A Good, Happy, Joyful, Wonderful Spanking

Spanking still occupies a central part of my, and our, erotic and sexual identity.  That part of our relationship has been under stress in these last months.  Even as life (in the general sense) has steadily improved, we've both felt a real tentativeness about the power exchange we've shared, and that has included our SM play.

I wasn't good or easy with our SM life for a long time even before the most recent crisis.  Going back five years to my hysterectomy, my ability to endure, process, and transmute painful stimuli shifted.  While my masochism remains as an essential part of who I am, nothing I could find to say to myself in my head made my body work the way it once did.  I was caught between my own wanting and my inability to actualize that physically.  That reality grew between us over the years as I struggled to accommodate the level of sadomasochistic intensity that we both remembered. 

Then there was that awful trio of  fear and trauma and mutual mistrust -- the artifacts of our explosive, meltdown.  Each time we've come together to try and re-establish that old, familiar connection, we've run smack into the jumbled pile of emotional responses that neither one of us completely understand.  Spanking play is freighted with emotional responses anyway, and the two of us were carrying a whole host of spoken and unspoken feelings that tangled themselves up in our "play."  To say that things have been complicated would be an understatement.

And we have a shoulder.  Well, technically, He has the shoulder, but it is one of those things -- His shoulder has become a shared concern and impediment.  His right shoulder has essentially disintegrated after years of osteoarthritis and a lifetime of hard work.  There really isn't much left of the joint, and the only treatment is a complete shoulder replacement -- actually, what is needed is an even more complicated reverse shoulder replacement.  The surgery is scheduled for June 17, and until that can be done, He has very little range of motion or physical strength in His right shoulder.  More and more and more, He depends on His left arm to perform the most mundane of physical tasks.  Spanking, which is for Him a right handed activity, has become more and more complicated.  He's shifted to the left hand as much as He can, but it isn't easy, comfortable, or particularly satisfying -- the right arm is definitely His preferred and DOMINANT side.

There have been lots of hurdles and barriers for the resumption of our spanking life.  We've been more comfortable switching, with Him in the role of bottom, than we have with our more accustomed D/s roles.  It has been a confusing and disquieting time.

But this morning, things aligned and we spanked.  He spanked me.  I wanted it.  He wanted it.  It was good.  He seems, through all of this, to have evolved to an increased interest in leather implements; more straps and quirts and such -- moving away (to a degree) from His former fascination with paddles.  I've always been better with leather than with plastic and wood; better with straps and floggers and quirts than with paddles.

This morning's spanking was good.  We did it together.  We connected.  We were with each other and enjoying each other.  It was good, happy, joyful, and wonderful.  I was thrilled.  I am not sure that He reached the level of thrilled, but I think He was pleased.  We are, I think, on the road to recovering ourselves.

swan