were knew to BDSM and seek help.

[ThaneFlynn]

Firstly, there is no need for you and your girlfriend to feel self-conscious or worry that you are freaks. Some of us simply enjoy something more than a steady diet of conventional sex. When you are new to anything it is easy to question whether it is right, particularly sane or moral but as time passes it does seem to feel more normal simply as a function of it becoming more familiar. I'd recommend that you both read A Different Loving: Sexual Dominance and Submission by William and Gloria Brame as a start. I think you will come away understanding that having an appetite for kink is nothing to feel freakish about.

You are correct in that there isn't any "how to" book out there. It would certainly be nice if there were however the truth is that kink is so all encompassing, it would be an epic undertaking to attempt to write such a book. There are some excellent books available however which will go a long ways toward answering many of the questions I'm sure you have. A few, many of which the previous poster mentioned, I'd recommend in no particular order include; The Loving Dominant by John Warren, Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns: The Romance and Sexual Sorcery of Sadomasochism by Philip Miller and Molly Devon, SM101 A realistic Introduction" by Jay Wiseman and The Ultimate Guide to Kink edited by Tristan Taormino. Reading books like those will give you a basic grounding. Also, while very basic, a good starter book for beginners in my opinion is 50 Ways to Play: BDSM for Nice People by Don and Debra Macleod.

Asking for someone to tell you and your girlfriend how to get started is really a bit broad and very nearly like a couple inexperienced with having sex asking someone to explain the ropes to them. It is simply impossible to answer the question with any accuracy because someone would have to be intimately familiar with both you and your girlfriend to be able to understand what you like, don't like, are willing to do and not willing to do. Those are things you must both discover about yourselves as individuals and as a couple. A good starting point is to find a basic play activities checklist like this one from Iron Gate. Simply review the list with your girlfriend and see which activities appeal to you and to her. Find the ones that seem to resonate with you both and then figure out a way to do them. Being new you may not know what every activity is but often you can simply type the word or term into Google or some other web search engine and find the answers.

The best advice I could offer to a couple starting out is talk to each other and ask each other; "What would you like to learn?" "What turns you on?" Make a list and then research those things in books or on the web and learn how to do them. I'd think this process would be easier in the particular situation you and your girlfriend are in since based on what you shared, you are both switches so there isn't any pressure on one person to feel that they have to quickly master all the answers and techniques so that they can be in charge all the time and effectively dominate the other.

There is a ton of information on bondage and discipline, dominance and submission and sadomasochism (BDSM) on the Internet these days. To be fair, some of it is very good but most of it is not. I urge you to read some good authoritative books like the ones I recommended before placing too much faith in things you find surfing the web. When you are new it is simply too difficult to differentiate between quality and crap. Play safe and have fun on the journey. After all, that is really what this whole thing is about.

Cheers