romance

My New Tattoo is Romantic as Hell 💖

Kate Sloan

It’s no secret that I love hearts, and pink and red things, and the whole lovecore aesthetic. I mean, I just wrote a whole blog post last week about pink-and-red outfits I devised to match a pink-and-red dildo… Suffice it to say, I’m a fan of these colors!

I think what draws me to the lovecore look even more than its pretty colors, though, is its emphasis on love and romance. They are really important themes in my life – I mean, I have a whole blog category dedicated to them! Love and romance have guided me toward many of my greatest joys and my happiest days – and not just because romance itself is fun and uplifting, but because crushes encourage growth!

If you are a person who experiences attraction (sexual, romantic, or otherwise), you can probably remember a time when you wanted to impress someone you were attracted to, or even just wanted to understand them more deeply – and in this effort, you researched a topic that was new to you, or consumed media you would’ve never stumbled across otherwise, or discovered a whole new side of your personality that you never knew existed. Whether or not our attractions ever “pan out” into “anything more” (which we can’t always control, anyway), they still pull us in the direction of who we want to become, and I think that’s fucking magical.

As we get older, every heartbreak and rejection can make it harder to keep pursuing love and connection. It seems scarier and scarier to go out into the world and take big, foolhardy risks with your heart – and gosh, wouldn’t it be so much easier to stay home on your sofa, numbing out with Netflix and living vicariously through other people’s loves? (If you feel called out, trust me, I’m calling myself out even more!)

It takes a concerted effort to push back against that impulse to self-isolate. Risk-aversion may be a prudent approach in finance or business, but it’s rarely the right impulse when it comes to human relationships, which inherently require some degree of risk. The ‘finding people to date’ part is risky and scary, the ‘actually going on dates’ part is risky and scary, and the ‘opening yourself up emotionally and physically to a new person’ part is definitely risky and scary… but when those risks pay off, it’s like winning the emotional jackpot.

Anyway, all of this has been on my mind for a long time, but especially since the pandemic kicked off. It’s never been easier to self-isolate. It’s never been easier to avoid relational risk. But I don’t want to do that. So I got a new tattoo to remind me: it’ll always be worth it to roll the dice on love.

My friend Addison Finch is an artist extraordinaire; you might know him as the creator of the current Dildorks album art, or the Making Magic album art, or his illustrations on the Funkit Toys Random Encounters sex dice, or any of the numerous other projects he’s done in the sex-positive sphere. He’s also a tattoo artist, so when he mentioned to me that he was going to be visiting my city and doing a guest spot at a local tattoo shop, I knew right away that I wanted some of his art on my skin!

I considered a few different possibilities, but kept coming back to an idea I had seen represented by various different illustrators over the years (including RubyRoller-Art, xPixelPerfect and Eidalfina): pink dice decorated with red hearts. To me, it was the perfect encapsulation of my current goals vis-à-vis love and romance: Roll the dice. Take a risk. See what happens.

After some discussions of layout and placement, Addison drew up a design in his own style for me to look at, and I loved it. He set to work tattooing it on me, while we chatted about life, love, kink, and art for a couple of hours. When I saw the completed ink on my arm, it felt right immediately – almost like it had always been there.

I’m not the bravest person in the world when it comes to love (or anything else). But I hope this tattoo will give me a kick in the pants when I need it, reminding me that love might hurt, and it might surprise me, and it might even blow up in my face – but it’s always, always worth rolling the dice on.

My Favorite Album is a Decade Old (& Absurdly Romantic)

Kate Sloan

It’s funny how falling down an internet rabbit hole can lead you to opportunities, people, and art that will later change your life.

