And then some stuff happened

 I went to therapy eventually.  I realised I wasn't getting over it on my own and needed help getting unstuck. I couldn't stop seeing my daughter as that little helpless baby, that I tried so hard to keep alive with willpower and vigilance. I didn't need to do that any longer but couldn't stop doing it on ny own.

And I needed to forgive my Owner for not being there. The fear I felt when I thought I was dying alone in the hospital, that she had left me there and wouldn't make it back in time. That fear didn't lift, it just stayed with me, poisoning me. I felt utterly abandoned, and knowing that was unfair and irrational didn't help at all.

It's not the easiest thing finding a therapist when you're a psychologist. Someone who is good and competent and available but not a friend or a friends friend or a potential colleague,  or worse, boss. But I did, and it helped. And then about that time, there was a pandemic. 

Control versus dominance

And then we talked. Or actually we cuddled and Mistress asked me about the party and among the questions I told her I smoked. I know she don't approve but at the party I didn't care. Didn't think to much about it at all.

But then naked in bed with her above me looking reproachfully down at me, I suddenly cared. And got defensive. And we talked.

I want to be hers. I want to be owned by her again. But the truth is that it's not so at the moment and I can't pretend it is. And if I don't get the owned part I have a hard time seeing the point of the obeying rules part.

In a way I think it has always been a trade off for us. She likes dominance well enough, but it's control that is important for her. That is her main thing. And if she can achieve that by acting dominant, then fine. I can get a kick out of being controlled, by all means, but it's the dominance and my submission to it that is the point for me. And if I can get that feeling from being controlled, then fine. I'm up for it.

That means I abstain from smoking cigarettes, which I enjoy, because she orders me to and obeying her makes me feel submissive and owned, which I enjoy even more. But if she doesn't dominate me and I don't get to feel submissive and owned, then I'll smoke whatever I want.

Not in every moment of course, I'm not particularly high maintenance and even though I can be occasionally bratty it's not my habit to go around being disobedient.

But this has been going on for a long time. Regardless of what happened before, our power exchange died when the baby was born. It might rise from the ashes like a phoenix, but it went away when all the bad things happened.

I didn't die on that hospital bed after all, but lying there in indescribable pain for 45 minutes alone, convinced I was going to die without even saying goodbye, killed off other things in me. Or smothered them or whatever.

I'm better now, almost all back. Tentatively trying to trust again, to need again. To want something. But it's really really hard and we keep missing each other. So in reality she hasn't had a real dominant hold over me for two years. She still wants to control me, because that's her default, but it doesn't really work when the rest of it is missing.

A blast from the past

I went to a party yesterday, a friends' 40th birthday. A lot of the guests were people I met 20 years ago but haven't really spent time with or gotten to know since then.

Halfway through the evening I realised my head was full of anxious thoughts about not being included, not being good enough, not popular enough. Wondering where the cool people where, if I was missing something awesome somewhere. And above all feeling very insecure and lonely.

It wasn't that I didn't have fun. I did, at the same time. But when I became aware of my thoughts and checked myself I recognized the train of thought as something from a very long time ago. I used to think and feel like this all the time, when I was younger. Around the time when I actually used to hang out with this crowd.

It changed and in this specific kind of situations it changed because I became owned. Not just having a boyfriend, that's not the point, but being owned. That feeling of security and belonging made me stop looking for affirmation and popularity from the cool people.

BDSM is a thing here. It's not an official activity but even though I don't really know most of the people at the party I happen to know that at least half of them are into BDSM and a lot of them are poly. And it matters to me because as soon as I know that, and if it matches with my interests, it affects me. I get jittery. I get interested. Not necessarily wanting to date them, but they become... more important. And I would probably be a very easy target if anyone with the right disposition showed any interest.

Being owned protected me from that. And I had gotten used to that. And now here I were, feeling all strange and vulnerable and didn't realise until late at night it was because my protective bubble is gone. I don't have it anymore and I miss.

I want to be owned. But right now, at this time, apparently I'm not. And it sucks and I don't know how to get it back.

Is it still a fire?

