One notch too far: my boundary pushing hangover

Today I’m nursing a hangover. No, it’s not alcohol-induced, but it feels the same in many ways. I’m tired, I’m getting ill, I’m trying to remember where exactly I picked up each scratch and bruise, and the elation from my exploits is also mingled with feelings that are lower. I’m a little shaky, feeling I’ve pushed it one notch too far. So if it’s titillation you’re after, skip this post and wait for the next one. If you’re interested in my soul business, then read on.

It’s not like I haven’t felt like this before. I’ll never forget the very first time I went to a sex club (in Tokyo of all places!!). I may tell the story properly some other time, but for now it suffices to say that my husband and I did nothing much but have sex just with each other - in public, being watched, having my nipples pinched occasionally through a grope hole by a pretty Japanese girl. But, wow, did I ever suffer from flashbacks the next day – and the wild, crazy thoughts: oh my god, is that me, what am I doing, did I like this, didn’t I like this, what’s going on????  I know that eventually it all falls into place – like my personality reassembles itself and a new expanded reality gets comfortable where the old one used to live. So these days having sex in front of other people is easy, natural, normal even. But this bit, right now, this messy reassembling bit – god, it’s shit! It’s making me wish I could crawl back into the comfort of the old familiarity, the safety of being a good girl rather than the instability of being a sexual adventuress. But what’s done is done and it can’t be undone.

When I first stumbled into dominant/submissive sex, it thrilled me – entirely and completely. The drama, the high emotions, the passion, the power play! I was expecting that, in the submissive role, I would feel small and humble and insignificant, but for me, the opposite was the case. I felt very wild, oddly free, desirable and high on adrenaline and lust. I loved the waves of different intense emotions – playing with fear, playing with a small amount of pain, with upset, desire and above all loss of control. Yes, I know playing with emotions doesn’t seem like a sensible thing to do to most people, but that’s the idea: it’s not SENSIBLE. I’ve done sensible most of my life – it suffocates me, restricts me. Here was my arena to push that conception of myself, but push it in quite a safe space with somebody I trusted, somebody to push some boundaries with, slowly and steadily over many months. And as we kept pushing I felt just how much they could stretch. I got very high on being able to take more and more and still feel highly turned on and happy. So when he said he’d like to see if he could break me, to see me cry in earnest, it actually really turned me on. I wanted to feel overpowered, rather than just play at being overpowered, I wanted to fight him and lose. So we’d agreed we’d try. In hindsight: I was way too nonchalant about it – deep down I didn’t quite believe that he could do it, or would do it, and to be honest, I was relying on the fact that he would read me, as he always did, and stop if it went to far. I was also expecting it to be just a big turn-on for me. Experienced S&M practitioners might be reading this in horror, but I’m sure even they made some mistakes when they started out and we’d only ever tried this with each other. Yes, we did have a safeword when we first set out, but at this stage we thought we really knew each other and what we could take! Stupid, I know.

So when it happened, it took me by surprise. We were just playing rough, I wasn’t even tied or constrained in any way and he’s not even a big guy. He just slapped my face that little harder and more persistently than usual (it’s something I normally love), so I got pissed off and pushed him away (still almost playfully). And before I knew it, before we both knew it, it all just started to feel a little bit too real. As he pinned me down and kept slapping me, I really did start crying and I genuinely wanted us to stop, but we'd agreed that we wouldn't. I was also still expecting my body, the very same body that normally desires him so much, to start responding to him once he started fucking me. I think we both were, but just this once it didn’t. He was turned on beyond belief and I’ve never ever seen him cum so quickly. I wasn’t turned on – I was upset, for the first time ever I actually felt violated and quite broken. One notch too far for me, I won’t cross that boundary again! It's great to lose control, but you need to maintain enough control to get out when it gets too much - even when you trust the other person, especially when you trust the other person - for both of your sakes. Lesson learnt. 

Wouldn’t it be so much nicer to tell you just the sexy stories, tell you just about the fun, the thrills? Or more straightforward to tell you the archetypal stories of sexual predator and innocent victim? But the truth is always so much more complex than that, the truth is of people making choices, exploring themselves, meeting their needs, pushing their boundaries. All that autonomy comes with consequences. The good girl doesn’t have to deal with those – following the rules has one advantage, it keeps you quite safe. Making your own rules however, well, that’s a different matter. Maybe I will play nicely for a little while, as I make sense of what has happened. But I know that the thrill of pushing boundaries has a lure all of its own and whilst I won’t go to THAT boundary again, I'm sure others will be met and sometimes even breached.