That’s what happened to me with the Fort Christmas 5-song EP titled Feathers, way back in 2011. I was an occasional follower of Rock ‘n’ Roll Bride, a wedding blog for “alternative” brides. They posted an engagement photoshoot of a couple, Jeremy Larson and Elsie Flannigan (now Elsie Larson!), whose quirky, Wes Anderson-esque aesthetic I was immediately intrigued by. When I googled them to find out more, I stumbled upon this blog post by their photographer, who mentioned that Jeremy – a musician, songwriter, and music producer – had released an entire album all about his relationship with Elsie. As a diehard romantic, of course I clicked the link. And I promptly fell in love.

Feathers clangs and clamors right off the top, crashing into my headphones with instantly cheery 1960s-style instrumentals (every part performed by Jeremy, by the way). The opening song, “The Leave Behind,” tells the story of Elsie and Jeremy’s maybe-first date – hanging out with friends on New Year’s Eve, feeling a connection, but not sure yet what to do about it. (I make a point to play this song every year on December 31st, if I’m near a piano or a ukulele, because it just makes me so damn happy to do so.)

Though later in the album he’ll sing about long-term love, getting engaged to Elsie, and wanting a future with her, the first track sparkles like freshly-fallen snow as Jeremy sings about what it feels like to realize you may have just met your future spouse:

Everyone’s eyes are on the TV in the room
But my eyes are fixed on you, and they don’t stray
Because I know that this is the beginning of
The best years of my life
The first years of our life
Starting now
With you and I tonight
-Fort Christmas, “The Leave Behind“

I think the main reason this album struck me as hard as it did was that I was looking for, hoping for, wishing for that kind of love at the time. I was about to graduate from high school, and my relationships during those tumultuous years tended to be brief, surface-level, and unsatisfying. As I walked out into the wider world of adulthood, I sensed there was big big love waiting for me somewhere out there – and the lyrics and guitars and jubilant drums of Feathers felt like the musical embodiment of everything my heart ached for.

I had a relationship with this album that I’ve had occasionally with other songs and albums throughout my life, one of total and complete obsession, self-soothing by repetition. Maybe it’s a bipolar thing, or maybe my brain just latches onto certain music in a way that is slightly abnormal. In any case, before too long I had Feathers playing in my ears at almost all hours of the day. I’d slip my headphones on as I walked to school; I’d transcribe the songs’ words in my school notebooks in spare moments during math class; I’d take solo lunches, leaving my friends behind so I could wander around outdoors under the guise of “getting food” while actually just feeding my brain with gorgeous melodies. I struggled to explain to everyone in my life why these 5 songs were literally all I wanted to listen to anymore (and why I had to play them on loop on the shared family computer when my mom was trying to watch Grey’s Anatomy in the next room). These songs had come to feel like an integral part of my mental and emotional functioning. They felt like food, or water, or air.

At some point I even set Feathers as my alarm, so I could be blasted awake every day not by blaring beeps but instead by Jeremy Larson’s joy. Sometimes I put it on when I went to bed at night, too – though the album made me buzz with happiness so profoundly that I often found it hard to sleep when it was playing.

It’s useless to pretend
You’re not in love with your best friend
On nights like these, it’s fairly evident
-Fort Christmas, “Story Telling”

Two or three months into this Feathers-mania, I met my first serious boyfriend. He was a mild-mannered, good-hearted, goofy nerd from OkCupid, and although I’d had severe anxiety about dating cis men until that point, he ushered me into that world with unfathomable patience and care. (He also encouraged me to start this blog and faithfully cheered me on for years after I did, but that’s another story.) I began to fall in love for the first time.

The songs of Feathers, which are largely about NRE (New Relationship Energy), were the perfect backdrop for this era in my life. It was almost like they had been written for me to listen to at this time – or, more likely, listening to them so much had ushered circumstances into my life that could readily create the same feelings I conjured in my body and brain every time I listened. For the first couple months of our relationship, I kept accidentally calling my new boyfriend “Jeremy,” which was not his name – not because I would rather have been dating Jeremy Larson (my esteem for him has always been mostly limited to musical admiration), but because over my hours and hours of looped listening, his name had crept into my head as the one most associated with crushiness, romantic excitement, and love – and that’s how my boyfriend made me feel. (I’m sure I tried to explain this at the time, and I hope he took it as a compliment!)

