#kink

Love letters to a unicorn is a blog covering kink, power exchange, and sex from the perspective of a submissive or bottom. It provides sex toy reviews and a vetted list of resources as well.

Rebecca Blanton

Nov 6, 2018
6 min

Topping From the Bottom

I can’t believe I haven’t written a blog post on topping from the bottom! How could I be so remiss of addressing a topic which comes up often in sub group discussions? Ah well… here is my take on the issue. Topping from the bottom is when a submissive tries to control the scene in various ways. This can be giving explicit directions during a scene, setting exacting constraints prior to a scene, refusing to do activities which are not on a hard or soft limit list, or other sim

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Rebecca Blanton

Sep 27, 2018
10 min

10 Things Everyone Can Learn from Kink

One of the most fortuitous events in my life was discovering the kinky world at about the same time I started puberty. It provided me with a buffer from the shaming, consent violating, controlling norms of our predominant culture. I didn’t realize how much pain I was protected from growing up kinky until much later in life. Thirty years down the road, I look back and can honestly say, regardless of what activities you actually enjoy doing in bed kink culture can teach you a f

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Rebecca Blanton

Sep 1, 2018
6 min

How to Love Your Anxious Partner

Living with anxiety is a bitch. We all experience anxiety at some point in our lives. However, lots of folks live with anxiety as part of a clinical disorder or health condition. In the U.S., 18 percent of adults (over 40 million of us) live with clinical anxiety. This persistent and excessive worrying is difficult on the person with anxiety as well as on the people who love them. Anxiety can interfere with relationships and with a person’s sex life. Worrying about how you lo

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Rebecca Blanton

Aug 21, 2018
9 min

Negotiation 101 for Subby Types

We talk a lot about negotiation in the kink scene. Negotiating what you will and will not do, what you want and what your partner(s) want is kind of kink 101. Most writing addresses negotiation either from a global perspective (e.g., tips for people on all sides of the slash) or as a “how to get what you want from your partner” perspective. There is less information about how to negotiation from the position of a submissive. That, dear reader, is why this post is here! DON’T’

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Rebecca Blanton

Jul 12, 2018
5 min

Sexual Healing (part 2)

When I was in one of my basic psychology courses in undergrad, the professor described sublimation with the following example. Say you have someone who really likes to hit and beat up people. This is not an acceptable impulse in most of society. So he chooses to pursue a career as a professional boxer. He takes his desire to be violent and to hit people and sublimates that desire by channeling it into a professional career. We can’t really talk about BDSM/kink and healing wit

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Rebecca Blanton

Jun 27, 2018
5 min

Sexual Healing (part 1)

The theme of healing through kink has come up repeatedly in both my reading and real life a lot lately. For me, this is a touchy subject. I know from first hand experience BDSM can be very healing. I have also seen too many people try to sublimate issues or repress feelings through sex leading to very unhealthy outcomes. Many people find engaging in kink and BDSM to be healing. It is. When practiced well, BDSM prioritizes connection, care, and respect. For many of us, incorpo

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5 Skills for Fighting Fair in Kinky Relationships

Rebecca Blanton

Jun 9, 2018
6 min

5 Skills for Fighting Fair in Kinky Relationships

Healthy couples fight. Most healthy couples don’t fight often, but disagreements do arise, emotions heighten and we fight. Its actually a good thing. Repressing feelings, saying nothing, rolling over to your partner’s every demand or becoming a passive-aggressive pain-in-the-ass is not healthy. Fighting as a couple can be tricky. It takes time and practice to learn to fight fair. In a power exchange relationship, fighting is made trickier because of the roles we assume and fe

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Rebecca Blanton

Jun 4, 2018
5 min

Planning a Scene

I love planning scenes. Figuring out the details, setting up the situations, and preparing the tools and clothing for a scene has always been exciting for me. I realized I now have a systematic process for setting up scenes. Be they simple date night scenes were we have done all the play before or a new scene with a new partner, I go through the same basic steps. Since some people are new to setting up a scene, others have limited experience, and still others have not set one

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Rebecca Blanton

May 22, 2018
4 min

Identifying vs. Becoming

In the kinky world we use a lot of labels. Queer, kinky, top, bottom, Master, slave, Domme, submissive, baby girl, pet, Daddy, switch, demisexual, bisexual, heterosexual, homosexual, cis, trans, agender, nonbinary, it goes on. While labels have a purpose, they are also problematic. Labels are great in that they provide a shorthand for us to identify something about ourselves and connect with others using this shorthand. For example, if I am talking to another person who has t

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Top 10 Tips for Loving Someone Loving with Mental Illness

Rebecca Blanton

May 17, 2018
6 min

Top 10 Tips for Loving Someone Loving with Mental Illness

It’s National Mental Health Awareness Month so lets talk about power exchange and mental illness. Depending on the source, between 20 and 25 percent of adults experience a mental illness at least once in a lifetime. This means there is a high probability you will, at some point in your adult life, date and/or love someone with a mental illness. Here are the “Top 10 Things” you should know about being in a romantic, kinky relationship with someone living with a mental illness

