CaringandReal
Posts: 1397
Joined: 2/15/2008
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MyOtherProfile2
Part of me thinks this might be a test and that I should be my natural dominant self and seize her, set her straight and remind her everything is fine and that if she follows me I will lead us to happiness and fulfillment. After all, that is what above all other things continually drew her to me. But the other half thinks this is serious and more than a test and knows that anytime someone asks for space the absolute LAST thing one should do is push, D/s, vanilla or otherwise. I can't stand the feeling of uncertainty and the loss of control. We had seen each other less than 12 hours before this began. She smiled at me and told me she'd miss me as I went off to work. The previous night we had had what was my most intense pain scene (I'm new to the sado/masochist thing, she's fairly experienced) and apparently I have a lot to learn but she said she was looking forward to my growth and education in that department. She left a lot of her things at my place. With all that I can't believe this was something that had been brewing but at the same time who decides to walk away from an intense relationship like this on a whim?
If nobody reads or responds to this ridiculously long post I don't blame you. At least it did me some good just to write it out.
What say you?
I have a number of things to say.
I hope she doesn't read this board because if she is upset at you, she may respond artificially and negatively to anything you try to do that mirrors the advice you get on here. But if it's good advice, if you know it's the right thing to do, do it anyway. That's one of the problems with living out your relationship in a semi-public way as you two have been doing. While the public praise and postive blogs are intoxicating to the ego and make you feel wonderful, all that public sharing, display, show, tends to lend a feeling of artificiality and inauthenticness to a relationship. It isn't just between you and her. It's between you, her, and unknown dozens or more who read these public things (forum posts count too). Such relationship publicity also can put pressure on a couple to behave in a certain manner, the way their audience expects, rather than to behave naturally. I've been there, done that (albeit many years ago) and I became much happier and calmer when my dominant (a natural performer/actor) realized the public display aspects of the relationship were maddening me, and let us become more private. So my first piece of advice to you is tha if you salvage this, shut down the public side, completely, at least until the relationship becomes live-in and you have more control and she has become accustomed to your control. This may be hard to do, as she seems a bit of a showgirl, but I think it is a hard and necessary thing and will aid you two in discovering what you are without an audience.
It's a growing social trend to conduct a relationship increasingly in the public (internet) eye, to blog, twitter, reveal all the private moments and receive feedback on them, to seek and crave an audience to very private intimate moments. Some people enjoy it much and seem very happy to live this way, but I think there's always a tradeoff. I think what you lose is some depth and authenticity and to some couples (I suspect you two may be one) depth and authenticity are important.
You can control someone remotely, it's just hard. Emotional withdrawal, in my opinion, is the worst way to punish/exert that control, however. It is interpreted so horribly by so many submissives, many of whom come prepackaged with huge abandonment issues. To control remotely you need to remove privleges. Is she "used" to being allowed a glass of wine or two on the weekend? If she's been naughty or disobedient, she doesn't get that. But to remove priveledges you first have to establish them as privleges and that means exerting control.
You say she responded badly to your initial strong control. It's hard to know how to respond to that situation, you have to go by your instincts, which is what you did. It's also not always clear what is best when you are remote, but I know from being a submissive who craves control that each time I acted out or tried get my rules lessened, I wanted two contractictory things at once: I wanted the dominant to show me some leniency, as that would show he cared about my feelings, but I wouldn't want him to completely cave in to me and withdraw a lot of control. Withdrawing control means that I won the power struggle, I got him to do what I wanted (or thought I wanted) and it makes a submissive feel pretty insecure when that happens. While lightening up a little is a good idea in this sort of situation, it's important to remind her of the reasons why you impose this discipline: so she can learn to submit to your will and accept what you demand without question. Yes, it's hard, and you can understand that, but still she needs to do most of what you tell her. Submissives will come up with all sorts of marvelous sounding excuses for not following simple orders, if you let them. Those last four words are key. And also, remember, however she chafes under your control, it also brings her security and peace of mind (if she's the kind of submissive you've described in your post that is--one that craves a lot of control).
So I think things started to get dicey for you both at that point, when you relinquished a lot of the former control.
The escort situation is a whole other can of worms--and a huge one. Providing sexual services for money, no matter how hot of a fantasy/kink it might be is fraught with emotional dangers. If I were a dominant, this is something I would not allow my submissive for at least 2-3 years. I would need that long to get to thorougly know her and know if such activities would harm her. Sex for money can have some bizarre effects on people. The primary one I have seen from observing my professional friends is that it shuts down their libidos, makes them uable to desire or respond naturally to regular sexual situations. It has a profound effect on the psyche of most people, even if it's something they really want or seem comfortable with or have even done before--it can mess with your self-esteem in ways you could never predict. The immediacy and extremity of the insane roommate problem perhaps hid other issues your submissive might have had with escorting had she not had to deal with that crisis.
Quite frankly, I think your submissive was already feeling on rocky ground, insecure becuase of your initial withdrawal of control, might have been quietly freaking out inside over prostituting herself, and then you dumped emotional withdrawal on her. I think that was too much to bear. I think it hurt her terribly, and she is "acting out" her hurt in public, telling you indirectly rather than directly (a behavior I would forbid in the future if it were me) that she's really freaked . I am not condoning her behavior; I think she's been a naughty resistant girl and certainly not totally honest with you (or herself) about her feelings about this escort business, but as you know, the onus falls upon the controller to bring his charge back in line.
At this point you two need to talk, most of all. Don't treat this as a "test." This isn't a game. Treat it as recovering that which was yours and should still be yours. You recover a straying submissive with the force of your will but applied gently. You convince her, you bring her back into your world and out of the one she has fled to. Yes you need to re-establish your dominance with her and come down strong. But perhaps it would be a bit too much to instantly do this. There's a lot of brush that needs clearing after this tempest. She's trying to run. She probably won't succeed on her own. It'd be better, I think, if you approached her this time, as you were the one to precipitate the crisis with the emotional withdrawal, and you want to save the situation. When you want to make a relationship work, you often have to be the "bigger" person, and that means making the first approach, being the mature one who doesn't sulk or pout or expect someone to come crawling back to you. That's part of how you keep what is yours.
Obviously, a lot needs to change in your dynamic to make this work. You're both going to have to toughen up: she to obeying your will, you to seeing that she obeys. I think you two have a really good chance. The fact that your relationship could be conducted in these adverse circumstances (public display and the sex for money stuff) indicates that at core it is strong. I am making a lot of assumptions, but I base them on the way you descirbed her behaviors which are good indicators of her interior state. I suspect she misses you terribly and is waiting for you to make the first move. I do think she'll do what most submissives do in extreme control relationships: try to take power or reduce your control if you let her, so if you get this to work, watch for that in the future. We don't do that because we dislike control. We do it because we really need to know that we are controlled and that we aren't the ones dominating ourselves. It occurs less as the submissive becomes more comfortable with your control and more safe with you, but she needs to know, often desperately, that you can control her and that this isn't all a pretence.
When a submssive asks for space she both wants it and wants her boundaries invaded. If this woman is anyything like me (and she may not be, this may be a bad assumption), she'll want the second thing more than the first.
Sorry if there are lots of typos in this, I suspect there are. I'm late for work and have no time to edit.
_____________________________
"A friend who bleeds is better" --placebo
"How seldom we recognize the sound when the bolt of our fate slides home." --thomas harris
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RE: I would love some serious insight on my limbo - 
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