Kink, the last bastion to resist social stratification?

Remember the good old days when the attractive male doctor fell madly in love with his female nurse and after surmounting the necessary obstacles, she finally falls into his arms, after which they obviously married and lived happy ever after? Same thing happened to the elderly widower and his house keeper. Well dream on because increasingly that is the stuff of fairy tales.

More and more people are marrying into their own socio-economic class. Partners increasingly have comparably levels of education, income, future earning potential (yes that sounds as ghastly as it is) and often are of similar backgrounds. One highly trained doctor marries another, or perhaps her lawyer and low skilled workers increasingly do the same, though not always by choice. Not only does this break down the social fabric it also impedes people from climbing the social ladder. If you want  kids and are high up the ladder it is a good strategy. However since one's social class is often a poor indicator of the quality of one's genes, for society as a whole it is a bad deal.

Even those at the top of the social ladder often loose out. Not only does it limit people's partner choices in general, it can stand in the way of finding one's true love as well. In many things the heart is man's most unreliable indicator, but when it comes to choosing a spouse it is comparable to none. It filters out all the noise and focuses on what is truly important, a set of traits that cannot be defined by mere reasoning. It uniquely identifies that one trait that annoys the hell out of you (or so you think) as the one thing you cherish in her beyond everything else.

Spend a rainy afternoon browsing Fetlife and you'll notice how kinky couples are often more diverse in terms of social background than the general population. It would be great if the explanation for that is love, but most often it is lust that leads us astray. When it comes to kink, some people are so desperate to get their fix, they delude themselves into thinking they love someone, when it is really not the heart that does the thinking but that other major organ, 11 inches down south. If all of a sudden your partner stops being the supplier of your kink, would you still love her, or would you, after having gone through the motions, move on and find someone new to act as your fetish delivery system? So next time your slave says: "anything for mistress", realize that terms and conditions may apply. Please note I am an equal opportunity insulter: this statement holds true for both dommes and subs.

Personally I believe formal education is much less important than common sense. Intelligence tests support that. A shared outlook on life, similar tastes and interests are a much more meaningful guide, even if those tastes initially appear to elude us. Then again nobody ever said love is simple.

Why kinksters settle for less when it comes to love most likely boils down to limited choice and the dynamics of BDSM. Some years ago I estimated the number of people into BDSM by comparing the number of people on Fetlife to the number of people who joined Facebook. The number is abysmally small. Yes, sexual compatibility is important, but it is far from the only thing that makes a relationship.

When at five in the morning the central heating kicks in with a loud bang and your girl, who is still vast asleep, unwittingly pushes herself closer to you, while her legs search for yours, there is no amount of kink in the world that can compete with that. And that not only shows why social stratification is a bad thing but also why selecting your partner purely based on your sexual needs is an ill conceived idea.

For the record, I do not hate summers, I use an app to emulate the sound of the central heating kicking in :)