The Tricky Part of Asking for Spankings

One of the most difficult hurdles that I navigated when I was still pretty new to all of this was finding the "courage" to ASK for a spanking when I needed or wanted one. In the early days, it was hard enough to come to terms with the word that described and defined who and what I was -- "masochist," nevermind the issue of finding my way to being active in implementing it by asking.

In time, I got over the "weirdness" of that, and learned to feel pretty comfortable asking.

As He and I connected and grew into our relationship, I moved from an eager and "ravenous" spankee to a place of experiencing significant cognitive dissonance with asking for spankings. Playing with Master meant that whatever I asked for was likely to be ratcheted up to levels I never envisioned. So while the "hunger" remained, I began to temper my requests out of fear and anxiety about what I knew I'd be unable to control or back away from. Asking grew harder to do, and I began to find that I only "asked" as I would become "desperate" in my needs.

Then I passed through the very difficult transition of these last couple of years. It has been a time when I literally did not know (most of the time) what my needs or wants really were. I spent many, many, many months feeling like I was living in a body to which I had no reliable connection, and with which I was completely unfamiliar. I became very unsure as I learned that I couldn't trust my physical or emotional responses. My orientation to pain, through all of that, shifted crazily up and down and all over the place. Mostly, though, I fought to stay "in the game."

As I've healed and recovered, I've begun to regain some of what seemed lost. I find myself wanting and needing the connection that He and I only achieve through spanking -- much more than I have for a long while. So, I've begun to ask again now and then.

Except it is a complicated emotional and intellectual wrangle for me. I get caught in the "slave" thing -- or what I think of as a "slave thing." Here's how it works:

In order to ask for a spanking, I have to first identify that I need a spanking. It isn't as easy as it sounds -- I still have some level of ambivalence about pain these days, and I still have to consciously pay attention to my sexual/physical responses -- they are usually very subtle. What I once experienced as enormous and earth-shattering, now, most often, feels very soft and quiet -- like lovely music playing somewhere just at the edge of perceptibility.

Then, I have to work my way through an evaluation of whether it is "OK" to ask Him for a spanking. I tend to go through all sorts of mental gyrations with this part: "What if He really doesn't want to spank me? What if, because I ask it, He ends up feeling obligated? What if He'd really rather be spanking someone who is younger, easier, less complicated, BETTER at all of this? What if -- What if -- What if?" In my mind, I wrestle with not "topping from the bottom." I know He loves me, and I worry that He might agree to spank me, even if He doesn't want to. That would stand everything about our dynamic on its head, and I don't want to do that. I'm never sure if I'll be able to TELL (if I ask) whether He wants to play with me, or is only doing it out of love and a sense of some kind of obligation. It is the dilemma of "telling Him everything," and then figuring out if He really NEEDS all of the odds and ends of my longings and fears.

But... I most often come to the point of being soooooo starved for His touch and His control, that I give it over and tell Him the truth. So, it was that I sent Him an email on Thursday morning:

I love you. I am wishing I could just be home with you. I miss you and feel like it has been too long since I was able to just let things go and settle into being with you. I need spanked and I need to be loved and I just want you.

He replied that He, too, had been longing and wishing for these things with me, but that we had both been so tired lately, that He hadn't "gone there." Perhaps, tonight, He told me, we'd be able to "go there."

I traveled through the rest of my day, anticipating. I started with a migraine in the afternoon, but treated it aggressively in order to be "ready" for our afternoon/evening together. By the time He arrived home, after giving a presentation at the University in the small town to our north, He was unfortunately, tired and strung out and barely into relating much less anything else. He had eaten a late lunch at a Chinese restaurant and was really not hungry, although, since I was "starving," I did convince Him to eat some meat and vegetable fondue with me. And we cruised through the evening, while I did that thing in my head, where I convince myself that I had no right to ask in the first place, and certainly no right to expect an affirmative response. I'd about talked myself to the point of acceptance that there would be no spanking, when He decided on a late night spanking. Of course, by that time I wasn't in a very good "submissive" head space. I'm never good at sudden shifts in emotional direction.

So, Idid get my spanking, but it was out of the range of what I'd thought I'd needed. But, then, in the middle of the night (1:30 AM or so) I was suddenly outrageously horny. Put a well spanked masochist to bed and you just have to expect that sort of thing :-).

At any rate, He has declared that there will be daily spankings for the next week -- until I am not feeling underspanked anymore. That falls into my brain and causes me to begin "interpreting" His intent. I am such a problem child! Part of me wants to believe that He really does like to spank me still, and is glad to be getting back to that way of life for us. But then, the wicked, mischievious voice begins to whisper that He is really trying to create a reality that is so aversive that I won't ask again for a really long time. Oh good grief!

This is exactly why it is much, much better for me to turn over control to Him. I think about things too much. I analyze and worry and fret and interpret too much. I get all twisted up in knots. When the control is in His hands, I can fuss all I want --it won't change anything. I'll be taken along to the place where I come to some kind of peace again... with myself, with Him, and ultimately, with us.

swan