The New Year, the same possibilities

HAPPY FREAKIN NEW YEAR! 

We spend the New Years at a dungeon, with people who know us and like us.  I didn't have a lick to drink, and yet I felt euphoric (although not sure if that's something to do with the energy of the place or just my general mood). No, I haven't found a new playmate or new lover.  Well...there's still nothing on the horizon, and I'm still at my dead end job...okay WHY THE HELL am I happy???

Maybe because I'm going to Disneyland in a few days?  Maybe the fact that I haven't worked a full week in about 3 weeks making me giddy? 

I deliberately don't make New Year's resolutions for sole purpose that I never keep them.  I do know that I NEED to lose some weight or I'm screwed, wardrobe wise.  SIGH...

Okay, perhaps I will make an effort to write more posts on here.  I had 9 posts up in 2011, maybe I can get that total to 10 or 11.  A simple goal, like the one I just proposed, might be something that I can achieve.  So, lets resolve to make more posts!

The universe is teaching me patience

It's almost year end, and its been three months since my last post.  Those three months might have been three years, with everything we have done since then.  There was Folsom, being more social in the community, making new friends, finding then loosing a play partner, and then opening up our relationship.

Oh yes, M and I have decided to transition our non-monogamous relationship, into a polyamorous one.  As I have written elsewhere, this decision is the inevitable conclusion to what was started earlier this year.  We also talked and wrote extensively about our feelings before and after this decision, dealt with the aftermath, and still concluded that becoming poly is the right thing to do.  We set our preliminary rules and limits, and posted profiles on OKCupid.  So far, I've been on a few dates, with nothing in the horizon for me, while M has a potential playmate.

The presence of this new woman in his life hasn't triggered horrible jealousy within me, and I'm generally excited for M.  However, I am very cautious about all of this.  The last thing I want to do is to delude myself that I am in the clear, only to have my fears and insecurities rear itself when I least expect it.  So far, my emotions have been in check.  No, its not that I haven't felt jealousy (actually its more envy than jealousy) rather, I've been able to process this rationally.

What I wasn't prepared for was the uncertainty, the ambiguity of what I wanted from all of this.  My body misses another lover to ravage me.  My heart and brain, however, wants safety, security and trust.  This is creating a rather strange dynamic within me, a hurry up and wait response, that I find extremely annoying.  I must admit I'm having a tough time telling which side is winning.  At the same time, I'm suspecting my expectations might still be high, and that I really need to step away for a moment and get some perspective.  Another issue I am encountering is that I don't know if I want another submissive, or a vanilla lover.  Hell, I complicated things even more for me by entertaining the notion of having a relationship with a top.  To make matters worst, I'm finding that not only are poly relationships drama-filled, but there seems to be "fall in love, then think about it later" attitude to poly dating that I find totally disturbing.

Sigh....

Because of all of this ambiguity, I think the universe is teaching me patience. It's not pushing me one way or the other, it wants me to be internally focused for now.  My past self would have said, "Fuck you Universe.  I want cock" and pushed my will into something I am totally not prepared to handle.  However, I'm more inclined to listen to it now than...oh...say...four years ago.  The universe was right about being patient with M.  The universe was right about waiting to heal before I was ready to make friends.  I think the universe is correct here as well.

Or Santa might give me another man for Christmas?  Hahaha probably not.

Bittersweet and anti-climatic ending

It's official.  I am legally a divorced woman.

Actually, I should have been a divorced woman a year ago, but my ex-husband's attorney is retarded and ignored his pleas for any updates.  My official dissolution date was September 2nd, but I didn't receive the paperwork until a week ago, since the paperwork was sent to my last address.

I called my ex to tell him the news.  He answered back with little emotion but I can tell he was supportive.  He wanted closure as much as I did.  We met for lunch last Monday to...celebrate? No, that's not the word.  To acknowledge, perhaps?  During lunch, he couldn't look at me, choosing to play with his food.  We made small talk, and I inquire about our friends.  I asked him if he was Ok about all of this, the divorce coming through.  He reiterated that he was fine, "It is what it is" he said.  I did tell him that I never regretted marrying him; although, I almost said "but things changed" after that.  Thank god I didn't because he looked surprised that I said that.  A good surprised.

Curiously enough, he asked me about my work, and about M, talked to me for the first time as a person, and not his wife.  Normally, he would go on and on about his work, about friend's drama, things of that nature.  But not that day.  I saw it in his eyes, it was over for him.  After almost 4 years.

I confided to M that it was a bit sad and anti-climatic, my divorce.  After all, I moved on and lived my life as a single woman since the first day of my separation.  M and I talked about how relieved and bittersweet he felt about his own divorce was, how he and his ex-wife stayed friends all of this time.  I had hoped to have something similar with my ex, but it would require extraordinary work on my part to keep it up, something I had hoped came naturally instead of some heroic measure on my part.  Perhaps?    Don't know, but I've learned not to count on anything.

