Differences

This is an exploration of some of the events in my previous post – Punishment.  If you haven’t read it, be aware that this may reference disturbing concepts or events, please read at your own comfort level.

I literally signed in here and then spent twenty minutes looking at old posts instead of writing this one… I’m horrible at procrastination.

I notice a lot of differences between my Sir (DJ) and M…  A LOT of differences.  In fact, it seems as if the entire point of my relationship is to point out to me on a daily basis all of the differences in the two relationships.  Not even the two men… the two relationships (though that has a significant amount to do with the two men).

And I realized (and just realized all over again) how much better I am… healthier, emotionally stable, able to work on my issues instead of just surviving whatever the latest drama or trauma might be, now that I am with Sir and no longer associating with M.

Last night I had another realization.  It was a rather sad one, but… Sir said to write about it, he wants to see my thinking written down.  So… sigh…  here I sit.  A little sore…

I was punished last night, fairly roughly (for me) by Sir.  And as I wrote my description of it, I realized that to an outsider, it might seem horrifying.  And then, I realized, that in fact… to ME, six months ago, it would have been horrifying.

The spanking was hard and painful but that wasn’t the part that really makes me think, although… it does highlight a difference between Sir and M already… but the sexual punishment that followed truly indicates a sea-change in my life and relationship with myself and with Sir.

Sir used sex, and orgasm, as a punishment last night.  There was nothing in it that was pleasurable for me, it was just intense and rough and painful and very very very firmly showed that he was in control, which was really his purpose in doing it.

It might seem questionably consented, although Sir would have stopped instantly if I showed any signs of trauma… and that, I think I’m realizing, is the difference.

Sub Brother was severely punished a couple of weeks ago, and that is never pleasant, but as I was talking to my therapist about it, I realized I was discussing it as something that was unpleasant and didn’t make me happy, but… didn’t make me fearful…  And she labeled it as “unpleasant but not re traumatizing” and I found that an interesting differentiation that I’ve been chewing on since.

It was unpleasant but it was not re-traumatizing.

I don’t think I’ve ever known that there could be such a distinction… especially when it comes to men and relationships.  So much of my life EVERYTHING unpleasant was re-traumatizing.  It was like my entire sexual being was one giant raw nerve that would scream at being brushed up against roughly…

Yet, last night, Sir physically restrained me and forcibly engaged in a sexual act with me (not without my consent, but not for my pleasure or comfort), and it didn’t scare me.  It hurt, it was uncomfortable, it made me sad (because I screwed up and was being punished), but it didn’t make me doubt him, or myself.  It didn’t make me question my safety.  It didn’t make me question his love for me.  It didn’t make that deep place in my belly go cold, the place I’m slowly learning to recognize (through self-compassion exercises) as a place in my body where I store trauma.

Sir never made that part of me flare once last night…

And never once last night did I spiral down into the self-hatred that used to be so instinctive.

I disobeyed M, once.  Much in the same way I disobeyed Sir last night.  M… questioned our relationship, threatened to end our association, told me I clearly didn’t want to be his sub… at another point when I made a mistake, he told me I was a terrible submissive…

With M, it was… terribly frightening to screw up.  Not because of the punishment that would come, but because I was so unsure of him.  Of him.  His inconsistency, his wild swings, his threats to end the relationship… I felt constantly as if I were living under the pendulum, waiting for its next past to be the one that would slice open my belly… and grasping for happiness in the moments of illusory safety between its passes.

When M became angry with me I had no trust in what he would or wouldn’t do… in how far he would go to hurt me, my body, and… my heart.

In Sir I don’t have that doubt.  We have slowly built this trust together so that he can now very roughly punish me, even sexually, without me feeling that deep and freezing distrust of his intentions, of his care, or of his love.

That isn’t to say he isn’t scary.  That the punishment isn’t scary.  That I don’t dread it when I know it is coming and that it doesn’t hurt my heart for him to look at me with his face set in that hard expression.

But I don’t doubt what his heart feels for me.  And I don’t distrust his ability to manage himself and his emotions well enough to ensure that my heart and my emotions will be safe even, and maybe particularly, when I am scared.

I doubted M’s ability to self-regulate.  I doubted his ability to manage himself.  I distrusted his ability to keep me safe even when he was scary.  He couldn’t keep me safe.  He didn’t know how.  He couldn’t even manage himself.  He ran away from his problems… again and again… and when I became a problem… I had no trust that he wouldn’t run away from me, too.

And, indeed, he did exactly what my gut, the part of me that knows trauma, that knows perpetrators, that knows, instinctively, the difference between uncomfortable and unsafe… that part of me was in overdrive when I was with M.

M told me I was mentally and emotionally unstable.  He said that he just couldn’t handle me because I was such a drain on him with my instability.

Sir not only CAN handle my instability, he doesn’t CAUSE it and so he doesn’t HAVE to deal with it.  I am more stable with Sir than I have been at any time in my life…  Because finally… I am learning what it really means to trust.  What it means to be able to be uncomfortable, even afraid with someone, without losing trust in them.

It is the first time I have been safe enough to begin exploring the poison stored in that part of my gut where my trauma lies.  The first time I’ve been safe enough… known I was safe enough… that I can begin to feel and process it.

Before I couldn’t afford that vulnerability.  Before I was in a war… all of the time.  A war of trauma and PTSD where if I let down my guard, I would be destroyed by it.

M not only did not create that safety between us, he added to the trauma.  I was unstable with him because he was a battlefield on which I had to be constantly aware, hyper-alert, even in the moments of peace and love that I clung to like they were life itself… those moments were almost hyper-precious because they were like moments of peace in a war… more precious for knowing they were inevitably fleeting and would be followed by the deeply traumatic horror of battle.

Sir isn’t a war zone.

Sir isn’t uncertainty.

Sir isn’t doubt or questioning or wondering.

Sir is different.

And what a difference different can make.

 

p.s. How sad is it that with this post I had to add the word “trust” to my tag cloud for the first time…