emotional s/m

18
Jan
2024

“‘I don’t think…’ Then you shouldn’t talk, said the Hatter.”*

If you are familiar with my writings, you likely know the content warnings this might require. If you are not, or if you would like to review them before reading further, you can find them here. In the scene written below, the adults depicted are fully consenting to and have extensively discussed the kind of thing they are doing and the potentials to their own risk profiles.

Alice asks the Hatter which vial to drink and then he tells her. This is how it starts, and she knows — she knows because she asked the question — but she doesn’t know, not really. Not yet. But sure enough, a few hours later, Alice feels herself falling, and her mistake is she lets him see. Alice falls, and he catches her. Alice falls, and everything echoes. Soon he’s walking her down the hall, helping her onto the bed, and she knows.

But she doesn’t.

Somehow she ends up without clothing. Somehow she ends up lying down. She laughs. She laughs like mad. He makes it so. She laughs until her eyes water, laughs like she once wanted, laughs until she’s desperate not to, a helpless way she never thought she really would because normally, she can think her way out of it. Or moans her way out of it.

But this is no longer her story. So she laughs, and — sweet almost-reprieve — he places his lips on her neck. And it’s too much. Of course it’s too much. And she asks if she may, and he doesn’t answer, only stops. And then, it all starts.

The laughter swept most of her away. Too breathless, heart beating too fast already, thoughts too electrified, everything too something. She manages to think it was genius, really — letting her get just weak enough, the point where she can’t remember a thought once it has finished and then making every thought the laughter; giving her an experience of real not-wanting where she couldn’t breathe from her own doing (or was it?) — and wasn’t she up there for an hour, or a day, and wasn’t he relentless, and isn’t he tired? He gets her more fully onto bed, gets her head to the pillow. He gets her there and she starts to sink immediately. So he starts to sink into her, even her hips struggling with the strength to push up. And she asks and he denies and he asks and she says no, I don’t like it, it doesn’t feel good, and he tells her she’s wrong so she believes him.

She swears she sees the letters of the words appear on the wall as he says them, quiver like her vision, morph and threaten. Each level she falls, lower and deeper; she sees the pit he’s digging even as she is already in it. Yes, that’s your favorite way to come. Your body is telling me I’m right; your body thinks that’s your favorite way to come. Go ahead, come your favorite way, and then Don’t you want to come your favorite way? and then Say it, and then Ask.

Strange respect becomes fear: this seems too crafted, even as she suspects it’s not. The last bit of critical thinking she has held onto tells her he’s smarter than she is, far more than one step ahead. Wrapped in the sentence of her realization, the world opens in that moment. Gravity shifts. Alice falls up, away from her body. She can see how her own eyes must look. Real fear. She sees him clearly for the very first time, it occurs to her, thinks, I had no idea… No, it turns out I have no idea what, exactly, you are capable of. 

He doesn’t stop. He hasn’t stopped. Constant words that she can barely hear, breathing quieted, shifting halted, all her focus on trying to seperate the consonants she isn’t even sure are real.

Come however you want. You know how you want to. You know how you want to. You know how you want to.

The thing is that she sees his tricks as they’re happening but it doesn’t stop them. Or… well, she thinks she does. There’s this word he keeps saying. Or there isn’t. There’s this thing that happens when they lock eyes. Maybe not. There’s this way he is tracking when she’s present and when she isn’t. He always knows before she does. It seems that way, seems right now like he knows everything, so she doesn’t speak up if she doesn’t hear him or if he says she feels good when she doesn’t — because what she does believe is when he says she’s a liar. What she does believe is when he says she’s wrong. What she does believe is when he says she’s mad.

Are you going to make your old self disappointed in you, or are you going to make me? Are you going to be selfish, or are you going to be a hypocrite?

He gives her impossible choice. He gives her illusion of control.

Alice falls into a body. Anymore, it is not her body. The falling stays, the sinking, but this body moves as if touched when it hasn’t been; it feels words inside it and it hurts. It hurts.

*Come your favorite way.*
“I can’t—”
*Shut the fuck up.*

She obeys and she obeys and she obeys.

Alice becomes one, the broken bits of her, and everything she feels is everywhere, and she isn’t sure, she isn’t sure anymore, how long he would fuck her and how and where; she isn’t sure anymore of any horror he could inflict. Yes, he might do it. He might already have done it. Any of them. All of them. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. Would he? But after all, hatters are mad, and sadists are—

I’m going to rape the consent out of you.

Alice whimpers. Or Alice is silent. It isn’t clear anymore what all she is or isn’t. She comes how he says she will, how he has always said she likes when she doesn’t, this nothing, this release that feels like nothing (that feels like her). She’s allowing this thing that she hates, she thinks. Or it doesn’t matter if she is.

In the hole, the fog now separates over months of wondering if the Hatter really somehow thought she liked this thing that she doesn’t. And in through the haze, she sees the truth: it never mattered if she did or she didn’t. That’s what it means to be here. That’s what happens when you ask which bottle to drink. So there he is. Everywhere she opens or closes her eyes. And it’s all Alice’s fault.

And what she does believe is everything.

Please note: being “mad” and “madness” are terms that are generally considered pejorative to those with mental illness, though have more and more been among those reclaimed by the community they affect. I am in this community. Please do not use these terms without being asked to by those with mental illness, and then only to those specific people. To that end, please also do not use them for *me* without permission.

also, Lewis Carroll was not a good dude.

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

The Kool Aid Man-Sized Hole: pre-planning for unintentional consent violations

An amazing group of edge-players I’m in recently was having a conversation about those of us who like play that’s more… well, as @zel put it, “less hip-checking the edge and more Kool Aid man.” There is a subset of people out there who want play that doesn’t just bring us to our boundaries but sometimes leaps over them. This may include bottoms deciding to forego our safewords and/or negotiation, tops intentionally pushing further at signs of distress, picking at emotional scabs, gaslighting, or any number of things that could, sometimes, lead to going too far. (Note: if you do not believe that this sort of play should be done, even if both parties personally want and seek it out, this note won’t be relevant to you.)

In my CNC Negotiation and Communication class, I refer to this possibility as an unintentional consent violation. In relationships or scenes that purposefully play this way, it’s possible for consent to be violated in a way that isn’t with intent. Both parties play understanding it’s a possibility and fully want to be playing that way still—and yet navigating how to move forward and rebuild after a consent trauma of this nature can be very difficult, particularly if you know you do want to continue playing like that in the future.

