In the next few days, I’m going to take down this site. It was a real pleasure writing here and getting to know so many people through this place. If you’re one of those people and you want to get in touch with me so that we can stay in some kind of contact, please do that soon. You can email me at devastatingyet at gmail dot com. (The email address isn’t going away, just the site.)
Otherwise, farewell, and enjoy your adventures!
Posted in administrative, amazing revelations
I realized a few weeks ago that I don’t want to do bdsm right now. I realized that, in fact, it would be satisfying to just say, “I’m not doing bdsm right now.”
I still live with Joscelin (though we broke up over 2 years ago), and occasionally we play together, sometimes just for a quick fuck, sometimes for a week or more at a time. But we haven’t done anything lately. He’s been working on some projects that he might like a guinea pig for, and I realized it might be helpful to let him know I’m not doing bdsm right now, so we had a good long talk about it.
Partly it is that I don’t like the local bdsm community — at least, the part of it that I’ve seen. Our most “local” club (45 minutes away) is almost entirely heterosexual. Even though I’m sort of mostly straight myself, this doesn’t work for me, and it’s not because of some theoretical objection. I not only enjoy watching gays and lesbians do bdsm, I also seem to require the presence of gays and lesbians to legitimate the scene for me.
At this club, I find the kind of yucky thing I didn’t find where we last lived, or didn’t find enough to bother me – gender/role essentialism of some kind. It feels like there is a community there in which some are recognized as submissives and others as dominants and submissives are collectively regarded as cute or adorable or precious or funny. It’s hard to express clearly, and it may be more about me than about what’s actually going on there, but that’s how I feel.
When I go there, I end up interacting mostly with people who are either jerks or obviously troubled. By “obviously troubled” I mean the kind of people who I can tell, in my first conversation with them, are too emotionally damaged or somehow delusional for me to want to play or be friends with or even talk to more than I have to. And by “jerks” I mean, for instance, the guy who told me to smile (and then I did, which only makes me more angry), or guys who insist on telling me about things they like to do and which squick me out, or just that guy who sits next to you and tells you about himself in a way that makes you hate him.
Of course, there are plenty of other people there, but the ratios are wrong for me. I’m also not the easiest person to approach socially (I’m sort of shy and tend to maintain a gaze/body language that makes it impossible to talk to me), so maybe only maniacs (the kind of people who hit on and/or tell their life story to everyone in the room) even try.
My own history of doing bdsm is not so great. I had amazing, moving, sexy times with Joscelin – I’ll never deny that. But I think a lot of the choices we made were fundamentally misguided. Some of what he wanted was stuff I no longer really think it was OK to do.
That’s sort of beside the point, because right now, my desire to dominate people is basically non-existent. Being firm, creating experiences, making up the story, guiding people, etc. – those things don’t come very naturally to me, and my current job uses up every scrap of energy that I have in that direction, and then some. Maybe that’s part of it. I wouldn’t mind being submitted to, if submitting to me completely freely was satisfying enough for a partner, without my needing to do anything to make the experience complete, but I don’t expect such a person to exist. (Frankly, I think the idea is crazy, and I’d have to satifsy myself that a person who presented himself that way wasn’t just ridiculously emotionally damaged somehow.)
As for being a submissive…well, it does align with my innate desires pretty well. All of my masturbatory fantasies since early childhood have involved force, control, punishment, training, denial, and/or overstimulation directed at me.
In real life, I find submitting to be extremely compelling and satisfying and good…for a little while, like a couple of weeks. After that, I still find it compelling, but no longer really good. I start to hate it but I’m unable to see that I hate it, and so I just do it in a way that makes things impossible for my partner, while still believing fervently that I want to be doing it. And I’m devastated when it ends.
In general, submitting turns me into an emotional wreck anyway. Even in the early parts, I fall apart at the drop of a hat and need constant and deep reassurance all the damn time. (I’m not like this in everyday life, though I’m not a supremely confident person either.) That seems to suggest that maybe it’s not the healthiest thing for me to be doing.
