Changes to My "View" of My Masochism

Morningstar asked, in her comment to the last post:

"i wonder if you always had this "view" (for lack of a better word) towards masochism? Or is it something that has just crept up on you??"

I am honestly not exactly sure how to answer that question. To tell the truth, I am not sure if my "view" of my masochism has changed, or if my physical and emotional experience of it has changed, or if the way it is being "done" these days has changed. I suspect that it is some combination of all of those things.

What I'm going to say here represents MY sense of things. It does not match Master's view in a lot of the particulars. That seems to be a big part of the difficulty right now. Even having come this way together, we are looking back over the same territory and seeing entirely different scenery. I really find that scary sometimes. But, oh well... Here's the story as best I can make sense of it:

When I first started "playing" with Master, I'd spent years longing for a relationship that would recognize, acknowledge, and simply honor that part of my "self" that I have come to call "masochist." In the beginning, deep pent up frustration and a lifetime of suppressed fantasies fueled our play. We explored with an abandon that was giddy and emotionally charged and starry eyed.

And I was younger.

And I bore no scars.

And I was full of hopes and dreams.

And I hadn't yet crashed into any of the realities of this lifestyle.

And I was not sure about even being a masochist. The very word was one I was learning to wear with some difficulty. Still it was clear that what fired my deepest fantasies lived in that realm.

Our play, in the beginning was fierce and intense and passionate -- and probably not entirely prudent. We played almost daily, in sessions that often ran to an hour and a half or two hours, running through the entire "arsenal" of implements from floggers, to straps, to canes, to paddles, to quirts, to canes, etc. Every "toy" was wielded for 50 strokes or more. Those sessions came, over time to include some fairly strict bondage as well, which I had trouble with at first, but then learned to embrace as a "security" thing. I never bled. I often would end a session exhausted, but my recollection is that it was an exhaustion that was happy, soft, secure. I'd feel I'd "won" in some sense, and I'd feel proud of the accomplishment. I was always welted and bruised, but I wore the marks happily and relished the warmth and sensations.

Eventually, things shifted. I began to break and bleed at every session. Too, His increasingly arthritic knees no longer allowed the use of the floggers and quirts and whips. They simply were too difficult and require too much physical energy and stamina. Age took its toll on us both. He began to pare down, consciously or otherwise. And the sessions began to "collapse." The collapse was a sort of telescoping in terms of time and the selection of implements. Along with the shortening and paring down of the implement selection, what I've "felt" is an emotional distancing between us. The sessions have become (from my perspective) mechanical, utilitarian, cold, and as stripped of all erotic content as it is possible to get. He paddles or spanks or whips or whatever, at whatever intensity He has in mind, for however long He wants, and when He is done (which is usually when He is turned on "enough") then we fuck. I understand that this is what pleases Him, and I have tried to learn to serve by learning to "do" this kind of play, although I find them very, very difficult because there is no chance for the help of the endorphin high, and so little erotic connection to lean on. Again, this is my perception -- I am the one who experiences these sessions as beginning and proceeding abruptly, severely, and without much in the way of verbal communication or erotic touching or "other" sensation. When I try to explain that as a "loss" to Him, I am almost always met with a reaction that is incredulous.

At first, I thought it was a temporary or maybe situational or even "sometimes" shift that would be an addition to our play style. I simply believed that we would sometimes (or maybe even most times) do what I thought of as "efficiency" spankings, but then sometimes get back to the more erotically charged, gently-graded, longer sessions of our beginnings. It took me a long time to finally understand that those were gone for good. He, I believe, has made the changes in style for good, and caring reasons. From His perspective, all the shifts have been made to spare my hide, and to make things lighter and easier on me. The loss of emotional and physiological response content is not something that He comprehends at any level -- it is a "bottom vs. Top" vocabulary gap that I have been unable to bridge. When I attempt to talk about what I miss, or what I long for, or what I reminisce about, He "hears" reference to play that, in His mind, was far more brutal than what we now engage in, and I believe that He feels that I am unappreciative of how He has "scaled back" in order to accommodate my more limited capacities. I know, because I have heard Him say it (incredibly), that He fears that I might someday claim that His SM play with me is "abusive," and so land Him in legal trouble. Hence, there is an essential trust issue that hinders our relating and communicating about this from the outset.