I believe unintentional consent violations are a when, not an if, with no-safeword arrangements like the one I’m in and rather likely with other similar CNC structures, and there is *nothing* that will guarantee anyone involved will be okay when this happens. I tend to think that this sort of play should never be engaged in without that being understood by all parties. The best chances of this turning out well may rely on a sort of communication that becomes more difficult after-the-fact, so it can be best to prepare for it in advance.

Below are a few considerations I have when talking to folks about how to navigate this. Please note that this is my process, that everything I say always has a “this may not necessarily apply” asterisk on it, and that those quoted should not be considered as having endorsed anything beyond the inclusion of their quotes.

Behold, a list with confusing and somewhat arbitrary numbering.

Step 1: Figure out systems.

Systems, in this case, refers to anything set up in advance for you to lean on in a time of crisis. I put this as step #1, but in many ways, it’s step all-encompassing. Everything I am suggesting you discuss is setting up a system, a big one: “This is what we will do when an unintentional consent violation occurs.”

This is the part where I address that you can’t always know how you’ll react to something going wrong in this manner—one that may be with someone who you actively ignored the protests of because that’s what they deeply desire in their play and/or sexuality, one who you are hurt crossed a line all while knowing they couldn’t have possibly known the line was there. Cognitive dissonance of that variety *does* change the “typical” trauma responses that rarely have a “typical” in the first place. In fact, you likely *won’t* get it all right. But with systems, there is something to lean on as it gets figured out so that you aren’t having the “What the fuck do we do and when??? What if our needs conflict?” conversation when you really need to be having the “Are you still eating and sleeping?” conversation.

  • On the more specific level of systems, this could look like:
  • Knowing one partner’s trauma response is going to involve a much lower energy for a while and deciding that if an unintentional consent violation happens, the other partner takes on their household tasks
  • Knowing taking medications on time can get lost in the shuffle and ensuring the other partner has the correct information to check in during the days following to remind or confirm.
  • Knowing that someone needs to withdraw emotionally to feel safe at the same time that the other will need other support and establishing—you got it—a support *system.* In discussing playing this way at all, @arrogantslut mentioned “wrapping in the support system of existing partnerships. Telling them I am doing it and asking them if they will be able to catch and hold me if things fall apart.” This is valuable for any sort of play. It is especially valuable in cases where there is a mismatch of needs.

The more specific you can be about systems, the better. Saying you have a support system is one thing. Knowing exactly the people in your sphere who understand and support this sort of play—because it isn’t everyone in kink—may be another. Another still to have people who’ve preemptively agreed that, in such a situation, they’ll ensure those eating/medicating/existing in your world things are happening.

Step 2: Figure out timelines.

In the aftermath of an unintentional consent violation, you may have different aftercare needs than otherwise. Tops may want to know this happened as soon as the scene is over so that they can process where things were misread with the memories still fresh. Bottoms may need extra time to process without physical touch. All of this may even have caveats, such as what sort of violation occurred. In addition to immediate needs, think about debrief conversations, amount of time systems should be in place, and amount of time you might wait before considering trying something similar again.

Step 3: Figure out what you will do next with your play.

This might be an automatic “this sort of play is off the table for x amount of time” or “we move back from exclusive negotiation with no-safeword play to exclusive negotiation with-safeword” or “we take a step out of 24/7.” It can also be “we don’t play again” or “we don’t change play at all; we just go forward with new knowledge.” This one is important to discuss in advance (especially for those engaging in deeply emotional S/m) because in the trauma-recovery state, some may have a “fawn” reaction where they’re likely to acquiesce to their top’s desires, or a “flight” reaction where they back all the way off in a way that makes their bottom feel they’re no longer interested, and so on and so forth. Knowing what direction you’re headed before you start, even if it does change, means that there’s no questioning from either party on if the other is able to both be self-aware and compassionate to the other’s needs in that moment (which you may not be!)

In terms of both this and the prior step, you may wish to set an amount of time to wait before determining to end a partnership. Of course, if someone wishes to walk away, they walk away—but some may want a reminder that they agreed to wait however long before making drastic decisions.

But that all brings me to…

Step 0.5: Figure out that you can indeed do all this with the person you’re considering engaging in this kind of play with.

Not everyone is the right partner for the variety of CNC which may lead to unintentional consent violations, even if they’re the perfect partner for other things. In fact, some may not want to do this with a life-partner because of the possibility of these occurring. You might do this through reflection on your own, and/or you might do it through negotiation conversations. There are questions with concrete answers here, but some may somewhat require believing the other party saying they will be able to do something or you making a judgment. @Pepper_Pots suggests asking (or at least considering how the other might answer) specific questions like “what is the max time/energy you can spend fixing this? Also, do you like/trust me enough to do that sort of work with?” You might also ask if they’ve had other incidents in the past, how those were handled, and what did and didn’t work about that. Of course, this is all irrelevant if you don’t know what qualifies someone as this person for you, so…

Step 0: Figure out *what* your who-can-I-do-this-with requires.

This probably will take a lot of reflection, maybe over time. It could include more abstract factors, such as

  • the ability to own up to mistakes
  • the ability to communicate and listen in the ways you operate best
  • willingness to see the process through with as much honesty and openness as possible, even if that’s saying “I’m no longer finding it easy to be honest and open”

But don’t ignore the more practical aspects either: for this kind of play, do you need…

  • someone who is able to unquestionably able to prioritize you if you need, and therefore unable to do this with someone who has a different primary partner in a hierarchical poly structure?
  • someone who is willing to drive you and stay with you with medical professionals in case of emergency, even if that potentially means discussing the reality of maybe doing things that can’t legally be consented to in your area?
  • someone with certain preexisting medical skills?

Again, go specific with all of this, particularly the abstracts. “I need someone I can trust to go through these things with me” is worthwhile, but there’s more to it. @zel, for example, takes it a step further by breaking down what trust means for her:

when i say trust in this context, i mean that i need to trust:

* your ability to consistently do what you say you will do, and communicate constructively when that becomes difficult or prohibitive.
* your ability to proactively and intelligently participate in risk assessment, mitigating, and care planning.
* maybe most importantly, your ability to own your mistakes and receive honest and compassionately-given feedback with grace and curiosity rather than defensiveness, and to meaningfully learn from those situations for the future.

this last “why” is maybe the most important: consistency for me doesn’t mean making few mistakes or causing no harm; it means consistently working together to handle mistakes and repair from harm. if you can’t emotionally handle hearing that you fucked up or hurt me (given my trust in your intent and my disinterest in casting blame), handling mistakes and repairing from harm becomes very likely to create more things to recover from.

