Begging

On December 26, He and I crashed into one another, and it was a relational disaster of Titanic proportions.  That dark passage has receded a good bit with the passage of time, but the sense of woundedness has not entirely healed.  For either of us. 

We've talked a very great deal.  We've worked hard to listen and to understand.  We've each been gentle with each other, but also very tentative.  From my perspective, it feels scary to move forward, or to move very much at all, because I am so aware that it might all burst into flames again.

We've continued to share a bed.  We fall exhausted into bed each night, and hold onto one another with an almost desperate tenacity. 

We've continued to make love -- almost daily.  Nothing at all kinky about that ... we are happy enough with our renewed and restored capacity for good, old-fashioned, vanilla sex. 

We've continued to maintain our positions within our established power-based dynamic.  He continues to have expectations of my service and my obedience, and I continue to work to fulfill those requirements.  It has given us a stable and familiar way of being together through these days.

But we have not spanked -- not engaged in any sadomasochistic play.  There was one spanking just after our battle.  It was very difficult, very intense, and very punitive feeling.  I was left very sore and bruised in the aftermath.  One other attempt a day or so later made me so miserable that He backed off completely, and has made no move to initiate anything since. 

He's stopped believing in me as a masochist, and who can blame Him?  I've been in an internal dialog that amounts to an accountant's balancing of the pain and pleasure values in my life.  There's not much that is overtly erotically pleasurable for me anymore.  I simply do not get turned on -- by anything, and I don't take much pleasure from sex these days.  It isn't difficult or painful -- it just isn't exciting or fulfilling.  Somewhere in my imaginings, I keep thinking that if there were more physical pleasure in the mix, that I'd be better equipped to make the journey through the painful side of things.  But I haven't done a very good job of explaining all of that to Him, and what He has interpreted of that is that I "don't like spanking" anymore.  He is unwilling to cross over into anything that feels abusive, and I have lost so much of my earlier "joy" in the physical reality of spanking, that He is feeling that He has lost His play partner.  Sigh.

In the meantime, I have not lost my need for spanking.  Not at all.  However unbalanced the pain/pleasure accounts seem, my perverse masochistic drives keep on working, and when we go for significant periods of time without spanking, I begin to feel starved.  Desperate.  Abandoned.  Fearful.

I have wanted Him to figure it all out.  I have wanted Him to see me and know me and understand my needs and my fears -- and somehow to fix it all.  THAT is unfair and unreasonable, and I know that, as an adult partner in this relationship, it is my responsibility to reach across the gap and make the move to re-establish the connection.  But I am a proud and arrogant, stiff-necked human.  Not good.

I have some medical things planned today, and so had the day off from school.  This morning, we woke up early, and made love just a bit after 4 AM.  I think we both believed that we'd fall back to sleep afterwards, but He was awake in the darkness, and I was frustrated and agitated and very, very sad.  I cried quietly, and worried, and tried to think my way along through all the tangles -- while lying there in the darkness rubbing His back.  An hour passed, and then another half an hour...  Finally, I broke the silence, and begged for what I've been needing for so long -- "If I promise to be good, would You spank me, please?"

I think He told me that He'd spank  me even if I promised to be bad.  :-)  We held onto each other for a bit longer, just touching and savoring the closeness.  Then I went to get onto my old friend, the spanking pillow, and He went to collect the toys He wanted.  I was very agitated, scared, and emotional in the beginning, and I got a bit panicky.  He held me and assured me that I was doing fine.  He stroked me with a knife blade, tracing the scars of the cutting, and teasing me into a gentler rhythm.  And, He spanked me.  Hard.  With a variety of implements.  Eventually, I settled in, breathing and clinging to my love for Him, and sinking deeper and deeper into the quiet and dark.  And then it was over with.  I kissed the paddle, thanked Him (really thanked Him) for my spanking, and the two of us fell back to sleep.  It was all so good.  I feel as if I can breathe again without it aching in my chest.

I am not naive.  I don't have any illusions that all is well, but I am hopeful.  Hopeful that we may have turned a corner toward being good again.  It took me outliving my own pride to finally say to Him what He needed to hear from me.

Pride.  Not a good thing in a slave.  Duh!

swan