So, she's away. I called here my wife in my last post, but I used to call her my Mistress. She still am, I think, but it kind of fluctuates.

Like a fire that is almost burned out. All the flames are gone but there is still embers radiating warmth. Is it still a fire? With more wood and oxygen it would be, but is it now?

I still obey her, mostly. I still belong to her. I still in theory want her to own me. But almost all the little rituals are gone. Most of the sex too. And the feelings... They are muted. Sparse. Fleeting. Not gone, but fragile and shy.

The relationships equivalent to wood and oxygen would be time alone together. The one thing we almost never have.

But in lieu of what we actually want we are working on getting things we can have. She is away now with little S, visiting a friend in another city. She seems happy. It makes me happy too, and gives me hope. We need more happy in our lives.

It's been two years

Two years ago now, give or take some, I almost died because of complications with my pregnancy. And then our premature baby almost died due to a virus infection.

And that was it. We didn't die. We didn't have any major physical consequences from this. We're fine now, bodily speaking.

The baby is a toddler now, two years old. Small and slender but healthy and smart as a whip. Talks like a waterfall, can do anything by herself (she says) and applauds herself and shouts "Bravo!" when she manages something difficult. She eats and sleeps and talks and irritates her big sister and she lives. Very much she lives.

I, on the other hand, am still not myself. I'm locked in. I'm cut off. I'm lonely.

I used to be the life of the party. A happy go lucky type of a person. Charming. Talkative. A bit obnoxious but charismatic.

Now I'm isolated and quiet. I go to work, I go home, I do household chores and look after kids and animals, I cuddle for half an hour with my wife in front of the teve, I go to bed without her because the baby can't sleep without me and she can't sleep with the baby. And then I wake up and we do it all again.

I want to scream about it. But I'm mute.

Everything the same, everything different

She lived and two weeks later we were allowed to go home to her big sister and try to be a family again. That was almost ten months ago now. She was tiny, so tiny and fragile.

She's big now. A big healthy baby. We're a family again. But the world has changed.

The longest seconds

I think there where twelve people in the room for the c-section, not counting Mistress and myself. I have no idea what most of them were there for. I think they all introduced themselves, or a lot of them, but I couldn't really sort the information. It wasn't anything I could do anything about one way or the other anyway.

I remember being really scared before the aenastethics, I was afraid it would hurt when they drove a needle into my spine. It did but not at all as much as I feared.

And then they cut me open and pushed my baby out. It took a lot longer than it sounds like and all I could do was lying still and looking up into the bright light in the ceiling and not have any feeling below ny belly button.

The seconds of silence that stretched out when they had gotten the baby out of me and she was quiet went on for at least an eternity. Maybe two. And then she screamed, an angry little wailing sound, and it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. She lived.

Again she made it

And then a week later they suddenly decided they had to do that c-section. And she wasn't there. She was at work I think. Far away from me. Little S was at school. And I was in a hospital bed hours away in a strange city.

In the end they could postpone the operation to the afternoon and she made it in time. I didn't have to be alone when I found out if my baby would live or die.

She made it

One of the hardest times was when I thought I was going to die alone.

I was stable you see and no one seemed to worry about me just then. I just couldn't leave the hospital. And little S had been picked up from school by my dad and didn't know what was going on but we had promised her we would come home "tonight". This was before we stopped making promises, before we learned we would just have to break them. So Mistress left and started to drive home at ten in the evening.

Shortly after that the pain started. It made me puke. I thought my head was going to split in two. They gave me morphin but it didn't help. I texted her: Pain. Throwing up. Turn around and come back.

She did but she was almost all the way home by then, at least 45 minutes from me. And I really really thought I was going to die on that bed, surrounded by strangers prodding and poking me, while she was driving through the night to reach me.

I didn't, obviously. And they didn’t even had to do an emergency c-section. She came and she held my hand and her just being there made the terror sink away. Because then at least I wouldn't die alone.

Being open and with friends

We had friends over this weekend, two whole families actually. Two couples with their kids came and stayed the night and it was really nice. Even more special since we're all doing BDSM. Not together, that is, there were no play and no overt dominance going on at all.

