Quote Originally Posted by Teufel View Post

We touched upon the subject of power exchange in a round about way during my "Marriage and Intimacy" class I took at my local state university at the beginning of the summer. Apparently, at least according to the research cited in the class, Peer and Near Peer marriages, in which both partners have an equal partnership of duties, responsibility and power, often have a common problem they called the "best friend" syndrome in which the partners become such good friends they lost sexual attraction for one another. Interestingly, the Peer and Near peer marriages that avoided this problem took active steps in the bed room to "spice" things up, and one of the "spices" cited was power exchange. Traditional marriages did not seem to have this as a common problem, and one theory was that an integral power exchange already exists in a Traditional marriage where the man has "veto" power as they put it. Society can be very hypocritical when they view us "deviants", but at least sociology is starting to come around.

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Hi.

I wonder where you get the impression that 'traditional' marriages do not have this problem? Can you explain? I can imagine that maybe traditional marriages do not seem to have the problem because maybe they do not get divorced or they do not get councelling, so any problems they may have do not 'show up' so to speak.

This sounds to me as another twist of the reasoning that domination is natural and male domination is extra natural - all part of what I see as a wish to somehow explain/excuse/get permission for the things we do in BDSM.

I do not believe that peer realationships are boring - I have not found it so, by which I mean the relationships I had before I became aware of my BDSM side. I also have not seen signs of this tendency in my sorroundings, and I suspect that part of this idea comes from cultural norms. I live in England now but have lived most of my life in Denmark where I think gender roles are rather equal, at least compared to what I see here in Yorkshire, and never saw any signs of this 'best friend' syndrome.