I survived the worst night of my life
It went long, staggering 26 years strong
And you arrived to save me, just in time
A new light, morning light, and here we are together
-Fort Christmas, “Newbie“

I think what has stuck with me most about this album is the way it showed me what I find romantic. Or maybe it helped create my sense of what is romantic. I honestly could not fathom, at age 18, that anyone would ever love me enough to, say, write and record and produce an entire album about how much they loved me. I already had inklings that this type of creative effort impressed me, turned me on, and made me swoon (the enby ex who penned me love poems in scrappy zines; the saved voicemail of a girlfriend breathily serenading me), but this album clarified for me that those wishes weren’t just fantasies. People like that really existed somewhere out there.

That first serious boyfriend was a game developer, and during our relationship, he made games for me, like little digital interactive love notes. He also sketched portraits of me, took cute photos of me, cooked me meals, and wrote me beautifully effusive messages on special occasions. His love-borne creativity may not have manifested exactly like Jeremy Larson’s did when he wrote Feathers about Elsie, but that album had broadened my romantic psyche enough that I could see these gestures for what they were: deep, devoted love.

I still listen to Feathers a fair amount. In fact, pretty much whenever it crosses my mind for any reason, I pull it up on my phone and put it on. Even just hearing those opening drum beats makes my entire body relax – because these songs remind me of a time when I believed in and wanted love more than I believed in or wanted anything. And that’s a good feeling, even 10+ years and 5+ partners later. The contours of my heart would be different today if I hadn’t clicked that fateful link in 2011 – or if Jeremy Larson hadn’t picked up a guitar and thought, “I’m going to write some songs about the person I love.”

Here’s a promise I can keep:
I’ll never find another like you
We will stay together
Will you make a lucky man,
An honest man, a better man
For not allowing you to slowly slip away?
-Fort Christmas, “Engaged“

25 Non-Boring Things to Do on Valentine’s Day

Kate Sloan

A month ago, I walked into an upscale sex shop in New York and saw that it was festooned in hearts, red lingerie, and Hershey Kisses. “OH GOD, NOT THIS AGAIN,” I shouted into the romantic void. How is it that I’ve been writing about sex and relationships professionally for nearly 8 years and Valentine’s always sneaks up on me?!

My beef with Valentine’s Day is mostly that it focuses on all the wrong things – showy, insubstantial displays of love, rather than the admirable daily work of keeping a relationship functional and fun – while making people feel terrible if they can’t afford exorbitantly priced roses/chocolates/dinner, or if they don’t have a partner to lavish attention on. I firmly believe love is worth celebrating, but some of the conventional ways of doing that have gotten awfully stale!

With that in mind, here are 25 ideas for Valentine’s activities you could do with your sweetheart that don’t make me yawn. These are intended for couples, but singles, please feel free to do ’em with a close friend or a fuckbuddy – or read my Valentine’s suggestions for the uncoupled. Now let’s get romantic!

Go see a comedy show. Forever one of my favorite date-night activities. Laughing together is good for your relationship and your neurochemistry! (If you’re in Toronto, my picks are Catch23 and Black & Funny; if you’re in New York, the Valentine’s edition of Tinder Live is a must-see.)

Watch a decidedly unromantic (or unconventionally romantic) movie. Perhaps at an actual movie theatre, if you can swing it. (If you’re in Toronto, the Revue Cinema is screening the 2001 slasher film Valentine as part of their Drunken Cinema series.) Here are some of my top picks: The F Word (known in some countries as What If), He’s Just Not That Into You, Her, Misery, Brokeback Mountain.

Outline your next creative collaboration. Is there anything hotter than working on a project with your brilliant partner?! Sit down and figure out if you’d like to collab on anything soon, whether it’s a tiny undertaking like devising a new dinner recipe or a massive hoopla like writing a book together.

