On bruises II - S&M vs submission

As I started meddling with the darker side of sex, I didn’t define these experiences particularly as BDSM. I didn’t want to categorise myself or become part of the scene, I just wanted to experience. In fact, I didn’t even know that, there was just something about those experiences that thrilled me beyond belief and made me want more.

I’ve been lucky. I’ve had enough therapy over the years for me not to fall prey to the “Am I sick? What’s wrong with me?” gremlin. With a little bit of effort I could accept that this was what I enjoyed and that, in a consensual setting, there was little harm in that. Still, I wouldn’t have ever told you I was into BDSM. The term just comes with too many presumptions, too many dodgy mental images. BDSM, that was for those more extreme people, not for me! I did odd bits of reading, but didn’t really want to know about the seemingly minute differences between Bondage/Discipline (B/D), Dominance/Submission (D/S) and Sadism/Masochism (S/M). Nothing for me to worry about – or so I thought.

So now, I’m a little bit further down the road. I have a couple of different types of experiences under my belt (or should I say collar?). I’ve got myself flogged by some people who were undeniably into BDSM and I’ve loved it – every single minute of it. So it’s official: I am a kinky slut! Yes, I’m into BDSM and no longer afraid to admit that to myself. Actually, I’m relieved, excited and happy! My flogging had been fun, ecstatic, joyous, physically painful, but I’d always felt happy, never scared, always still in control enough to call a stop to it any time I wanted to. I felt like I was the object of pleasure, if of an unusual kind. My main thought as I came away from that night was: “Ah, that’s how it’s supposed to be done!”

The thing I’ve been wrestling with since that night is this: if this was S&M, what then were my previous experiences all about? Because one thing I knew for sure was that they'd felt very different. It was those older experiences which had felt darker to me, not, as I'd expected, the genuine fetish club flogging. Whilst they had been thrilling, they hadn't been anywhere near as light-hearted, I was much more out of control and also dangerously absorbed with one person. My first reaction was one of judgment. We’d done it “wrong”, been misguided, I’d been infatuated, he’d taken advantage. I certainly had plenty of encouragement from well meaning friends to see it in exactly that way. But I also knew that this wasn't actually my truth. It is perhaps unlucky that all of those evaluations got tangled up with the end of that particular friendship. Knowing what anything may have meant in hindsight is impossible, even more impossible as you stand on the shifting ground of partial truths. So all I had to go with was my experience of the moment – and that at the time had been thrilling and something I craved. What remained though was the fact that where my flogging had been about the pleasure of pain, this had been about something else. I've wrecked my brain for the past two weeks about what that "something else" might be. I did much thinking, some reading and it came to me eventually. It was SUBMISSION.

It’s easy to throw the term submissive around loosely, thinking that getting a guy to tie me up and fuck me senseless means I’m submissive. In fact, I’m still the one getting serviced in that scenario – just like I did during my flogging! So whilst my flogging was certainly S/M and even B/D, D/S it was probably not. And that’s fine, it was fantastic!! Actually, when I dipped into my first book on the D/S relationship, I was mightily disappointed. It talked about service, about having no desire whatsoever for your own pleasure, but only for your dom(me)’s – hell, it even gave recipes for dinners you may cook them and how to look after their shoes!!! Actually, that didn’t remotely appeal to me and I felt a little freaked at the idea to exist purely to serve someone else. That felt terribly unhealthy to me and if I'm honest, in the end, I want to be the centre of attention and admiration, if only for the quality of my sexual services. So clearly, my slave attitude sucks! 


However, there was something about our dynamic that had been about submission in its truest sense. I had been his to own. It’s my guilty secret – I long to lose myself in someone else. For the distance between me and the other to shrink away to zero. That intense feeling of unity, it’s there in those moments of complete trust, complete submission. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to live my life that way – I like to be in charge of my affairs. That is perhaps why this is a hard experience for me to achieve with my beloved husband - maybe we need to work on that. But in that very tightly boundaried relationship that existed for no other purpose, I had a chance to experience SURRENDER. Yes, I am told, it’s perhaps not the wisest place to look for that experience. After all, you’re left in the hands of another fallible human being. They will have their own motives and may not be worthy of that level of trust. And of course, they will sometimes get it wrong. My close friend commented how many look for those peak experiences in spirituality (actually, most spiritual literature clearly states that looking for them in sex is definitely misguided). My flippant response was that I'd been there, done that and found it boring! Yes, I'm sure meditation is a much safer route to ecstasy, but since when has safe ever appealed to me?