Fear is such a hard opponent to pin down. It can masquerade as bravado, aggression, submission and jealousy. Dealing with fear is the one major stumbling block in most poly relationships. Take for instance my most important lesson in communication:
Recently I found out something that has me sitting back and wondering about all my assumptions about my relationship with my husband. I found out he isn’t really all that “kinky”. Now don’t get me wrong, the man has so many kinks he reminds me of a slinky that got played with by a two year old. Until recently I thought he understood the BDSM scene and could relate from an insiders perspective. I was wrong.
This was revelation to me, worthy of mentioning, because I have been with this man since we were both 16 years old! We have experimented with bondage, spanking, forced play, you name it and we’ve probably tried it. Through it all he always assumed a superior tone and a look of jaded disinterest, I thought, because he had seen it all and done it all. The truth was he was scared, more tortured than excited, and couldn’t fathom why I would enjoy this “stuff”. He is an abuse survivor and his abusers preferred to couch their abuse in BDSM words and philosophies. There was nothing safe, sane or consensual about what they were doing, a ten year old can’t consent or remain sane during what he went through.
In my household growing up, sex was fairly mundane. My Mother took unashamed pleasure in, well, pleasure. My Father, though he wouldn’t discuss sex with my sister and I, was a porn aficionado. The man LOVES his porn and it is omnipresent in his house.
It has been suggested to me that this was abusive, but to be honest, it was their reaction to my sister and I looking at the porn that was abusive. Instead of putting it away and making it known that this was not something we should concern ourselves with, my parents left it out in the open and then declared that my sister and I were bad and perverted for looking at it. Good girls wouldn’t do this stuff was the message we received. The same is true about masturbation. My parents masturbated frequently but if we girls did then it was something to discuss at the holiday table with extended family present. THAT was the abuse, the rest was just natural curiosity and really didn’t do any harm. We knew that wasn’t reality the same as we could distinguish fantasy violence from the reality of the violence in our home.
As I grew up and into my sexual adulthood I was held back and defined by Sigel’s hang ups. To be fair to him he didn’t realize he was doing this, he was much too wrapped up in dealing with his childhood trauma to focus on anything else. He worked and provided for us and that included deciding how our sex life would be run. He didn’t receive any training on how to ask for what he wanted so he made the worst mistakes possible and nearly ruined us. He decided that I was frigid and repressed and needed to be treated like a perpetual virgin. When I stepped outside his box he ridiculed me and physically forced me back into it! I accepted this as normal since I was never told different and it was such an uncomfortable subject for my parents. This went on for nearly 20 years with him finding ways to repeat the abuse he suffered as a child, which is a common problem with traumatic abuse, and me living bewildered and scared. Then I met a young man who was the total opposite of Sigel.
Enter our Life partner, stage left amid fanfare. This is a man who knows his own mind and for whom kink is his world view. He is comfortable with his fetishes. He’s a gamer and understands the place of fantasy and where the line is between story and reality. He is willing to play and unafraid to give away power. He has never had a reason to fear, no one has ever taken from him the power to say no. For him the ability to give away that power for a short time is intoxicating, as it is for me. The problem is neither he nor I understood what was going on in Sigel’s mind. To Sigel we were either silly children unaware of the danger we were putting ourselves in, or scary predators plotting to take away his freedom to say no. He really couldn’t understand how Arch pinned me down and how he could get excited when I “humiliated” him. The thought filled Sigel with fear, though he tried to hide it. His life had taught him that you never show predators fear since it only excites them. Then the worst thing that could ever happen came to pass. I managed to make a change in my life and suddenly I had my own disposable income, and a site to indulge my fantasies. He braced for the worst, built his shell tighter, became as arrogant and abusive as he could about Arch’s and my shared fantasies and put as much distance as he could between us.
Together Arch and I grew and challenged our beliefs about sex. I began to review toys for Eden Fantasys and Arch was my willing accomplice when Sigel was busy. All of this caused some real issues for Sigel because it challenged his ideas about me and who I was. I began to change into the type of life partner he had been looking for all along. The problem was I now wanted things that, for him, were frightening and threatening. There was the possibility that if I didn’t like the answer he gave I’d simply leave with Arch! No matter how many times I reassured him, because our communication skills are so poor the message didn’t come through clearly. Sigel’s answer to me was always, “Whatever! You won’t shock or scare me…” I didn’t realize this was the false bravado that he hides behind to protect himself.
