“Never have I ever…” Lucy* pauses and audibly sighs. “God, I hated that game!”
The well-loved drinking game is supposedly a twist on ‘Truth or dare?’ but chances are most of us remember it as a bout of sexual one-upmanship. For some it was a chance to show off, for others it was a source of embarrassment – and a fast track to getting wasted.
For Lucy, the evenings spent sitting on the floors of student living rooms, clutching a glass of cheap wine and smiling awkwardly, conjure different memories. “People would be laughing about crazy sex stuff they’d done but I’d never done any of it,” she says. “I’d had boyfriends and I liked sex but compared to everyone else I felt so boring.”
Now 36, Lucy describes herself as “gloriously vanilla” but it’s not a word she’s always felt so comfortable using. “It kind of felt like an insult,” she says. “I would read magazines with tips on getting kinky in the bedroom and wonder if there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t into spanking. I actually got to the point where I started to wonder if I was demisexual because that stuff just didn’t appeal.”
The turnaround happened when she met her now-husband. Their sexual chemistry was such that she didn’t even stop to question whether they needed to spice things up. “I used to worry that partners found me boring in bed but with my husband it was clear straight away how into each other we were,” she says “We tried tying each other up once and it was fun but I didn’t find it that hot. To be honest, the best sex we’ve had recently was after we watched Normal People! We spent ages talking about the chemistry between Marianne and Connell and then went to bed and had the most intense sex!”
What is vanilla sex?
But Lucy’s far from alone in having mixed feelings about identifying as vanilla. When I tell a friend that I’m writing about vanilla sex, she forbids me to mention her by name. “I reckon I’m pretty vanilla but I don’t like being described that way as it basically means boring,” she admits.
It’s true that vanilla sex sometimes gets a bad rap. The term itself was invented by kink communities who used it neutrally to distinguish non-BDSM sex, but over time “vanilla” has become a byword for boring. Many of the people I spoke to reported feeling “vanilla-shamed” and judged for their pedestrian sex lives. But sex isn’t about ticking boxes or impressing your mates. Surely great sex is about doing what you enjoy?
Gemma and her partner have been together for 11 years and she says they’re not remotely interested in getting kinky. “We mess around and try different sex positions and we’re really happy with that. I just don’t really see the point of bringing handcuffs and toys into it if you’re enjoying what you’re doing,” she says. “We watched Fifty Shades together but we realised we just weren’t bothered.”
She jokes that if she and her husband had a “red room” like Christian Grey’s, it would be really sumptuous bedroom where they could focus on the sensual side of sex. “We’d have a really nice bed and music and massage oils and candles and lube,” she says.
There’s no shame in vanilla
The idea that we need to be constantly spicing things up is what sex educator Justin Hancock calls a “should story.” In his new book Can We Talk About Consent? he explains that we pick up ideas about what sex “should” be from the world around us, whether via our parents, what we learn (or don’t learn) in school, our religion or culture, and, of course, through media and porn. As open conversations about BDSM have helped destigmatise it and dispel the idea that you “shouldn’t” be kinky, many of us have started to wonder if we “should”.
In his 2018 book Tell Me What You Want, social psychologist Justin Lehmiller surveyed over 4,000 people and found that over 90% of women had fantasised about BDSM. But it’s one thing to fantasise, it’s another thing to actually incorporate it into your sex life. A 2017 Belgian survey found that almost half had engaged in a BDSM activity at least once but that still leaves over half who hadn’t!
In any case, there is no universally agreed definition of “vanilla”. If your partner tugs your hair during doggy style sex does that make it instantly kinky? Is a long, drawn-out tease automatically vanilla just because it doesn’t involve bondage rope?
The reality, says Hancock, is that it’s not an either/or situation. “There’s this idea that you’re either staring into each other's eyes in the missionary position and it's gentle and everyone magically comes at the same time, or it’s rough and violent, involving bruising someone's butt and making them cry. But it’s kind of a false binary.”
It’s also not a hierarchy. No one type of sex is automatically “hotter” than another, as long as everyone involved is consenting and enjoying themselves. Being “sex-positive” is not necessarily about donning a latex catsuit and shoving things up your bum (though this obviously also fine). It is about tapping into what it is you really enjoy about sex and owning that.
Sammi Tye is a performer on OnlyFans, the (mostly adult) content-sharing site, where she is no stranger to people’s fetishes. But at home, what she enjoys in bed is “really, really basic stuff.”
“My demographic is horny dads,” says Sammi, 32, who asked to be referred to by her stage name. “I do a lot of secretary role play. Last week some guy asked me to get in the bath and cover myself in custard. It’s fun, I like the escapism, but kinky stuff in my personal life does absolutely nothing for me. I’d never want to be tied up and spread-eagled. My favourite thing is when my husband comes up behind me, moves my hair out the way and kisses my neck. The kinkiest we get is a bit of rimming.”
Similarly, learning about kink online gave Emily, 24, the freedom to choose vanilla. Having spent a lot of her teenage years on the microblogging website, Tumblr, she says the exchange of ideas helped her understand what she actually wanted from sex, and how to communicate it.
“It meant that when I first had sex, I had a really good idea of what I wanted,” she says. “I was aware of things like rough sex but I knew I wanted my partner to be tender with me. We talked a lot about consent beforehand and it was sweet and gentle and nice.”
Ultimately, there’s no right or wrong way to do sex, as long as it’s consensual and you’re enjoying it.
*Some names have been changed
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