Convergent Evolution

I've been going on a few dates with a guy (whom I shall call The Italian). Recently we fooled around (first time I've done that with someone not from college), and it threw into stark relief that what I'm used to is not necessarily "normal" (or at least common).

He was frustratingly vanilla, for one thing. At this point, my first reaction when I get excited is to bite. Hard. While he didn't freak out or anything, he did make it clear that wasn't his bag. And he's ticklish, which means I can't caress him where/how I normally caress people. So what the hell am I supposed to do? Plain ol' making out for 15 or 30 minutes straight is boring. :/

Also he didn't bite me much, and when he did it wasn't nearly hard enough (despite my encouraging). He handled my tits way too gently, and he didn't pull my hair for long enough or hard enough. This left me feeling frustrated.

In the past, when I've sensed that my partner wasn't going to dominate me, I'd turn the tables and start getting aggressive. (Like many animals, I can sense weakness. >:3) But, for reasons mentioned above, I couldn't really express any domliness I was feeling. So there wasn't really any power dynamic going at all; it was just some wishy-washy blob.

Maybe if I'd been intimate with more people before my discovery of kink, this would be more familiar to me. But Master was the first person I ever had sex with, and by some stroke of luck all my friends in college (or at least all the ones I wound up having sex with) are kinky to some degree. So that's basically all I know, and I know that's shaped my desires. I imagine it's gone something like this:

1) I have a vague, undefined interest in kink.
2) I love/trust the people I'm with, so I try it with them.
3) Any enjoyment I get intrinsically from kink is reinforced/amplified by my positive feelings for my partners.
4) Because I enjoyed it, I do it more.
5) My enjoyment is once again reinforced/amplified by my partners.
6) Repeat steps 4 and 5.

If I were in a different environment when I first started having sex, I imagine my sexuality would have evolved differently. And now I am in a different environment, and I'm finding myself ill-adapted to it. I can't just assume that everyone I make out with is into leaving bruises.

So now I'm starting to wonder if I should, like, screen for kinkiness when meeting potential dates. Because I'm pretty certain that plain vanilla stuff isn't going to do it for me anymore, and while The Italian is an awesome guy and all, if we're not going to click sexually then I don't know what I should do. :/

(Also: His dick was definitely not the size/shape/etc. that I'm used to. I am suddenly apprehensive about having sex with men other than Master because I had forgotten that he's not typical in that department and I'm worried I won't enjoy anything other than his penis profile.)