But there's something about hanging out with people I can be open with that matters a lot to me. It's not that I say or do anything in particular. It's just that I'm more comfortable, more myself. More in love with Mistress, too. Knowing that I don't have to hide makes a big difference, even if the hiding usually isn't all that taxing.

I guess it's like getting out of uncomfortable clothes. It's one thing to stand it when you have to wear them all the time, but when you can take them off for a while it feels really really good.

I remember

I remember when Mistress taught me to behave at parties. The thing is,  want to be a social butterfly. I was forever working the room, mingling and making sure I wouldn’t miss anything. No matter who I was talking with I worried there were something more fun going on in another room. That I was missing out.

This drove Mistress crazy. She didn’t want to mingle, and didn’t care if she missed something.Nor did she want to sit alone all night while I talked to absolutely everybody for five minutes each. We bickered about it a bit, as I recall, and eventually she made me/persuaded me/told me to simply stick with her. Even if that meant I missed out.

And I remember this particular party, or bits and pieces from it anyway. This was before we got little S, so before 2009, but I don’t remember anymore about it. It was a theme party, some historical period - might have been the twenties maybe. I think a couple of people celebrated their birthdays together, and the venue were some sort of pub or something similar in Stockholm. There were a lot of people we knew a little bit and a lot of people we didn’t know at all. I remember this nervous feeling I had, that I always used to have at parties and gatherings, this mix of excitement and fear.

And Mistress made me sit with her at table in the middle of the room, close to the door, with our drinks, doing nothing. No mingling, no circulating, no going around saying hey to everybody. Just sit there.

Of course, what happened was that everybody came over and said hi to us instead. Turns out that if you sit at a table with available chairs looking friendly and relaxed a lot of people find that rather appealing and joins you. We had a great time, and if I missed out of something I didn’t notice it. There was this relief in this, in obeying Mistress, in taking this chance, and in noticing that she had been right all along

A nightly walk long ago

I remember a night during the first spring after we had fallen in love. It must have been the spring of 2004 and I lived in an apartment in central Stockholm, together with my ex, my then-Master. Mistress semi-lived with us then too, she had her own place in another town and worked at yet another place, but we spent a lot of time together.

This particular night we were up and out very late, I don’t remember why. I vaguely recall that there was a reason, we had been to some event or other. And we walked home through the city, Mistress and me. It was late spring or early summer and one of those nights that doesn’t get dark. There was a little bit of cold in the air, the scent of flowers were everywhere, and it was light, a bright twilight, even though the sun was down and it was late at night. There were some people out, but not many.

And Mistress had me in a collar and leash, perhaps for the very first time or at least one of the first times. We walked through the dreaming night city, in the twilight and the scent of flowers, I followed her a few steps behind her and she held my leash in her hand. We might have led the leash inside my sweater and out through the arm, it was very discreet and no one seemed to notice at all. It was magical and exciting and made me feel very safe, and very loved.

I remember also my ex commenting afterwards when I talked about it that he was a bit jealous because if he had had me in a leash in public people would stare angrily and assume I was being abused. Maybe he was right, I don’t know and we never tried it. I know no one stared or commented on me and Mistress and I know that I looked forward to doing it again sometime. But I’m not sure we ever did.

Longing and hope

I've become a bit wary lately, afraid of wanting her. Afraid of wanting to much, of being a burden and in the way. I've drawn back in order to not be pushy. Unfortunately, that's not a very positive strategy. We've drifted apart, in ways, and I think this wariness of mine is one of the reasons. Among the other reasons are the cause of my wariness, of course. But that's not my point right now.

My point right now is that I've more or less on purpose stopped thinking about how good we can be, how wonderful it can feel. I've stopped fantasizing and remembering, I've stopped lusting and hoping. I've tried to go day by day, happy for what I get, not yearning or craving or imagining anything more or else.

Doesn't it sound like a good, mindful, properly submissive attitude? The calm, accepting property only taking what is given and expecting nothing more. Very zen. And, for us, very much bullshit.

It hasn't shown as much because I've always been very willing when she has reached out to me. When she has taken initiative and done things to me, I've been enjoying it and appreciated it. But... I haven't let it get my hopes up, I haven't been willing to expose myself to the vulnerability of hope and longing and need. I've been shut down.

