Communication

It is probably the most ubiquitous advice within the lifestyle, whatever your kink: communicate, communicate, communicate. We all understand that it is not only good advice, it is necessary if our kind of relating is going to work. But simply telling someone to "communicate" does not answer the "how to" questions that come up in the trenches when people actually try to do this. It just isn't always as simple as it sounds.

We've been working our way through a problem that has challenged us for probably the last year and a half. It has shown up with a lot of faces, but at its root, it has been an issue of communication -- or more correctly, a series of communication miscues and misses. I think, WE think, we've got it figured out now, but I'm going to try and describe what we've been through. Maybe some of this will be instructive or interesting or just useful to someone else in some way. Maybe not. Whatever. It is part of our story together.

I think there are a few parts to the problem we've had. Part of it is that my own thinking isn't always that clear. It is hard to communicate when what you ought to be communicating is a wordless tangle of stuff in your gut and your mind without much form to it. Communication that sounds like a wounded animal shrieking is just not a whole lot of use to the average Dominant. The second part of our sometimes struggle is that His own thinking process is very quick and very direct. He wants words, laid out neatly, in nice straight, simple lines that make sense. He has very little patience for my sort of round about, image driven, fishing for words and pictures. Then there is what I think is a very natural barrier between Dominants and submissives (although I imagine He might disagree with me on this one) which is that we are not the same in our most essential natures. I believe that Dominants and submissives simply see and experience the world differently.

Perhaps it began long before it actually began. I came here, over 4-1/2 years ago, with a simple black leather collar. It was not a collar that He gave me. It was purchased early in my explorations, and worn whenever my husband and I ventured out into public to play. For me, that collar said to the world that I was "submissive," and that in those days, when I was with my husband, that he was my "protector." Nevermind that he really wasn't up to the job, that collar made it possible for me to explore, to learn, to grow, to go safely in the community where I first spread my wings as myself. I invested it with a very great deal of power and significance. It was a powerful talisman for me. Admittedly, there are other pieces that served as "collars" between my husband and I. Most of them have significance attached to that relationship and do not bear the same weight that the leather collar does. I don't ever wear any of them, and we don't use them for anything, either. Because, in the early going, I learned my way into my submission largely by myself, that leather collar came to be VERY powerfully weighted in my psyche.

He has always used it as a restraint. Along with matching wrist cuffs and a simple metal fitting, the leather collar has always served to hold me physically in place for our SM play. For Him, that is what that bit of leather is for. It is a practical piece; a nice addition to the toybag. It has no particular significance and no emotional or relational weight. He didn't give me that collar. It doesn't mean anything special to Him. As far as He is concerned, the collar that matters is the chain mail collar that He gave me -- and the cutting marks on my back. The other is meaningless. Dominants are like that I think. They see the world from an entirely different place than submissives do sometimes.

So.

It was nothing at all for Him to take the restraints and use them AS restraints a year and a half ago with *j*. It wasn't anything that was discussed between us. I wasn't part of any of it. There wasn't any reason why I should have been. He was going to play, and so He used the restraints -- including the collar and cuffs. It was purely a practical matter. AND, after all, when it comes down to it, slave's don't OWN anything, so there shouldn't be a problem with it, anyway. He'd do it again, will likely do it again with anyone He chooses to play with.

Practicalities, shouldn'ts...

In the beginning, it wasn't anything that I really noticed. There was so much brokeness; so much damage to clean up; so much to attend to just to survive the initial aftermath following the mess with "j", that I didn't really pay any attention to how I was feeling about any of it. Things all seemed to happen quickly. Then I started having real medical troubles, and then there was the surgery, and the aftermath, of the surgery, and the very long and difficult recovery.

Except that there was more and more and more difficulty with our SM connection. It started very subtly at first. He would put that collar on me, and I'd begin to struggle. I would gasp, and sweat, and my stomach would clench. I didn't make the connection at first. I didn't make any connection at all for a very long time. I'd simply fight down the reactions and hold on and get through it all. I really didn't even "get" that it was the collar that was triggering it all. Over time, the reactions escalated, from a bit of queasiness to a full on gagging reflex, to an almost overwhelming sense of impending nausea. The idea of having that collar around my neck began to make me ill, began to make me angry, began to be an obsession that I simply could not make go away.

And I knew it was all just crazy. I knew that if I told Him what was making me so nuts, He'd send me right back to the creepy shrink guy again, and I'd have to do all that icky psychobabble crap all over -- and for what? It wasn't going to change a single freaking thing. Somehow, I knew that I was going to have to get through the place in my head where the leather collar meant more to me than it did to Him; figure out how to stop feeling like having it on was like wearing someone else's used underwear...

I tried to tell Him a couple of times, but couldn't get it to make any sense because explaining all of that in few enough words, clearly enough and concisely enough, without a whole lot of emotional burden so He would sit through it all just seemed to be beyond my capacity. I just hadn't had any luck making it clear to Him what my problem was. All He was getting was that our sessions were breaking down and that I was falling out of "position" in a rage most of the time. He was concerned but not sure what the issue was.

Confusion was sitting between the two of us, creating havoc.

That's where things were last weekend when He got out the restraints and strapped me up. I was in trouble immediately, physically repulsed AND furious. He had no idea that there were storm clouds brewing, and set about with a rubber strap. That was enough -- the floodgates burst. I couldn't do it anymore. I began to try to rip the leather from my neck, flailing and tugging, wrenching the evil thing every which way -- determined to get it off of me. Snarling and spitting, I shrieked my anguish at Him: "I don't care what You do! Take j's fucking collar off of me and You can do whatever you want! Just don't make me wear her goddamn fucking collar anymore!"

It didn't save my ass. He went right on with whatever He was doing. Left me bloody and bruised and welted. Broke the cane over me in the bargain. Finished. I think I remember hearing Him say something about it not being her collar, but maybe I imagined that -- I was still shrieking and trying to rip the damn thing to shreds. Afterwards, He held me, rocked me, stroked me, made love to me. Said nothing at all about any of it.

Later in the week; days later, He told me: "Order a new collar -- choose a two-toned colored one so that we will be able to tell it apart from the other one. Then there will be one that will be only yours." End of discussion. He heard me; loved me enough to honor the depth of my pain and fix the problem. I am the luckiest of women.

Sometimes communicating takes hard work, and lots of patience, and more than just a little time.

swan