Go dancing. Yes, even if you’re “bad at it.” Sweating together is oddly fun and bonding (I removed “exercise together” from this list in favor of something less preachy, but the point stands), and it can be surprisingly sexy to see the way your paramour moves on a dance floor – even if they’re charmingly awkward (or you are)!

Go to a strip club. Traditional vanilla/monogamous wisdom holds that you “shouldn’t” find other people sexy if you’re in a relationship – and while this type of traditionalism works for some people (I would imagine very few), IMO it’s fake news. Take your partner to the best strip club in town, tip generously, and make some mental notes about how you could best give your sweetheart a stellar striptease later in a more private environment…

Make each other’s gifts instead of buying them. I’m not a crafty person (and my songwriting habit isn’t an on-demand type of thing) so I’ve never been very good at this, but hey, you might. There’s something so romantic about creating a gift rather than choosing it off a shelf, whether it’s an embroidery of an inside joke you share, a hand-painted wooden figurine of their favorite animal, or a necklace assembled from crystals they think are pretty. (If you want to commission a queer trans artist to paint you and your beau, I highly recommend C. Murphy, who did this rad portrait of me and mine!)

Dine in. I don’t mean that as an oral sex joke, although… that too. Seriously, a homemade Valentine’s dinner would be so lovely, whether you make it together (you don’t truly know someone until they’ve been your sous-chef for a night) or the more cooking-inclined one of you throws something together while the other watches lovingly. Or does something actually useful like making drinks or setting the table.

Draw all over each other’s bodies. My friend Caitlin is very into this practice, and I once volunteered to get drawn on at a party she held. You might be surprised by how sensual it is to feel marker strokes feathering along your skin (or, if you’re a masochist like me, a sharp pen digging into you) – and certainly, it’s nice to be focused on like a work of art.

Do drugs together. Famously, there’s an OkCupid question from the early days of the site that asks, “Do you think drug use with your partner can be a romantic activity?” I was a firm No when I was straight-edge, but having eased into a more drug-accepting lifestyle, I now think it totally can be. Moving through altered states together can be a bonding ordeal, like climbing a mountain or running a marathon. It doesn’t much matter if it’s a drug you’ve done together lots of times or one neither of you have ever done – as long as you’re risk-aware and prepared for any potential mishaps, a shared trip could be a super sweet and intimate experience.

“Fuck first,” as Dan Savage often advises. Sex when you’re overstuffed (or overdrunk) from dinner is not always the most fun. Why not get it on before you leave for your romantic rendezvous? You can always fuck again later.

Talk about your goals and how you can help each other achieve them. Self-improvement power-couple alert! New Year’s is traditionally the time to talk about such things, but hey, collaborative goal-pursual is romantic, so why not discuss it now?

Devise a relationship check-in. This is a series of questions you can ask each other, in a formulaic way, once a week/month/whatever works, to determine which areas of your relationship are working and which need a tune-up. It can also simply help you become more present and aware of the things about your relationship that you’re grateful for. (Here are the questions me and my partner use.)

Take sexy pictures of each other. You don’t have to be a master photographer to capture your sweetie lookin’ fine; you will catch different aspects of them in your lens than most people would, just by virtue of being their partner. This would also be a great opportunity to pull out those mesh briefs/seamed stockings/”fuck-me” heels you’ve been hoarding!

Do karaoke, either at home (check YouTube or Spotify for tracks) or at a local bar that offers it. What a goofy good time.

Record a podcast together. You don’t even have to release it (although, if you do, Soundcloud is a good spot to host a one-off) – just sit down and record a conversation about your relationship, or a passionate interest you share, or the general idea of romance, or whatever. I always love having tangible records of earlier periods of my relationships and audio documentation can be particularly salient!

Go to an arcade or board games café. (There is no beating Snakes & Lattes here in Toronto, IMO.) Hell, maybe trouncing your nerdy love at Scrabble or Skee-Ball will inspire them to “punish” you later, in bed…!

