It's ten years ago now that me and Mistress moved in together. Or it will be, in a week or so. I remember Christmas 2005, it was horrible. Our poly triad was in it's death throes and I was so utterly miserable, with almost every aspect of my life. It was that Christmas I decided I would spend a week at my mothers' home and not talk to either of them, Mistress or my boyfriend/then-Master.
After a few days I missed her. I didn't miss him. And that was kind of it. It still took me about two weeks after that to actually make up my mind and say something about it. Two absolutely miserable weeks. And then one night me and him were laying in bed, he tried to have sex with me, I pushed him away and he started to cry. And I said I wanted to break up with him, that it was over. I don't remember everything we said, but I remember the despair. And that he said he would kill himself, and I said alright, if you do that I'll kill myself to. Come on, let's do it. He didn't, obviously, and I guess we fell asleep after that.
I left as soon as I could, but there were a lot of agonising moments before we were finally separated. Packing up stuff, moving, seeing each other and not talking. The bleak despair of it all. And Mistress, suffering from our agony and afraid I think that I would leave her too - and yet by my side, all the time, supporting me.
I moved in with her, and I remember that we both agreed that it would be best for me to get my own place somewhere, to land on my feet and be self sufficient before we could build a life togehter. It sounded so wise and thoughtful and right. But I didn't want to be anywhere except exactly where she was, so that didn't happen. In March 2006 she proposed to me and I said yes, and we lived in her apartment until she bought us a bigger one in June that year.
We got married in August 2007, little S was conceived during the fall of 2008, with a lot of frustrating trips to the hospital, and she was born in August 2009. We moved again in the summer of 2010, to a three bedroom apartment in the same city.
I began my studies in psychology that same year me and Mistress moved in together, my first term started in January 2006. I took a slightly involuntary break in 2008 because I wanted to change schools to my home town to get out of commuting and hade to wait for a spot to open up in the right term in my new school. And then I took some more leave because of little S. In the end, I didn't graduate until the spring of 2013.
What we didn't know until the fall of 2012 was that I have ADHD. It's a bit strange now to think back and realise how different we would have looked at things if we knew. But we didn't, and we made the best decisions we could with what we knew. I got sick from exhaustion, from trying to be a good mom to a high need baby and successfull at a demanding education and managing all of the life stresses that everyone has to handle. I'm quite a bit worse at that than most people, however, and by the summer of 2012, I was in a really really bad shape. We were training to become therapists in school by then, and I remember that my first patient was in much better shape than I was (though I never told anyone in school (and of course didn't say anything to my patient)).
I got medication and eventually an ADHD-diagnosis and medication for that too, just in time to save the paper I had to write for my Masters degree. And I got my degree as a psychologist. Then I didn't get a job. It was actually a really good time, the summer and fall of 2013. I didn't do much, I mostly recuperated. Eventually I got a job, but in a different part of the country, and my heroic family moved with me in the summer of 2014 for a year in exile. And in the summer of 2015 I was done, got my license and a job back home again. And here we are now.
It's been quite a ride these last ten years. And all this time, in all the ups and downs and varying circumstances, Mistress has been with me. She has kept me, in all the meanings of the word. She has her job, and even though it's stressfull and bad and she's not appreciated as she should be (because of patriarchy and misogynistic pricks for bosses) at times, it's also fun I think, and the job itself seems to suit her. It's paid our bills all this time, she has supported me through school (I've worked some, and have student loans, but it's a pittance compared to her contribution) and we would never been able to afford going to school with a kid without her income.
And she's loved me. Every day. A few days ago we discussed that I can take critique in a better way now (even if I'm still bad at it). And I realised that one important thing is that now, at 35, I've lived more years in a loving, supporting environment, than I did in the suppressive, hateful one I grew up in. It's much easier admitting mistakes when it's finally sunk in that it wont mean being ridiculed. I'm loved. No matter what happens in the future, I know I'm loved.
(Also, spanked and controlled and fucked. That's good stuff to.)
Showing posts with label the ex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the ex. Show all posts
Jan 1, 2016
Mar 10, 2014
Questions!
Thanks Florida Dom for the questions! I'll take them a few at a time.
How long you been together? How did you meet?
We met in 1997 when I was seventeen, Mistress was 26. I had just found LARPing (see http://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Main_Page for more info, it's a weird hobby), and was blown away with how amazing it was. Mistress was one of three other women who were planning on going to an event as a group of soldiers in a 17th century setting, and they were one person short and asked me to join them. We were a tight group after that, for a couple of years on. Eventually the group fell apart, but me and Mistress stayed friends.
