Want and Wanting

Ingrid Bergman once said, "Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get." There's a note of resignation to that sentiment. It isn't all that far from the life philosophy that I remember adopting as a child of 10. In those bleak years, I remember that I came to believe that the best way to be happy was to not want what I could not have. Ingrid would have been impressed...


Today, I live the life that I chose for myself -- the life I once dreamed of. I love, and am loved. I belong to a bright, strong, confident man who honors me with His ownership. Certainly, by Ingrid's definition, I have made a success in terms of my relationship. It is exactly what I wanted -- exactly what I craved from the time I was very young. If getting what you want is "success," then my life epitomizes that.


The issue of happiness is more complicated. To want what you get seems to me to be a tall order, at least as a steady state. In general, I do want what I get. I want His control. I want His oversight of my life, my choices, my well-being, my thinking, my behavior. His "sadist" meets my "masochist," and that match is a powerful and almost intoxicating source of energy and delight for both of us. Most of the time.


I am not, however, simple or easy. I have enormous drives to seize control wherever that is possible. When I sense an opening, I will manipulate and wheedle and play every card in my hand in order to come out as the "winner." That compulsion can be wickedly destructive inside of an intimate relationship, and I am lucky that He is completely unaffected by those moves. He is who He is, and He wants what He wants. He requires and demands my submission; my compliance, and there is simply no room to wiggle. That fact creates great security and emotional comfort for me, but it also chafes -- because I have never lost the part of my being that really does want Him to do what I want Him to do.


I get frustrated when I sense that He is going right on with whatever is on His agenda -- no matter what I might "want" or think I "need." That sort of thing pisses the hell out of me. It isn't fair! Can you see my pouty face?


If being happy is equivalent to wanting what you get, then I am sometimes not even a little bit happy. Sometimes I get way more than I bargained for. Sometimes I do not get anything that is even remotely what I want ... except that it IS (in some upside down fashion) exactly what I want, and I DO end up feeling fulfilled and contented and sometimes even goofy with the happiness that brings me. What a contrary mix of feelings and wants I am...


I swear I am not crazy, and certainly not schizophrenic. I have a pretty well integrated sense of myself, and I am really not all that easily knocked off kilter. I know that I am not the only one who lives inside of the paradox that is masochistic submission. It sets me up for the cognitive dilemma that IF He chooses to use me in the ways that I think I want, I may feel sensuously pleasured, but I am often left with a lingering sense of deprivation. The masochist does not respond to that pleasuring sort of play. For me, the way into a place of satisfaction and contentment is almost always through an enormous and often bleak internal battle and struggle for control -- and I have to lose that battle fair and square. I have to be taken through sensations and emotions that I'd consciously prefer to avoid. I have to be driven through rage and despair and resentment and hopelessness to the point of complete submission, and for that to happen I have to choose to remain in the one place where every instinct screams I should not be.


I can't imagine how it is that He tolerates the fierceness of the emotions that He brings up in me. It is perhaps, that sadism provides some sort of protective armor off of which all the emotional spears simply bounce and fall harmlessly away. Or maybe He just knows me so well that He understands what He is seeing in the moment -- knows that the external raging is the artifact of an internal battle that isn't about Him at all.


It is a primal sort of relating. Nothing delicate or genteel. He commands and I bend, but even as I choose the practice of submission, the voices in my head are seldom quiet, polite, or sweet. I can rain down silent curses, even as I give Him the required "Sir." I can wrap myself in bitterness and refuse to give up that last shred of control that would allow my mind and body to follow the path to soaring ecstasy in the pain He unleashes. I can be my own worst enemy sometimes.

Sometimes. I want. And often -- I do not want. All at the same time. Sometimes. I would refuse what cannot be refused, and if it were allowed, I'd miss out on the whole experience. Because I am sometimes not brave enough or strong enough to go there on my own. He guides. He cajoles. He insists. He commands. He has taken my power, and He uses it for the benefit of us both.

The weekend was not entirely happy for me. I do wonder what drives the unpredictable storms of my nature. This week though, the pouty face seems a distant memory. I am centered and secure and sure of my own self. It is the melding of success and happiness that comes from getting what you want by not being given what you think you want.


swan