Reflections part 2c: Difficulties and Complications

I will warn that from here on out, everything gets very messy as many sets of events happened concurrently and it is easier to elaborate upon them individually or risk having it appear like a Game of Thrones episode.

A few months in to the relationship things got a bit more confusing and complicated.  It's safe to say that I was a mess.  The positives up to this point:  K's health was steadily improving, I was deeply in love with someone who loved me, we were both exploring a lifestyle together that was surpassing my deepest fantasies.

There were some difficulties.  K had withheld certain details of her life that she revealed later on which made things a but more complicated.  She was currently the guardian of the child of her deceased brother and in a custody battle with the abusive piece of shit of a mother.  When she asked if it bothered me, it had taken me a bit by surprise but my response was that as long as it didn't make her love me less, it didn't bother me.

A little while later K dropped another bomb on me: she was currently married.  This one messed with me a little bit more but I let her explain it rather than reacting immediately.  They lived in the same home but were separated.  They were friends who had met in their local BDSM community.  He had been in a cautionary tale level of abuse D/s relationship that had messed him up something fierce.  K explained they had eloped after a brief romance and while the marriage was pretty much over after 6 months, with her health situation and some other factors they just hadn't gotten around to getting divorced 2+ years later.  She told me she was going to help him get into a stable living situation before finalizing it.  I chose to believe in her but somewhere the seeds of doubt and fear began to creep in.

A few other things began to confuse me as well.  At the start, K had us compartmentalize certain aspects of the lifestyle.  Basically, we had times that was just hanging out as friends (off time), times where D/s was in effect (on time), and times where a stricter set of D/s rules were going (high protocol).  In addition to these, each day we would have a discussion about the events so far and my previous day's journal entry where we were in our roles were Domme and sub but during these times we had full and open communication on anything.  As time went on, these lines began to blur and her expectations would often flash between roles in an instant and without warning.  This would throw me off a bit.

In hindsight, I realize now that many of these struggles were due to her learning curve in becoming a Domme.  In the moment, I was at a loss because K had always been my authority on the subjects at hand.  For example, if my journal entry had cited something I didn't like and my reluctance to do it again, sometimes we would talk this out and come to an understanding.  Other times K would react as if I just told her no while in high protocol mode and there would be hell to pay.  Soon it was difficult for me to understand what I was supposed to be at any given time and I started to hesitate sharing my entire feelings for fear of repercussions.  This process happened slowly over time so there wasn't any one defining moment where I went from trusting to afraid. 

I also began to understand how K's experiences within the accepted BDSM protocols were trapping her as a Domme.  Intellectually, K was strongly opposed to any ideas that allowed a Domme's power to go beyond mutually agreed upon activities and negotiated limits.  She wanted everything to be mutually pleasurable for both parties and idealized that obedience should always be voluntary without the need for reinforcement.  I'm not sure that K fully understood the differences between male and female submission post-orgasm.  Her experiences were that femsubs post-orgasm feel an even stronger bond and submission to their Dom.  To be blunt, even the best male subs are pretty damn useless and disconnected following an orgasm unless the Domme has a mechanism for an immediate return to subspace. I think my disagreeable nature following an orgasm hurt K's confidence but she was never one to share this information with me.  She also never strayed outside of protocols to correct this as well.

I was aware that things were going a bit awry.  I knew that I was a large part of the problem and I felt terrible because of it.  I began completing additional assignments for her or adding to the lists K had me write early on.  Slowly I peeled back some hard limits (moving them to the list of soft limits), removed many soft limits completely, and began adding to the list of fantasies I would be open to trying.  I was supposed to write a piece of fantasy fiction once a week and I started to write more.  K used these stories to try and understand what made me tick as a submissive and she would find parts that aroused her and she would masturbate to them as well, making them part of her fantasies.  In the stories I began to dial up the intensity of things with the goal of alleviating some of her hesitations and letting her know I was okay with the intensity levels that made her shine the brightest.  It was my way of saying, "Hey, this turns me on too, it's okay to do it this way if you want to."

I gave it a lot of thought, even to the point where it started to scare me.  K was most at home in high protocol mode.  All expectations and behaviors were clear and it was simply a means of my ability to perform and her ability to enforce.  From that part onward in the stories morphed:
-All D/s dynamics were in high protocol mode only.
-I never had another orgasm in the stories.  At first, all orgasms were denied.  Later on, I just focused solely upon her pleasure without any sexual pleasure of my own (except for what caused arousal).
-Displays and symbols of her control became more pronounced and extreme.

After a while we spent a lot less time in normal on mode and the majority of the time in high protocol.  This alleviated a bit of the confusion but I wasn't sure if she was still hesitating.  Gradually her intensity increased.  K had begun to embrace locks over the "honor system" and she would wear the key around her neck sitting just above her cleavage.  When she was there and we would sleep she kept my collar chained to the bed post. She had me get a webcam so that she could monitor my time out sessions when we apart.  We started talking about getting a cage.  The more intense things got, the more excited I became and the deeper my love got for her.  A lot of my thought processes were driven with the goal of making her proud of me.  I started to feel horrible if I let her down in even the slightest way.  This was when I realized just how cathartic punishment was for a sub as a means to atone and wipe the slate clean.

To be continued...