She was working towards her PhD, while I hadn't even finished the Swedish equivalent of High School when we met. I graduated eventually and the years after that was a bit chaotic for me. I enrolled at the University but never got a degree, I broke up with one boyfriend, slept around a little bit (very little, actually) and fell in love with a couple of other guys. Mistress on the other hand got her PhD, got a job as a scientist and lived an ordered, albeit perhaps a bit empty life.
We started organising LARP-events together, and we were good at it. We didn't really talk all that much, mostly about the current project, and it took us a long while before we realised that we had begun to come up with things to do just so that we could meet and do them together...
When at long last we both realised that we were in love, I was already living with my then-Master. We had a D/s-relationship since a couple of years back, and I was invested and loyal and in love with him. And head-over-heels in love with Mistress.
It was a recipe for disaster, and in time it was quite disastrous. In the beginning it wasn't though, because both Mistress and my ex was brave and open minded and generous persons, and decided to enter into a poly dynamic together. The dream was a family of three, with them being if not in love so at least infatuated with each other, and me belonging to them both.
It all fell apart in couple of months, and since we were all stubborn and deeply invested in the idea, we strived and tried and fought for it for two years after that. None of us was ready to call it quits, but we were increasingly unhappy. At long last I couldn't take it anymore an moved in with my mom for a week to think. After two days I missed Mistress like crazy, but not my ex, and there was my answer.
I broke up with my ex and moved in with Mistress, and we've been together ever since. That was January 2006, so we've been living together for eight years now, and known each other for 17 years (oh my God! Haven't thought about that before. That's a long time. Ah well.)
Mistress proposed in March 2006, and we got married in church in 2007, the happiest day of my life so far.
How long you been together? How did you meet?
We met in 1997 when I was seventeen, Mistress was 26. I had just found LARPing (see http://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Main_Page for more info, it's a weird hobby), and was blown away with how amazing it was. Mistress was one of three other women who were planning on going to an event as a group of soldiers in a 17th century setting, and they were one person short and asked me to join them. We were a tight group after that, for a couple of years on. Eventually the group fell apart, but me and Mistress stayed friends.
She was working towards her PhD, while I hadn't even finished the Swedish equivalent of High School when we met. I graduated eventually and the years after that was a bit chaotic for me. I enrolled at the University but never got a degree, I broke up with one boyfriend, slept around a little bit (very little, actually) and fell in love with a couple of other guys. Mistress on the other hand got her PhD, got a job as a scientist and lived an ordered, albeit perhaps a bit empty life.
We started organising LARP-events together, and we were good at it. We didn't really talk all that much, mostly about the current project, and it took us a long while before we realised that we had begun to come up with things to do just so that we could meet and do them together...
When at long last we both realised that we were in love, I was already living with my then-Master. We had a D/s-relationship since a couple of years back, and I was invested and loyal and in love with him. And head-over-heels in love with Mistress.
It was a recipe for disaster, and in time it was quite disastrous. In the beginning it wasn't though, because both Mistress and my ex was brave and open minded and generous persons, and decided to enter into a poly dynamic together. The dream was a family of three, with them being if not in love so at least infatuated with each other, and me belonging to them both.
It all fell apart in couple of months, and since we were all stubborn and deeply invested in the idea, we strived and tried and fought for it for two years after that. None of us was ready to call it quits, but we were increasingly unhappy. At long last I couldn't take it anymore an moved in with my mom for a week to think. After two days I missed Mistress like crazy, but not my ex, and there was my answer.
I broke up with my ex and moved in with Mistress, and we've been together ever since. That was January 2006, so we've been living together for eight years now, and known each other for 17 years (oh my God! Haven't thought about that before. That's a long time. Ah well.)
Mistress proposed in March 2006, and we got married in church in 2007, the happiest day of my life so far.
May 5, 2013
A seminar about a theoretical construct about D/s
I went to a lecture/workshop-thingy last week, I've been meaning to blog about it but not gotten around to it yet. Not really sure what to write anyway. The subject was "24/7 D/s from a non-sexual perspective". Not to mean that it's about asexual power exchange relationships, but about discussing the aspects of the dynamic that isn't about the sexual side of things.
So far so good. Since this was a regular work night and it was an hours drive to get there, I was a bit wary, however. I couldn't help but have misgivings about getting there and then spending my whole night becoming aggravated about people saying stupid things that would imply that me and my relationship doesn't exist. In that case, I would rather sit at home and cuddle with Mistress.
