#cdanecdotes

[cynicaldom]

Little Stumble

I recently told @amysubmits​ I wanted to institute a strict bed time rule for her in a few weeks. She resisted strongly, but not wholly disrespectfully. She couched her resistance in a playful tone but her eyes told on her. I don’t think I ever faced that much resistance from her before.

It really bothered me. I felt challenged. She wasn’t disrespectful, but it felt like she strongly thought I was making a bad decision. But she also couldn’t satisfactorily explain herself. 

But I also felt overly-emotional, which made me pause and not lash out. We just left it there, both of us not sure of our own feelings. Both of us withdrew into ourselves to figure it out.

After a time and a conversation with a friend online she came to understand what her feelings were. She was having financial anxiety and having a bed time that might interfere on the margins of how much she could work struck that nerve. She is not aware of the details of our finances because of the abnormal amount of stress it causes her. To be clear this isn’t a rule, if she wanted she has access to all of this information, our money is in a bank account in both of our names, but she chooses to let me handle the responsibility because of the anxiety it causes her. All she knows is that this time of year is her best time to earn money, so her anxiety about money makes her work herself crazy. She realized she needed to get past her anxiety and to trust me. If I tell her she needs to have a bed time, it’s not financially dangerous, that she trusts me.

I’ve come to realize I was anxious myself. I was working on a business partnership and it brought up the realization that I could be a lot more successful than I have been if I stopped being so afraid of failing. My anxiety was not about fear of financial ruin, but feeling pathetic that we could have so much more if I didn’t let myself get in my own way. Something about striking that anxious nerve had left me reeling for days. It’s something I think I’m ready to change, but I know it’s going to be very painful to change.

I don’t think either of us handled it badly. Not ideally, but we didn’t whiff the ball. She had overly negative feelings that she didn’t understand, but she was not disrespectful. I took her reaction overly personal, but did not let myself blame her for my reaction.

When she couldn’t properly explain her feelings I should have realized those feelings were coming from an emotional illogical place, and then not take them personally. She just didn’t immediately wholeheartedly embrace my view. She needed time to process, and that’s ok if done respectfully.

I should have said: “You don’t have a clear reason for why you’re feeling this way. That means there’s some other reason behind this that you’re hiding from yourself, and you need to figure out what that is. We need to have clear communication, and nebulous negative feelings aren’t clear enough, if you feel this rule is objectively unfair or bad in some way I need you to help me understand why”. This would have helped her come to her own realization faster.

[cynicaldom]

Why It’s Worth It

Amy has often asked me the following question. What makes the responsibilities on my end of our 24/7 D/s relationship worth the effort? Why is it worth it to me?

She says that she asks that question because filling in my role of our relationship sounds like hell to her. I take on the stress of major financial decisions, it’s my responsibility to make sure we’re ok whatever comes. Her healthcare is prioritized over mine, things I need done are postponed for long periods of time so she can have the same things done. I need to show her I’m watching over her everyday, and know that she will be hurt if I ever fail to do so. Still the question seemed odd to me. From my perspective, I do have to take responsibility and make sacrifices sometimes but it isn’t something I’ve felt negative or painful about. I’ve never asked myself that question on my own. But really that just puts a finer point on the question, why don’t those things feel negative?

My first attempt to answer her question was to describe the pleasure I get from her sexual submission. While that’s certainly true and an aspect of it, that isn’t the core of my feelings. My second attempt was to describe the feelings of trust & power I get from our relationship. I was closer this time but again felt like I was missing the mark somehow. I was just making a list of pleasureful things I get out of our relationship, not describing why those things were worth the effort. It’s a subtle but important difference. If the answer is just the pleasures I get out of our relationship, why would I still not chafe at the responsibilities required to get them? If the pleasures were the animating factor, that doesn’t explain why there still wouldn’t be some part of me that was resentful of the sacrifice. That meant there was something about that responsibility that I found satisfying, but why exactly?

I didn’t fully understand my own feelings. We continued to dance around the question, each time I felt like maybe we were getting closer. After several conversations over a period of months I think I finally have a real answer. 

I deserve only what I’ve earned, besides human rights. And earning something, deserving it, makes consuming whatever it is more valuable to me. Working and sacrificing for something gives it meaning.

It’s hard to describe how much I value Amy’s submission. Earning something so great requires paying a great price. It requires putting her needs first. It requires being able to make great sacrifices.

Amy’s submission is so valuable that when we both feel that I deserve this thing that is so valuable, it makes me feel incredibly valuable.

It would of course still feel pleasurable to experience her submission with no effort of my own put forth, but to feel like I earned something so powerful evolves that pleasure into satisfaction. Knowing that Amy is not role-playing, that because of my actions she feels that I truly deserve to be submitted to is such an incredible feeling. A feeling of validation so immense that I do not know how to properly describe it.

I don’t know what sacrifice wouldn’t be worth that.

