Yup you heard right.
After sorting through my feelings and figuring out what I wanted or didn't want, what mattered and what didn't, it occurred to me that I didn't miss BIKSS the boyfriend. I missed BIKSS the Daddy. As he himself said in the face-to-face we had last night - "I wasn't very much of a boyfriend was I?"
And indeed he wasn't. Let's face it, it's not like I ever thought we were going to walk down the aisle and live a blissfully 24/7 D/s life spankingly ever after or anything of that sort.
It was always just what it was. So if you remove the D/s bit, there really wasn't much by way of a traditional emotionally co-dependent vanilla relationship. It worked because I depended on the dynamic. And I think he did / does too.
And so we have come to the conclusion (or I have, and he agrees) that what I really want is a Daddy and not a boyfriend. I've often said that I wasn't interested in having someone come into my life (and home) and messing up what I've set up for myself. (My vanilla friends insists I have a fear of commitment.)
How did we get here then? I suppose from the very beginning I knew I wanted to be a sub - at that time the only thing I knew about the lifestyle was from a TiH website I had read which made such an impact on me that it was all I could think about for a week! I told him so during that first week after we ended up in the sack together. (Ok that was just lust. And neither of us had any romantic notions about that first time.) Mostly he was trying to save me from being stupid about the fellas I was falling in love with (the irony right?) - saviour complex maybe?
I reckon we both had no idea what it was that was missing from our lives and what the draw to each other was. Now that we are better acquainted with BDSM / TTWD vocabulary and schema, it is kinda easy to see that what we were looking for were partners to complement our respective Dom and sub selves. And the only way we knew how was to first engage in a traditional relationship and incorporate the kink within it.
I think we're better equipped now to be able to handle just the dynamic without needing the boyfriend/girlfriend portion of it. There need be no proclamations of romantic love, promises of happily ever after, or anything of the sort. Of course there will be some emotional co-dependency, but I think it'll be the kind I can handle.