I'm perfectly okay with a speaker directing his or her focus on something that isn't relevant for me - but there's a real risk at these sort of occassions that I'll be told I'm not even real. That, for example, it's imperative to have a safe word, for everyone, or that it's really the submissive person in the relationship that actually has the power. Or that of course anyone can leave whenever they want. And so on. I even wrote a question to the organisers to have my fears laid to rest, which I got. And then I felt kind of silly. Maybe I was overreacting, or have been to tainted by Fetlife.
But honestly I don't think so. I've been to workshops and classes before. And there's a Swedish BDSM-community too, pre-dating Fetlife quite a bit, and there's the same discourse there. And of course everyone can discuss what they like - I'm just not always up for listening to it.
Anyway, the actual lecture didn't even touch upon my sensitive spots, so in the end it was much ado about nothing. The speaker, a middle aged man who was the dominant one in his relationship and had his young girlfriend there with him, had an idea about how D/s-relationship is built up, which was an okay and at times interesting construct.
Unfortunately he choose to introduce the whole topic with a comparison with his view of vanilla relationship structures, which was a bit bad taste partly because his first words had been about how he never had been in one, and also because it was so clearly an attempt at "oh, look, over there is 'them' and we do it better!". And not the least because he pointed out getting kids and having joint economy as hallmarks of vanilla relationships, completely overlooking the fact that kids might be relevant for people in power exchange too.
Oh, and yes, he read an essay aloud about the norms regarding vanilla dating, continuously interpreting the patriarchal norms that makes the men into the subject and the active party in the mating ritual in a light as if that meant it was the women who had the power "because she just stands there, she is the one who accepts or rejects". Yeah.
My friend I. very promptly brought forward the concept of "slut shaming" and explained the norms that restricts women's choices and actions. The reason women doesn't usually ask a man out isn't because she holds the power - it's because if she does, she has immediately excluded herself from the cathegory "respectable women" and instead become a slut, a whore, not suitable for dating anyway (but possibly suitable for rape). It is about power - but the other way around.
This rather unfortunate example of cluelessness made the first 20 minutes of the evening a bit embarrassing and uncomfortable, but it did get better. As soon as the topic changed from Gender Issues 101 and vanilla-bashing, and he started to present his actual theory, it became a bit more interesting (and a lot less cringe-worthy).
The idea, in it's simplest form, was that D/s-relationships stand on four baseic building blocks- identifying needs and wants, "the magic", communication and trust. On that base, it is possible to add other blocks, like rituals, disciplin, rules, kinky sex, lust, order, service and so on. Possible, but not necessary (which I think makes a good point - especially after what a child ridden waste land the last years have been when it comes to the BDSM part of me and Mistress...) And on top of that comes what the lecturer choose to call life goals, but I would rather describe in my own mind as "valued direction". Not goals as such, but more important things one might want to strive for in life. Becoming a better person in specific ways, living a meaningful life, those sorts of things.
And well, yes, so far so good. I actually think there is some merit to this idea. I'm pretty sure most of it has been said before in one way or another, but collecting knowledge and presenting it in a cohesive way is important in it's on right.
Is the basis for all power exchange relationships identifying needs and wants, "magic", communication and trust?
I don't know. Maybe. I agree that it's all important things. A problem I see with this model though is that it was described as the basis that is layed down in the beginning, and then it's done. You need to have it there, but it was kind of put as if once it was established, you could go on to other things.
But honestly, me and Mistress has been openly in love since 2003 and married for almost six years now, and we're still constantly circling back to those things. It's in no way a done deal or a basis for our relationship we can always rely on. We rekindle the magic every week, blowing on the embers and trying to get a flame going. We're constantly exploring our needs and wants and trying to, and at times failing to, communicate with each other. And in all honestly -trust is the biggest issue for us, all the time.
Do you really want me? I think every argument or fight we've ever had has had that as the basis, the note that is always carried through every hurtful word and every angry stare. "Do you really want me? Am I really good enough for you? Really, really? Can I trust you not to find me to lacking and abandoning me?"
But the idea that the middle block of rituals and rules and hot steamy sex is optional and can be removed without necessarily damaging the foundation - I liked that. It was an image that resonates with my experience. The actual relationship is there, whether we have time to act on the power imbalance or not. Sometimes the fancy stuff simply can't be fitted in - that doesn't mean we're not we any more. We're just a bit more boring.