And even though it hasn't shown all that much when we've had sex, it has shown a lot in other ways. This blog, for instance. There's a reason I haven't written in it. I've tried not to want the things I write about here, and so I haven't been writing nor reading. I've avoided the feelings, because I've wanted to be a good wife, a good partner, a reliable person to my wife. And remembering how it feels to be owned, how it feels to be safe, how it feels to be wanted and lusted for and dominated - it has made me upset, and sad, and bitter, and longing and filled with emotions of all kinds. Emotions that makes me demanding and dramatic and not at all stable and reliable. So I've avoided it.

Ah well. That was a bit cowardly and rather pointless.

I'm going to try to dare to come back to this place, and to all those feelings. I'm no good to anyone shut down and distant.




I remember when we where at an event for pony play and she harnessed me and we played in a sanded fenced in area. I was her horse and obeyed her commands, she was my trainer. I was completely present and aware, and safe, and I felt her pride over me deep down in my heart.

I don't want to not remember things like that. I want to be aware of them, and long for more of them. Even if it hurts sometimes.

"What is your favorite sort of interaction with your Mistress?"

Yey! I got a question from ancilla_ksst, thanks! My favourite sort of interaction with Mistress?

Honestly - when she's fucking me. :-) That's my very favourite thing, much the same way that my favourite food is chocolate and my favourite place is on vacation. I like pleasure and sensation and indulgence, and being fucked gives me all of that.

Most days we don't do that, however, because well, life and tired and time and things. So on a typical weekday when we both have been working we don't really get to spend much time with each other until little S is asleep. We usually cuddle up on the sofa, and I rest with my head on her shoulder. She pets my hair, and everything is nice and soft and safe. That's good too.

And then when we go to bed and say good night I lay on her arm and she holds my wrist in her hand and we're close together and drift off to sleep. That's good to.

I think I simply like to cuddle a lot. 

Q&A March

I just realised it's March and it's a good time to ask questions, and answer them. So if anyone have any questions, I'm up for it.

Noose

We cuddled on the sofa yesterday, as usual, and Mistress was holding my collar in her hand. She often does that, but this time she unhooked it and grabbed the end so that it formed a noose around my neck. She kept it tight but not too tight, it didn't restrict anything. It just made me feel very safe and secure and held.

Being parents

I left with little S after breakfast this morning and we came home again in the afternoon. It's a fact of life in our family that we all actually have a better time if we split up. It's sad and not at all how we thought it would be to be parents, but it is what it is. We do things all three of us every now and then but we need a lot of time apart too.

So in  a way it's been a really good day, little S and I had a good outing and now she and Mistress are playing downstairs before bedtime and I'm relaxing upstairs. I think the little one has had a good day, and both me and Mistress has gotten time on our own and a chance to rest and recuperate. What we haven't got is anytime together.

We said a brief good morning before breakfast, but we can't have any normal grown up conversations over the meal or around it. And when we came home we pretty much changed shifts at the car. Mistress stayed outside and played and I went inside and rested. Before bed I'll watch a video with little S in bed and tonight it's my turn to read the bedtime story.

When little S is asleep, it's our time, we can be grown ups for an hour or so, and say anything we need to say. Cuddle and hang out and possibly doing something sexy or kinky. But we go to bed at around ten, and we would even if we didn't have to go to work or school because little S always wake up early and can't abide one minute without a parent.

One way to look at it is of course that we have a spoiled kid, that if we just raised her better she would be able to let other people finish a conversation uniterrupted or stand that her parents hug each other. Another view is that she's perfectly normal and behaves like every six year old and that the idea that parents would be able to exchange a sentence during a day together is asking for too much (that's my mothers' view, by the way).

I honestly don't think there's all that much we can do differently, without resorting to threats or physical violence. We've tried a lot of different tactics and I'm pretty convinced little S does everything she can to please us and do what we want her to do. I also don't think she's exactly like every other kid on the planet. I've seen the other kids, and even more, I've talked to their parents. They can do stuff we can't, without even thinking about it.

