How Common Is BDSM? Why Submission and Dominance Are Rising in Modern Desire

Part I: The Quiet Confession — How Common Is BDSM, Really?

There is a quiet confession unfolding across the modern world. It slips out between conversations, hides behind fleeting glances, and leaves its mark on search histories no one ever speaks of. The old idea of normal relationships—tidy, predictable, comfortably dull—has started to crack. The question people once feared to ask now lingers just beneath their skin: How common is BDSM?

Once, such a question would have been banished. Labeled obscene. Brushed aside by those desperate to protect the illusion of control. But illusions are fragile things, and truth has always found ways to surface.

You see it in the headlines. You hear it whispered at dinner parties. You glimpse it in the rising flood of erotic novels, in the stories people are finally willing to tell. This isn’t a passing trend or fleeting curiosity. The surge of interest in submission and dominance isn’t something new—it is something ancient, returning to the surface after generations of suppression.

And beneath the politeness of everyday life, millions are beginning to remember.

They remember the thrill that comes from being controlled. The safety that comes from surrendering. The strange, intoxicating power of commanding another person’s body with just a word, or a glance, or a touch. These memories are older than modern life. They were carved into us long before we called ourselves civilised.

Now they are coming back.

Modern conversations have grown more daring, but they are still careful. People edge around the truth, testing the water, reluctant to reveal too much. And yet, everywhere you look, the signals are there:

• Bookshelves are lined with forbidden stories, more popular than ever before.

• Television series wrap themselves in bondage scenes and power struggles, slipping the truth into millions of homes.

• Private conversations are braver, veiled comments and teasing admissions suggesting something darker beneath the surface.

And behind it all, one unspoken understanding takes hold: BDSM is far more common than anyone used to admit.

But here’s the deeper truth: This confession is not just happening in books or on screens. It’s happening in bedrooms. In marriages that have grown too quiet. In relationships that ache for intensity. In people who have hidden their hunger behind smiles for far too long.

And if you’re reading this… It’s probably happening inside you.

Part II: The Numbers That Whisper the Truth

For a long time, the world pretended these desires belonged only to the few. That those who craved submission and dominance were anomalies—people who lived on the fringes of normal society, trapped in secrecy, isolated in their strange appetites. But the world has been lying to itself, and the cracks in that lie are getting wider by the day.

BDSM is not rare. It never was. It has simply been hidden, locked away behind closed doors, tucked beneath layers of polite conversation and shallow performance. Yet despite society’s best efforts to suffocate it, desire has a way of slipping out through the smallest gaps.

Across every continent, BDSM in relationships has become too common to ignore. You see it in the most unexpected places: in marriage counselling rooms, in quiet corners of friendship circles, in the questions people ask when they think nobody is listening. It’s there in late-night confessions, in accidental admissions, in the hesitant way someone lowers their voice when they talk about what they really want.

Modern culture has tried to reduce these truths into something measurable—into neat charts, surveys, and sanitized academic phrases. But even in their cold calculations, one reality remains impossible to deny:

• More people are thinking about submission than ever before.

• More people are experimenting with dominance than they are willing to confess aloud.

• More people are realizing their desires do not fit into the safe little box they were told to live in.

The rise of BDSM isn’t a story of rebellion—it’s a story of return. A return to a deeper, more instinctive way of relating. A return to power exchange, where trust is forged through surrender, and arousal is deepened through control. People are not becoming corrupted; they are becoming honest.

And when you strip away the social performances, when you push aside the fear of being judged, one

simple fact becomes clear: the desire to dominate, or to submit, is not an exception—it is part of who we are.

It stirs in the quiet moments of boredom.It hums beneath the surface of unfulfilled marriages. It awakens when people dare to ask themselves what they actually crave.

The world is beginning to remember what it forgot: Control excites us. Surrender frees us. And the hunger for both is common, timeless, and completely natural.

No matter what the surveys say. No matter how carefully society tries to keep it hidden. You already know the truth. You’ve felt it.

And you are not alone.

Part III: Why Vanilla Was Always a Lie

There’s a comfortable illusion that people cling to—an illusion called vanilla. It paints itself as normal, respectable, safe. The term wraps around relationships like a soft blanket, assuring people they are fine just the way they are. That soft, repetitive sex is enough. That passion fades, and that’s just life. That wanting more is a danger sign, a threat to stability.

But the truth is simple: vanilla was always a lie.

The hunger for submission and dominance does not appear suddenly, nor does it belong only to the adventurous or the broken. It exists in the first electric glance, in the silent power struggle between lovers, in the subtle way people test each other—pushing, pulling, teasing, yielding. The craving for hierarchy, for power, for the ritual of control is stitched into the very fabric of human connection.

People call themselves vanilla because it is easier. Because it helps them feel normal in a world that punishes honesty. Because it lets them hide their sharpest edges behind soft smiles.