I love high protocol. I love orders and rituals. I hope to have a lot of those things in my life over time. But maybe not right now, when we're building a family. We have a long life ahead of us. There'll be plenty of time for Mistress to teach me fancy slave positions.
And the importance of valued direction I liked to. In a way I think that was a big part of what was lacking for me in my former relationship. That, and of course that I was in love with Mistress... But if I look only at me and my ex and accept the fact that it wouldn't have worked out anyway (because I really don't think it would have) I think the fact that my life was put on hold was an important aspect for me.
I wasn't happy with him, in the sense that the life we led didn't make me happy. I loved him, but living with him made me miserable. We were poor. I worked a lot, mostly night shift, and he was in charge of the money but spent them on junk food, his Coca-Cola-addiction and technical gadgets. I was constantly stressed out about money, at the same time that I actually worked and made a decent salary. We ate junk, and I gained tons of weight. Stress, night job and junk food combined with no exercise whatsoever because of lack of money, time and opportunities made horrible things with my health.
At it's worse, I weighed over 100 kg. I eventually rectified that, on my own and with the support of Mistress, when we were still in the poly-tryad, but he never helped or did anything to make it easier for me.
I had a job without prospects. I had no direction in life. And he made it clear that when he was done with med-school I was supposed to go where he got a job, no matter where that was, and that if we ever got a kid, he had no plans to share parenting equally or sacrifice his career for his kids. None of that was okay with me or my values or my goals in life.
With Mistress, we have so many plans. Before her, my future was blank to me, empty and black. Now - we have tons of dreams and plans. Living with her has made me secure enough to dare to voice my desire to write fiction. She encourages me to take the time to do that. She's supported me, emotionally and financially, through the whole of my university education. She made me get my drivers license. She got me a dog. And a kid. We're living a life, we're going forward, we share dreams and hopes and plans.
We have shared values, and I do think that is super important. Not only that I get to move towards things that are intrinsically valuable to me, but that she is aware of what is valuable to her in her life, and that our values match. I don't think this really has anything to do with the power dynamic between us - but it do have a lot to do with us being able to live happily ever after together.
So far so good. Since this was a regular work night and it was an hours drive to get there, I was a bit wary, however. I couldn't help but have misgivings about getting there and then spending my whole night becoming aggravated about people saying stupid things that would imply that me and my relationship doesn't exist. In that case, I would rather sit at home and cuddle with Mistress.
I'm perfectly okay with a speaker directing his or her focus on something that isn't relevant for me - but there's a real risk at these sort of occassions that I'll be told I'm not even real. That, for example, it's imperative to have a safe word, for everyone, or that it's really the submissive person in the relationship that actually has the power. Or that of course anyone can leave whenever they want. And so on. I even wrote a question to the organisers to have my fears laid to rest, which I got. And then I felt kind of silly. Maybe I was overreacting, or have been to tainted by Fetlife.
But honestly I don't think so. I've been to workshops and classes before. And there's a Swedish BDSM-community too, pre-dating Fetlife quite a bit, and there's the same discourse there. And of course everyone can discuss what they like - I'm just not always up for listening to it.
Anyway, the actual lecture didn't even touch upon my sensitive spots, so in the end it was much ado about nothing. The speaker, a middle aged man who was the dominant one in his relationship and had his young girlfriend there with him, had an idea about how D/s-relationship is built up, which was an okay and at times interesting construct.
Unfortunately he choose to introduce the whole topic with a comparison with his view of vanilla relationship structures, which was a bit bad taste partly because his first words had been about how he never had been in one, and also because it was so clearly an attempt at "oh, look, over there is 'them' and we do it better!". And not the least because he pointed out getting kids and having joint economy as hallmarks of vanilla relationships, completely overlooking the fact that kids might be relevant for people in power exchange too.
Oh, and yes, he read an essay aloud about the norms regarding vanilla dating, continuously interpreting the patriarchal norms that makes the men into the subject and the active party in the mating ritual in a light as if that meant it was the women who had the power "because she just stands there, she is the one who accepts or rejects". Yeah.
My friend I. very promptly brought forward the concept of "slut shaming" and explained the norms that restricts women's choices and actions. The reason women doesn't usually ask a man out isn't because she holds the power - it's because if she does, she has immediately excluded herself from the cathegory "respectable women" and instead become a slut, a whore, not suitable for dating anyway (but possibly suitable for rape). It is about power - but the other way around.