[cynicaldom]

She Lost Her Wallet

@amysubmits​ and I were checking-out at a grocery store last Friday. We were picking up a few things, I was getting some alcohol as well. The cashier asked if she could see some ID. Sometimes they want us both to give ID, so we both went to pull it out. The wallet portion of her purse was gone.

Amy keeps her cards in a wallet in her purse. She must always know where her cards are at. I made this a rule because she would lose them all of the time. Irresponsibility like this puts us at risk of theft. If she was out without me and needed money for some emergency she would be screwed. A lot of our rules boil down to respecting me by doing the things I ask of her, or respecting herself by doing the things we both expect of her. But there are only a few rules that directly relate to her safety, that if broken leaves her vulnerable. This is unacceptable behavior.

We drove to the places we were at that day, looking for her wallet.  We could not find it.

We got home and there it was on the kitchen table. She had gotten it out for some reason and forgot to put it back in her purse. It wasn’t lost lost, but she didn’t try to argue that point. She didn’t know where it was when she needed it. She broke the rule.

We had a guest coming over in minutes, and a social event that was going to take up literally all of the next day. I told her I would spank her in two days. It was a long weekend. On Sunday I woke up, had breakfast, and then led her into our bedroom. I broke a wooden crepe spatula over her ass. Then switched to a leather paddle. It was an intentionally hard spanking. She cried, but she took it well.

I was turned on from spanking her. I try to keep a clear line of delineation between sex and punishment spankings. I waited a few hours. I removed my pants this time, and put her back over my knee. This spanking wasn’t a punishment spanking. I took her hand and put it on my cock. I had her squeeze my dick and feel how hard it got as I spanked her. She got really horny. I did not let her cum.

[cynicaldom]

Intimacy

My relationship with @amysubmits has become much more intimate since we started 24/7 D/s. We have set clear lines of control and protocol for us both, to filter out the anxiety that stems from ambiguity.

The human experience is tragic because we yearn for order in a decidedly unordered universe. To live is to experience a constant background radiation of existential anxiety, an unconscious awareness that we are not in control and are not cared for, we simply are. How we want the world to be and the way it actually is do not reconcile, and the space between manifests itself as fear and anxiety. What decides the trajectory of our lives is how we deal this space between. Do we let that terror consume us & seek pleasure above all else to soothe that existential pain, or do we try to reorder at least our small part of the world into what we wish it always was.

Our 24/7 D/s is an act of communicating to bring order to an incredibly complicated system. That system is a romantic relationship, how two unfathomably complicated and separate beings interact and share their lives as smoothly as possible. Through negotiation and dialogue we explicitly hammer out what we expect of each other and of ourselves, we codify it into a rule set. An explicit rule set for Amy, with punishments if those expectations are not met. While not quite an implicit rule set for me, certainly an expectation. An expectation to act in such a way that I deserve to judge and mete out those punishments. An expectation that I will always try to bring that just order to both our lives that nature has left us so wanting of.

Our 24/7 D/s is a clear expectation of effort. We’ve taught each other how to labor for each other’s love, so we do. And in in this labor we don’t bring the order that is missing to our world, we make a new world, an ordered world, that exists just between us.

[cynicaldom]

Remembering Why

@amysubmits wrote a post about an experience we recently had titled “Why Do You Like It”. While having her suck my dick I verbally walked her though her experience, forcing her to explore why she enjoyed submitting to me. 

The day that post happened, I was close to having an emotional breakdown. It’s been a particularly busy & stressful month or so. On top of that I’ve been helping my mom work through a bitter divorce due to a traumatic event. I felt thread bare that night, I laid on our bed and told Amy I needed a leg and back massage.

My sexuality during stress & depression is odd. I either want to fuck the pain away or fade away and not feel anything. I was feeling the latter, all I could feel was sharp emotional pain in my chest. But I wanted to try to feel good. I told her to suck me off.

We are relatively inexperienced at 24/7 D/s. We’ve been doing it for about a year now. Our 24/7 D/s comes with responsibilities, I get to sexually dominate her but I need to take care of her, I need to be aware of how she is doing, what she is doing, and hold her accountable to the rules we’ve set up. I’ve had this fear that in times of stress or depression I wouldn’t hold up this end of the bargain. That fear has come from the fact that when I’m stressed or depressed I have a tendency to not shut down, but slow down or at the very least really feel the weight of my responsibilities. That fear also came from a podcast we listened to a while back. I had searched for D/s or BDSM or some set of keywords like that and found a podcast of a longtime vanilla couple that was exploring the newfound D/s part of their relationship like we were. There was an episode or two where they talked about how during a stressful time the woman felt the D/s aspect of their relationship got set on the back burner. And even though they both communicated well in the podcast, it sure seemed like she was crying out in between the lines that she really needed him to be more present. She seemed so sad. I don’t know if he fully picked up on it. I’m lucky I found that podcast and learned from their experience so early in this part of our relationship, I may have had to learn that the hard way otherwise.

