Aaron’s word of inspiration this week is vanilla.

“Not interested in vanilla”

This is a common sentence, in a number of various forms, that I am seeing on dating profiles this past week.

Last weekend, I had scratched my eye so in order to cheer myself up (it actually did the opposite but whatever) on Sunday night I opened up some dating apps to start dating again. My eye needed a week of medication (aka no makeup) so it was the perfect time to start looking and chatting for long-weekend dates.

If you read my post from yesterday about me sabotaging my own romantic relationships, you’d know that I am finally settling on what I know will make me happy and not trying to meet the expectations of others. So I have set my preferences to reflect that, and it means that I am getting a few older gentlemen hitting my suggestions. Which is fine, I like older men. A little age gap doesn’t scare me, especially not at my age of 35.

But what is shocking is that a lot of the profiles now are like “not vanilla” “if you’re vanilla swipe left” like way to shut down people haha! I used to consider myself very “vanilla” in the sexual experience department. But after some exploration and online relationships, I don’t think so anymore. It might take me a little bit of time to warm up to a person and start to explore those boundaries with them, but the instant that a guy has that on his profile I know that he’s not the type to actually take that time to get to know someone and their preferences and how they fit with his own.

And perhaps sharing just a tad too much, if you’re wanting to be a dominant in a relationship, it’s not just about the power dynamic. It’s about helping your submissive to explore their own boundaries in a safe and trusting way while you take charge of that.

I took a chance on one guy who had some similar message on his profile back in January. He was cute and my type, and I’m all for a strong male presence in my relationships. I’ve been trained a bit and can fit into that quite well. We talked about boundaries and the like, and we talked for all of one evening before he was blocked. It was late and I was trying to go to sleep so I said “ok say goodnight so I can go to sleep” and he kept talking and asking questions. So I repeated myself “hey I really need to get some sleep so I’m going to go, say goodnight” and he’s all “I say what I want when I want, I’m not ready for us to stop talking” and even just that simple statement was enough for me to know that he was not going to be anything that I’d want to continue on with at all.

There is a fine line between being “not vanilla” and being a huge poop. So now, if a profile says anything along the lines of not wanting “vanilla” then I just simply pass it on by, even if I’m up for not vanilla.