This rather unfortunate example of cluelessness made the first 20 minutes of the evening a bit embarrassing and uncomfortable, but it did get better. As soon as the topic changed from Gender Issues 101 and vanilla-bashing, and he started to present his actual theory, it became a bit more interesting (and a lot less cringe-worthy).
The idea, in it's simplest form, was that D/s-relationships stand on four baseic building blocks- identifying needs and wants, "the magic", communication and trust. On that base, it is possible to add other blocks, like rituals, disciplin, rules, kinky sex, lust, order, service and so on. Possible, but not necessary (which I think makes a good point - especially after what a child ridden waste land the last years have been when it comes to the BDSM part of me and Mistress...) And on top of that comes what the lecturer choose to call life goals, but I would rather describe in my own mind as "valued direction". Not goals as such, but more important things one might want to strive for in life. Becoming a better person in specific ways, living a meaningful life, those sorts of things.
And well, yes, so far so good. I actually think there is some merit to this idea. I'm pretty sure most of it has been said before in one way or another, but collecting knowledge and presenting it in a cohesive way is important in it's on right.
Is the basis for all power exchange relationships identifying needs and wants, "magic", communication and trust?
I don't know. Maybe. I agree that it's all important things. A problem I see with this model though is that it was described as the basis that is layed down in the beginning, and then it's done. You need to have it there, but it was kind of put as if once it was established, you could go on to other things.
But honestly, me and Mistress has been openly in love since 2003 and married for almost six years now, and we're still constantly circling back to those things. It's in no way a done deal or a basis for our relationship we can always rely on. We rekindle the magic every week, blowing on the embers and trying to get a flame going. We're constantly exploring our needs and wants and trying to, and at times failing to, communicate with each other. And in all honestly -trust is the biggest issue for us, all the time.
Do you really want me? I think every argument or fight we've ever had has had that as the basis, the note that is always carried through every hurtful word and every angry stare. "Do you really want me? Am I really good enough for you? Really, really? Can I trust you not to find me to lacking and abandoning me?"
But the idea that the middle block of rituals and rules and hot steamy sex is optional and can be removed without necessarily damaging the foundation - I liked that. It was an image that resonates with my experience. The actual relationship is there, whether we have time to act on the power imbalance or not. Sometimes the fancy stuff simply can't be fitted in - that doesn't mean we're not we any more. We're just a bit more boring.
I love high protocol. I love orders and rituals. I hope to have a lot of those things in my life over time. But maybe not right now, when we're building a family. We have a long life ahead of us. There'll be plenty of time for Mistress to teach me fancy slave positions.
And the importance of valued direction I liked to. In a way I think that was a big part of what was lacking for me in my former relationship. That, and of course that I was in love with Mistress... But if I look only at me and my ex and accept the fact that it wouldn't have worked out anyway (because I really don't think it would have) I think the fact that my life was put on hold was an important aspect for me.
I wasn't happy with him, in the sense that the life we led didn't make me happy. I loved him, but living with him made me miserable. We were poor. I worked a lot, mostly night shift, and he was in charge of the money but spent them on junk food, his Coca-Cola-addiction and technical gadgets. I was constantly stressed out about money, at the same time that I actually worked and made a decent salary. We ate junk, and I gained tons of weight. Stress, night job and junk food combined with no exercise whatsoever because of lack of money, time and opportunities made horrible things with my health.
At it's worse, I weighed over 100 kg. I eventually rectified that, on my own and with the support of Mistress, when we were still in the poly-tryad, but he never helped or did anything to make it easier for me.
I had a job without prospects. I had no direction in life. And he made it clear that when he was done with med-school I was supposed to go where he got a job, no matter where that was, and that if we ever got a kid, he had no plans to share parenting equally or sacrifice his career for his kids. None of that was okay with me or my values or my goals in life.
With Mistress, we have so many plans. Before her, my future was blank to me, empty and black. Now - we have tons of dreams and plans. Living with her has made me secure enough to dare to voice my desire to write fiction. She encourages me to take the time to do that. She's supported me, emotionally and financially, through the whole of my university education. She made me get my drivers license. She got me a dog. And a kid. We're living a life, we're going forward, we share dreams and hopes and plans.
We have shared values, and I do think that is super important. Not only that I get to move towards things that are intrinsically valuable to me, but that she is aware of what is valuable to her in her life, and that our values match. I don't think this really has anything to do with the power dynamic between us - but it do have a lot to do with us being able to live happily ever after together.
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