Of course, this is all in a 24/7 type of setup. There are other ways to do bdsm, but over the years of knowing Joscelin and being around the scene I have kind of lost this knowledge.
It also takes a fuckload of trust for me to want to bottom to someone more than extremely casually. It’s not the physical risks — I’m not too worried about someone ignoring my safewords or raping me, etc., though I probably should be — it’s the mindset. If I learn later that there is gender essentialism in the other person’s mind or [fill in the blank with other things I find objectionable] I’m going to be really rageful and feel shame over what I participated in. It’s a lot to demand of another human being, really.
So, damn, what about the fact that it’s mostly only bdsm (or at least sex with some kind of power imbalance) that turns me on? Well, whatever. I’m not trying to constrain my future self from having whatever funtimes she chooses. But right now, sexual gratification doesn’t actually feel very important to me. I masturbate and that’s enough for me.
If I met someone I wanted to have sex with, then I would (assuming it was mutual, of course), and if we wanted to do some bdsm, then we would. But right now I’m not looking for that to happen, and certainly not going and seeking it out.
Posted in amazing revelations, community, ethics, trust
“Domination & Submission” must be the most generic post title ever, but it’s exactly what I intend to write about.
You see, I face a bit of a conundrum in my romantic life. I’m single right now, and starting to feel more interested in dating/playing than I have in a while, and and as a free and unfettered (so to speak) person, I can think about what I want. I’m clearly kinky – I probably wouldn’t do that well with a non-kinky partner at this point (though I wouldn’t mind just getting laid sometime). But there is a conflict at the core of my sexuality.
When I am going to have an orgasm, whether during partner sex or masturbation, I think about being dominated or helpless or being punished or used or something along those lines. Even if a partner is pleasuring me and I am not actively fantasizing about something else, and even if that partner is submitting to me at the time, I am almost always imagining that I’m helpless about what is happening to me in that moment.
And yet…and yet.
I am not romantically attracted to mandoms. I’m really not. I don’t enjoy seeing myself as a submissive. I don’t aspire to be good at being a submissive or at bottoming. And the bottom line is I just don’t love men who are dominating me. I can be in thrall to them. I can adore them. But I can’t love them in the way that I want to love someone.
Not all mandoms turn me off. Joscelin didn’t, when he was dominating me (which happened a few times during our relationship and then again at the end, which was deep and intense although it didn’t last all that long). But the ideal sort of mandom (as viewed by the bdsm culture) doesn’t appeal to me at all, and even the best mandoms – even Joscelin – I don’t really like when they are doing their thing. It’s unfair but true.
I was talking to Joscelin about this earlier, and we were trying to ponder whether there even is such a thing as the “culturally ideal mansub” for comparison. The best I could come up with as a romantic image is that idea of a guy who is like a knight who wears a lady’s favor. And honestly even though that is not exactly up my alley, I do like it. I like devotion. I like devotion aimed at me. I like it very much.
I suppose having different romantic and sexual interests is not that rare. I have a close male friend whose sex fantasies usually involve something like a gaggle of young volleyball players romping with him, but who in reality is only romantically interested in middle-aged hippies. I’m not actually interested in dating a filthy pirate who threatens to beat me if I try to get up from the rum-soaked table onto which he has pushed me. Is it really so extreme?
Submitting threatens me and makes me angry.
When I was submitting to Joscelin last year, as I said above, it was very deep and good. These days he has another submissive, who he just started with a few weeks ago, and during our conversation tonight, he said something about the event that made me back out of what we were doing. (Short version: I kicked him and he got very angry and I freaked out a lot.) He said, “I was thinking about that, and I realized, I would never have responded that way to [the New Girl]. But then, she would never have done what you did, either.”
