Spanking Bench -- The Experiment

I didn't think it would be possible to turn the new spanking bench over, and I am now convinced that I had it right with that guess. 

He and I played together yesterday afternoon.  It was a session that had a few "agendas" attached.  One of those was to test the stability of the spanking bench under the demands of the sort of high-end play that might cause me to become frantic enough to try and escape.  More significant for the two of us was to explore the potential and impacts of returning to our earlier and  much more intense play style that we've largely abandoned in the last few years.

The latter was in response to a conversation we've been having about the way we've come to the place we find ourselves, and what that has meant for us...

He has, step by step, backed way off from the higher end sadistic play that was His mode for the first years of our lives together.  Mostly, that has been driven by His concern for my health and well-being.  In His view, I've become less and less able to withstand the demands of the play that He is so inclined to -- physically, but also emotionally.  It is, classically, the sort of thing that lifestylers sometimess decry -- struggling with how one reconciles a strong sadomasochistic bent with an equally strong love for the partner.  How does a sadistic Top partner find the path to hurting the one He loves -- especially if that bottom partner is struggling emotionally to accommodate that sort of play?  Over and over again, He's asked me if I want to submit to the kind of spankings He's fantasizing about.  Over and over, I've quailed; too afraid to give Him the "yes" that would have set us both on the path.  Simultaneously, as He's worried about me, He's become more and more connvinced that the solution is to let me play at the level that is "comfortable" for me, and save the high-end sadism for other spanking partners. 

For my part, I've struggled with believing in myself, and believing in Him.  As I've felt my old masochistic power leeching away, I've worried that there was nothing left to me that was of much value.  I've imagined myself an old woman, slaving away at the daily stuff of life -- meals, dishes, laundry, trash hauling, and on and on and on.  I've mourned the loss of that part of this that was sexy and exciting and just plain hot.  Somewhere in my brain, there is a submissive that is absolutely convinced that I could still do it if He'd just help me and guide me.  From my perspective, His move to back off and back away has felt like abandonment.  I could hear Him saying how concerned He was and how much He loved me, but it didn't feel like that inside of me. 

Round and round and round we've gone.  I'm betting that we've not faced anything that other couples making the traverse from relatively youthful lifestyle practitioners to relatively older have had to deal with, but the paassage has been daunting for us.  What a tangle!

I think that the way forward finally appeared when I began to wonder, "what would happen if..."  What would happen if, instead of backing off when I hit a wall in session, He would just push forward and carry me through that place?  It has never been unusual for me to come to a point of panic and often great anger when the intensity passes my initial ability to cope with it.  I cry and beg and struggle and spit and hiss and withdraw emotionally.  If it ends at that moment, I'm left right there awash in a whole host of negative emotions -- and in my judgement, I have failed utterly.  Early on, He tended to not care if I was happy, and would just go right on with whatever He had in mind for me and for us.  In that event, I'd have no alternative but to follow His lead, albeit sometimes grudgingly.  The result of all of that is that I'd fall out of the other side, and find myself finally giving it all up to Him.  In the end, I'd feel soft, safe, secure, and successful.

Being able to express that question to Him opened the door for the two of us.  We've talked a lot, and I think we've come to understand what that might mean to both of us. 

So, yesterday afternoon, as we got ready to play, I knew that I was embarking on a journey that was likely to be challenging, but might potentially be a very good thing.  He restrained me to the bench, and started off with a back rub.  Yes, a back rub.  I'd pulled a whole host of muscles moving the mattress the night before, and I have been struggling with some chronic lower back issues anyway.  The back rub was a surprise, but it was wonderful.  That was followed by some pretty intense hand spanking and an absolutely wonderful flogging with the buffalo floggers.  Things got more and more and more intense after that.  Very early, He switched to the annivarsary paddle, and I (perhaps predictably) panicked and declared that I was done.  He went right on; moving from paddles to straps to canes to paddles to floggers to canes to quirts to straps...  I cried, and yelled, and floated.  He hurt me and loved me and held me and hurt me some more.  Over and over and over, we went together through the cycle of pain and fear and powerful eroticism, until I was spent and He was satisfied.  Somewhere in the middle, I even achieved the (for me) very rare orgasm.

When He was done, He left me there, on the bench, still restrained -- telling me to just calm down and relax.  He went and got some ice packs and tended to my very red, very sore, very welted butt.  I floated away, softly -- completely sure that He'd take good care of me.  When He did release me, I staggered my way with Him into the bedroom where He held me and helped me warm up -- I was very, very cold.  In time, we made love very softly and very sweetly, and when He reached His release, I did too.  Again!  Amazing. 

I spent the afternoon and evening sitting very gingerly, and I didn't sleep very comfortably, but I'm much better this morning.  If we really wondered what might happen if we moved back toward the kind of play we once enjoyed, I think we got our answer yesterday afternoon.  I am entirely able to withstand it, and I will not become mortally traumatized.  On the contrary, what might be true is that our kind of sadomasochistic play remains, as it has always been, the pathway to sexual and erotic fulfillment for my "old lady" body and mind.  How did we ever come to the place where we believed otherwise?

swan