Have a staycation. Book a hotel and read some travel guides for your city to find out which landmarks, restaurants, bars, and other miscellanea are most recommended for visitors. Love can make your mundane reality feel fresh again, and staycations can do that, too!

Make a Clone-a-Willy. I can’t think of much that’s more romantic than gifting your partner a fuckable facsimile of your genitals.

Spend time in silence together. You know, I used to believe that lapsing into long silences around your partner was a bad thing, because it meant you didn’t have anything to say to each other anymore – but it can be a nice thing, too, sometimes. Especially if you and your partner are both introverts and/or homebodies, maybe the best Valentine’s gift you can give each other is a quiet night at home, each separately reading or writing or crafting or meditating or whatever you want, together in your silent sovereignty.

Ask each other the “36 questions to fall in love” from Arthur Aron’s study. This list of questions was designed to foster intimacy between strangers, but you can learn a lot from going through it with an established partner as well.

Issue each other a day-long challenge. Can your girlfriend stay off Twitter all day if you remind her how unhappy it makes her (and keep her distracted with more fun activities)? Can your boyfriend stop complaining so much if that’s something he wants to stop? Can your enbyfriend write 3,000 words in a day, if you sit beside them sipping coffee and reading and offering moral support?

Play Truth or Dare. Yes, like teenagers at a suburban basement rager. It’s a classic for a reason! Here’s an online version if you need help coming up with prompts.

Do tarot readings for each other. Even if you think tarot is bullshit, this can be fun. The internet is chock full o’ sites that will tell you how to position cards in a reading and what each card means. You can pontificate on how you think the cards you pull are indeed relevant to your partner’s life – you probably know them best, after all!

Roleplay as a conventional vanilla couple. Oh, go ALL OUT, honey. Flowers. Chocolates. Restaurant reservations. Chaste pecks on the lips. Confessions of “I love you” and “You’re my soulmate” while having sex under the covers in the dark. Sometimes there is nothing more perverted than pretending you’re not perverted.

Read each other love poems. They don’t have to be Shakespearian sonnets. They can be raunchy, like this fave of mine by Richard Brautigan: “The sweet juices of your mouth / are like castles bathed in honey. / I’ve never had it done so gently before. / You have put a circle of castles / around my penis and you swirl them / like sunlight on the wings of birds.”

 

What are your favorite unconventionally romantic activities?

Obsessed & Distressed: Reflections on Rabid Love

Kate Sloan

I learned what love felt like from someone I couldn’t bring myself to love.

She was a close friend in high school whose harmless puppy-love toward me darkened into something deeper over our sophomore year. Try as I might, and try though I did, I couldn’t conjure the caliber of crush in return that she shone on me like fervent floodlights. Love can’t be forced, and she knew that, but I’m sure it made her sad anyway. I’m sure it also made her sad that we had a sexual relationship for over a year that remained only one-sidedly romantic. Look, tenth-graders don’t always make the most rational decisions.

I’ve spent ten years processing that relationship, and I guess she probably has too. We’ve made amends for the ways we fucked up, each trying to squeeze the other into an ill-fitting box. But what’s stuck with me most from that relationship was how obsessed with me she was.

(A note worth noting: this post will throw around the words “obsessed” and “obsessive” in their colloquial senses, and not the sense used in mental health diagnostics – although I and at least some of the people I’m describing have mental illnesses that feature some degree of invasive thought-loops one could consider obsessions.)

My tenth-grade paramour wrote me long emails and romantic poems. She kept up with my foibles on Facebook and Twitter, both relatively new and uncommonly-adopted technologies at that time. She mined me for minute trivia, plumbing my lore like I was my own cinematic universe. After a while, she knew everything from my favorite flavors of ice cream to my top 5 favorite Regina Spektor songs to my darkest fears. When our English teacher gave our class carte blanche to do a deep-dive on a topic of our choosing for our final project, she did her project on… me. Those documents are still tucked away in my Google Drive somewhere, curious little remnants of a love that once was.