He doesn’t normally compare me to the New Girl (since he’s not a dick), but the truth is, whenever he talks about dominating her, I do the comparison myself, and I’m often angry/defensive/hurt. Because I actually think I was amazing as a submissive to him, and I don’t know if he thinks so (or, as I would say in my head, “realizes it”). So when he said this, I naturally went very quiet, and when he started to continue, I said, “I can’t have this part of the conversation,” and eventually we moved on.
It still upsets me to think about. But I’m also upset on a meta level. Why do I feel defensive about what kind of a submissive I was? I don’t aspire to be a good submissive – the thought makes me retch. Why is it that just because I submitted to him I will now apparently forever buy into this thing where he gets to judge my value as a submissive, and I can be compared to these other submissives, and things like that? Yuck.
I bring this up not because it’s a big deal, the conversation we had – it wasn’t – but because it is kind of an example and indicator of how I feel about submitting and why I don’t want to do it.
On the other side of things, though, when a man submits to me, I do like who I am. I like being a sadist. I like power. I like caretaking. I like having someone in thrall to me, or expressing devotion to me. These to me are beautiful things. A man who responds to me in this way is beautiful and precious to me, and that’s a way of loving that I…love. I like the person that it makes me. I want to be a fuller expression of that person.
So, yeah…bring on the submissive men. Because I’d rather have the romance, beauty, and the bigger picture than the slightly more intense orgasms I can get from being dominated.
Sometimes, when I am enjoying some, ahem, alone time, I think about asking Joscelin to top me, at least in specific ways. There are deal breakers between us that make a relationship impossible in general, but over time my mind worked out a very limited relationship that seemed like it would be highly enjoyable and yet avoid the serious drawbacks.
Usually when my alone time ends, I lose interest in this idea, but last night I brought it up (over IM, despite him being in the next room) and after a little discussion, he agreed to try it. So we had sex.
The sex was good in some ways. I got turned on and I enjoyed it. But I found myself resolutely avoiding eye contact or sort of acknowledging who exactly I was doing it with. And I knew as soon as it was over (maybe sooner) that I wouldn’t want to do it again. I decided not to say anything about it right then, during what was basically aftercare, but to bring it up today.
Our conversation:
Me: So, um, I…erred. I made a mistake.
Jos: I did too.
Me: Was it the same mistake?
Jos: I think so.
Me: So…are we done?
Jos: Yeah.
Me: Good.
We were all smiles and friendliness during this, and relieved to find that we both felt the same way so there would be no unnecessary awkwardness or hurt feelings between us. It was pretty cute.
Posted in agreements, amazing revelations, conversations
Joscelin and I were going along merrily doing a pretty serious d/s thing, with him on top, and then a few weeks ago, in a restaurant, I got irritated with him for accidentally kicking my foot, and I kicked him back, while demonstrating what he had done. He got angry, and I…was terrified, suddenly and absolutely. It felt like the reaction of an abused person (though he was never abusive at all), and it took me a while to get over it. That evening, we decided to stop for a bit and reassess.
I’ve never gotten around to telling him the result of my processing of what happened between us and how I want to go forward, but he’s started asking this week.
It’s complicated. Unlike in past times when we switched, I have only good memories of my time under his control. It was all really wonderful and hot. I don’t seem to have any lingering anger or fear towards him or any of the situations we were in. So that’s good.
When I masturbate, I desperately want to be back there, too. It was so good in so many ways. Mostly I guess it was just very hot, and of course I’m very motivated by that when masturbating.
Once I have my orgasm, the feeling sort of fades.
The truth is, after several years of drama between us, now that I have gotten over the break-up, it’s really nice, really relaxing not being tied to him so deeply. We still live together, still talk and hang out constantly, still sleep in the same bed, but I don’t feel responsible for how he feels or what’s going on with him. I don’t have any obligations towards him (beyond what I’d have towards any friend/roommate).
