An Ideal Husband

I’ve been wanting to write about this topic for some time, but it’s a difficult one to handle. The question: Is it possible to be into gaining/encouraging and have a relationship with a guy who isn’t?

I know this is a hot button topic for a lot of guys with our kink—most gainers/encouragers in relationships right now are partnered to guys who aren’t into gaining/encouraging (who we’ll call “civilians”). So I’ll tread carefully.

The answer to the aforementioned question is no. And yes. And maybe. Truth be told, the answer is different for every guy. It’s entirely dependent on what you want and what you’re willing to give up.


THE TROUBLE WITH DATING CIVILIANS

Expansion is wonderful for the camaraderie it breeds, but it’s also a nifty fishbowl. Through heart-to-heart conversations and casual observation, one can walk away with a lot of fresh insight about our community. A number of guys came this year with their civilian boyfriends and it was great to see so many fellas who just wanted to support their partners and learn more about their kink.

After the event, I was chatting with one a gainer friend who said the event helped his civilian partner understand his interest in all this much better.

One anecdote was particularly telling. The two of them had been to plenty of bear runs in the past and were accustomed to spending time in a pool with lots of big, hairy men. At the bear runs, his civilian partner recounted, guys would often float by and grab his dick. Expansion was much the same in terms of look—big, hairy men hanging out in the pool. And the guys certainly floated by and groped him. But not one guy grabbed his dick. They were all aiming a little further north: They wanted to rub his belly. It was then that his partner began to understand just how “different” their sexualities were.

That story somewhat illustrates the point I made in my first post “We Are Freaks/We Are Awesome”—the thing that makes us gainers and encouragers so different from other dudes is not the type of guys we want, but rather the kind of sex and intimacy we want with them. Gaining is really about what’s in our heads, and being in a relationship with a guy who doesn’t have the same thing going on in his head can be… well, complicated.

Some argue that sex shouldn’t be the most important thing in a relationship. That’s true. But let’s be honest, sex is still important.

There is a fundamental obstacle in any gainer-civilian relationship: your civilian partner will never be the center of your sexual universe. Yes there may be a very strong attraction and even some chemistry. But at the end of the day, you and he want rather different things between the sheets. It’s a problem that can be more easily overcome in the short-term, but tends to create tension and conflict in the long-term.

We discussed some of the short-term fixes during one of the seminars at Expansion. Some gainer/encouragers elect to keep their desires in their head, playing mental acrobatics in bed to make things work without freaking out their partners. Some civilian partners try “co-opting” gaining, meaning they play along, say the things their boyfriend wants to hear and maybe even put on some weight. And some guys choose to open up their relationships and meet their needs with other men.

All of these tactics help gainers and encouragers to cope. They work, to a degree, but none of them solves that fundamental problem: Your partner isn’t the center of your sexual universe. And shouldn’t he be all that—and more?

Now that conclusion is based on the assumption that gaining/encouraging is important to your sexuality. For some guys, like myself, it is. For others, it might not be. So it’s critical to be honest and evaluate just how important all this is before deciding your own answer.


ARE YOU A G1 OR A G6? IT MATTERS.

Just like the Kinsey scale for sexuality, there is a sort of gainer scale for us as well (no, not that kind of scale… get your mind out of the gutter people!) This kink isn’t the same for everyone—many of us have different interests and fantasies—and the degree to which it impacts our sexuality varies widely.

Can’t reach climax without some kind of physical or mental stimulation relating to gaining, bellies or some similar interest? You’re probably a Gainer 6.

Do you only think about these kinds of things every once in a while to get off, and otherwise have normative sexual desires or other paraphilia? You’re more of a Gainer 1.

Most of us probably fall in the spectrum somewhere between those two extremes.

Knowing where you are on that scale will help you to answer for yourself whether you should be in a relationship with a civilian. This is the time for total self-honesty. How much of your sexuality is gaining/encouraging? Do you think about it every time you masturbate? And no, it doesn’t “count” if you have normative sex with a guy, but are thinking about gainer/encourager fantasies the whole time.

If this is all just one small facet of your sexuality, then perhaps a civilian relationship could work for you provided your other sexual needs were met. If it’s a big part of who you are, you may want to think about the feasibility of making a civilian relationship work—and I mean really work—in the long term.


WHY SETTLE?

In the interest of full disclosure, I’d probably place myself as a Gainer 5. This kink is pretty well embedded into my sexuality. It’s a critical aspect of what I want in sex and even in a relationship. While I wouldn’t entirely rule out a relationship with someone who’s not into gaining/encouraging, I don’t think that scenario is very likely. I’d need to be convinced that he was not only OK with it all, but could also engage it on a certain level. And even then I’d still have reservations.

When all is said and done I want a partner who—in addition to being a great person—is the center of my sexual universe; and who places me at the center of his. I don’t want a partner who needs to think about someone else, or some other fantasy, to be intimate with me. And he deserves the same. I don’t want a relationship that requires us to sleep with other men to fulfill our deepest desires. I want one where we not only share our deepest desires with each other—we revel in them.

Am I asking too much?

Perhaps, but when it comes to “the one,” why should we settle? Shouldn’t we try for what we really want? I know a lot of guys can get caught up in the numbers (there aren’t that many gainer/encouragers in this world!) and feel trapped by those limits.

I remain optimistic, but that’s a topic for next week’s posting.