Whether or not the ex and I will remain friends, one thing is for certain: it's unfortunate that of the divorces I knew of, mine was among the most amicable.  I've been subjected to my friend's divorce that dragged on for months because no one could agree on anything.  I suppose I should be lucky, neither one of us had anything of value to fight over and there were no children involved.

Still, a chapter has ended in my life, and another has begun.  I wish my ex luck happiness and luck and I hope that we can stay friends.

Complications

Some posts write themselves.  This is not one of them.

I've been playing more than writing lately.  While that's usually a good thing, my kinky parameters has expanded too quickly than what I can process at the moment.

Case in point, I have been exploring my dominate side for the past few months now.   Not only have I enjoyed this role, but unlike my submissive side where certain conditions have to be met before I get to that space, my dominance feels natural and unforced.  I find it strangely creative, and the more I do it, the more confident I feel.  At the same time, I was unprepared to deal with all the crap that came up as I learned more about this side of me.  Namely, that I had a dark side and that I have a complicated love/hate relationship with control.

I experienced top drop for the first time a day after I had my first private scene with my submissive.  It consisted of me crying in the basement because I though I was evil.  Don't know about you, but I think everyone has a dark side.  We are conditioned to sublimated it, hide it, get rid of it because it's evil and who wants to be evil.  I could blame my Catholic upbringing or unrealistic expectations put upon me while growing up of what a girl is suppose to act like, but I would be obfuscating.  Intellectually, I can see the concept of having a dark side, but to actually hold up a mirror to yourself and look at it was a frightening concept.

Dealing with my dark side was nothing compared to dealing with Control.  You see, I have another confession to make...I've been addicted to control, or rather, the illusion of it for a very long time.

Even in my submissive state, I never truly let go of it, except with M.  Since dominance is about harnessing control, it was as if I was given crack and told to smoke it. I'm keenly aware of how much I needed to be control of everything, despite the fact that this need of mine have pulled me in directions I didn't want to go, simply because I was too arrogant to admit I was wrong.  But total control is an illusion.  Erroneously, I thought in order to understand this illusion, I had to let go of control.

Going through all of the pain I went through a few years ago was part of that journey.  The other part of it was, I thought, accepting my truth.  Well, accepting that truth meant having to deal with my control issues.  I mention the pain, but if it wasn't for my ex-husband who forcefully insisted I had more control in the relationship than I was admitting (that is, before I was ready to admit that he was right), did I truly understand that I had this power over people and situations, and that I needed to take responsibility for it.  Being responsible does not mean ignoring the consequences of your actions, nor does it mean denying that I had any part of it.  And how could I let go of control, if I never honestly dealt with it.  I'm not going to say that I have a complete handle on this at the moment. I can say that OK its out in the open and I'm not going to hide it any longer.

In the meantime, I will continue to dominate/top M when he wants me to, and get a better feel of how my submissive wants my dominance to manifest with him.  I'm also not going to neglect my submissive side since something tells me I will seek it out more often now.  Just another thing for me to integrate into my life.  Let's see how good of a juggler I am.

Dating in the "Lifestyle"

The second post, or part 2 of the other post...or whatever...let's just get with this.

I have a confession to make.  I hate what we call what we do a "lifestyle".  There's this impression that by calling our kinky lives a lifestyle it is assumed that it is better than vanilla/more traditional relationships.  I could not agree with that assessment.  And frankly, I hate the whole vanilla vs kinky shit. Honestly, how we approach people is not all that different than in a vanilla situation, we just state our wants and needs upfront.

Because we tend to put our cards on the table up front and center, there's a tendency for kinky people to think that we are better communicators.  Of course, the first thing that was drilled into my head when I started down this route was that everything was negotiated before we do anything.

Let me tell you something.  Kinky people are no different than other people.  They can be as douchy, selfish bastards, that can lie to you or hide shit from you.  And no amount of talking will stop this.  When I finally proclaimed myself a switch, I can't tell you how many guys hit on me to peg them, and or dominate them, often calling me a  mistress against my will.  I had to put up a guidelines post on my profile on fetlife just so that I didn't have to deal with bullshit.

On the swinging side, I didn't have to deal with pretension too much, but it had its own pitfall.  Dating a couple meant we had to make sure if there was compatibility with all four of us.  Its hard enough to reach compatibility with just one person.  Then you had to be extremely firm that we had these rules set up as a couple.  Now we were aware that meeting like minded people to sleep with might be hard, but what we weren't prepared for how social swinging is.  At one point we had a party every weekend, with a one week break in between.  I was beginning to resent the fact that I had to be ready for sex at a moments notice.

