holding the contradiction

I've managed to avoid a great deal of self doubt about how society would view our arrangement  or does view what it believes about arrangements it believes are like ours.  But every once in awhile - something outside of us, outside of what i see as a virtual community to which i belong (and in a very few cases, an irl community) - every once in awhile something crashes through and impacts me.

It happened last week.  Apparently the two deranged people who kidnapped two little girls and sexually abused them were living as  master and slave, in the kinky, bondage sense, as the news put it.   I also noticed that the media, if not law enforcement, seemed to be mentioning it as a way of relieving the woman from culpability: she was his slave, she had to do it, it was all his fault.  I didn't think a lot about it though, it was just two bad people who did bad things, way too much of that around it seems.

But then we were at a social thing - lots of people we didn't know very well at all, people who are mostly parents of very young children, and i overheard the small talk, including a conversation about this case.  They were aghast and also titillated and  mostly self-righteous about the inherent evil of  'those kinds of people.'

Later that evening my husband and I went for a walk I asked him if he had overheard the same conversation. He hadn't.  In fact he hadn't read about the case at all, at least not anything beyond that the girls had been found.  I was having a very hard time relating the story to him - i couldn't bring myself to say the words submissive, slave or master - i just couldn't get them out.  He was a little impatient with me, he had no idea where i was trying to go because he didn't know the story.

I had thought i had dismissed the whole thing in my mind - but it floored me then.  Eventually i was able to say what it was, and why it upset me so much: suddenly we are 'those people,' people one assumes are evil and child molesters.  But i know that people from so many groups have done evil in the name of that cause, or in the name of that group  or that religion, when it has nothing to do with the group at all.  [Leaving aside the issue of groups being complicit by not rooting those people out.]

Even more so though, was the assumption that i, as the slave or the submissive, have no responsibility for my own actions and decisions. I must be so far lost mentally that i would do even something like that without stopping myself, or him.

But i'm not.  I do think for myself and i do speak up, about all kinds of things that impact us and our family. This is that stupid, absurd hypothetical, 'Would you cut your arm off if he told you to? Would you commit a crime?  Would you sexually abuse children?'  Except that it wasn't hypothetical in this case.  I know damn well that he would never, that this scenario is not in the realm of possible.  And furthermore, i know that if some bizarre turn of events leads to him asking me to do anything wrong, morally or ethically, he fully expects I would say no, and to do what i can to stop him.

This i know - have always known.  But it left me with a flood of self-doubt.  Where is the line?  If i'm to analyze every request for right vs. wrong, and choose to comply or not - how is that submitting?  And I must be no where near slave then, which i do consider myself, except i still don't like that word at all, but i have no other. But if  there are - and there are - things over which i would certainly refuse him - how deep is my commitment really.

This is only a question in the face of the outrageous and completely absurd, the things that won't happen really.  Except it did.  And some man asked the heinous, and some woman didn't stop him.  I know that has very, very little to do with D/s and everything to do with the wrongness of both of them.

It works in my head: I have given my whole self to him, no reservations.  No holding back.  No contingencies.  Not even any limits of my own.  At the same time, I completely retain my own intellect, my judgement, my conscience.  I know that i would disobey, i would work to thwart him if i believed i ought to.  He would have me do no less.  And i can't explain how both of those can possibly be completely true at the same time.  In words and on paper - clearly they can't.  But in me - they are.

all the right moves

I love a good summer thunderstorm.  It's one of the reasons i like not having air conditioning - i feel them coming even inside.  I miss our old house, where we used to live - it had the most fantastic front porch - swing and all, perfect to just sit and be in the storm.  The storms last week though meant that his flight home at the end of the week was cancelled and the one the next morning delayed.  All of which meant a small window of time alone together most likely lost, again, and with no real prospects in the foreseeable future. That started a storm of negative in my head.

As it happens - i want those times with him.  We are rock solid as a couple, our marriage is very strong, but i've found out that there is something more that is possible and i'm very reluctant to give that up, i worry if i think it is threatened, and i'm greedy when i don't get enough.  It's reinforcing our roles, satisfying my masochistic bent, a great endorphin trip, a chance to offer myself to him in a hard way, reconnecting in a way that goes far beyond anything vanilla (i believe).... It's all that, and i can live without it but i don't really want to and neither does he.  It took me a very long time to surrender my need to him, to actively open up to a need in myself that only he can meet.  To rely on him that deeply.

By the time he got home - i was storm clouds gathering, rumbling and threatening to open up.  I had to work not to give in to the parts of my head that try to convince me that it would be better if i shut myself off to this need rather than be hurt again and again when it can't be met.  For me - i really do have to actively keep myself open to this; staying open to the connection and the more of it all means also being undefended against the hurt and disappointment and doubt.  I was disappointed and he could see that, but i didn't give in to my doubts.  I waited for him, i hoped for some opportunity to re-connect, but not as i have (i'm ashamed to say) testing him.

He took me to the shower and reminded me who and what i am.  He doesn't do that often, maybe that's why it's so effective.  Maybe there's something left in our DNA or our reptilian brains that connects to the dominance and submission of marking or being marked with piss, likely it's humiliating because society and our upbringing say it's so.  It is active submission to kneel, to stay put, to open my eyes and watch when he commands it, to clean him with my mouth after...