I still believe that I have intact masochistic responses. I honestly believe that my erotic orientation is submissive and masochistic. I am convinced that the physical and health limits that have constrained us for so long have pushed our dynamic into an odd and skewed configuration that makes it hard for us to relate in sadomasochistic terms or to balance our power exchange roles consistently -- it is too easy to slip out of Master/slave and fall into "nurse/patient," or some other crisis-based model that throws us out of alignment with one another.

I want the masochistic experience that takes me where I know I can go. That requires a partner willing to take me there, even if I fuss and rage and bleed. Somehow, the diminishment of aging has robbed me in a way that I could not have predicted or imagined. It is something I cannot overcome, although I can cover it cosmetically. When it comes down to it, I cannot hide the fragility of my skin. However, that fragility has cost me in terms of my own self-confidence, and it has cost me in terms of His. We have backed away from one another. I want to submit. I can muster some of the courage it takes. In the end, though, I need His hands and His words, and His strength. I am too weak to go the whole distance alone. When He backs off in the face of my weakness, I feel abandoned. I think, in shortening, in reducing the range, in backing off, He has felt He was "taking care." The effect though is akin to leaving half the trapeze act without anything to catch onto...

I believe that there must be very few roles scarier than that of sadistic Top. Not only do these Ones go against all that our society says is proper, polite, and "right," but they most often walk straight into their own darkness and ours as well. In doing so, they have to trust that we, as partners, will play fairly and steadfastly in our mirrored roles as the "bottom." When personal history leaves room for doubting that partners will be constant, it becomes even harder to invest in that way. He and I are walking a difficult road to learning to trust after long, difficult, unhappy personal relational histories. What we are learning together is about way more than the mechanics of how and where to land a flogger or a paddle. It is not simple or easy.

It has to be worthwhile. This I believe.

swan

Willfullness?

I don't know. Maybe this is the issue. Maybe I'm just willfull. Whenever we get into these crossed-up places, where things aren't "easy," and we start out talking about what is the "problem," invariably I come away with the sense that I am the problem. Somehow, it is clear that I've changed, lost my orientation, misled, back-tracked, stopped fulfilling the promises, stopped going where I said I would... If you just type "willfullness" into Google, this is the definition that you come up with:

Noun 1. willfulness - the trait of being prone to disobedience and lack of discipline
fractiousness, unruliness, wilfulness
intractability, intractableness - the trait of being hard to influence or control
contrariness, perverseness, perversity - deliberate unruliness

No wonder He seems frustrated with me. No wonder He seems quick to withdraw. No wonder He is so ready to suggest that perhaps I might be better suited to a vanilla partner. Who needs the hassle?

I know that submissives submit. But I've worn Him out. He no longer wants to deal with my hurting if it is not joyful. If hurt uncovers anger and rage then He does not want it. Only smiling masochists need apply. If there is another shore beyond the rage, I only rarely get there. And every abortive voyage feels like failure to us both. And every failed attempt ups the ante and the anxiety.

Psych.

swan

Yo-yo

A couple of weeks ago, Master found an old wooden yo-yo from His boyhood. It has been sitting on the dining table. He's actually pretty good with it, but that's another story. It seems to have become emblematic.

Because that's me. Up. Down. Up. Down. Spinning round and round in wild circles.

I finally got the "all healed" from the doctor Friday afternoon. That news should have made me wildly happy. It really only brought up a host of issues and questions, and honestly, by the time we all got home Friday night, neither of us were in any shape to "try intercourse" as the doc so enigmatically phrased her release of me... Really, how does one "try" intercourse?

Saturday morning, however, was a different story. We didn't just try, we succeeded! Gloriously. All doubts swept away in one magnificent, outrageous, noisy, laughing, sobbing, celebratory fuck... We were both as giddy as newlyweds.

Up. Up. Up.

I woke up ahead of Him Sunday. Ready for a repeat. Hot and horny and excited and feeling sexy. He woke up soon after, seemingly feeling the same way -- all systems go. A bit of spanking, and then He decided I needed a good paddling -- hadn't been paddled in a long time...