@Darren_Campbell says,

I think it’s also important here to understand what we are talking about when we say “trust”. Am I trusting your truthfulness and ability to make promises you intend to keep? Am I trusting your ability to keep to the word of your agreements, or to the spirit of your agreements (these are 2 VASTLY different things in my experience). Am I trusting in your ability to assess how you feel during and after what we are negotiating? Am I trusting in your ability to adapt and communicate after the fact should expectations not be met? Am I trusting in your ability to read me really well? Am I trusting your own self knowledge? Am I trusting your intent or am I trusting your abilities or am I trusting a combination of both? To me, as I get older, I’m really valuing people who know themselves as best they can and then say “I don’t know” a lot. If I can trust your ethics and your ability to own your mistakes, we can build something cool.

One final step, a step ∞ for anyone still here:


Realize that doing this is still playing with fire — and for all us edge-players’ nice words about risk awareness and safety protocols and mitigation, those risks are real and can be devastating. Physically. Emotionally. To your relationships. Be upfront about these possibilities using your imagination and your self-awareness. Communicate best you can. I really loved these two examples of what that might look like, which come from @suspenddisbelief:

“If you do this, I might feel angry at you for a long time afterwards. Not in a hot way, in a really unsexy resentful way. I might devalue your intelligence in my head as a defense mechanism. Is that okay with you? Why is that okay with you?”

“If you speak to me this way, I might have behavioral spirals that you can’t fix with the number of words you used to set it off. I might require intensive outpatient treatment. Past partners actually came to this treatment with me even though they weren’t the ones who set me off. How does that sound to you? I’m not able to quantify the risk. It’s low, but possible.”

When we were talking about this sort of process, @Chayla said, “I think for me, maybe the way I conceptualize the thing that you’re pointing to is doing what feels necessary to build a foundation where forgiveness is available afterward. This is generally building some level of trust in the other person’s good faith and their intentions, and one of the ways that can happen is conversations about what’s for real badbad.”

The thing that stands out for me is how many of us who play Kool Aid Man style have had things go badbad in various ways. Permanent scars that change how we move through the world. Relationships that end. Trauma responses that bring us back to nightmares we thought we had dealt with and cause major problems in our lives. And yet, these are stories I know specifically from those who play in that space—present tense. There are of course an unknowable number who have had things go badbad and never return, to this kind of play or even to kink at all. But it is doable to have it happen and not regret it. I’d argue many of us play accepting that it one day will, not letting it stop us. We deserve to: to follow our desires. To feel intimacy in the ways that we specifically do. To be fulfilled alongside others drinking the same Kool Aid we are.

Join the conversation on this post in the comments on Fetlife!

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

Set and Setting in Emotional S/m

My first experience with emotional S/m could have been catastrophic.

It was ~8 years ago and I was on a week-long visit home during a months-long stay out of the country. Our relationship wasn’t on its most stable footing for reasons both related and very unrelated to that distance. We were, as we are now, very in Love. We were, as we are now, very dark in the way we play[ed].

What happened that night hadn’t been discussed much ahead of time. It was a lot. I spent most of that night crying on one side of the bed, rolled as far away from Him as I could.

This wasn’t a failure of His. He knows me well, we’d long since agreed to work through any complications that came from our mutial preference to no longer explicitly negotiate, and He was right that in His judgment that I’d prefer not be “built back up” after emotional play as some like. This also clearly *wasn’t* catastrophic, after all. But it *could* have been quite easily.

Over the next few months, however, something strange happened: I found that that scene was often what popped into my head as I was getting myself off. It did so more and more as time went on, as we communicated more and our dynamic got back to focused on us as opposed to all life’s other insignificancies. And soon enough, I was home and we were playing in this way more than any other.

So what changed?

There’s a concept that I have hard of used to reference what makes certain recreational activities good or bad: set and setting.

Such activities as the term was coined in alter your headspace. Not in quite the same way to how play does but… in a way that might be comparable for a number of reasons. At the very least, I think this is one.

“Setting” isn’t always a where in this case. In fact, it rarely is. It’s a social and personal context: a when, a who, a *how; the external factors that very often end up interwoven with the internal ones. The internal ones are—you guessed it—the “set,” which is short for “mindset.”

I want to be clear that by “mindset” here I don’t (necessarily) mean “the bottom must have a mindset that they are not the things the top makes them feel like in the scene to not have a badbad time.” There are some of us who would not even *remotely* get what we wanted out of emotional S/m if this were true—to me, my Owner picking on actual insecurities or beliefs is hot, and Him saying things that I don’t believe He could believe at all feels silly. Others, they don’t want that. This is something that varies for everyone and can only be known through explicit discussion and/or deep, intimate knowledge of each other. What I do mean is that the mindset going in should be one where the play doesn’t cause harm—whatever that is for you.

For me, in that first scene, I had a mindset of “I am not ultimately someone my Owner wants to prioritize.” This made things badbad. Today—through a combination of therapy, action, and time—along with the right “setting,” which for me is “living together in a functional, stable, communicative relationship with agreed-upon needs” (and more importantly isn’t “the opposite of all those things”)—I have a mindset of “I am who my Owner wants to be with in any reality.” This means that He can say the horrible things and make me do the embarrassing things and they can all be real and true and weaponize my own beliefs about myself and it simply doesn’t matter. I am who He *wants* to be with: Me, the validation-seeking slut. He *wants* to be with me, the shameful little thing who gets off to [redacted.]

(Note that I personally like to have an internal locus of control here. Although my set has to do with the partnership, it’s still about me. This is important. It isn’t “My Owner wants to be with me in any reality;” it’s about who *I* am. It’s a subtle difference but it’s one that matters.)

Mine is a mindset that works for our play. If I were approaching emotional S/m through pick-up play (a wildly different setting that wouldn’t be right for me personally with any set), that wouldn’t be my priority. It might be something more like “I am a successful person regardless of how others feel about me” or the like—Whatever it is most important to you that your emotional play not harm, that’s what the right set and setting should reflect. And as you’ve probably figured out by now, these things relate to each other deeply. They can be considered separately but one may relate to the other: my friend @Venerant on Fetlife did a risk breakdown for play after her personal context changed due to the loss of a beloved pet. In her writing, she demos considerations of how her SETTING is affecting her SET might look quite well.

In any case, only you can know the setting and set you need. But I hope you find one that’s conducive to all the best, hottest, most liberating outcomes.

Join the conversation about this post in its comments on Fetlife!

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

Analysis: Why Emotional S/m?

I like information. I like gathering it and I like looking for patterns. I do these things for personal enjoyment, to better plan my writings and classes, and to share something that maybe others find of value. I have done this before with Defining CNC and Defining Edge Play. Now, I’ve changed from a what to a why.

