It is Strength or Weakness, Health or Sickness?

A dear friend and i were at dinner one night this week. We do this about once a month and at some point during our dinners the talk always turns to our relationships. Usually we talk about sex, too, and i have shared with her about what she calls my "special needs" sexually.... BDSM. She understands bedroom and/or BDSM play but doesn't understand D/s.

We both spent many, many years married to verbally and emotionally abusive men as we raised our children. Each of us left those men with thoughts of never looking back and we each got help individually and as couples. Who knew that we women would find that we have voices and opinions and that those voices and opinions are important to be heard. Who knew that our spouses would finally get it too.

We were both submissive women too eager to please, too eager to accept another's --- anybody's --- unhealthy dominion over us, too easily sent to scramble to figure out where we miscommunicated when the shit would hit the fan. We just kept scrambling to tidy up all the loose ends because we were unable to fix that whole fabric of what was really wrong. We needed to find a voice and become healthy. For some reason we were just not willing to pack up the kids and run probably because the hurts were not visible and the abuse was done in secret. We felt that we wouldn't be believed by our children, parents or friends.

She and i were friends during much of this dysfunctional time and didn't know we were each living like this. Amazing, isn't it. But at a party one night she said something to me..... sort of a little slip that told me she was hurting.... and i invited her to dinner. At that dinner i told her my history and told her that i'd soon be moving away from my home, husband and young adult children because if i didn't i would most certainly die. And she then told me her story and we shook our heads in wonder that we'd never had the voice to share with one another or anyone else.

So at dinner the other night i began to talk about how comforting it is for me to have a person with strong broad shoulders on which to lay my burdens, how fulfilling it is to be able to completely surrender myself so as to meet another person's needs in service and how that makes me feel so complete, about how i feel there are some people in this world who love being the ones to take the burdens and make the decisions just as i love to give them up. Very simplified, yes, but about as far as i felt she could comprehend what are the beginnings of a power exchange type of relationship.

Her brows knit together as she said "That is just not healthy! Isn't it true that within a relationship, the person who is so controlling must learn to give up some of that control in order to learn to defer to others and the people who are so deferring must learn to take charge?"

Hummmmm. i wonder. i wonder if she is right. The pressure i put on myself to be "a good sub" may not be healthy. i went in a direction which was to find affirmation of who i am, a submissive person, and subsequently developed that understanding into a need and craving for that life. i pretty much found the choir that sang the virtues of D/s and joined in. Conversely, she went in the direction of the cultural understanding of mental health which is to teach a much more middle of the road approach that we call "vanilla". But i wonder if i got it right. Did i get on the bus that may not ultimately bring healing?

This is all so heavy on my mind and heart today because i am struggling with this awful feeling that i did the wrong thing with Master last night BUT i don't really think it was the wrong thing... the delivery was wrong but the message was not wrong. It's not a huge thing going on... i know we will talk it through eventually but this is the thing.... here i am feeling defensive like i used to feel when i tried but couldn't "speak up", or when i tried but couldn't "disagree" or when i just flat out got angry because i felt so powerless. This is not about BDSM, it is not about limits.

i used go over and over a situation that ended badly trying to see how i might have better explained myself, how i might have been more understanding of a position other than my own, how i should have been more patient, how i should have asked for help or more time or more information. But the thing is sometimes a negative outcome is not my fault.

Last night i was reduced... yes, reduced, to a shivering little pleaser submissive puppy dog of a woman and it doesn't feel right. It feels like i'm thrown off balance, like i can't trust my own instincts, like i will loose ground if i push my opinion. The patterns run so deep and here i am not knowing how to please and to have a voice at the same time... the fear of saying the "wrong" thing runs so deep.