It is, of course, flattering to be someone’s top priority and main focus – assuming this attention doesn’t frighten you or make you uncomfortable. But I think the reason her love comforted me was that it felt familiar. My crushes had always taken on a similarly obsessive tone: when I pined over pseudo-celebrities of the local comedy or theatre scene, I Googled them late into the night, memorized their answers to interview questions, gave them more real estate in my brain than perhaps they deserved. So when I felt that similarly laser-focused love being aimed at me, I recognized it for the love that it was. Though she was the first person ever to fall in love with me, it wasn’t hard for me to believe or accept; I knew what it was because it looked how I expected it to look. It looked like how I would love someone, if I ever did.

Almost a decade later, the shadow of that old love filtered through my consciousness again – because I fell in love with someone who wasn’t obsessed with me. And it hurt.

I wonder, in retrospect, if I was drawn to him because he was everything I’ve never been able to be: chill, cool, aloof. Aside from initiating our relationship by asking me out on Twitter, his expressions of enthusiasm toward me were scant. Maybe that just made me want him more. (Is this a lesson we all have to learn at some point? That the chase is fun but also exhausting? I hope I’m done learning that one.)

I felt – to partly dilute a word that maybe I shouldn’t be diluting – gaslighted. He told me over and over again that he liked me, loved me, wanted to be with me, but his behavior was comparatively devoid of evidence he wanted me around. He’d ignore my texts for hours at a time, neglect to keep his promises, back out of plans at the last minute, and pull away coldly when I wanted closeness and warmth. I don’t know that he was doing this intentionally, as the “gaslighting” label would suggest – but the net effect was, regardless, a sense of emotional whiplash. I kept reminding myself to listen to his words, because they no doubt were truer than my anxiety-warped perception of his actions – but actions, as you well know, tend to speak louder. His were drowning out his words.

I brought this to his attention only once, and came to regret it. We were looping the same argument we’d been having for basically our entire relationship: I resented that he wouldn’t give me the assurances I felt I needed, and he resented that I needed them. Grasping at straws, I tried to explain: “It’s hard for me to recognize love as love when the person isn’t kind of obsessed with me, because when I like someone, I want to know everything about them, I want to see them as much as possible, and I think about them almost all the time.”

Some part of me hoped he would counter with what I wanted to hear: that he did think about me constantly, that he was obsessed with me; how could I not have noticed? Instead, he replied, “I don’t really get obsessed with people. I never have. That’s just not how I operate.”

Wise and level-headed people in my life, like my therapist and my best friend, would probably tell me to just accept a lower level of attention and devotion from partners. Just because someone doesn’t pine over you nonstop, they might tell me, doesn’t mean they’re blasé about you. If you broaden your view of what love can look like, you expand your ability to be loved, to feel loved.

That’s true, I guess. But I wanted love I didn’t have to do cognitive backflips to understand. I wanted love that was more joy, less compromise. I wanted love that mirrored my own, that matched me in my wild zeal. So when that boy broke up with me, although I was crushed, part of me was relieved. It felt more peaceful, more pleasant, to know for sure that no one loved me romantically, than to beg for scraps of affection that never quite felt like enough.

When I met my now-boyfriend, then-Twitter-crush, one of the first things he told me about himself is that he’s obsessive. I thrilled at the possibility of familiarity.

It didn’t take long for me to discover how right he was, how core this quality is to who he is. Intrepid Googling and curious research have left him well-informed on a broad range of topics. He can tell you the top 5 best cocktail bars in any neighborhood in New York, off the top of his head. He geeks out about etymology, psychology, philosophy. Once, during a conversation over drinks about whether or not our D/s dynamic is technically 24/7, he said, “That reminds me of this quote from SM 101…” and pulled it up on his phone in seconds. I swooned.