Both in order to answer a question a friend asked and to help refine my Negotiation and Communication for Emotional S/m class, I recently asked for responses to “Why do you like emotional sadomasochism?” I received roughly 40 responses, some in the form of comments or writings and some in DM by those who wanted to remain anonymous, and have now identified a few trends.

For the purposes of this writing, ESM refers to emotional sadomasochism. I did not define “emotional S/m” for the respondents, but readers may wish to keep in mind that this is a vast and varied kind of play that could encompass a number of different things. All that being said…

Here are the major themes I found in the answers to “why emotional S/m?”

It makes us feel seen.

The most common phrase in the answers by far (over half included some variation) was along the lines of “emotional S/m makes me feel seen.” I’ll break this further into two terms I saw fairly frequently: authenticity and intimacy. There’s a large overlap in the venn diagram of how these factors were described, so the lines may blur a bit in the discussion below. I think this quote from @mairy helps to illustrate both well:

“It reassures me that my partner sees all my grotesqueries but is attracted to me anyways.”

Authenticity

As in mairy’s quote above and written in some form by a sizable number of others, many who play with emotional S/m prefer to be brought to real “undesirable” emotions or to have actual insecurities come up in play, often feeling that it in some way peels back the layers of the everyday public-facing self to reveal a self that is more “real,” “authentic,” or “complete.” In playing in a way that focuses on these self-perceived negative traits—in mairy’s description, “grotesqueries”—their play partners see them in a way others never do.

Intimacy

Intimacy, named by over a third of all answers total, further breaks down into two more categories of its own.

The first is represented by that second half of mairy’s quote: intimacy can be the closeness that comes from knowing one party still accepts, likes, is attracted to, or otherwise wants to be around the other after the authentic self has been revealed. This goes for the bottom-to-top direction too: Tops feel intimacy both in the honor of the bottoms showing them their true selves and in their cruel sides being accepted and desired.

The second way intimacy was discussed was phrased more or less as a prerequisite, or else, a quality of which good ESM scenes are a proof: the idea that creating an effective emotional response may necessitate a deep, intimate knowledge or understanding of the other party. It may simply be a requirement for ESM to happen, and/or good ESM can be the evidence of this deep knowledge that makes non-ESM connections feel more possible:

“Someone who knows how to emotionally hurt also makes me feel seen, and feeling seen makes me feel safe and makes me feel cared about/loved. If someone knows how to hurt me in precisely the ways they want, they’re demonstrating that they are unlikely to hurt me accidentally in ways that they don’t want.” – @ACatNamedSam

It helps us explore ourselves.

This is a big category, as I’m including many different items from the coding in it. There were a fair number of topics that came up a non-zero amount yet not often enough to be their own major category. These subtopics, bolded where they appear below, seem to me to fit under a larger theme: engaging in emotional S/m allows for a deep exploration of the self.

This is a fairly wide umbrella. For one grouping under it, ESM is a way to experience feelings they likely wouldn’t otherwise and to explore the full range of the human experience (put a pin in this). This overlapped with “feeling seen” in some cases, with discussions of having the full range of ones’ emotions brought out by a partner therein validating that all those emotions are acceptable and safe to show.

Another group spoke of ESM as a way to—as @Venerant put it—calibrate their emotional scales. By engaging in darker emotions in play, they are able to better evaluate emotions they experience elsewhere in life. This may happen in a number of different ways:

“Sometimes the relief comes from my negative perceptions being affirmed and the resulting pain, and sometimes the relief comes from recognizing the absurdity of my perceptions having heard them from someone else, and thus letting them go.” – @InquisitiveElle

“Human brains don’t judge by how objectively good things are–they judge how good they are *relative to other times.* I appreciate all of my life more if I get thrown down into a hole and feel how far I have to climb/be pulled back up, and doing this in the controlled setting of emotional sadism is healthier than getting into actual life trouble just for the sake of contrast.” -@SuspendDIsbelief

This calibration also can be related to the matter of overcoming: getting through a trying ESM experience helps some bottoms trust that they can also get through trying daily life experiences. An anonymous top likewise spoke of how being the architect of ESM scenes provided this feeling, saying “When I am also the demon, I know my own don’t stand a chance.”

@sweetblackangel also brought up the language of personal demons, stating that ESM offers “a way to drag my demons out into the light and actually work with them instead of suppress them. Turns out, they are a lot less scary after play.” Working with negative emotions once they’ve been brought to the surface was an element worth naming for a number of respondents, in terms like “shadow work,” “processing,” and so forth.

In these ways and others—while ESM is not therapy—engaging in ESM can be therapeutic. That is, many find it somehow soothing, informative, or otherwise helpful to fostering mental health. ESM was referred to as “a controlled setting” in which they could feel negative feelings that they might be drawn to or even benefit from in some way, experience release/catharsis, and become less likely to self-sabotage in relationship with others.

“I don’t trust [times in my life when things are good] […] and I end up having urges to sabotage good things just to prove to myself that I’m still in reality and that I still can recover if things go wrong. If I’m in a place where ESM play is on the table, I can more effectively resist that urge, essentially by telling myself that I don’t need to do that work and can trust the sadist to do it for me next time we’re together.” – @Chayla

And though this decidedly is not the case for all, for some, the draw to ESM is one some players reference as stemming in some way from past traumas, intentionally and/or innately. This is another venn diagram overlap area: a few brought this up in terms of feeling that trauma is “fully seen” by a partner, as well as with a final subcategory here.

Though it is worth saying that not all think of their societally-engrained emotional beliefs as a kind of trauma, a number of respondents mentioned the way ESM allows feelings that sociopolitical, cultural, or familial norms did/do not. (Ouch! What was that? Oh, that’s that pin I stuck in earlier, right around how ESM gives some the experiences of emotions they don’t otherwise get to feel.) Bottoms assigned male at birth pointed to the vulnerability they can feel in ESM as something they don’t feel allowed in daily life, and tops assigned female at birth spoke about the freedom to be “powerful,” “cold-hearted,” “selfish,” and other similar words.

“The reason that I only top for distress and not pleasure (even though they can achieve similar ends) is probably influenced by my violent allergic reaction to society telling me that partnered happiness is found through being pleasing to my (male) partners. At this point in my life, the idea of “pleasing” is revolting.” -@owlfinch

“I am invited to explore emotions that I have been taught are wrong. Things around gender, sexuality, power. I am on some level accepted and affirmed as a whole person with flaws and instabilities and trivial obsessions – and this makes me feel powerful, alive, loved. Though I am very emotionally sadistic, I ultimately find many scenes sadomasochistic because I allow the bottom/sub to view parts of me i have been taught are problems. I mean this both in a general Western Culture way, but also in the Sex Culture way.” – @GetsCarriedAway

“Hurting for someone gives me space to feel feelings I wasn’t allowed to feel when I was younger. I’ve been managing and carefully controlling my emotions my entire life, and it’s incredibly difficult for me to put those guards down. Emotional sadism is someone forcibly tearing those walls down and then putting the negative emotions inside. And that’s safe. If I’m sad because someone wanted me to be, then that isn’t a failure to manage my emotions.” – @ACatNamedSam

It’s hot.

