a mistake

As my regular readers know, I have a long-standing habit of describing, often in excruciating detail, failures, mistakes, and instances of things going horribly awry in my often wonderful d/s relationship. This is one of those times, and to some extent I don’t want to write about it, because it’s embarrassing, but writing about things is therapeutic for me, and it’s good to talk about how things like this can be handled when they do happen.

A little over a week ago, I was at Joscelin’s house, and he was desperate for an orgasm. I was trying to figure out how to decide whether he could have one or not, and I wanted to do something chance-based, but also devious and interesting. Then I got my idea.

“OK,” I said. “I want to try this, but it’s going to be horribly psychologically damaging. You ready?” (I was not serious about the damaging, but I did feel that it was akin to edgeplay for us - dangerous, perhaps not quite right.)

He assented, so I had him fetch a piece of paper and a pen, and I asked him to write down some tasks that he was willing to complete for me by the next Sunday (tomorrow). “Make sure you’ll have time to do them,” I said.

My idea was that I was going to let him roll as many D10’s (10-sided dice) as he wrote items, and if he had three come up as 8, 9, or 0’s, he could have an orgasm. But when I saw the list, he had written only four items, which wasn’t enough dice, but they were fairly substantial. So I counted up the hours the tasks would take (~ 7 by my reckoning) and used that number instead. He lost the dice roll and got no orgasm that night.

Fast forward to Thursday night. We were at a restaurant discussing how he was going to get the tasks done.

“I have to confess something,” he said. “If you asked me to do that again I would not write down any tasks.”

“OK,” I said. I felt crushed and a little bit angry, but I didn’t want to say anything, because I knew I would cry if I did. I kept the food I was eating in front of my mouth so that he wouldn’t notice, but he didn’t look up anyway, for long enough that was able to get over it.

Later, in bed, I got my feelings hurt over something silly (I forget what), and it dragged on a bit, and I said, “You hurt my feelings earlier.” (I really wanted to say “You slaughtered my feelings earlier” but I controlled myself.)

When I told him about it, he apologized, but said it had been important for him to say.

I asked him to roll over and face away from me. I wanted to hold him from behind and feel, at least for a few minutes, that I was holding and comforting him rather than needing comfort from him. I stayed that way for a couple of minutes and then said, “I guess I need to know how you felt about that.”

He was quite a minute, but finally said, “I felt like you took advantage of my weakened state to get me to agree to things that weren’t good for me, for my schedule. I felt tricked. And I was angry about it.”

Of course, this was my worst fear, and I said so. He told me he hadn’t needed to tell me that - that what he told me at dinner was enough - but I disagreed. I thanked him for telling me. I was glad that I had asked. And I apologized to him, and explained that I knew it was edgy at the time, but hadn’t meant to hurt him.

And, of course, I fell apart crying and needed to be held for a long time. And eventually I apologized for responding so poorly to his anger, and he said, “I forgive you,” and I was crushed. And he felt terrible for hurting me, and I felt terrible for being so hurt over such a small thing (really).

It worked out all right, I suppose. We were able to talk through it completely, which is important. I am proud of myself for asking the question. I’m not so proud of myself for (predictably) falling apart. Meanwhile, for the record, Jos has completed all but one of the tasks.