Our FSoG Story

Many of us here have one ... a 50 Shades story. Now seemed like a good time for me to share ours ... but first I'd like to introduce you to an odd couple who've been in our lives for very many years. They will drop in from time to time in future posts, as well as this one, so a proper introduction is needed ...

Meet the Libidos ... 

Up until a few years ago, Frank and I really only fought about one thing in our many years together and that was sex ... kind of ironic, eh, considering where we are now ... 

The reason? ... mismatched libidos ... as in opposite ends of the scale. I like to think of our libidos as a little Italian couple (my apologies to any of you with Italian heritage ;)) ... Luigi is loud, proud and over the top. Lola is a princess, who only comes out to play when everything is just the way she wants it. 

Mr & Mrs Libido

When we were first together the Libidos were pretty well matched ... as in over the top ... like rabbits, over the top.

However, as time went on my Lola could be found in the corner, yawning and filing her nails. 

There wasn't any good reason for the change, other than the desire (but not the love) dwindled. On the other hand, Frank's Luigi continued to be present and demanding .... Frank's sexuality has always been a huge part of his personality - or at least, the personality he presents to me :>)). When he was on the prowl (pursuing me ;)), he was funny, witty and charming ... denied, he'd turn into a silent sam. He would be handsy and I would be dodging and it lead to big fights. We almost split up over it early in our marriage, but we knew we still loved each other so we sought counselling. Over time, we managed to find a happy medium .... but it was still wasn't ideal. 

On with the story ... 

There were a couple of things we did to help Ms Libido deign us with her appearance ... erotica, and me finding time and place to relax and turn off the noise in my head re kids, work, school, house, family, etc, in order to read said erotica. The bathtub became the go to place .... "go have a bath and read" or "I'm going to have a bath and read" became our signal for some shared sexy time. 

In addition, we got a good vibrator ... not a toy ... a good Wahl version with power (and after it died, there was Wahl II ... and now we have the intrepid Vibratex Magic Wand ... rechargeable, no cords, woohoo! ;)) ... if the erotica didn't get Lola entirely out of her hidey hole, the vibrator did. 

In the intervening years, after the departure of our kids from the nest and the advent of our D/s dynamic, our sex life got much more spontaneous, our fighting over the frequency of it, much less, but still some type of brain gym was almost always required to get Lola's attention.

Fast forward to ~2012 ... my everyday reading material for many years was crime/mystery fiction and contemporary novels but somewhere along the line I read 50 Shades of Grey ... probably because everyone was talking about it so much I had to see what all the fuss was. I liked the series just fine. My normal erotic reading material was was a little more hard core so it was kind of nice to read a BDSM themed book with a romantic bent. I do remember it lit a bit of a spark in Mrs L as well.

In early 2017, I found myself deep in SADS season ... a total funk. I wasn't doing much except the bare necessities and reading. When I ran out of reading material and couldn't find any new mystery writers to follow I went back into my ebook archives to see what might interest me as a reread and thus retrieved the 50 Shades series. 

Again it was enjoyable read. However, I also remembered that many of the erotica writers I was reading after my first FSoG read, had panned the series ... their criticism levelled at both the writing and the way BDSM was portrayed (if you wish to read a dissection of the FSOG series by someone long in the BDSM community, there is an interesting series of posts written on the History of BDSM blog here). So I got to thinking ... if this wasn't considered to be all that great, what was? I changed my Goodreads Listopia 'best crime mystery' query to 'best erotic romance' and jeezus!, jumping!, hell! .... who knew!!? 

My first thought was, this list of books sure doesn't look anything like my mother's stack of Harlequin romance novels I burned my brain with, at the beach, many, many summers ago (and possibly the reason I wasn't a romance genre fan). And before I knew it, that was that .... I was in over my head reading every erotic romance of every related sub genre I could find and I am still at it a year and a bit and a couple hundred books later. Yikes! ... Frank has given up counting the number of book purchases on the credit card bill. 

Very quickly, after my initial new reads (I started with the Sylvia Day Crossfire series, then moved onto Christina Lauren's Beautiful series), Lola Libido emerged, fully prepared for lust and love!

For the first few weeks of my erotic romance overload, I was so continuously turned on I felt like I was wandering around in a sexual fugue ... I was sending Frank schmexy emails, tackling him in the bedroom and other places, dropping to my knees for impromptu bj's and always wanting to feel close and connected to him. He actually at one point, really did utter that old phrase ... 'who are you and what did you do with my wife?!'

As I continued to plow through books, I came to the realization that the closeness I was developing with Frank was about something more than an increase in sexual attraction. The MC's in these books supposedly represent, to what I imagine are mostly female readers, our most desired male characteristics. I began to realize, with Frank, I could tick off many of those idealized man boxes ... and as such I began to see him in an entirely different light. 

So there you have it ... 'tis the reason our new ttwd/DD path is a bit boring, snoring, with no big drama to report ... our entire relationship dynamic significantly shifted last year and it happened prior to the discovery of ttwd/DD. As you can see, FSoG was a big factor in that wonderful shift ... AND ... since I found DD for the first time in an erotic romance novel and then brought it to Frank, it is also the reason we are now on the ttwd/DD path.

PS ... there is a coda to this tale ... I'll fill you in with the next post ...

Thanks for dropping by ... nj