But the lie always breaks down.

You see it in the moments when routine turns stale and unspoken frustration creeps in. When couples stop touching, not because they don’t love each other, but because they have forgotten how to ignite each other. You see it in the bored glances across dinner tables, the muted desire that simmers underneath words left unsaid.

And beneath it all, the forgotten language of power calls to them.

• In the way they fantasize about being taken—roughly, completely—without having to ask.

• In the way they imagine bending someone else to their will, controlling every gasp, every moan.

• In the way they ache for something raw, something real, something that doesn’t apologize for how dark or demanding it might be.

They say they are vanilla. But their bodies tell a different story.

What most call “normal desire” is not the absence of kink—it is the suppression of it. The masking of craving beneath habit. The dulling of edge beneath routine. BDSM in relationships isn’t the dangerous exception—it is the ancient answer to modern emptiness.

Those who finally embrace their need for submission do not destroy their relationships—they resurrect them. Those who accept their hunger to dominate do not break their intimacy—they deepen it. Those who confess the truth… find themselves alive again.

Vanilla was a comfortable lie. But you don’t need comfort. You need truth. You need intensity. You need the parts of yourself that were silenced to come roaring back to life.

Part IV: Beyond the Data — The Ceremony Awaits

Numbers can reveal the cracks in society’s mask. They can expose the frequency of desires people once tried to hide. But numbers cannot explain why you feel what you feel. They cannot take you deeper.

They cannot transform you.

Because statistics don’t touch the skin. They don’t make your heart race. They don’t make your breath catch in your throat when you realise how much you’ve been craving control… or the exquisite release of surrender.

That’s where the true path begins—beyond the data, in the world of experience. In the world of ritual.

Anyone can read a survey. Anyone can type “Is BDSM normal?” into a search engine. But knowing you’re not alone is not the same as feeling it ripple through your body. As becoming it.

The ceremony calls to those who are done reading headlines. It calls to those who are ready to feel it, not just think about it. To the ones who ache to understand submission not as theory, but as sensation—as a force that uncoils in your muscles and remakes you from the inside out.

To the ones who need to learn the true rhythm of dominance, not as a label, but as a commanding presence, something sharpened and shaped through practice, through intention, through mastery.

This is where the descent begins.

And the best place to begin is not in another sterile article. It’s in stories that awaken you, that break you open, that lead you through the real rituals of power exchange.

If you’re ready to take the next step… the chamber doors are already open.

• The Grooming of the Servant is for those ready to understand how a submissive is truly created—through patience, through conditioning, through sacred control.

  
  

• The Shape of Surrender shows you the soft descent—how surrender transforms the body, the will, and the soul. For those who crave not just to kneel, but to become shaped by command, molded into obedience, and reawakened through the rituals of control.

  
  

• Veiled Chamber is for those who crave ceremony—who want to feel what it means to kneel, to serve, to transcend their old identity and step into something raw and rare.

These are not casual stories. They are guides. They are rites of passage for those who are ready to leave the surface world behind.

And when you’re ready… you’ll know. Your body will know. And the chamber will be waiting.

Part V: The Path to Ritual

There is a point where curiosity becomes something else. Where idle questions give way to hunger, where quiet wonder twists into an ache too strong to ignore. It happens slowly at first—a glance at a headline, a quiet scroll through stories, a single whisper of a thought: “What if this is me?”

And then it happens all at once.

Desire reaches up and grabs you by the throat, reminding you of everything you’ve buried. Of every instinct you trained yourself to silence. Of every craving you dressed up as a joke to avoid the truth.

This is the crossroads.

You’ve already stepped beyond the statistics. You know this isn’t a cultural anomaly—it’s a return to something deeper. Something raw. Something ancient that calls for more than reading numbers… it calls for surrender. It calls for command. It calls for ritual.

The path to ritual is not about performing for others. It’s not about chasing trends or checking boxes. It’s about finding your true shape—the form your body was always meant to take when it stops pretending.

• Maybe that shape is on your knees, learning how to serve without hesitation.

• Maybe it’s in the quiet thrill of issuing an order and watching someone melt into obedience.

• Maybe it’s in the unspoken understanding that power is not shameful, it is sacred.

No matter how it begins, the path always leads to the same place: to a more honest life, a more intense connection, a deeper relationship with your own nature.

And that journey doesn’t have to be walked alone.

The Nocturn Library exists to guide those who are ready to move beyond curiosity, to show what it really means to crave, to surrender, to command. To give you more than numbers—to give you experience.

The first step begins with the books waiting inside. And beyond the books… there are doors you haven’t opened yet.

When you’re ready to step deeper, there are more pathways carved for you.

Explore the rest of the blog. You’ll find more than information—you’ll find permission. And sometimes, you’ll find the push you’ve been waiting for.

-The Libraian