As we got to know each other, he’d casually reference old videos of mine, tweets, blog posts. He got embarrassed each time I called him out on it, backpedaling and blushing audibly over the phone, but my screeches of “How do you know that?!” were never accusatory – only excited. For me, combing through a crush’s internet presence is par for the course; it had been years since anyone had made me feel spotlighted that way in return.

He commissioned me a custom perfume based on a list of preferences he cobbled together from research. He devoured my sex toy reviews so he’d know what I like to be fucked with, and worked his way through my podcast so he’d know how I like to be fucked. When he sends me flowers or brings me treats, his selections are educated guesses – or sometimes, exactly the right thing.

The more I think about it, the more I doubt that “obsessive” is the right word. The essence of romance, and indeed of love, is focusing on your paramour: giving them your attention, putting effort into them, demonstrating your enthusiasm for them over and over. That sharp passion is what was missing from so many of my past relationships, which is why it feels especially good in this latest one. I spent years making desperate excuses for aloof partners, twisting their apathy until it looked like love. I settled over and over for paltry affection that barely warmed my skin, let alone my insides. I gave up on thinking of myself as someone worthy of obsession, even as I continued to furtively memorize my crushes’ likes and dislikes by the dim glow of my laptop in the dead of night.

I’m so happy now to be loved in the way I’ve always craved, and so happy to have discovered that love doesn’t have to be a compromise at its core. Sometimes it can just be exactly what you want.

Hearts, Flowers, & Bruises: Valentine’s Day Ideas For Kinksters

Kate Sloan

Look, I get it. Valentine’s Day is kinda bullshit. BUT. It is also an opportunity to celebrate love. We could always use more of that. Whether you’re dating one person or a bunch of people or none at all, whether you’re vanilla or kinky or somewhere in between, you deserve to feel lifted up by love.

But frankly, a lot of Valentine’s Day activities guides are vanilla as fuck! So I’ve put together this list of suggestions for how you and your dom or sub can celebrate this weird fake holiday together. Hope this sparks your pervy imagination!

Mark the submissive with a heart. There a bunch of ways to do this. You could give them a thorough spanking with a heart-shaped or heart-emblazoned impact toy. You could use a stencil and a hairbrush to spank a heart onto their skin. You could brand them with ice. Or you could keep it simple and just draw a heart on their skin with a red pen, perhaps somewhere secret where prying eyes can’t see. This is a cute way to literally mark your sub with love.

Get a collar (or put more stuff on the one you have). Some consider a collar a pretty big sign of commitment, so maybe this is a bit cheesy, like getting engaged on Valentine’s Day. But it’s also very sweet. You could pick one out together online or at a sex shop, or go get one custom-made, or make one yourselves. If the sub already has a collar, maybe you could add something new to it, like a collar tag or a charm.

Read each other kinky love stories, to remind you of just how romantic D/s can be. I like Mollena and Georg’s story, sappy stuff from Sinclair, and you can also read, um, anything in the “Super Sleepy” tag on my site. Slash fanfiction also works a treat for this purpose!

Do an elaborate roleplay. I’ve found few things more romantic than doing what was essentially a low-key public improv game with my partner, as part of a kink scene. Complex roleplays like this can be hard to plan and to make time for, which is why Valentine’s might be the ideal day to do one – it’s already a day dedicated to your love, so you might as well go whole-hog.

Define “romantic sex” together, and then have some. Bullshit concepts of “romantic sex” in the media – think rose petals, scented baths, and Barry White – often position themselves as one-size-fits-all when they totally aren’t. Kinksters’ idea of romance can be quite different! Have a chat about which elements of sex and kink feel truly romantic to you both, and then combine all those elements into a scene. (I think mine would involve wax play, a thuddy over-the-knee spanking, face-slapping until I cry, and a lot of cuddly aftercare.)

