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CaringandReal -> RE: When It Just Gets Too Much (10/22/2009 5:46:59 AM)
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Hey lovingpet,
I'm sorry you are (or were) feeling so bad. I wanted to reply last night but when I saw the thread it was curfew time. I believe I can relate to what you're saying. I go through frequent "dark nights of the soul" these days, at least twice a month, sometimes more frequently. The content of my thoughts is not on the same subjects as you have described, but the nature and the intensity of the emotionals, particularly despair, panick, sickened by myself, terror of the future, all those are very familiar companions to me. I will also address the content, what you think about, but let me talk about these moods first. It's stupid to assume, but from the way you speak of this, it sounds like these are new experiences for you? In my experience, this combination of emotions can occur about anything, not without reason (usually there's something, sometimes imaginary, sometimes very real and awful, that causes them) but they don't limit themselves to crises of faith about a very strange and non-standard sexuality. They occur in me most often when I've got something pent up, something I haven't spoken about to anyone. Keeping something inside, even something quite small, can sometimes cause it to curdle and grow to an enormous size. It's as if unexpressed emotions ferment in people, get bloated with foul psychoemotional gasses...ok, this is getting gross, even for me. Suffice it to say that when something grows inside you it causes pressure to be placed on other things, and that is most often quite painful. The solution is to let it out, of course, release the pressure. Paradoxically, although this is what brings relief, it's also often the most difficult thing to do. The reason the pent-up feelings got so bad in the first place was because a person didn't feel comfortable letting them out in the right context previously. And they longer you hold them in, the worse they get.
These feelings aren't something that pop out fullblown overnight, usually. I imagine if you think back on the history of this, you'll find a point while back in time where it started with just a little uneasiness, maybe about something specific, maybe about something general, but that uneasiness wasn't expressed? You made a good first step in trying to let some of the tension out last night by expressing it here, but this audience isn't going to really relax much of the pressure. You know who you have to talk to. I know it's harder to do that because he's inextricably tied up with what you feel is the root of the problem. But that's why these things appear to you as bad as they do: you know where the source of your relief lies but given the content of your thoughts and feelings, that relief is suspect. I've been at this spot, emotionally, so many times in the last year, I've lost track of them. I've endured it, because the alternative (disclosure of the thing I dreaded) seemed far worse. It's taken a toll. I think I've been able to let this go on so long because I got used to living with horror and terror and loss and self-loathing after my first owner, who I loved more than life, died. This new stress, as bad as it has been, seems almost light in comparison, so I've made myself just suck it up and endure it. (Although I don't think I've done the right thing, by the way.)
"Does anyone else ever get to the point where everything just feels like way too much?"
I did, certainly, at the beginning of my first master/slave relationship. I think twice. They were intense moments of crisis, when I was cretain what I was doing was horrible and very wrong. BDSM, especially when there is a strong power exchange, is just so different from the way most people live their lives. If you're the submissive, your life becomes curtailed from what you have been used to. You face astonishing challenges, things you've never faced before. You described one of those your evil genius thread: an enormous self-image/body image change imposed by your master. That in itself would be enough to trigger a crisis, as it was such a radical change from what is normal for you, but I imagine there have been other things, besides this, going on. Enslaving someone is always a multifaceted process: many dominants attack it from a lot of idifferent angles at once. Understandably the person being put into control fears she may be losing parts of herself, essential parts of her personality, ideals, beliefs, some of them bad parts, but others special good parts, the more tightly the net is drawn around her. And what is it all for? Sometimes it seems that all you get in exchange for all this change and challenge and loss is... a bunch of hot sex. Of course you get a whole lot more. But it's hard to think of the positive aspects of this when you're panicked and having a crisis of this magnitude.
