and we met for coffee a week later. Now after a series of text chats she says she wants to be “parkrun buddies”. Do I cut and run, or be patient?
– Anon
Dear Anon,
I showed your letter to my husband and we both started trying to remember the quote and then blurted out simultaneously, “faint heart never won fair lady!” (Is that right? Ed). You’ve been divorced and in the bonk desert for a decade and I can feel the anxiety, loneliness and neediness pulsing from your letter. That’s understandable and you have made a good start in responding to a woman’s contact, and then sending her an email – presumably with your number so she could respond by text, which is more immediate and intimate. I can understand your excitement after a lonely decade. This is someone you can imagine dating – and maybe more. Not only that, you met this woman in real life doing something you love and she spoke to you first. This was a red letter day, no?
But now, of course you want things to unfurl fast and prettily like a fern. Life isn’t like that. I do think you have to take some deep breaths, and force yourself to play the long game. It’s worth it. One, women like it, and two, it often works.
I’m putting myself in your attractive academic’s Nike Airs after she gets your email. And let me tell you straight: no normal English woman would say, “come over to dinner on Thursday” after a glancing encounter at parkrun. But she is suggesting that you run together every Saturday – which is, I suggest, a flying start. Or as Keir would say, you have hit the ground running here. You don’t say if you asked her out in your email but anyway, I’d text her to make sure she’s running on Saturday, and turn up. You’ll find out more about her by doing something together than by downing a bottle of sauvers or two in a Tindery wine bar full of gruesome twosomes.
In answer to your question – be patient. Be persistent; wear her down like that famous line in Ovid’s ode about water dripping on a stone. You have nothing to lose. After all, what’s the worst thing that can happen? You make a friend.