Down. Crash. Out went the fire. I do not eroticize paddles or paddling. I endure paddling because He likes to do it. So, over the pillows I went, for a session with the paddle, which I know, and which He is quick to tell me was way lower-end than anything we used to do. And when it was over we tried to make love again...

But I was terribly sore inside. And not turned on, and He seemed -- less "ready" than before we started. Even my getting paddled hadn't pleased Him. At least that's how it felt in my head. I'd lost my "goodie" and I hadn't made Him happy either. I'd just hurt for the sake of hurting with no gain for either of us. The fucking was dismal. I tried. I don't know how long I lasted. For awhile I think. Not long enough. In the end, I felt like a failure all the way around: crappy slave, crappy lover, crappy woman.

Worst of it is that I still don't have words for where it all goes off the tracks. I don't think I'm a really bad slave or a terrible masochist. I don't think we're a terrible match for one another. I think we are a really good match, but we seem to be at odds right now. I don't meet up to whatever the fantasy is that He has in His head and I guess I don't even meet up to the fantasy that I have in my head. He keeps suggesting that maybe I'd be happier with some nice vanilla man... That is a threat that drops me to the bottom of the pit.

Ah well, even yo-yo's have strings. They aren't totally worthless as long as someone keeps hold of the string. In the end, I think the biggest problem for me has been that sense that the string is loose. I don't know if we'll ever get straight with one another what that means to the two of us. We don't seem to share much vocabulary in that regard. I think that His idea of what I really need to feel His "ownership" is different than the reality -- especially at the critical moments when I am most vulnerable. I don't need Him to direct me or hold me tightly when I'm pouring detergent into the washer, but when I'm facing the demons and dragons at the edge of the masochistic forest -- then, oh then, I need His strength and His voice and His power. Unfortunately, at that moment, I suspect He is into His own space and not willing or able to be available in that way... I may have to learn to fight the demons on my own...

Or go find that nice vanilla man. Or maybe just lay down and die.

swan

Knowing "What I am up against"

As I am more and more healed, we are contemplating more and more seriously coming back to a resumption of our relatedness as sadomasochistic partners. It is not entirely simple or smooth, much as I believe both of us want it to be.

SM, I think, is clouded to a degree when partners are also lovers -- and we are.

We remain, at present, somewhat stifled and stymied by the continual, periodic intrusion of doctor visits. Every two weeks, I am obliged to "bare all" to the gynecologist since things have yet to heal sufficiently to gain me release from the surgical follow-up regimen. Because I am prone to significant marking and bruising with even fairly light impact, we've been kept to time limited activities. Always there is the question of "healing" obvious marks of our interactions before the good doctor gets a good look at me...

That said, we've had some interludes that have foreshadowed what is to come. I am aware that He is "crazy" to pick it all back up again. I am trying to "know" that His care for me will balance the craziness that has built up over these eight long weeks... I am wanting to be "good," to be "pleasing," to be "ready" for whatever He will want from me...

I am not a "simple" masochist. I do not readily or easily eroticize painful stimuli. I eroticize the loss of control that comes from being taken beyond my ability or willingness to endure painful stimuli. It is not a direct path.

Interestingly, I have made the connection with a sadistic partner who, given the opportunity, and a willing partner, enjoys very high level "impact" play. His orientation is almost entirely toward whips, straps, canes, and paddles. The other elements of BDSM play are of much less interest for Him, generally. When we first were partnered, our sessions were typically lengthy, consisting of long build ups with many toys. He'd start out with light leather slappers, and soft suede floggers, taking me from level to level -- building the sensation and intensity as I caught the wave of endorphins and rode the crest of the pain with His use of increasingly high-end implements.

My skin (now older and far less resilient)and His patience will no longer allow such dalliance. Our sessions now are far shorter and far more "condensed." There is no room on the "menu" for the luxury of slow, sensual build ups that leave time for the rush of endorphins to the rescue. Our play now is "efficient" and most often severe from the outset. If we are to make it through a session with a minimum of bloodshed, we need to go for whatever objective He has in mind, and hang the "niceties."