When I first asked this question elsewhere, a very lovely kinky brain scientist told me that it’s fairly simple why people are attracted to this: arousal, plain and simple. Now, while arousal is not a 1:1 connection to “that’s hot,” this meaning of arousal was acknowledged directly by at least a third of participants. There were also several “I don’t know why I like it; I just do” type answers that I didn’t include in this count, but that I suspect meant the same thing, and perhaps responding to the question at all even implies this answer (but perhaps not, so I did do a formal count).

What’s hot about ESM for respondents came from fantasies, from narrative, or from above-listed reasons (such as intimacy) and others being turn-ons themselves. A small but not insignificant number of respondents also mentioned engaging in ESM because the people they like are into it.

Tops were slightly more forthcoming with “it’s just hot” answers. Almost all of them mentioned power. Notably, two switches said that emotional sadism is rooted in sexuality for them, while emotional masochism is not.

Finally, some stated that ESM is something they can engage in even with bodily limitations from illness, disability, or daily life requirements: it is at least to some extent a more practical approach to our sadomasochism.

In all the answers, those three themes were the most all-encompassing. However, there is one last thing that did come up enough that I think it’s worth sharing:

“I deserve it.”

This was, truth be told, only said a few times. All the same, it’s the complication of this statement which makes it the perfect one to end on: although it is true that some who play with ESM have self-conceptions that align with the play, there’s also something here that I always try to highlight in my classes: *you deserve to seek out consensual experiences that are as fucked up as you desire them to be.* Some participants said this outright about themselves, and I am saying it outright here: Those who enjoy ESM deserve to have it with the consenting partners of their dreams.

And so do you, if you’re nodding along with any of this. I hope that you get the chance.

Housekeeping/Interesting things.

Please note that ESM is also edge play for many of us. I suggest you do not engage in it without thorough consideration. I [have a list of questions bottoms could look at here](https://fetlife.com/users/3055227/posts/5489251),

I did not include comments to the writings others posted in response to me if they did not also comment to me directly—no one’s answers were included in the analysis if they were not given specifically to me for that reason. If you’re interested in these writings (which are wonderful!) and the other responses, you can read the “raw data” on Fetlife here. Should you want to join in on the conversation in the comments of my writings, you can find the original Fetlife post of this one here.

The majority of the responses were from bottoms, though not all. Many were from switches. Somewhat surprisingly to me, nearly all of the complete tops who responded chose to do so anonymously. I just found this interesting and wanted to share. Responses quoted are no better or worse than those not quoted. They were just the right quotes for what I was trying to say

Want to be included in future research? I do post about things like this on Fet, but my substack is the best way to ensure you get the questions when I send them out.

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

Enthusiasm, emotional S/m, et cetera*

I have a confession to make.

I have a Negotiating/Communicating for Emotional S/m class I’m teaching this weekend that I’ve been nervous about in a way I haven’t been nervous about teaching in a long time. You see, I… kind of feel like a fraud. I mean this beyond the (unfortunately) usual youngish-woman-teaching-in-2023 imposter syndrome; I mean that I’m not sure if I can teach emotional S/m because currently, I don’t know that I can *do* it.

Or at least, that’s what I’d been thinking for a few weeks.

Life has been life. You know how it goes. Hormones. Miscommunications. Med changes. Life. I’ve felt hesitant around any sexual play or banter, mostly knowing how ESM almost always sneaks into it these days. I haven’t known if I could engage in a way that keeps me feeling whole (or that breaks me in an easily reparable way).

The hard part is that ESM is still what I want *anything* along those lines to be, so I have had a hard time feeling flirty or sexual at all. And I’ve been worried. Personal insecurities have left me thinking I just can’t handle this kind of play anymore at all.

Or at least, they had.

Then, the casual condescension started sneaking back into our more playful conversation. Ways I text or chat have once more turned to the kinds of sharp-edged tones of degradation I love. We have had a few mis-steps, but it turns out, my fears were way simpler and smaller than I had realized.

The problem was about two specific words.

Two. Words.

Not their synonyms. Not any other kind of delicious put-down or mocking tone. Just two words that mattered.

Triggers are complicated, and often very specific. What a word means to one person can have a different gravity for others. It’s one of the many reasons ESM is a minefield. A topic can be totally fine until one word sets off the “nope” button.

Words matter. This lesson was driven home to me this week in multiple ways. Last Friday, I wrote a piece on Fetlife about how “enthusiastic consent” is an ableist idea. In it, I took for granted that others would have been taught that concept in the way I was: as a physical display of emotional eagerness given each time and throughout all sexual encounters, something I feel unable to give due to disability. And hundreds replied that they have felt that way too. Still, at the same time, others felt misled or hurt by my words and how they resonated in their own, more individual readings. What I had thought had an implied “for me and my body” didn’t do that for everyone reading, and I left some feeling like I felt sex was necessary for a good life (I don’t; that’s specific to my needs) or like people should push through experiences they don’t want to be in and don’t want to not want to be in (never, ever. If you genuinely want to end something and haven’t mutually elected that experience, you should never feel like you *have* to continue.) Now, I myself may know that these things aren’t what I meant, but it doesn’t matter: people who read those words once and took away something I didn’t mean may never be reached with my corrections, and maybe their reading of my writing leads them into a bad place. There are ways I should have been careful and specific that I was not. It mattered.

Someone I Love makes “actions, not words” their mantra, and it’s sat strangely with me for many years. Now more than ever, I’ve figured out why. Words *are* actions. Which we choose, how we put them together: this matters. It is holy, sexy, life-altering work. And it has a weight and a gravity to it.

Be general. Be specific. Try to say what you mean. Recalibrate when you get it wrong. And if certain words aren’t working for you… maybe you can communicate in another way for now.

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

When it comes to emotional S&M, safewords don’t really work.


I don’t believe there’s any kind of emotional s&m that isn’t edge-play — because I don’t believe there’s such a thing as emotional s&m for which you can depend on a safeword.