Oblivious to Sigel’s inner turmoil I decided to buy him a “gift basket” for his birthday. Some restraints, a few floggers, a gag, and a blindfold. Arch, being the more level headed of the two of us, suggested that maybe the reason Sigel warned me, often in rather scary threatening ways, not to give him power over me wasn’t due to his desire to dominate but instead indicated his level of discomfort with the whole idea. So with the mantra playing in my head (safe, sane, consensual) I approached Sigel. I told him that Arch was concerned that we weren’t including him in our decisions about exploring BDSM. At first he reacted with anger and ridicule but I eventually was able to explain that I wasn’t saying he was weak or childish, rather I was asking if he was interested. FINALLY he relaxed and was able to admit that he didn’t understand the appeal. Indeed, experiencing even the low levels of play we had done brought back the feelings of fear from his childhood. Armed with this information I changed my gift idea to something soft and sensual which meant so much more to him as it showed him that Arch and I both cared about his comfort level and wanted him to feel safe.
Does that mean I won’t explore my kinky side? No, not at all! It means that I will get to explore this area with Arch for a while until Sigel becomes more comfortable with the idea, or decides he really isn’t interested at all. So many people believe that being kinky means you will force your ideas and desires on everyone you meet; infecting them, so to speak. It is a common misconception that dominant individuals must dominate everyone around them. This is a painful and limiting world view as far as I am concerned. I am dominant, extremely dominant, but I have a soft side that needs to be fed as well. It’s been my experience that I’m not unusual in this. Vanilla doesn’t have to mean boring and pedestrian, and it certainly doesn’t indicate the person who enjoys that type of sex is unenlightened. For someone as broken as our Sigel is it’s a welcome bastion of safety in a world that hasn’t treated him with much kindness.
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[...] How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust [...]
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[...] How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust [...]
[...] (Short) Ode to Uncut Cocks Compersive Vanillas? How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust I am not a rapist… Mother’s Day Gift On threesomes On Friendship Playing Nice On The [...]
[...] (Short) Ode to Uncut Cocks Compersive Vanillas? How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust I am not a rapist… Mother’s Day Gift On threesomes On Friendship Playing Nice On The [...]
[...] How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust [...]
[...] How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust [...]
[...] (Short) Ode to Uncut Cocks Compersive Vanillas? How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust I am not a rapist… Mother’s Day Gift On threesomes On Friendship Playing Nice On The Swingset [...]
[...] (Short) Ode to Uncut Cocks Compersive Vanillas? How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust I am not a rapist… Mother’s Day Gift On threesomes On Friendship Playing Nice On The [...]
[...] How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust [...]
[...] (Short) Ode to Uncut Cocks Compersive Vanillas? How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust I am not a rapist… Mother’s Day Gift On threesomes On Friendship Playing Nice On The [...]
[...] (Short) Ode to Uncut Cocks Compersive Vanillas? How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust I am not a rapist… Mother’s Day Gift On threesomes On Friendship Playing Nice On The [...]
[...] (Short) Ode to Uncut Cocks Compersive Vanillas? How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust I am not a rapist… Mother’s Day Gift On threesomes On Friendship Playing Nice On The [...]
[...] (Short) Ode to Uncut Cocks Compersive Vanillas? How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust I am not a rapist… Mother’s Day Gift On threesomes On Friendship Playing Nice On The Swingset [...]
[...] (Short) Ode to Uncut Cocks Compersive Vanillas? How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust I am not a rapist… Mother’s Day Gift On threesomes On Friendship Playing Nice On The [...]
[...] (Short) Ode to Uncut Cocks Compersive Vanillas? How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust I am not a rapist… Mother’s Day Gift On threesomes On Friendship Playing Nice On The Swingset [...]
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[...] (Short) Ode to Uncut Cocks Compersive Vanillas? How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust I am not a rapist… Mother’s Day Gift On threesomes On Friendship Playing Nice On The [...]
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[...] (Short) Ode to Uncut Cocks Compersive Vanillas? How Fear can Lead to Understanding and Trust I am not a rapist… Mother’s Day Gift On threesomes On Friendship Playing Nice On The Swingset [...]