I believe that the Lover in Him would be pleased if I'd "get something" out of our play, but I also know that when it is over and done with that is not the primary motivation. He hurts me because it pleases Him to do so; turns Him on to do so; connects Him to me to do so. It is a fierce, roaring, driving, powerful, absolute need for Him to have me in that place where I am begging, pleading, crying for Him to stop, to go no further, to let me go -- please, Sir... If it gets me off, too, then that is a bonus, but not a requirement.

And it very often doesn't. For me, it is battleground. To get there. Stay there. Hold. In masochistic submission, I walk an edge that runs between utter darkness and absolute fury. He pushes, looking for the breaking point. It is not enough for me to endure. My quiet, stoic, sweating, panting, survival is never, ever good enough. He wants my struggle, my suffering, my pleas, and my desperation. For me, the danger is that I can so easily fall off the cliff into the darkness of despair, or, even worse, flip over into the rage that brings me to the point of wanting to do murder... I am not a sweet slave in that place. There is feral just below that surface.

So, the other morning, as we struggled, each of us with our own frustrations and fears, I fussed that I only wanted to know what He had planned for the morning/day --wanted to know "what I was up against." It hurt His feelings in some significant way. He is quick to read that sort of phrasing as reflective of a feeling on my part of "abuse." It isn't that at all. Only the mental preparation of one who engages in a serious endeavor requiring a disciplined mind, body, and spirit. I do prepare for our sessions, if I get the chance. I work to be ready. I know that, unless I am gifted with the rare confluence of masochistic magic, I will have to call on every single personal resource at my disposal to give us the kind of interaction that fires our love into a space that is more than just sexy -- if I can BE who I ought to be under His hand, then I know that together we can be powerful and magical and lyrical and forever bright like the stars.

swan

Power Exchange and "living" on and on...

Ours is a relationship that is founded on power exchange. Grounded in power exchange. Built around power exchange.

It is not apart. Not separate. Not able to be compartmentalized. Not discrete from the whole.

We love to the very cores of our beings, and always the energy sparks back and forth between us. Step and measure, gauge and check, test and balance. We are ever aware of one another. Ever present to one another. Exquisitely attuned.

Sometimes that balance is joyous and simple and pure. Sometimes, it is purest agony. Energy makes music, it also burns.

We've reached an edgy place these last few days. We are worn out. Too much has come our way this year: too much illness, too much surgery, too much recovery, too much time spent waiting to be "well." There have been too many demands put on our energies by outside forces over which we've had no control. The slave struggles with such intrusions. The Master purely rails.

We've clung to each other and promised each other that the day will come when we will "have" each other again. We see that day approaching, but we are tired. Like shipwrecked survivors washed up on a rocky shore, we cling to one another and gasp and wheeze. We know we've come this far together. We know how lucky we are to have one another. We are glad and grateful for the gift of the love we've been granted.

Still, we are feeling, each of us, beaten and battered and beleaguered. Not always as gentle or as forbearant as we ought to be. We are a frightened and mortal pair at this point. Staggering along, hoping to make it to safety and sanity soon. Hoping that the hope we've nurtured has not expired while we waited to reach the shore.

Power exchange is not for the faint of heart. That goes double for this journey from middle-age into what lies beyond that (and what shall we call that territory?). How foolhardy then, those of us who opt to do both things at once, together and simultaneously? Good gravy, Mabel!

Patience, good-humor, strength, courage, enduring love, and the blessings of all the fairies -- these are the gifts we most surely will need as the days come down upon us.

What Are Your Fantasies?

That is the question He asked me the other night as I struggled again in the desert that has become my post-surgical sexual state.

It had come to seem that nothing, NOTHING, was working to assuage the growing sexual frustration with which I've lived since the end of December. Even the week and wobbly orgasms which I'd managed in weeks three and four seemed to have fled, and lately I've not been managing any sort of release at all. Exhaustion, worry, fear -- all of it seems to be working its evil magic to keep me from regaining access to that part of my female life. Along with that more mundane, "vanilla" sexuality, there is the plain reality that I am continually traipsing off to visit the doctor and so, our SM-play has been dropped into the deep freeze as well. I might as well have taken vows of celibacy when I signed that surgical release. Maybe we both should have...