I’ll be clearer, as some of you know how I play: I don’t mean “safeword” when I say “safeword.” I mean “no way that a bottom communicates they want everything to stop can be relied on to work.” I mean “this applies even for those of us who don’t use safewords;” I mean “there is no communication that is adequate;” I mean “this is a thing to be considered before you even start.” Because when we talk about communicating stops to play, we talk about removing what is causing harm. And the second play happens in the head and involves fucking with one’s sense of self, or values, or security, we are no longer talking about what can be so simply stopped.

Say that you need to get out of rope immediately, and the rope can be cut.
Say that you need to get the forty needles out of you, and sure—it can’t be done in an instant, but the process can begin.
Say that you need to stop being degraded or humiliated, and the scene itself, the words being spoken, the whatever is happening can immediately come to an end.

But can the play?

Well, maybe. If you’re especially good at compartmentalizing or if play has only touched on the imaginary and everyone is aware of that, if it’s only been roleplay the whole time and nobody has any doubts to this. But for those of us who play dark enough to touch upon the real, emotional play is planting a seed and burying it deep. And suddenly, it’s there, germinating.

Stop escalating, sure. That you can do. But what happens at the important work presentation next week that requires your confidence? What happens if there’s a rift soon after with your play partner? Will things stay compartmentalized then, or will you wonder if maybe what was said was really true? Will it affect your behavior? How you eat? How you speak? How you move through the world?

When play happens mostly in a bottom’s head, are they able to safeword out of their own ruminations?

All this doesn’t even address that speaking up about when a scene needs to change or end is difficult for many bottoms under the most un-emotional circumstances, making some feel like they’ll be less worthy, less valuable, no matter how entirely not-the-case this is. If a bottom is being degraded effectively and is believing, at least in that moment, that they are dumb, worthless, annoying, any of the above… it may very well make them less likely to speak up the larger that the problem becomes.

So what’s the solution?

In many ways, this is all individual… like anything else.

But start with making sure everyone knows all this. Let there be no doubt as to the possible risks. Discuss and consider. A lot. Lab out just how certain words feel to the bottom. Share videos and stories and ask what the other party thinks of them. Talk about curiosities and concerns. Ask a lot of questions.

What I can tell you is that for me, hard limits I once had around this kind of play have turned into the most rewarding kind of fucked-upedness that I crave more than anything else.

But when they were still limits for me, they needed to be. Because there’s no tool quite as powerful as the imagination. And once that’s started, you can’t just put it back in the box.

Which I suppose, for many of us, is the reason we do it at all.

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

all I deserve*

CW: stuff I like.
Assembled from old LiveJournal posts and my memories of a few hours ago, which are not to be interpreted as exact dialogue given they likely mingled with my fantasies.

“The way you move your hips should be criminal.”

“The way You make me move them,” I say.

“Do I make you? Or have you maybe always been like this? Always been a little seductress, making men look at you, want you… always known exactly what you were doing, always lied about it—is that it? Do I make you, or are you a lying little tease?” I’m sure I must have answered, must have come up with some at least half acceptable thing to say, but I can only remember the terrible surety of knowing my shame had made Him need to fuck me again already, that instead of staying in this afterglow, I’ll be ending the evening sore.

My favorite weekends are when [the Catholic boy’s school] has their mixers. It’s the one time I truly feel like myself, and at the end of the night I can feel my heart and know I’m alive again and everything in me lights up. I always go on my own and can lose myself there, dancing, with lots of eyeliner and my black boots. I like to stay near the outside of the crowd so that the guys without girlfriends who are walking around looking for something to do see me. And they always see me. Someone did separate me from the first guy I made out with last night, which was awkward, but not the second. I know the second’s name, but only because I purposefully checked his nametag after I realized I didn’t know the first’s.

“What if I said I’d want to take you out sometime?” some guy said to me when I left.

I said, “I’d believe you.”

“Nobody else could Love you,” He says. “Not at this point. The things you’ve done, the things you like, the things I’ve made you like. You’ve come while I’ve pissed down your throat. I have videos of you begging to be fucked in the ass. Hell, you like being beaten—really beaten, punched and kicked until you cry. Maybe they did once, but at this point? You’re lucky I found you. And now, you’re stuck. You’re not strong. You’re not fast. You’re not smart. You can try to leave, but we both know I’d fucking destroy you. I’d drag you back.”

“Come back,” this one says over the phone as I turn on to the highway. I saw him script this to himself from his front porch, watching me after walking me to my car. “I know you think you’re happy with _____. I know I’ll probably never have the kind of job he does, or even something stable. But I could make you* truly *happy. We could have such a life together. v, I’ve been in love with you for five years. Ask my sister.” I don’t have to do that, because I already know. I knew when I went to see him that day, and I knew when I visited him in New York, and I knew five years ago, too. “That’s my fatal flaw: how much I hate loving you. That’s why I never act on it.”

No, I tell him, your fatal flaw is loving me. Hating it is merely a fact.

“Come back,” he says, “come back.”

He spits on his hand, gets ready to enter me again. “I’m sure you wish that was on you.” Maybe He saw me shudder when He did it, but He’d know anyway. I remember when I figured out He’d been training me to come when that happened. It’s too late, He told me then. It doesn’t matter if you know what I’m doing or not.

“Stay still,” He says. “Don’t even think about it. This is about me now; you don’t get to come again, except maybe at the end if you’re really fucking lucky. Every time you do, you move your filthy cunt, and I’m going to get off inside you now. So present yourself to your god. Put your ass up and stay. still. I don’t care about your disgusting little orgasms. This is all you have to offer me.”

This one calls me at two in the morning, flirting around the lines of drunkenness. “Aren’t you going to ask me to tell you why I called?” he says.

“No,” I say. “You’ll tell me if you want.”

“Well,” he says, “80% is that I just thought of how we used to be friends. Aren’t you going to ask me what the other 20% is?”

“No. You’ll tell me if you want.”

“I’m imagining you on your back on my granite counter,” he says, “like in that poem you wrote last September.” That poem wasn’t about you, I think but do not say. “I’d make you come so hard you could only think of me with any other man.” Sure, I think. They all say that. It’s so important to them, being the one I remember. “I’m imagining how high your back would arch when—are you going to tell me to stop?”

“No.” I lay on my floor and make the requisite moaning noises, half-listen… play Tetris. I don’t care about the words, and I’m not getting anything sexual out of this. What I get is confidence, and it comes from the sound of his need. He doesn’t text me the next day. Instead, he mails me a sweater.

“You don’t deserve to come. All you deserve—no, all you want is brokenness. You want to be treated like the little lying whore you are. After all the guys you left hanging, everyone you screwed over? You don’t deserve to feel anything good at all.” I can’t say for sure if what I’m feeling is “good”—this laser-focus sense of disintegrating at His touch, holding my breath like that will hold me together, desperate not to… lose? Disobey? Fail?—but I know that it is what I will save for whenever I’m next allowed to get myself off. I’m unsure in this moment if I’ve told Him that as of late, this is all I fantasize about: being told all the ways in which I’m a liar as I try not to give in. But it’s too late. It doesn’t matter if He knows what He’s doing or not.