The week after we stopped, Jos broke down one night and expressed a lot of fear, anger, and resentment towards me, related to our previous relationship, and he criticized me somewhat harshly (though more or less accurately as well). I know he wouldn’t have done anything like that while dominating me, but I felt like, wow, I really can’t belong to someone if owning me is the only way he can control his rage towards me, or not be terrified of me.
Joscelin regrets significant parts of our relationship, including, at times, submitting to me at all. If we do d/s in the other direction, he may come to regret that too. It may turn out that I’ve deceived him or promised something that was not delivered or that I was totally the wrong partner for him to do it with. I’d rather not go through that again.
I don’t want to turn out to have been under some weird system of obligations that I didn’t know about at the time. I don’t want to end up having hurt Joscelin again.
I’m not sure I can serve someone (if I can serve anyone at all) who has so little compassion for himself, who cannot tolerate making a mistake in dominating me. I know that if he ever found out that he hurt me, in a serious way, in the course of dominating me, that it would be extremely hard for him to get over. I don’t really want to be part of that kind of system.
But, boy, do I really want it sometimes. I’d sort of like to reevaluate in six months or so and see if anything has changed. For now, though, I’m really enjoying the relationship that we’re having. It’s warm, friendly, relaxed, funny, and basically just like having a great boyfriend but without the drama and the hot sex. It’s kind of awesome, and I’m not too eager to change it.
Posted in relationship blather
A few weeks ago, I asked Joscelin to take away my vibrator. Historically, it’s been the only way I’ve had orgasms. When I owned Jos, we did go through a short period when I was having him give them to me, which we both enjoyed, but then I started using the vibrator again…and doing so makes it extremely difficult for me to come by other kinds of stimulation. I kind of wanted go back, but giving up my ability to easily masturbate was difficult to choose at any given moment, so I didn’t.
I’m not under any particular orgasm restriction right now. I am allowed to masturbate to orgasm. But I have not succeeded at doing so yet (I think I’ve only managed it once or twice in my life), so in effect, all of my orgasms come from Jos. And he gives them to me somewhat regularly, but not as often as I used to choose on my own.
And they are amazing.
One of the games I play with myself sometimes while masturbating is to force myself to relax the muscles of my pussy (the kegel ones), which is unnatural when I’m being stimulated. It makes it feel like the sensation is washing over me and I can’t actually get hold of it. It becomes more and more difficult as I get closer to orgasm, and if I try to come that way, a sharp pain arises that forces me to tense and have the orgasm (which will then be painful). But generally if I am doing this with myself, I can’t make myself be relaxed all that much, so I just alternate for a bit before moving on to something else.
I let Jos in on this secret, of course. He also knows that I come more easily when it feels like I’m not getting enough stimulation. He also knows I will obey him. He also knows he controls me completely.
When I ask him if he will give me an orgasm, and he says yes, I know that’s it – it’s like I’m strapped into the roller coaster and there is no turning back. I have no control from that point forward.
Lately what he does is that he makes me relax the muscles and then he teases the everloving fuck out of me. He strokes my lips and clit so subtly that it’s amazing it feels like anything at all. He lets his finger just graze over the best spot and I can’t do a damn thing about it. Sometimes he rests his finger right there and just twitches it ever so slightly.
It makes me insane. It thrills me. It is like all my masturbatory fantasies came true. It makes me never, ever want to have an orgasm any other way. It turns me into a hot submissive mess.
Last night, he did this, and made me keep the relaxed muscles until I was afraid I was going to come and not be able to control it at all, and when I told him I was getting close and fearful that this would happen, he kept going, but with less stimulation for a while, and then he ramped it up until it took absolutely every drop of my will power to stay relaxed, and when I told him again that I was going to come and not be able to control it…
he said, “That’s OK, you’re done for tonight,” and took his hand away.
And in between expressions of desperation, I thanked him profusely.
Posted in orgasm control, scenes, submission & submissives
Is it difficult now to keep up with who controls whom in my relationship with Joscelin? He’s in charge these days, and for the foreseeable future, if the whole thing doesn’t blow up.