Write each other kinky love letters. Of course, you could write traditional love letters, too. But I’ve enjoyed kink-infused writing assignments in the past, and you might too! The dom can tell the sub to write them a note about their favorite past scenes, their fantasies, or what they appreciate about their partner’s dominance. The dom can write a “progress report” or “report card” for the sub, or a loquacious list of all the ways their sub makes their life easier and better. Beautiful stationery and good pens are strongly encouraged!

Go on a D/s-tinged dinner date. I’ve written before about how to do this. All the fancy, romantic restaurants will be packed on V-Day, so it’s an especially perfect opportunity to play with power exchange on your date. Outfit selection, table manners, mid-date tasks to complete in the bathroom… There’s so much fun to be had here!

Incorporate a stuffed animal into an ageplay scene. Cute little stuffed bunnies and teddy bears holding hearts are everywhere around this time. If you are a perv of the ageplay persuasion like me, you could get one and incorporate it into a scene – maybe the little has to get themselves off by grinding against the toy, or they hold onto it for comfort while enduring a difficult spanking.

Visit (or rent) a dungeon. The Ritual Chamber in Toronto, for example, can be rented by the hour, and it contains enough implements and themed rooms to keep you busy, whatever your fantasy may be.

Watch a kinky movie. If a snuggly Netflix-and-chill date is more your speed than a night out, there’s still lots of ways to make it kinky. Of course, you’ve got classics like 50 Shades (ugh) and Secretary (…okay), but I would also recommend Red Eye (psychological manipulation galore!) and Shortbus (the orgy and threesome scenes are divine). My mom the cinemaphile would be mad if I didn’t mention her fave sexxxy movie here, Blue Velvet, which supposedly contains a fisting scene!

Ruin some red lingerie. You can usually get good deals on novelty lingerie around this time, so it might be fun to buy some cheap lacy stuff, wear it under your clothes for an outing, and then have your dom bite/cut/rip it off you once they get you alone. Lots of people have this fantasy but rarely get to actually experience it; now’s as good a time as any!

Try a new kink together. I’ve found few things more exhilarating and romantic than barrelling head-on into a new kink activity with someone I adore. Much like riding a roller coaster or seeing a scary movie with your beloved, there’s an element of fear tempered with the comfort of being with someone you trust. Watersports, wax play, and feminization are some recent somewhat-scary faves I tried for the first time with my partner, for example.

Make dinner into a service task. If the sub is culinarily inclined, perhaps they would like to throw together a home-cooked meal, complete with intricate table-setting and elegant candles. It can be very satisfying, as a submissive person, to make something (food-wise or otherwise) that perfectly suits your dominant’s specific tastes.

Play with “love addiction.” This kink is particularly a trope within the hypno community; you can use hypnosis to make someone feel like they’re falling deeper in love with you and can’t get enough of you. (Proceed with caution and with lots of negotiation beforehand, obviously!) A skilful hypnotist could even set it up so the sub feels a little hit of love every time they take a sip of their drink at dinner, for example, or every time they overhear the phrase “Valentine’s Day.”

Get (and/or give) a massage. Maybe the dom’s a little achy from all that paddling and flogging, and could use some firm hands to work out those kinks, so to speak. Maybe the sub is sore from last week’s predicament bondage scene and needs to be kneaded into putty. A professional couple’s massage would be a super romantic gift from one of you to the other – and, as a bonus, you’ll both be extra limber and relaxed afterward, ready to return to the high-intensity pervy activities you love so much.

Chocolates… with a twist. Whatever Valentine-y treats you pick up at the store can be used as rewards in a kink scene, you devious genius. Maybe the sub gets a chocolate for each shoe they shine; maybe they get one when they complete a series of math problems while their dom goes down on them; maybe they just get a bunch as aftercare treats once they’ve taken a thorough beating. Aww.

Use roses as a spanking implement. This is a much kinkier way of sprinkling rose petals all over your bed! Just be careful of the thorns, okay? Unless you’re into that…

 

What are your favorite romantic kink activities?

 

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