“Let me tell you a story!” This one always uses too many exclamation points when he’s drunk. “I liked you! For so long! And figured you would never like me back! So I tried to find a reason not to like you but I couldn’t! So I invited you to my house and the whole goal was to find a reason not to like you! And you were still perfect!” When did I last speak to him? Two, three months ago? When did I go to his house? I saw so many men only once this year. “And you just left at the end! A truly good person would have just said they weren’t interested, but you played me from the beginning!” Oh, I remember now. We watched a Glee special on Valentine’s Day. I really thought he knew it was just as friends—except, of course, no, I didn’t. “So now I know you’re a liar! And I found a reason!”

“I hope that hurts”, He says—and it does hurt, that burning between my legs that happens when He fucks me multiple times in succession, or else without warning, or else stays only barely entering me so that the friction builds more and more as I’m reminded of my own weakness. “You deserve to hurt, the way you hurt so many boys–so many weak men–just for your own amusement. This is all you ever wanted done to you: you wanted them to teach you a lesson. You deserve this for the rest of your life, the kind of girl you were.” And it does hurt, that throbbing in my jaw that comes when I have to use all my focus to clench it shut, those exquisite, acerbic moments where what I would say back to anyone else is “fuck you.”

For five minutes that winter, we didn’t hate each other. And though I didn’t go with him to the Sweetheart Dance, he came over to my house after. I insisted I was too tired, and he told me he was already driving around my neighborhood. I was exhausted. I don’t remember much of what happened. But I do remember most that gorgeous face, that silent contorted moan or scream when I moved my hips over his and did not, no matter how he looked at me, kiss him.

I’m silent now. He hasn’t told me He doesn’t want to hear me, but I try my best not to breathe too loudly, just one small thing I can maybe control. If I open my mouth, I’m sure I’ll either come or cry. I want to look back at Him and see the way He is overcome at these moments, all venom and power, but that would cause the same problem. So I focus on keeping my ass up for Him—not moving even when He’s thrusting into me with all His strength, even when I feel so full of Him that if I don’t stop pushing back I’m sure my body will not bear it—until those final moments.

And then, I cannot hold it in anymore: I beg. Please, please, please.

“No, you goddamn little cocktease,” He says. “You may not.”

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

Questions and Considerations for Bottoming to Degradation Play

Over time, emotional play has become one of my core kinks. Very few of our scenes don’t have at least some element of degradation, and casual degradation and humiliation is a part of my day-to-day life. It certainly has caused its issues at times, but I wouldn’t want to remove it from our dynamic for the world. It makes me feel Loved. Most of my erotica involves it. *All* of my fantasies do. Often times, I can’t get off without it. Suffice to say, I think about this sort of thing a lot.

I recently read someone’s guide to emotional sadism. In the comment section, many bottoms expressed regret over emotional S&M gone wrong in the past, whether because their partners did not engage in it from a healthy place, boundaries weren’t clearly considered or communicated, or other reasons. My aim here is to create a resource for bottoms to help them think through potential pitfalls before they encounter them.

This is a non-comprehensive list of possible questions you might ask yourself or discuss with your partner when considering delving into emotional play. Sometimes I’ve added examples or other commentary, but it’s mostly just the questions. It’s by no means exhaustive. It also is not at *all* meant to qualify if you personally should or shouldn’t engage in this sort of play—if your answer to a question is something negative, that doesn’t mean “don’t do it”; it means follow the question up with “and am I okay with that?”

  • What feeling do I wish to come out of this with?
    options might include: shame, loneliness, fear, worthlessness, failure, abandonment, guilt
  • Do I want this to be role-play (my partner says things we both definitively know to be untrue) or do I want this to touch on real insecurities and beliefs?
  • What categories of degradation are too far, desired, or won’t have an effect?
    options might include: attractiveness (physical? personality? smell?), intelligence, worth as a partner, worth in general, capability (of being a good submissive, at your job, to achieve your dreams, etc), aspects of identity (race, religion, sexuality, gender), promiscuity, sexual ability/worth, core values
  • Am I okay with real-life events being mentioned?
  • If we are role-playing but my partner says something I believe is true about myself, will I be able to trust that they *don’t* think that? If no, will that undermine my concept of true and false for things they say in the future?
  • Have there been any recent hurdles with this partner that might affect my ability to see something as play?
  • If I am feeling ashamed, unimportant, or otherwise lesser in the scene or dynamic, will that affect my ability to communicate if I need things to stop?
  • Are there reactions that should signal a stop or pause to my partner beyond explicit communication
    examples: shutting down, crying, inability to make eye contact, heavy breathing
  • In some physical scenes, a safeword stops the thing causing the pain. When emotions are involved, the escalation can stop but the pain might not (ever). If I have the ability to stop this in our scene/dynamic, am I able to do that *before* it gets to a point I won’t be able to handle?
  • How long do I want to sit with the bad feeling(s)? Do I want it made better after (being “built back up”)?
  • If I need my top to make me feel better after, do I want them to negate what they said/did in scene and tell me it was all a lie, or build me up about other things?
    (Personally, if my Owner were to say He didn’t believe the things He told me, I’d start thinking that He didn’t really enjoy degrading me and that would make me feel worse. YMMV.)
  • What else do I need after? Are there behaviors of mine that might need to be monitored (eating properly, fulfilling goals, communicating, etc) based on what we do? For how long? Will this partner be in my life for that long? Are there other people that can look after these things if they aren’t?
  • If this scene involves certain activities, props, or locations, they may trigger these feelings in the future. Am I okay with that?
  • If I do this in public or write about this and people think/know my top really thinks these things about me, will the way they perceive us be bothersome to either of us?
  • Is my top prepared to handle the emotional labor that may come with my feeling they think x about me? Will they feel guilty if I become afraid of them or their presence makes me feel negatively? Are they aware of that possibility? Will they be patient if it is hard to overcome, or even if it doesn’t ever go away?
  • Are other relationships prepared to handle the emotional labor that may come with my believing x about myself? If I need extra reassurance or am suddenly insecure in our relationship, will that make them feel negatively about themselves?
  • Do I have events in the near future that will be affected by my confidence in myself changing? (important presentations, job interviews, performances, first dates)
  • Am I comfortable being vulnerable in front of my partner? Will I be after this happens? Do I have a support system I can speak to honestly about this experience without fear of judgment?
  • How might this affect any emotional issues I already deal with?
  • If this partnership dissolves in the future, will this experience make that harder to handle?
  • If I begin associating affection or sex with these negative feelings, how will that affect my perception of reality, and how will that affect how I evaluate this and other relationships down the line?
  • What traits, connections, perceptions ground me to the reality of whatever this relationship is? How will I be reminded/remind myself of them if/when I need to?

