Regarding BDSM, for what it's worth, I've mentioned that the swingers and the kinksters in my community give each other a bit of the side-eye, and it is true. The BDSM people for the most part are not comfortable with casual ANYTHING. Everything is heavily invested in intimacy and depth for most of them. Not all. Especially the newbies who are wild to try it all, there are some who come just to get down and play. But in discussion groups, with mostly kinksters, mention swinging or having casual sex, and many will frown and say "nah, I'm not into that" and mention casual kink/play/scening and even more will say, "no way." And the relationships I see, whether mono or poly, in the BDSM world, are if anything more...committed, shall we say...than vanilla ones. Invested. I think a lot of that comes with the territory of the power dynamics.
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As far as what kids know, and don't know...I guarantee they didn't know a lot of things. They didn't know about their parents' sex problems. They didn't know that every morning I fantasized about the day I'd be away from their father, in one way or another. No one did, because I kept that shit inside of my head. Personally, I absolutely DO place my obligations ahead of my passions. And I cannot deal with adults who don't think that obligations are important if feelings are involved, and you should just throw the security and survival of your children out the window because you want more happiness than what is on your plate. Especially knowing damn well that once you jump off that cliff, you do not have any guarantee that anything, your love life included, will be better or WORSE.
My mom and dad growing up, had a bad marriage. But my mom was more passionate than I am and doesn't control her emotional outbursts, so there was all the screaming and bad behavior you'd expect of an oversized child with no self discipline. Both of my parents behaved badly and put themselves first. But after they divorced, my Mom found the first man who made her feel passionate and sexually fulfilled and all, and hey, he paid the bills. Good! But of course she had to defer to what he wanted, and please him and keep him happy, which meant all his drunk guy friends over having parties day and night and even if he sometimes got out of hand and treated her badly, it was the price of doing business. Even when one of his friends assaulted my 14 year old self...well...so sorry. Gotta keep a roof over our heads. Kids are EXPENSIVE. If you don't make much, you need help. And the state isn't much help if you can get anything from them at all. Poverty, struggle, abusive guys...all stuff we dealt with, because my parents couldn't just suck it up, act like adults, set aside their precious feelings and get the damn job done.
So when I got unexpectedly pregnant, and my hormonal insanity left me unable to contemplate any course but having a magical sparkly new baby thing to love and hug and squee over (hormones are the damn devil)...at least I realized that I did NOT come first anymore.
And my kids did have a great life. And they miss it now. And they absolutely feel betrayed that their Dad went crazy and that their happy family fell apart. If I told them, "Well I should have really done this to you sooner, I mean, the sex was not fulfilling my needs and I didn't like your Dad that much, and it would have been worth it to see you in poverty from a young age to hopefully find a fun boyfriend..."
Yeah no.
That's like quitting my office job, which I often hate, to chase my dream of being an artist, even if I end up living under a bridge. Yeah, sounds fun, but I'll pass. I like my apartment, and my cat, and eating regularly, and dreams and feelings don't pay the bills.
All I'm trying to say is, I think it's lame to call people stupid because they have other priorities than what you do. I have compassion for those who have hard choices to make in life. We only do our best with what we've got.