I do think we have an intense kid with a high need for social interaction and with a low impulse control for her age. She's all over the place and need a lot of time and attention in order to manage ordinary everyday things. If we don't support her, her anxiety levels goes through the roof. She's also really smart, kind, sweet, a good friend, has a great imagination, she's brave and caring and wonderful in many ways. But... no. She's not like most kids.

And that means that we can't do things many parents, many families, can. Get five minutes, or even one minute, alone together during a day, being the one we miss the most. We need to arrange things, make sure we get that time, because it doesn't just happen.

On the other hand this spring we went on a trip to Iceland and we rode Icelandic horses all three of us. Little S rode on a horse on her own, trotting and galopping and climbing the rocks and wading the rivers just like the adults. She had better control over her horse than most of the adult tourists on the tour. There's things we can't do, but there's a lot of things we can do and do that other families wouldn't. I don't want to change her a bit. I just want her to go to sleep soon so that I can cuddle with her other mother...

Assignment

Mistress is reading bedtime story to little S, and she gave me a few assignments to do while she was occupied. One was writing a blog entry, about whatever I wanted. Another was laying out three things she could hit me with and three things she could use to penetrate me with.

I love that. I get to choose the things I like and hope for, but I can't make her use any one thing or influence how she uses it.

She used the carpet beater on me yesterday. Ingeniously she varied the padding on me instead of the power of her strokes to serve as warm up. Well, at first she hit me with my trousers down but apparently I whimpered to much so she put them back on, and then something else - my dressing gown I think. Or maybe a blanket. And hit me full force for a while, which hurt but only just. She removed on thing at a time until she was down to bare skin again and by then I was all mellow and floaty.

Also, she used my own breathing technique on me, making me exhale and then not inhale until she told me to. I teach patients that to calm down and lessen anxiety, but counting seconds by hits with a carpet beater was not part of the original instructions. Worked very well, though.

Today we've been all kinds om jittery. I have what feels like bruises, but nothing shows, and I think we were both touched in our hearts. After reconnecting through pain and dominance we both have a need for cuddling and reassurance and just being close.

Unfortunately what was on the agenda was taking turns parenting a needy, hyper active and extremly jealous six year old. We both love her, deeply and dearly, but I think if a space ship had landed and asked to abduct her for a couple of hours, with a solemn promise of returning her unharmed and with a wiped memory, we just might have agreed.

The trick is to keep staying connected. To keep taking all the chances we get. It's hard, because it's so painful to get separated when we've been reunited. But the alternative, staying apart and distant from eachother, is frankly not acceptable.



Also, new rule. Or deal. Or experiment or whatever. When we are separated overnight, usually because Mistress travels for work, when we're reunited we wont argue. There's an arguing ban. No discussions, no conflicts, no solving of anything whatsoever. Twelve hours onwards from reuniting we are to swollow and accept anything and everything from eachother and forgive every wrong, look beyond every mistake and turn the other cheek at every slight. We're so damn nervy and twitchy and prone to conflict and crisis when we've been apart - if we could just keep quite and sit still for a day or so, I think it would spare us a lot of grief. So we'll try this radical, rather unflexible approach and see what happens.

And Mistress has formulated a goal that she shall beat me as soon as possible when she gets home, and at least withing 48 hours. We usually go sweet reunion --> horrible argument --> making up -->spanking. It would be nice if we could by pass those two in the middle.

Trust (and crying and misunderstandings and a water crisis).

Yesterday when I was snot-crying into my pillow my mind was filled with very real thoughts about our relationship being over. I didn't see any way forward at that moment, and even though part of me knew I was being very much overly dramatic another part was very very sincere in the idea of "this is it - I can't go forward from here".

When we were arguing, or rather trying to solve things instead of arguing, I hugged Mistress, rested my head against her chest and asked "Can I trust you?". Meaning "I want to trust you, no matter what, I don't care what just happened, I don't care about our problems - if you say you'll be there, I'll believe you, and everything else will take care of itself. Just tell me I can trust you, and I will."

That's what I meant, and that's what I was expecting an answer to. That was, however, not how she interpreted the question, and she answered, calmly and with sincerity: "No".