There was no time afterward for spanking or beatings or trips to subspace, but he used me with that combination of distance and detachment and almost but not quite brutality that is so perfect.  He brought me to the edge again and again, he made me beg, and somehow it was so clearly just for his amusement, his pleasure.  Even once he commanded me to come, it was for him.

It is interesting to me that what i need, what allows me to keep myself open to him, is not that he provide any certain thing or give me any specific thing, but simply that he challenge that the door remains open.

optimism

My son the other day was struggling to find just the right word for "unreasonably and hopelessly optimistic, without any real foundation in reality."  I didn't want to say the words 'cockeyed optimist' out loud to my 17 year old son so I offered, "Pollyanna"    It doesn't come from a latin root - so he didn't know that one.  Oh well.  Not much chance he's going to go back and read children's books about a happy little girl in New England a long time ago...

Anyhow - i tend to be a worrier - i can, admittedly, blow things out of proportion and see the downside of a situation a little too quickly.  My husband tends the other direction - he's certainly not manic or all rainbows and unicorns, but he tends to be good at not creating problems in his mind either.

One of the things he has been pushing me to work on in myself lately (like for 6 months or more) is to be more optimistic about a lot of things that worry me - mom things, job things, life things, but especially us things.  He wants me to believe in us, in who and where we are, and to focus on the joy of it, not my perceived doom and gloom.

So - I'm trying.  And to that end - 3 good things.......

1 - Texting from wherever he was last week and telling me to wear my leather collar to bed, and to send a picture before I go to sleep, oh - and to actually go to bed by my bedtime.

2 - Catching up with the dates/caning - it was a decent amount of catching up, and it really is good for me - especially mentally.

3 - Biting and hair pulling and manhandling me around to just where he wants me - i do tend to forget that this is not how it always was - that it is him taking and me surrendering.  

Damn good question.....

Jz posed this question here :    Where does your submission live?

She used body metaphors: is it in your heart, head, a feeling in your gut, worn on your sleeve..... I pondered it a good bit in the back of my mind throughout the day.  I concluded that I don't have the imagination to work with her metaphor - I suppose i would have to say it lives in my head - but that's very literal and concrete and not at all what she meant.

This line though stopped me in my tracks:   My submission is a thing that centers on him, not me.

That - turned as a question - seems very important to me.

As she says, " I don't get itchy for things I want him to do to and for me. Instead, my satisfaction comes from providing whatever he wants and needs."

I know that Jz didn't write that line to be an indictment of anyone - this is her and her life and how she is - it's a beautiful thing about her in fact.  It's just one of those coincidences that it happens to be a thing for me.

I couldn't even pretend to own this attitude.  Besides the 5 years worth of blog here documenting my itchiness for what i want him to do, and my frequent lack of satisfaction, I know in my heart that my submission centers in me, maybe on me, sadly.  It is a thing, a big thing, that i would like very much to figure out how to start to change.

On some levels - I do believe he wants this - that he wants my submission.  But at the deepest levels, i think i also believe he could be happy without it as well. And that makes me insecure.  And i can see that maybe it doesn't matter - that he does like and desire my submission, why should possible alternate universes matter.  I need to believe that and learn to live it.

This blog also documents a lot of up and down and round and round - each time around learning more and more.  I've been more and less secure in it all at times.  I have a feeling that a lot of things will fall into place if i can believe it and live it, if i can truly shift the locus from me to Him.

things i'm not allowed to get pissed about, but still do

Well - one thing for today......

You know - those things that used to be acceptable ways for men to treat women, but then people got enlightened and they were no longer acceptable**

But since i've voluntarily, essentially moved backwards several hundred years - not really - but there is no longer a "society says" that this or that is or isn't actually acceptable in behavior or interactions...  It's fuzzier - it's all up to Him, and while He is not interested in anything that makes me less than - there is the fuzziness of things done to reinforce our respective positions - which ironically - don't make me feel less than, they make me feel secure, but..... anyhow, told you it was fuzzy

Fuzziness aside - there are still a few things for which my impulse is to shake him and point out how unenlightened and old-fashioned and inappropriate he's being.   Things that frustrate me instead of making me feel secure - even though i tell myself it's his prerogative, and that helps a bit - still - not entirely.

Today's frustration is brought to you by that ancient curse - my period.

I've been gone, he's been gone, the kids have been way too present way too much, etc., etc., We haven't had time together in too long.  He comes back today, and of course my period also showed up - early - of course.

So there's the disappointment and frustration of knowing it will be that much longer.

But also - there's the underlying feeling i get from him about it all:  he won't have anything to do with me during.  He has always been this way - he's just simply not interested in going there.  He may demand i service him - but even that is less.  It isn't quite shunning - but decidedly less intimacy.  It just flirts with the edges of feeling like he blames me or is upset with me for it happening.  I know he doesn't, but....

There's the little bit of mind fuck for me in it - and not necessarily in the good way - it's his right, his control. He doesn't do humiliation much and not outside a context in which it's pretty clear what's what.  So this isn't a control through humiliation thing.  But i'm not so sure it isn't a 'because I can and this works for me" thing - which i should find hot, or at least reassuring, but most often i can't.



** I'm NOT talking about past and present day, all too real, inequalities and human rights abuses - just to be clear.

the thing about the rule..

The rule is i'm not allowed to scratch if i have an itch (the literal kind - this is so very non-sexual) in his presence.

The thing with this rule is that he has absolutely no idea how often i itch and don't scratch.

He only sees when i break the rule.

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There's a metaphor in there somewhere.....