Oh, honey, after being with someone for 17 years, it might take a little trial and error to find a suitable new partner. My heart goes out to you.

I have found that gambling on a man's Dom potential takes me out of the moment. If you like this one, best to enjoy what you have now and if he is a natural it should progress naturally, with subtle encouragement.

I have had good luck not assuming I know what someone else wants, but taking things slow and making it a long, fun adventure to find out all the particulars. Dating can be frustrating, you have to go through a lot of ash to find a diamond, and then not every diamond is the one. When a nice one comes a long, a 'keeper', it is hard to be objective about where my desire starts and his intersects, and how far we will go together. I like to not think about the potential and future so much as enjoy the present. Not to say I am an expert on men, but I have a lot of guy friends and good relations with most of my exes.

I love how open you are with your nervousness. This is a nice place to get advice and feed back and I hope you can find many helpful ideas here. I also understand the desire to reach out to a community like this for advise. You are not the first to feel like this.

I spent years married to a perfectly fine man who did not share my kinks. After I left him, I dated and stopped dating and fell into a few small relationships and recently I decided I would only look at or consider a man after I established he had some measure of bdsm experience. Unless a guy strikes up a conversation about floggers over dinner, damn near the only way I have found to ascertain kink factor up front was to put personals on spicy websites and state as clearly as possible what I want. I have also had good luck with this.

Maybe he is trying not to freak you out, how does one bring out the flogger tactfully? Hmmm. Back when I dated nilla guys I would just try to press them by generally playing rough and if they whined, I knew I was on the wrong track. Or I would encourage dominance at times, but I like to talk dirty, so I could usually tell for sure if a guy was into same as me pretty quick. I would try not to get attched in a loverly way if there was a discordant response.

I hope this helps.