The truest answer to His question is, that until recently, I've been too tired to entertain any fantasies -- and too freaked out. All I've been able to do is survive. Survive and sleep the sleep of the nearly dead...

But then, just the other night, long after He'd fallen asleep, I finally made it to the mountain top. And the story in my head was one that would have made the sadist in Him proud, even as it scared the masochist in me half to death.

Stocks.

The singletail.

The gag.

All the elements that terrify me at the highest and deepest levels, took me flying off the edge and rocked me into a full on, out of control orgasm that did not fizzle, did not wobble, did not disappoint...

To be fair, the fantasy in my head, did not resemble any reality that will likely ever transpire. The scene played out with much foreplay, with much preamble, with great sensuality, with a great deal of setup that put me in a "headspace" to BE there, to feel in my body, to drop into the place to let it all go. Stylistically, those things are almost certainly not going to accompany any trip to the stocks or any real life encounter with the single tail. Still, I was jubilant that my very first return to full sexual response was in answer to such a powerful sadomasochistic archetype.

For me, this is reassuring and affirming.

I am, perhaps, healing on levels that are not merely physical.

At last.

swan

Sometimes a Fellow wants...

Like almost 21 million others, our family lives with diabetes. It influences our lives on many different levels. Often, we "dance" with the constraints and limitations it imposes, and never even think about it; so ingrained are the patterns that the illness has woven through our lives...

T's diagnosis came just weeks before I arrived here to live. Master's was years before. We often note that I am the only one in the family with a "metabolism."

We've gotten to be the ninja warriors of diabetes control. We shop and cook with a critical eye on all the "numbers;" watching for carbohydrates, fats, sugars, sodium... We pay attention to all the other medical and lifestyle care modalities as well. Diet, exercise, routine screenings... we do it all conscientiously and aggressively. Still there is a progressive component to the disease. We all know this is the reality.

Years ago, when we were first coming to know one another, when I was still living across the country, when most of our contact was long distance, Master and I talked, by phone and email and IM, often for hours at a time, about everything that we could think of, sharing the most amazing connection and bond. I talked with Him about things I'd never ever talked to anyone about -- not even the man I'd been married to for a quarter of a century. Yet, there were things that remained oddly vague and obscure. We were clearly, openly, deliberately, consciously moving toward a very intensely intimate, deeply passionate relationship, but I had no sense of how the two of us would BE together sexually.

Ultimately, as we approached the point of actually being able to be together as we'd dreamed and talked, I took the plunge and simply asked the question: "what will it be like between us sexually?"

It was then that He told me that diabetes had impacted that part of His life and that there were issues related to nerve sensation, ability to sustain erections, and delayed ejaculation. He told me that the likelihood was that we would never have intercourse in the normal manner. I understood that, and never once wavered. My path was set. I am happy to report that His prediction has turned out to be incorrect, BTW. He and I fuck like the proverbial bunnies...

However...

There remain some issues. That limited sensation in the penis, and the issue of delayed ejaculation... Sometimes a fellow wants a blowjob, you know? He seldom asks. Because, well, it just isn't like you would think it would be... All that great stuff about what does and does not work and how to do it... There are only just a few, little, bitty places that even notice that you are there, and they aren't where a girl would think they would be, and once you find them, if you can find them, you better be prepared to go after it for a really, really, really long time. Can you say "Energizer Bunny?"

But we've been on restriction for such a gosh darn long time... Anything. We'd do anything just to have some sense of one another. So Sunday, He said, "I'd like it, but I don't want to strain you..." Awwww...

My only hesitation was that I so seldom "succeed" in the sense of bringing Him to climax. But, I just wanted to be there, to be with Him, to be for Him, to please somehow. It didn't matter so much -- the "success." I don't know how long it went on. I don't know how "good" it was. I got lost in the doing somehow. I think there were times where He directed it some, other times where He simply let me go, on and on and on and on...

I have never felt like I was "good" at giving blowjobs, never actually enjoyed it. This was different. I was entirely, joyously, happy with Him and with us and with me this time. Caught up in Him and His pleasure and the sensations between us, the sounds of us, the light and dark between and around us, the waves that carried us. Somehow this time, there was no "success" and no "failure." There was only a joining that was good.

swan