During my first crisis of this nature, I was at work, still living in my little town across the country from him. I called him from the phone in the office hall (pre-cellphone days), extremly upset. I was very self-conscious at the time and thought people were looking at me, listening in, so I left the building. He made me promise before I hung up that I would call him again immediately, as soon as I got to a public payphone outside. So I walked a few blocks and found one... and I called him, and we talked for a few minutes and then I got extremely self-conscious again about passers by who might be watching me cry or listening to my end of the conversation, so I told him I had to go, had to hang up and he made me promise to walk to another payphone and call him from there. So I did. I think I did this about five or six times. It was rather bizarre. here I was in the biggest crisis I felt I'd ever faced in my adult life, and yet I was so self-conscious and embarassed about emoting in public, that I had to keep changing locations. A mile or so, and six payphones/collect calls later, he had me calmed down/resolved enough to return to work. It felt so good to tell him about my fears and mistrust and arguements against slavery and control. And he had an answer--that made sense--for every single one of them and that soothed and calmed me.
Anyway, the issues you are speaking sound terribly familiar. They were the ones I was facing back then. The whole thing did strike me as very sick, as wrong, that my life was narrowing, not expanding, that horror, not heat and joy lay ahead, that he could do anything to me and there were so many sick things out there that could be done. I can't remember a lot anymore of what my master said to calm me down and get me to see this with a more balanced perspective. Much of what he did was non-verbal, just reassuring me with his normal friendly humorous presence on the phone that everything was Ok. He understood completely why I was feeling this way and was very sympathetic. He explained to me where a lof of my feelings were coming from: showed me the connection between experiencing real non-play control that goes on day after day and my feelings of panic. I'd changed so much, I'd experienced so many new things in such a short period of time, this way of living was so different from what I had been useful, that it was natural that I'd come to feel freaked by it all at some point or another. He told me he was a bit surprised this hadn't happened earlier. I asked him why this wasn't a very sick, bad, wrong way to live and I don't remember what his answers were anymore, but they satisfied me intellectually and calmed my misgivings.
So yeah, this kind of thing does happen, especially if the control is very real and very intense. If a crisis of this sort didn't happen, it might bring cause one to wonder about your level of sensitivity and awareness/self-awareness. In my experience extreme power exchange is not bad, but it's very, very different from the way you are used to living, and it's natural that this would cause conflict and crisis, especially in the early years. It gets better, of course, eventually you can't imagine living or wanting to live in any other way and if life forces you into that second change, god forbid,..well, suffice to say it makes all of what had gone on before seem like a cakewalk. :/
I understand what you mean about the fetishes seeming sick or scary but you two are not personally practicing all of these fetishes that you find creepy are you? I imagine if you asked him about some of them he'd think many of them were gross or unsafe or just boring. Dominants have their preferences, usually very clearly defined preferences in fact, they don't like every little activity that falls under the wide bdsm umbrella. Women, in my experience, tend to be more open to new fetishes, so if anything, you may find that you are the "sicker" one in the relationship, lol, that you like things that he will absolutely refuse to touch! Unfortunately, that means you won't touch them either, except in fantasy. ;)
You know you need to talk to him. Know also that I am emphatically nodding and pointing at the door. It's time to see what sort of stuff he's made of and how he handles a bdsm crisis of faith. :) If you can, try to have this talk in person.
I'll say one more thing. A lot of very extreme ideas, practices, and philosophies get talked about in this forum. When you are having a crisis of the type you describe, the content of such threads can exaccerbate what you are feeling. Try to keep in mind that many of the posters mouthing off about these extremes have little to no practical experience with them. Their money is definitely not where their mouths are! A lot of them do not have any idea of how difficult and complex genuine enslavement can be and if they did; I think they'd be a bit more subdued and cautious in their speech. A lot of the talk that goes on here is pure high spirits, someone's in a new relationship, it's making them dizzy, wheee, and at the early stages of a courtship one thinks that anything and everything is possible--even though you have had no real experience with many of those things. Everything seems easy. It's a superman/superwoman complex, that's all. So take that talk with 10,000 grains of salt. Its very easy to talk the talk, and if you have the gift of gab, you can even convince others that you have walked! Another type posts here: people, like me, who have been doing this for a very long time, who have a a lot of experience. Such people are posting about real things, but their perspective is very different than yours. They're past their crises, they in different stages of their relationship, so a lot of what they/we say isn't going to be very relevant to someone establishing a new bdsm relationship and being brought under real control for the first time. I imagine young couples just starting a family and dealing with the stress and sleeplessness and crises of having young children face this as well, when they listen to the blase "Oh it will be fine, you'll look back on this and laugh" responses of the empty nesters. Not too useful!
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