Amy gets easily spooked when I’m feeling down, and the night of that post I could tell she was concerned. So while I was having her blow me I thought I’d try verbally dominating her, to metaphorically yank on her leash, to remind her I was still here and aware and she didn’t have to worry about being taken care of. I started talking, asking her why she moaned while she sucked my dick, making her confront how and why she wanted to submit to me. It felt really good.

The next day I was surprised how much that experience rejuvenated me. Depression made me more inclined to not naturally pull Amy’s leash because when I’m in that bad state of mind I am not naturally inclined to do anything. But the fear I had based on other people’s experiences made me make sure I made the effort anyway. And when I did, her submission made me feel loved & validated. Now it didn’t make me instantly feel all sunshine & daisies, depression doesn’t work like that, mine doesn’t at least. But it made me feel good when I was feeling so bad, and it helped me stop from entering an even deeper depressive state. Like so much with depression, it can lead you to do things that are are counterproductive. You enter a fugue state, you lose your priorities and sometimes you don’t know why you keep going. What I’ve learned from this experience is when I’m depressed our D/s is not just an important responsibility I need to keep up on, it’s tool that helps me remember why I keep going.   I’m loved, deeply and completely.

[cynicaldom]

Little Decisions

@amysubmits often comes to me when she’s trying to make some small decision. It’s usually something unimportant like deciding between two options at the grocery store. She’ll tell me the pros & cons of the choices and where she may be leaning. My usual response has been to give her advice where I would lean and failing that just say I don’t know. I’ve done this because that’s what I want when I come to someone for advice. I want their consideration and if they don’t feel there’s one correct answer then for them to just admit that. She seems frustrated when she comes to me like this, and my honest advice rarely seems to cure that frustration and indecisiveness. I had an epiphany recently and have been trying something different. I just decide for her. I’ve ramped up that change slowly and her response has been interesting. She immediately accepts the decision without comment or regret, and that frustration immediately leaves her. Oddly enough I don’t think she’s been aware I’ve been doing it. I wonder if It’s so much in her nature to follow when someone she trusts leads that she internalizes the decisions made for her as her own. We have two wildly different perspectives. If I went to someone for advice and they just decided for me I’d consider them to be an arrogant asshole whose input is worthless. That’s because I’m asking for advice that will help me make my own best decision, even on something unimportant. When I ask for advice I am simply asking for advice. Often, not always, but often when Amy asks me for advice she is actually asking for my help in eliminating a cause of anxiety, her difficulty in making a decision. What would be an asshole move to me is actually more useful and often the best response for her. Like most things I’m learning through D/s, once I learn them they seem obvious. It’s hard to escape your own perspective. I always knew she needed someone to lead on the big decisions. But sometimes even these little decisions give her anxiety, so she comes to me, and I decide.

[cynicaldom]

While listening to the podcast, I began to have a ton of questions. I’m not a sub so my knowledge is very limited however I have read all of your anecdotes and listened to all of the podcasts and I usually keep my questions to myself but I wanted to know if things between you and Amy failed to work out, do you believe you would still be interested in this lifestyle? Would you still be a Dom?

Yes. 

I talk a lot about my process of “becoming” a Dom because I don’t see a lot of content like that out there. But I don’t think you can successfully do this lifestyle for prolonged periods of time if it isn’t who you are.

If I had never gotten together with Amy, would I have discovered all of this by myself eventually? I think I so, eventually. Maybe it would have taken a lot longer. But I think if I was still in a vanilla relationship, I would have a unrequited sense of longing that would dog me until I figured out what was missing.

[cynicaldom]

Amy

It’s difficult to express my feelings for you, @amysubmits.

Not because they are unclear, but because they are so much. 

As children, the world did terrible things to both of us. Deep down, I have always hated myself because that was the only way I could survive. Even if I just blamed the world, it doesn’t care, it doesn’t react. When I could find something wrong in myself it gave me the power to act, something I could at least have a hope of changing. I could sacrifice a piece of myself in exchange for some sense of control.

I learned to love myself because you trusted me. You were so hurt and so vulnerable, and you chose to trust me. It made me stand up and be stronger than I thought I was.  Your trust made me realize who I always was.

In our daily lives, the relationships around us are all wreckage and debris. Most are just two separate individuals out-sourcing their self-loathing and self-harm. Something short of a suicide pact. but in that same dim spirit. In a few rare cases, there are people that truly care for each other, but their real needs and desires are lost in translation. They cannot speak the same language, so they inevitably hurt each other, but even through this barrier they sense that rare thing. They beat against the thin wall, they try to reach the warmth they feel just on the other side. They can’t reach through.

There isn’t a wall between us. We found some way to break it down with 24/7 D/s. We’re here now, together. Naked and without scars. We have something we’ve never seen in real life.

I never allowed myself to think I’d ever really be happy.

You make me so happy.

You are sweet, conscientious, and full of fire. And good lord you got a great ass.  You are what I wanted, and I have you now. All of you.

Thank you. A thousand times, thank you.  For all you are and all you mean to me.

It’s your birthday soon. You deserve the world and so much more.

I love you.