I suppose I really shouldn't complain.  If it wasn't for a certain individual whom I rocked his world, we would never have met some awesome people.  I mean superfucking nice couples, that we could actually talk to as well as fuck.  And I got to dominate someone else besides M.  Woot.

Okay the point of all this is, dating in the lifestyle is not any more different than dating vanilla style.  I would argue that if you had strong limits in your vanilla dating style to begin with, then you will have a good foundation to base on when you try kinky stuff.   M and I are slowly learning what works for us and what doesn't.

Nesting

This was suppose to be on big post on two subjects, but elected to separate the subjects and give them a post of their own.

The time had came to commit to our decision to move in together.  So, in the month of March, we proceeded to pull the elements to do make it happen: finding a place, securing it, coordinating our move, and merging our household into one.  This was no small undertaking in normal circumstances, however events at work was threatening to implode on me during the middle of all of this, making me wonder if finding another job was something I needed to add to my burgeoning to-do list.  That worry subsided, for now, and despite the stress, we managed to do it without needless drama.

Some of that residual energy stayed with us as we made our way to getting settled into our new home.  We spent the better part of this month unpacking, buying major appliances and furniture, worrying about our cats, establishing a normal routine, and navigating living with another person under the same roof.  While we are not completely unpacked and organized, our life has sort of reached as uneasy equilibrium, because it can and must.

Our domestic lives can be described with this quote

...we locked ourselves inside
I guess we just kidnapped each other's mind.
so we can't complain -- Nickel Creek

For the record, I hate quoting emo songs that ends badly, but seriously, that is what if feels like without the negative connotations.

Well to clarify, we are hyper aware, wanting to spend every waking moment in each others presence, blinded by love, like teenage lovers in bad romance novels.  I'm not exaggerating.  Ok, I am a little, but not much.  We are constantly commenting how much we miss each other, despite the fact that we see each other now every day.  We eat dinner in the dining room, on our dining table...EVERY NIGHT...and we actually like it.  I can't play WoW for long periods of time because the minute he gets home I just want to be at his side.  We even start conversations that start with "It seems like we had more free time when we lived alone."  I wouldn't blame you if you mocked us for being syrupy cute right now, then chastise us cause its disgusting.  Trust me, We are well aware of how absurd this can be.

I know that we are in our honeymoon period, and that the newness to this will subside.  I do wonder how long this period will last, not that I'm expecting the "the other shoe to fall".  I also wonder if I'm too eager to push for normalcy, and instead, just let it happen on its own time.

Still, its been nice, living with M so far.  Now, if only our cats get along.

No more compliance

For the longest time, I thought I was very submissive with the men I had been.  After all, I never viewed as someone who had any impact within a relationship.  So when I started this journey into BDSM, that assumption held strong.  It wasn't until I started playing, I started to embrace the power dynamics, that I realized that I had never submitted to anyone.

From the moment that I discovered I was kinky, I began exploring my submissive side.  And it felt lacking.  Aside from the masochistic end of BDSM, which I still love, I couldn't wrap my mind to submitting to another.  It really was a Eureka moment to discover that you can be a switch.  As soon as I tapped into my domme side, the concept of power dynamics, the yin to the yang, the exchange, became extremely clear for me.  I was enjoying my domme side way too much, sort of neglecting my submissive side, or rather just indulging my masochistic tendencies and left it at that.  Then something happened (okay a couple of things).

Well we started swinging..and holy hell, I lost control for the first time in my life.  It was both frightening and exhilarating, and began to doubt that I had never submitted at all in the past.  It doesn't help that I was trying to submit to men who were not inclined to the ways of d/s.  But I also had some severe trust issues of my own.  To submit, you must completely trust the person you are giving your power to.  Looking back, I never let go..with anyone, other than M.

I'm convinced what I've done in the past was compliance and well..dominated.  That is, I played along, and gave enough of me  to move the relationship along, but never to give all of me.  When this didn't work, I would exert some of my power, only to feel guilty.  I understand now when my ex-husband accused me of having all of the power in the relationship.  I did.  In fact he did often defer to me but I didn't see it at the time.  Also, I gave my power to someone who was unwilling to have it.  But then again, he was emotionally lazy, narcissistic, and played the compliance game better than I.  Wow, no wonder I never let go with him, he wouldn't have it.  Oh, I'm sure with my trust issues, not to mention lack of self-confidence, didn't help.  But you can now understand the frustration with my ex.  Well..with most of my relationships.

I submitted to M this weekend, with only the sound of his voice, and choice words. No, truly submitted to him.  My body felt weak, my mind slipped, and all I wanted was to please him.  It was interesting to see my reaction, since I was completely taken by surprised.  But by the end of the evening, all I wanted to do was please him, fuck him, submit to him completely body and soul.  At to that end, I am finally complete.  Both parts of me is now his and he is mine.  And I'm happy and whole now.