So there. For me, that was kind of it. I tore lose, told her she made me panic and that I couldn't believe she just said that. She changed the subject and went to check on some practicality. I told her to go to Hell, ran upstairs, slammed the door, threw myself on the bed and cried.

For me, her answer was practically the same as thrusting a divorce paper under my nose. If she herself says I can't trust her - how can I? And if I can't trust her, if she doesn't even bother about trying to behave in a way that I can trust, if she just disregard that as something unimportant, how can I submit to her? And I know, by now, that any other type relationship will dry up and go stale very fast for me. But the thing is that I have absolutely nowhere to go.

It doesn't matter how mad or sad or frustrated or heartbroken she makes me. I can't imagine a life without her, either emotionally or in a practical sense. All my dreams, all my hopes and plans and ideas, are tied to her. Everything I want to do, I want to do together with her. The idea of doing anything without her felt lika a vast, black gulf opening before me.

But on the other hand there were those words: "Can I trust you?" "No."

Well, she followed me after a few minutes, laid herself literary atop of me, like a rather heavy duvet (heavy for a duvet, that is - she's not that heavy for a human). She hugged me and said she wanted to make things better, and that whatever I had heard or interpreted was wrong and that I could trust that she loved me and wanted me and would always do her best to take her of me. That made it kind of better.

And right around when I had stopped bawling my eyes out our time was up and little S was tired of waiting and came upstairs. Like any jealous and possessive six-year-old she did her very best to not only lay on top of us but also slide herself down between us, so that the mommy-hug became two mommies hugging her, instead of two adults hugging eachother. Ah well.

The crux of the matter is I guess what it was Mistress answered to. I asked a very broad question, concerning our whole relationship, my whole existance almost. She answered a very narrow specific question regarding the immediate situation.

When we came home the water was frozen. This is our first winter in this house, and it has so far been a very mild one. We've been gone for a week, and during this week it has suddenly gotten cold. There's a cable that needs to be plugged in so that the water in the pipes doesn't freeze, and we hadn't done that, and so their was no water in the house.

This was quite easily resolved by plugging in the cable and waiting a while, but before we figured it all out and solved it, Mistress got really tense. It had been bad winter weather on the drive home too, and she really doesn't like that either. In the end she had a fit, she talked to little S in an angry voice, hit herself in the head with her fist, and stormed off. I freaked out and got very angry (also pouty and moody) and it was when we tried to resolve this everything went from bad to worse.

So when I asked can I trust you, Mistress heard: "Can I trust you to never be stressed out over a crisis again? Can I trust you to never lose your temper, have a fit an storm off?". And she answered very truthfully: No. Because even she really tries, and even if she agress that it was unneccesary and wish she had kept her cool, she can't promise me it wont happen again. Honestly, it has happened on a regular basis since I've known her, so it's pretty much the other way around; no matter how hard she tries, she most probably will do it again.

The question, then, is; can I trust her? Can I trust her, even though she throws fits when she gets stresses, even though she hits herself in the head when she gets overwhelmed, even though she answers literarily to a loaded question in the middle of a relational crisis without regards to hwo that answer might be interpreted? Can I trust her, when this is who she is and how she will behave?

Yes, absolutely. Everyday, for the rest of my life. I don't care what idiotic things she says when she's lost her theory of mind due to stress. I trust her.

I belong to her, and I trust.

Seesaw

And then we got home and within three hours I was in the fetal position in our bed, crying my eyes out and accusing Mistress of breaking up with me. I hate that we do this. It's like some weird seesaw, if we are starting to get closer and more intimate, we somehow always end up with epic fights that rip us apart. I hate that.

This is so freaking normal for us, we've been doing this song and dance since we first fell in love. We have learnt, however, to make up faster than before. It took only a few hours before we had settled down again and were cuddling on the sofa.

I slept badly though, and feel a little off today. Even though we make it better, it still hurts. Words were said that can't be unsaid, and I feel a little tender and wary. I want to be loving and trusting and open and submitting. But that also makes me vulnerable and sensitive, which means both that I notice things and care more about things, and that things that hurt me hurts much more.