Face Time, Fun, Disappointment....and a Prayer Answered?

We were finally getting a handle on our personal and professional lives after what amounted to "The Disaster Years", working our psychological butts off in therapy and finally finding what we thought was our way in our personal lives, why did things still feel "off"? 

Master A and slave g were extremely helpful with advice, but theirs was a Master/slave dynamic.  Master A was very much "old school" (as He liked to say) and there were very deep undertones of The Gorean Way in His philosophy and how their relationship was structured.  While some of this appealed to me, it did not appeal to Sir.  Sir was very direct in making it known that he was extremely uncomfortable with Gorean rules.  There was no way He was going to supervise every facet of my life.  However, he would step in and take a more active role to meet my needs (and His). Sir did not feel that micromanagement was good for either of us.   

Sir leans strongly toward sensation and psychological play rather than impact play and SM.  I definitely appreciate the sensation/psych play, but I also love impact play - the flogger, paddle, and the whip.  Sir is quite good with a flogger and the paddle, but he shies away from the cane and crop (thank goodness)  and has made it very clear that he will never use a whip on me (pout).

We read and reread the books written by well-respected authorities in the BDSM community:  Wiseman, Miller, Brame, Weiss, Warren, Rubel just to name a few.  We found some really good videos on YouTube on impact play.  Sir was getting ideas and becoming quite resourceful.  WalMart, Lowes, Home Depot, and KMart took on a whole new meaning.  (Clothes pins, spatulas, egg beaters, who knew?)  FetLife was a treasure trove and we were beginning to explore avenues in the communities in and around the Baltimore/DC area.  But we were still complete cowards about coming out in our local BDSM community.

Sir was very open to instruction and we enjoyed watching the videos and reading the books together, but for some reason, I still felt as though I was Topping from the bottom.  Rather than just letting go and having a good time, Sir was (at least I thought so) overly concerned with how I was doing during scenes.  Explaining that I would safeword if things got too rough didn't seem to be enough.  Even so, we continued to muddle through. It seemed as though Sir was becoming more comfortable with more intensity during impact play.  I was pretty sure the problem was me, but what to do about it?  When I tried to find the answers on my own, it always came back to basically the same thing:  Roll with it.  The partners set the rules and things will settle out and fall into a natural rhythm.  One thing was for sure – we certainly understood BDSM from an intellectual perspective.  How hard could it be to apply this knowledge to our lives?  Okay, back off the reading and analysis.  Roll with it and let the chips fall where they may.  Sure....

Meanwhile...in the Vanilla World...

A new professional direction meant getting out and selling my talent.  It meant face time and the opportunity presented itself in the form of the Sassy Seven Authors' Naughty Sleepover in San Antonio in February of this year.  It was a relatively small gathering and there was going to be a BDSM demonstration by a local Dom and His sub.  I had struck gold.  I'd get to meet some of the authors I had been working with and networking with in person, get my name out there as an editor, be a secret fangirl (I'd read books by all of the authors who were going to be there), and get a chance to pick the brains of some of those in the San Antonio BDSM community. 

The trip was a definite "go" and I started keeping all kinds of notes and lists of questions I wanted to ask in addition to making preparations to join up with my BFF and biz partner in San Antonio.  Biz and Par-tay all in one great weekend. 

Then the emergency brake on the car broke.  Which led to a visit to the repair shop, which then led to finding out not only were the tires on their last miles, but the rotors were warped and the brake pads were worn down so far the car probably would not pass inspection.  Oh, freakin' joy – NOT.  As if that wasn't enough, the 45K service was due.  We were planning on owning this car for a very long time (it'll be paid for in October of next year), putting any of this off was simply not an option.

I have worked miracles with money in the past.  Even in this economy, I can still sometimes make a dollar scream for mercy.  Well, not this time.  No magic was going to make the car repairs and Naughty Sleepover happen.  The Lottery was not an option – not with my luck (or, if I'm honest, appalling lack of) at gambling. 

Oh, well, life happens sometimes.  Other opportunities would come along.  Let the disappointment go; it's not that big a deal.  Take care of the car repairs.  Sir is under a lot of pressure at work; don't bother Him about something so trivial.  I'm trying to get my business through its evolution to become self-supporting which carried its own set of unique stressors.  We were both working 12 to 16 hour days and not taking down time.  There would be time for that later.  Well, sometimes later will come along faster than you think and take a chunk outta your butt before you can blink. 

The meltdown was coming.  I could feel it and tried everything I could think of to prevent it.  In two scenes on two consecutive weekends, Sir made His intent known and in both, I was able to get into my headspace to ride the wave.  This was going to be a stress reliever and playtime for both of us.  He safeworded the first scene almost as soon as it started.  The only explanation was that it wasn't working for Him and He couldn't get into it.  Okay, I get that.  Shit happens.  Cuddle time is a good thing, too. The next weekend, He safeworded the second scene essentially giving the same reason.  Imagine you've been in the desert for days and finally arrived at the oasis.  You're thirstier than you could have imagined was possible. You're handed a glass of cold, clear, wonderful water and just as you get it to your lips, it's jerked away.  Not once, but twice.  No, this wasn't a mindfuck.  Something was wrong.

Remember, this was the blind leading the blind.  Very little training, no support system in place (Master A and slave g had moved because He had been transferred overseas) and not a great frame of reference.  I'm not a screamer; I don't throw loud, crazy tantrums.  I internalize.  And that's exactly what I did then.  I shut down. 

We had broken the first two cardinal rules in BDSM:

1.  Communicate.  Neither Sir nor I were talking about what happened.

2.  The Dominant has the last word.  You betcha, but Sir wasn't talking, I was not happy about it and couldn't let it go. 