Obviously, everyone experiences things differently. Though I hope it goes without saying, emotional S&M can be very hard on a person and on a relationship, whatever that relationship is, and should be carefully thought through—but with the right partner, I think it’s one of the most incredible, intimate, and even empowering experiences to be had. These questions are meant as thought/conversation-starters, not a comprehensive checklist.

Come over to the comments section of this writing on Fetlife to tell us what you’d add!

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

“For whatever it’s worth, I think I’m having another degradation phase.”*

At least, that’s what I brace myself to say for the full hour before You come to bed. I repeat it to myself, ready to say it to You casually once You join me.

But I don’t.

Why? Because I’m embarrassed. Because I’m afraid it will be obvious how scripted it is. Because You’ve just walked in and called me pretty, and I certainly don’t want You to stop calling me pretty–but silently, I add a second part to it, my insatiability filling in the blank You don’t even know is there: “It’s good you’ve got that going for you. There isn’t much else.”

See, I have this second-rate version of You in my head. (“Isn’t everything you do second-rate?”) An hour ago, You turned me around while we were fucking and I pushed my face into the bed, hearing “I couldn’t bear to look at those disgusting faces you make any longer.” That’s a frequent one. “Keep your ass up, disappointment. Can’t you even do that much?” That’s another.

When You allow me to masturbate, I see You in the corner of the room, Your arms crossed like that day in the airport, observing, waiting. You watch me, mock me, even time me. I bore you. “Go on. You can’t get yourself off? Poor baby. I’d have you begging for me to stop by now. How does it feel, knowing I can manipulate your body so much better than you yourself?” I know how pathetic it is that I do this. I even hear You say, “I can’t believe you need to pretend I’m there in order to come. Don’t you have any imagination of your own? Of course not,” You smirk. “You weren’t built for that.” I can’t see anyone else. I stopped trying that two bedrooms ago.

You are the voice in my head. My earworm, my hallucination: You. You are what haunts me; You are all my nightmares. You’re the waking ones, too–when You’re there and when You’re not. You are the reason I have any self-control at all, like that time You told me You didn’t want to hear me anymore, my whining or heavy breathing, that if You did You’d stop and I’d have to live with myself knowing that You didn’t get off. I gave myself petechiae that night, limiting my own air. In the moments before You make me lose consciousness sometimes, I almost reach that feeling of despair. I almost remember how awful that felt, my fear of failure, my sense of dread. It isn’t quite as good as when You make me feel those things. It isn’t quite as whole. It’s empty, like me.

Why post this now? Is that easier than just saying that one sentence to You? Why share it with everyone? Maybe it’s the exhibitionist in me, the one You threatened to make hump a pillow while an audience watched. Or maybe it’s just my need for attention, but only on my terms–which they’ll give me, as they always do and always have (“Shameless narcissist. You are a disgrace.”) Everyone but You, that is, which is probably the whole point. Or maybe it’s just the recognition that when You’re actually there, I am smaller than small. I cannot predict. I cannot pretend. I cannot be so candid with You, Your laughter so near.

But for whatever it’s worth, Owner, I think I’m having another degradation phase.

I know it isn’t worth very much.

Posted by vahavta
18
Jan
2024

the place with all my demons: on degradation and shame*

It’s always been about loss of control, for me. Helplessness. The giving over.

How I used to think that would be all blood and violence. For a time, maybe it was. Screaming and crying and eventual silence. How I used to think that would be enough.

But we grow, and we adapt, and I am a masochist. When I got better at interpreting the blows into what would make me come, I was no longer satisfied. Not fully. I accepted that I could do that. I even liked it.

How I used to think I could never fully suffer again.

I don’t know how I got to this place. Back then, words like ‘dumb’ and ‘worthless’ were on my list of hard limits.

There was a path, I’m sure.
Little taunts when I cried from beatings.
Piss on my shirt and in my mouth. Small things.

And then, when we had been long-distance for many months, when I came home for a week in the middle, there was this one night. A night where He mocked me for not getting Him off. Had me ride Him and neither looked at me nor reacted. Made me bend over and stay completely still and silent while He came and I did not. After, I turned away sobbing, hating Him for using one of our limited nights so selfishly. Hating myself more.

But in the time away from each other (sometimes even still,) whenever I got off… it always went back there. Every time. That awful suffering. I didn’t tell Him. (How I used to think I could keep this to myself.) My eyes closed, my hand between my legs, thinking about feeling completely tossed aside. That shame. That worthlessness. I started to notice it in every scene I found strong enough to think about, write about. It crawled into the most secret fantasies I had.

And in recent weeks, it has crawled right out.

I love pain. I still do. He can push beyond my masochism to where I get that, generate real tears, real fear in the moment. But that’s just it: I do love it. I want it. I can think through it.

When He’s in my head (and oh, how He’s in my head…) there is no escape. There is no secret enjoyment. Even what I enjoy, I hate. I suffer. There is no end to it. I can’t claim dehydration or exhaustion. I can’t tense different muscles or move a bit forward. I can’t meditate through it. I certainly can’t focus on the knowledge of His Love.

My emotions have controlled me at so many points in my life and here is a man who can control them, more powerful than all the darkness.

I don’t know how I got to this place: my looking back at my Owner Friday night, his cock inside me, begging Him to say something awful to me. Knowing in that moment that was the only way I could come. Needing to cry in self-hatred. I don’t know how I got to where in two weeks we will do our first full scene of public humiliation and how that’s the first play in forever I’ve found myself actively hoping He will forget, fearing in anticipation, not knowing how to prepare for. Give me beatings. I can stretch for that. I can prepare myself. I can know what to expect. Even now, I know part of me writes this to deflect that shame. Look, that isn’t real. That isn’t me. I’m not really that… whatever I will be. Remember me, how you’ve seen me bruised and bloody? Don’t you know I’m actually strong?

But I am not. He is in every one of my recesses, finding my weakness and taking it for Himself. And I crave it, and hate myself for hating myself. And I beg.

And then He says what I need Him to, takes me to that cliff where all my demons lie below, and I finally, finally, look up and say with my small voice:

“Please, please, please may I come?”

And He laughs.

“No. But you stay there for me. Right on that edge.”

Posted by vahavta