I want to post about what’s going on right now. The truth is, I don’t know if I’m allowed to write this post. I am under some new rules that I don’t really understand. (I was given ample opportunity to ask about them, but I have so many questions and concerns that it was impossible to exhaust them, and like mushrooms they continue to pop up.) Certainly I am not allowed to freely discuss my concerns or negative feelings with Jos right now, but I’m not sure whether that extends to blogging or not.
In theory, two new rules were added yesterday. I’m not sure I can state them correctly, so I’ll give context for them, but for me, they actually make even less sense in context. It’s possible I also completely misremember them, since they are muddled together in my mind. These are the third and fourth rules in our system; the first two, as stated before, are
Rule #3
The context for this rule was that I had been thinking about what is best to do when I feel like Joscelin is being unfair in a particular moment. The truth is, we strongly share the same sense of fairness, and given a few hours or a day, we almost always (perhaps actually always) agree about things that have happened between us. But in the moment, either of us might be wrong. So I asked Jos for permission to, when I think he’s being unfair, simply submit to him anyway, and then bring it up the next day if I still see it the same way.
He was concerned that I might never bring it up the next day. I proposed some countermeasure to his concern, but I’m not sure what. I think the rule inspired by this says something like this:
If I have a concern (such as about fairness), I must either ask whether I may bring it up later, or ask to bring it up at that time. When we do discuss it, Joscelin will ask me questions that I am to answer as simply as possible, and let him guide the discussion.
Points of uncertainty:
I have a concern about this protocol, which is that, even at this moment, working through my current outstanding list of concerns in this way would take, I think, hours, and I’m not actually sure that the process would ever terminate. Ultimately I don’t think the relationship can possibly work if I can’t speak freely about what’s going on with me.
(I want to just trust Joscelin to figure this stuff out, or to make it work, and focus on giving him my willing and gracious submission, but, per the transparency rule, I’m not even allowed to simply not bring up my concerns at all – I think – and also I’m afraid moment-to-moment and don’t know which behaviors are allowed/encouraged/forbidden. There are actually things I think may be mandatory or forbidden and I don’t know which.)
Rule #4
Two nights ago, Jos and I were talking about his strong preference that I make a point of submitting to him first and then raising concerns later. (I’m not really clear anymore on what we discussed, but it was something like that.) When thinking about that, I worried that I would “get out of” things by just crying or freaking out. Last night I tentatively asked Joscelin to forbid me to cry (around/because of him) except with permission or during aftercare.
The fourth rule:
I may not cry because of Jos’s actions except during scenes (aftercare included) or out of joy.
But there’s more. A bit later I asked, more for reassurance than anything, whether I was allowed to express negative feelings like anger or sadness (for instance, by saying “I feel angry”). And Joscelin said that for the sake of “simplicity” (?) the answer, for now, was no. I guess this is probably an addendum to the third rule rather than to this one, though that’s how I interpreted it at the time.
Overall, I don’t feel like I know how I’m supposed to proceed, even though we discussed this endlessly and I had (as I said) ample opportunity to raise concerns (which I did). Last night I sat and wrote up a long list of concerns I had at the time, but I’m not sure I didn’t already violate a rule by saving them for later without asking for permission to do so.
I want – I really want – to just give this a try and see what happens. I hope that I can do that. I’m just sort of overwhelmed with confusion and distrust and anger. I’ll be underslept today because, once I woke up this morning, I had too many feelings to get back to sleep, and I couldn’t shut my thoughts off. I’ll need to bring these up with Joscelin when he gets up, I guess, but I’m trepidatious about that given that I feel like the conversation would need to go on for hours just to address the current list, and I don’t have hours to spare because I need to get a lot of schoolwork done and I’d rather not be a wreck.
Perhaps I can ask permission to remain silent about these issues and just see what happens.
Posted in anger, bad feelings, conversations, fear, honesty, protocol, trust