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Fetlife Protest Isn’t Just a “Feminist Thing”

Rebecca Blanton

Apr 25, 2018
8 min

Fetlife Protest Isn’t Just a “Feminist Thing”

For those of you unfamiliar with Fetlife, it is a social media site for kinky folks (kinky defined very broadly). Currently, there is a group of folks of undetermined size who are planning to temporarily deactivate their accounts at the end of April as a protest to some of the current policies and procedures on Fetlife. In the last couple of years as kink has become incredibly popular in the mass media the site has grown exponentially with folks looking to explore some part o

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Rebecca Blanton

Apr 18, 2018
6 min

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. & Relationships

Power exchange relationships have many similarities to vanilla relationships. Both require kindness, understanding, communication, and support by and for partners to success in the long term. In most cases, both vanilla and power exchange relationships involve sex between the partners. Both types or relationships require respect, but respect is a bigger deal in power exchange relationships than in vanilla relationships. Power exchange relationships (i.e., Dominant/submissive,

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Rebecca Blanton

Feb 4, 2018
4 min

Adding the K to “LGBTQ+” – NO

There is a new call to add a K for “kink” to the LGBTQ+ acronym. This call for more inclusion has highlighted a couple of issues in both the queer and kink communities. To be clear, I am against adding kink to the LGBTQ acronym and by extension, the groups which work on behalf of us queers for political rights. Failure to Know Our History The call is promoted by folks who believe the LGBTQ+ community should be inclusive of all groups with any form of alternative sexuality or

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Rebecca Blanton

Jan 22, 2018
5 min

7 Tips for the New Switch

So you want to try switching things up. Great! There are a lot of benefits to switching power positions (e.g., a submissive trying topping). You will learn a lot about your own desires and your own internalized perceptions of the side of the slash you occupy. You may also gain a deeper appreciation for the side of the slash you normally do not occupy. There are a few things to keep in mind if you try switching. 1. Your version of bottoming may not be the same at the person yo

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Rebecca Blanton

Jan 19, 2018
6 min

Switching It Up

A couple of months ago I was performing with Bawdy Storytelling and had the great pleasure of hearing Race Bannon tell a story about the first time he bottomed. Bannon is a well-known Master in the kink community and has been for years. He didn’t bottom. One night he tried it and his story is about how eye-opening that experience was. This was followed by phone calls from two female friends both excited to tell me about how they recently fell into a dominant role in a relatio

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Rebecca Blanton

Jan 8, 2018
6 min

Consent 201

It’s great that vanilla America is finally discovering the idea of consent. Not our judges or politicians apparently, but a large number of non-kinkly folks are starting to think about sex and consent in a way they never have. Articles in widely read papers about the idea of consent and things like Tea and Consent going viral actually speaks volumes about the cultural shifting that is taking place. Less than two years ago I was submitting articles about consent to publication

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Rebecca Blanton

Nov 21, 2017
7 min

Power of Apologies

I have been thinking a lot about apologies lately. Nationally, men have been issuing varying forms of apologies for sexually harassing women and raping them in the media. They range from the non-apology bad example from Kevin Spacey (queer community thinks you are a dick, Kevin) to a mediocre one from Al Franken and lots in between. Apologies are really important and we need to think about them in the BDSM communities. Chances are you have transgressed already at this point (

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Rebecca Blanton

Oct 23, 2017
7 min

The Submissive’s Body & Chronic Pain

The submissive’s body is a unique thing. Our body is ours, first and foremost. We have the right and the responsibility to keep it safe. We also keep and prepare our bodies for a dominant’s use and enjoyment. Many submissives, though not all by a long shot, enjoy some form of pain, be it mild or more extreme. Our relationship with pain is different than people who do not receive some form of satisfaction or enjoyment from certain types of pain. This means in caring for our bo

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Rebecca Blanton

Aug 7, 2017
5 min

Help! I’m Kinky and I’m Broke!

The U.S. kink community, like the rest of the United States, is experiencing a growing divide between the “haves” and “have-nots.” As kink becomes more visible and BDSM clubs make it on to more American’s sexual bucket list, entrepreneurs have seen the possibility to make tons of money. If you peruse the web to get some general costs for kinky gear, there is (of course) a huge split. Toys, fetish wear, and various furniture for kink play can run into the thousands in a very s

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Rebecca Blanton

Jul 16, 2017
5 min

Get Out of Your Head!

I want to address the apparently growing trend of discovering and practicing kink without connecting to actual humans you are not having sex with. I have recently come across a couple of articles [here and here] about the increased exposure of kink to the mainstream. I have also experienced a surge in people contacting me online. When I ask them what munches or groups they participate with, they say none- they do kink in private. Please keep in mind, I write the following ful

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