How I used kink, BDSM to treat my depression and save my relationship

Although I’ve always considered myself to be closer to vanilla on the kink spectrum, I’ve recently found myself being one kinky motherfucker. It started with a little roughness and led into a sadistic awakening. Now, a little puppy play has led into a budding full-time D/s relationship, and I am super excited.

While my first couple of dates/play sessions with Bubby weren’t particularly kinky, it soon was very clear vanilla sex wasn’t going to fulfill this boy. In the first couple weeks we’d already added wrestling, biting, spanking, punching, slapping, scratching, restraints, choking and sensory deprivation to the repertoire. About a month into the relationship, he let me in on his desire to try out puppy play.

From the start, he loved being my puppy. It took me a minute to get there but I found that I loved it, too. Up until then, our kink play had all been for sexual gratification. After a few puppy play sessions, though, we both realized it offered a mental cleansing.

We started using it as a tool to get off and get the gunk out of our mental cogs. It also became a tool for punishment when Bubby’s anxiety got the best of him and made him misbehave.

For the most part, Bubby is pretty great. Sometimes, though, he gets anxious, sad, tired or hungry and he’ll start drinking/smoking too much, acting a fool in public and being a little shit in general. At the time, this behavior was happening multiple times a week and threatening to end our relationship. We tried talking, but that, along with everything else we tried, just didn’t work.

Choking him out definitely wasn’t my first choice, but it worked well and turned us both on. In combination with some re-worked meds, we got his behavior mostly in line. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the type of relationship where I could redden his ass as a preemptive measure. So, I still had to argue and fume and deal with his crazy until he did something that knocked him out of the funk. In the meantime, he would make my anxiety spike, send me into depressions and do everything possible to sabotage our relationship.

Because I knew – from firsthand experience – how hard it is to live and be sociable with anxiety and depression, I gave him time and assistance in getting his shit together. Regardless, he was pressing his luck far too often, and avoiding a Whammy was getting harder.

We kept discussing ways to help him: weed, meditation, stretching, alone time, more frequent orgasms, more punishment sessions, etc. We tried a few but no matter what, the rollercoaster of Bubby’s emotional state continued. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the inconsistency in Bubby’s behavior had something to do with our inconsistent power dynamic.

Since I have a very dominant personality, I had been trying to let the more submissive Bubby lead day to day in the relationship; as a result, we were both ending up anxious and stressed. When we found out that letting both of us drift into our default headspaces helped us both, we used it as a treatment. I figured that if we started taking that metaphorical medicine on a regular basis, we might be able to really fix this. 

The first couple times I floated the idea of a full-time D/s situation, Bubby dismissed it. To be honest, I wasn’t fully behind it in the beginning, but it was the obvious solution.

Bubby needed someone to take care of him, because he was failing to take care of himself. I needed someone to take care of to help keep me present and mentally clear. Even still, it took another month’s conversation and an incredibly productive acid trip before we both agreed to make our D/s puppy play dynamic a full-time gig. 

This first month of full-time D/s has had the best and longest stretches of good days since we met. My depression and anxiety are basically gone, and the frequency, intensity and duration of his tantrums have dropped off dramatically. It definitely hasn’t been all smooth, though; he’s still earning back my collar and ownership. Even still, the change has been large enough to make me – the unblinking realist – believe we might make this work long-term.

A full-time D/s relationship was definitely not what I imagined for myself, but it seems to be the dynamic that will help my current relationship thrive. While I admit my optimism has a couple asterisks, I’m happy to have gotten this far. I’m also incredibly excited about the prospect of spending eternity being able to freely – but justly – redden Bubby’s ass in the frequent event he needs it.