 
Oh, and surprise!  Who would've thought one could encounter subdrop if scenes didn't get past phase 1?  And guess what?  Domdrop is a very real phenomenon, too.
 

Were we ever gonna get this right?  

About a week later, I saw a post on Fet about the OWN show Our America and the episode "Shades of Kink". I didn't know it then, but it would provide the answer to a prayer.

Next:  I Never Saw It Coming...

A Little Background

It's no secret that I'm a professional editor.  I started out specializing in editing technical, academic and scientific literature with some general editing (papers written by college students, magazine articles, etc.) to fill in  here and there.  This is pretty dry work consisting of fact checking, grammar correction, tweaking formatting, chasing down those ever-elusive typographical errors and even doing some indexing.  I learned a great deal from the material I was editing but, honestly, there were times I was so bored out of my mind I wanted to scream, throw the computer out the window or both.  I still do this work but, about two years ago, my life took a rather interesting turn.  A friend asked me to look over the manuscript for a book she was writing, and my job hasn't been the same since.  I moved from dry, mostly technical editing to working with independent, self-published authors in the wonderful, amazing, a-little-bit-crazy, whole-lot-hot, world of Romance Fiction, editing contemporary and historical General Romance, Erotica and Erotic Romance, with a healthy serving of the wide ranging kink subgenre to keep things spicy and very interesting.

My job is no longer boring, and I find ice water and fans to be helpful tools to keep close at hand.

And, yes, I'm a pervy kinkster, who lives the D/s life, loves the B, is very curious about the SM and would like to explore the M/s dynamic all under the BDSM umbrella. 

In the vanilla world I'm very happily married for the last 20 years to a wonderful man who is the Love of My Life and Center of My World.  About ten years ago, I finally came out to him that I had a very kinky twist to my personality, had been this way almost from the day I first became sexually aware, and could no longer live in the closet.  Was there any chance he'd be interested in trying a little Rocky Road with our Vanilla?  He was.  We did.  And it's been a complicated, amazing, eye-opening, sometimes disappointing, frustrating, nerve-wracking, fun, silly, incredible journey ever since. 

The first three years or so were characterized by the "two steps forward, one step back" philosophy.  Sometimes it was more "two steps forward, three or more steps back".  Our professional lives mandated that we had to keep this part of our lives very, very much on the down-low.  Consequently, we were the personification of the less blind (me) leading the completely blind (DH). 

In 2005, our lives were turned every which way by several devastating events that occurred one on top of the other over the next three years.  If statistics are to be believed, our marriage should have failed miserably from any one of these circumstances, never mind the others that piled on one after the other.  The truly miraculous thing about all of this was that our marriage not only survived, it flourished.  While living through what finally ended up being nearly six years of hell we became more deeply committed to each other and fell more and more in love every single day.  Even so, I suffered two episodes of major depression so severe that I literally ceased to function outside of my job.  I've only just begun to rejoin life and the world of the living in the last two years.  Those two episodes of depression and the years of therapy it took to heal caused me to take a long hard look at every facet of my life.  I decided it was time for a major overhaul.

While in therapy I began to realize that I had been living a life that was governed more by what I thought society expected and keeping up appearances than being true to myself and acknowledging who and what I am.  This realization brought about some good, very positive changes in my life and in my relationship with my husband.  It also created problems, some of which stemmed from trying to live a D/s life without training, practical guidance and/or a support system.  The blind were leading the blind resulting in tripping over carpets, furniture and each other.   

It wasn't pretty.

It was complicated – and that's putting it mildly.  

I am a submissive leading a very dominant professional life that was spilling over into and definitely messing with my personal life.  Husband (aka Sir Sayanov) is a Dominant in his professional life, knowing deep down inside he is a Dominant in his personal life, but societal expectations were in conflict with instinct resulting in a confusing, totally messed up situation for both of us.  In our personal lives, as the more experienced partner in the D/s dynamic, I was trying to guide and teach him how to embrace the Dominant side of his personality.  As a result, I began to feel as though I was Topping from the bottom.  It wasn't working.  We knew it wasn't working, couldn't understand why, couldn't fix it, and I became confused, frustrated, insecure, angry, sad, and a hundred other crazy emotions.  The whole thing just felt wrong, very, very wrong.  Sir blamed himself.  I blamed myself.  Communication broke down because we weren't speaking the same language.  While we both knew it wasn't working, we knew that the D/s dynamic could work if we could just figure it out.  The situation was not getting better; it was getting out of control and we knew we needed help. Something somewhere was going to break and it finally did.

I knew I was craving something, wasn't sure exactly what it was, but I was driven to try and find answers.  I confided in a very trusted friend who helped steer me in the right direction.  This led to mentoring with a BDSM Master and His slave, which resulted in our decision to fully embrace the D/s dynamic in our personal lives, culminating in my husband becoming the Dom He was always meant to be and, about a year and a half ago, collaring me as His sub. 

Distilling it down makes it all sound incredibly simple; it was anything but simple.  No one waved a magic wand and instantly solved the problems.  There were a million things going on in our lives.  Sir's career was evolving and I had completely revamped mine from the ground up.  We adopted the mantra "one foot in front of the other, one day at a time".  We embraced the changes in our personal and professional lives, and the pieces finally began to fall into place.  It wasn't long, though, before we realized something still wasn't quite right.  Our professional lives were going along just fine, but our personal lives were not.  We were sure we were on the right track, but something just wasn't working.  So, what was wrong and how could we fix it?

Next:  Anticipation, face time, lots of fun...and then disappointment.