Noah
Posts: 1660
Joined: 7/5/2005 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: sapphirepleasure I did read the whole sadism thread from a week or two ago and learned a lot from that so maybe I am asking the wrong question. Maybe I need to understand myself more and how to tolerate it from someone I love. Put the focus on me, because obviously my issue is that I am having a hard time accepting it and it's triggering issues for me when it gets to a certain level. I have learned to tolerate more when it's mixed with pleasure and praise, such as spankings, paddling, floggings and even some caning. It's just when it gets to a certain level I just feel so vulnerable and helpless and get very emotional, so much so that it even really upset my Master and caused him to question his own wisdom in how he handled me when honestly he was wonderful. Hey, As you have already noted, these things operate at a number of levels. You could easily do a thesis or dissertation teasing apart the layers and dimensions and the sometimes fluid ways they interact, etc, etc, etc. I hope to God you don't attempt that right about now. KOM and Arpig gave you some great things to read. I mean really print-them-out-to-discuss-with-your-partner-and-share-with-a-less-experienced-friend-some-day Great. I hope everyone around here new to masochism finds those posts. Forgive me for not naming all the names but there have been other very worthwhile insights offerred here too. It might be potato potahto but I would want to take issue with the one observation from merc and/or beth about how if your S/M "levels" don't "match" it is hopeless to imagine that training might bring you closer to having matching levels. I just have too much successful experience with just that sort of training. Where mercnbeth and I might fundamentally agree after all would be by saying that it would be terribly hard to tell just how a person is wired deep down, to stick with that metaphor, until the territory has been explored somewhat. What I'm calling training could as well be called exploring that territory under his guidance. We can sadly, even pathologically limit ourselves by investing too much in statements about "our true nature" in my view. Personally I don't think people are best described as static objects but rather as dynamic processes. My girlfriend recently pointed out where a popular poster here raved about how watersports are something like a necessity for the full expression of her submission. This was a person who had gone to some lengths a year or so ago to explain that wetwork was a wicked hard limit. Time passes. Things change. People grow (and sadly also sometimes shrink.) Interpersonal violence already has special, powerful emotional meaning for you. In many areas of life we can master these things in ourselves, as tops and as bottoms. Think of the person raised to an ugly racist world view who has a visceral negative reaction at the very sight of someone of another race. Given certain sorts of experiences this racism can be transcended and its energy inverted. Warriors in the cause of human rights have come from such beginnings. Take the simpler case of the herpetologist who was deathly frightened by--and said with all candor that she "hated"--snakes in her youth. There are all sorts of fascinations, positive and negative; healthy and unhealthy I suppose. But I see people who are generally healthy and whole successfully addressing their "issue" areas in all sorts of different ways. At one end of the spectrum is building a life where the issue is unlikely to ever arise. At the other end--or one of the other ends as these things aren't simple and linear--some people harness the energy of an "issue", which once manifested itself only in negative ways, for good, whether their own or others. But before I completely sink into a morass of analytical bullshit here I'd like to suggest a couple of things to keep in mind. Look at the bright side. This guy isn't a big fan of the World Wrestling Federation, the NFL, or Civil War Re-enactment. Better a few seconds in contact with a cane spread out over a few minutes or a few hours than living in a house decorated in Dallas Cowboys colors and a tiny little life jammed with, well, all that shit, am I right? I'm being a little facetious but the underlying point has to do with the fact that however little interest in football you may have brought ot the relationship you might very well "submit" to using his season tickets with him. You might well do this without ever torturing yourself with questions about "why does he feel the need to do this to me?" Avoid the paralysis of analysis. By the way I'd like to pause to give you mad props for the progress indicated already between your OP here and your subsequent post to this thread where you begin to open the scope of your considerations from "How can he do this to me?" to "What can or should I attend to in myself that would lead to my betterment and that of this new relationship". Unlike at least one other poster I am comfortable with the meaning I find in being sadistic to a devoted partner who isn't masochistic in proportion to my sadistic bent. Her acceptance of pain is a submission with a certain sort of simple clarity--okay that's a dodgey term and I don't want to invest too much in it because interacting with the right deeply masochistic partner is no less meaningful or fulfilling for me. I won't belabor the point but just hope you have caught a glimpse of what I'm trying to point to. If it is completely unclear and you were to beg prettily enough I might deign to mount yet another pedantic diatribe to flesh out that thought, but this here pedantic diatribe is getting pretty fucking long in the tooth already. Finally, and back to the notion of multiple interwoven layers, please consider this. For you to submit to his cane, given your background, has a special meaning for someone with the emotional equipment to appreciate it. Of course I happen to know this guy and I know he has this equipment. I am VERY MUCH IN FAVOR of the advice given above with regard to slowing way the hell down on both the emotional commitment and the play-intensity levels. As you two do go forward I would direct your attention to another level at which things are happening whether you have noted it as such or not. Yes, you are suffering under his cane (hurting anyway, some people want to draw a black and white distinction between hurting and suffering and I don't find that un-useful) but moreover you are are enduring the pain associated with treading this new ground with and for him. This interacts with another whole layer in that this new ground of consensual masochism is for now anyway overlaid on your own personal old ground of parental abuse. That is to say that in a sense the sting of the cane itself is the least of your pains right now. You are dealing, if I read you correctly, with a medley of physical, psychological and emotional pain, yearning and new love. Not only the pain of the cane can be processed masochistically. Your struggle to come to grips--or maybe it would be better described as your struggle to let go--and its attendant pain can itself be processed masochistically if the desire and will to do so are present. If they happen not to be, that's fine too. I mean holy shit. A (healthy) girl who can and will attempt this without just wigging out is going to be appreciated by certain sorts of Dominants. You are lucky enough to have a partner who can see things on more than one level at a time. I am confident that he sees you enduring the pain of the cane AND the pain of processing that pain and that he is gratified by both. Listen to the advice of those who advise patience and proceeding with a measured cadence. He knows enough about cane wielding to use cadence to maximum effect on the physical level. If you decide to go under that cane again you might let yourself appreciate the way his care in using that cadence mirrors what I assume will be his care in attending to the cadence of the growth of your relationship and his and your individual growth.
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