When Kink Stops Feeling Exciting: Understanding Habituation and How to Break the Cycle

Habituation is something that many people may consider dangerous to the health of the relationship, not just in vanilla relationships, but within the realm of kink as well.

First, what is habituation? As I’m sure many of you already know, habituation is the slow decline of response to an outside stimuli. For example, if you move into a house next to the airport, you may start off being frustrated by the noise of the planes, but as you continue to live there and your body begins to realize it’s perfectly safe, you stop hearing the noise as something that’s disturbing to you and it simply becomes part of the background of your life.

This sort of habituation can also start happening around things that generally perfectly safe. We become used to our partner being around us and therefore we may begin to take them for granted – which, in and of itself, is a type of habituation. We become used to the presence of our partner in our lives and our emotional response and excitement at seeing our partner may decrease over time as well. That doesn’t mean we love them any less, but we’ve become habituated to their presence in our lives so maybe, we stop writing them little love poems, or perhaps we’re not excited in the same way as we used to be when they walk through the door.

When it comes to kink, this sort of habituation can extend into play and sensation as well. One may not think that being spanked, or bound, or going through another roleplay can feel tired, but it most certainly can. I needle and blood bottom I know talked about how she realized something needed to change when getting needles through her vulva just felt like another Tuesday instead of something exciting. The pain wasn’t doing what had done for her in the past and she new that she needed to investigate herself, her kink, and her response to both.

Using Absence to Reignite Excitement in Kink and Relationships

Take a moment and think about the butterflies and the excitement you felt when you and your partner first started courting each other. Remember that thrill of seeing them for a date after a couple of days. That awe you would feel when you were in the bedroom together, the desire to explore and touch and kiss and feel and experience? Then you moved in together and suddenly they’re with you every day and at first, it’s all sex all the time because you couldn’t keep your hands off each other. Then, that started to slow down as life started happening around you. Friends to see, work to do, exhausting days. The sex becomes less frequent, less intentional, and may even begin to feel repetitive.

We can look at this saying as a way to de-habituate ourselves from the constant presence of our partner in our lives. If there’s a work trip or something they need to do that doesn’t include you, take that time to really feel their absence so that you can feel that excitement again upon seeing them. If you’re the one doing the traveling, take that time to really miss your partner. Not to pine after them, not to focus on the fact that you miss them, but to feel it and acknowledge it and let it ignite that excitement around seeing them again.

When we’re talking about kink, I think it’s important to mix up your activities so that they don’t become habitual and feeling like every other time. The desire to be pierced by needles and to partake in blood play didn’t vanish, but the activities had become regular. What my friend had enjoyed so much, now didn’t give the same thrill. Instead of throwing in the towel, she dug into it. She still fantasized about needles and blood, but her fantasies were different from the reality of it. How could she take some of these fantasies and bring them around to something that was more grounded in reality. If you’ve ever seen the movie Crimes of the Future by Croninberg, there’s a scene where the main character and his partner get sexual using an automated surgical device that cuts them open and closes them with advanced technology. While such things were impossible in the real world, those were the sorts of fantasies she was experiencing, so she sat down with her partner and came up with new ideas for their play. Instead of just doing the needles and play piercing, they got into artistic cutting, and then blood cupping. Now, they don’t perform the same sorts of scenes all the time, allowing the buzz from a new scene hold them over through the next all new scene and only revisiting scenes when they start to crave that sort of experience again.

By removing the activity from regular rotation, they were able to create an absence of it, in a manner of speaking, so that when they returned to it, it was still something that brought that same level of excitement.

How to Switch Up Your Kink Scenes to Beat Habituation

That doesn’t mean to try switching roles, unless it does for you…

Take the lesson from my friend and look at new ways to incorporate your kinks so that you don’t get bored with the same old things every time. If you enjoy CNC and always have a home-invasion scene that’s your go-to, maybe try something else entirely. A stranger on an airplane, or where you get taken to the back alley of a bar (all in part of the scene itself). A different sort of relationship to each other within the context of the scene.

If you like bondage and impact play, maybe combine them in a new way. Perhaps an interrogation scene where your Top has to extract information from you within a certain timeframe and the impact play becomes harder and more severe over the course of the roleplay (as always, make sure this is negotiated and you have your safe words ready).

If you’re part of a DD/lg or MD/lb dynamic, consider something different from what you’ve done before. Maybe you’ve done some teacher/student roleplay, or maybe you’ve done something involving coloring books. Look at new scenarios and possibilities that fit your dynamic. Think outside the box so that you’re not returning to the same scenario over and over. Maybe try something involving a roleplay with your partner’s favorite author and they get a surprise from them.

Breaking Habits

Habituation can slowly erode a relationship with the loss of excitement and stimuli around activities that you have done over and over for long periods of time. The only way to start breaking that cycle is to try new things. To separate yourselves from what you’ve done, to possibly even separate each other for a time, and find new ways to experience each other and your kinks. Just because you feel like you’ve gotten bored with being spanked, doesn’t mean you’ve gotten bored with it – it may mean that you need to find new scenarios in which you are spanked.