Choose: Process Me or Exploit Me
Themes:
Boundaries in relationships
How my boundaries relate to my sensitivities
Finding time to reconnect with Paladin
Running away from the feeling of emptiness
Craving degradation, violence and humiliation
.
.
"I find it seductively appealing to lose myself into your life, and your choices," I had written to Hibiscus in early December. I had said something similar as early as a couple weeks into our relationship.
.
Paladin, Hibiscus and I had watched Teal Swan's video on Boundaries (versus Oneness) in November. We all had boundary issues, but I had not previously thought that I did. After all, I wasn't the person who took on projects I didn't really want to commit to, I was not the one who gave in to things all the time to my own detriment. I looked out for myself. Right?
.
Or so I thought. If the people closest to me are my mirrors, and my mother, and both my husbands have serious boundary issues, then I probably do too.
.
And I did. It finally dawned on me how to put it into words as Paladin and I were walking together in the down-town area of the village near Silverstag.
.
"My boundary in a romantic relationship is physical pain," I said to Paladin. "I should be willing, and am willing to do anything up to that point. It seems obvious to me that it ought to be that way. It is such an obvious assumption to me that I had never even thought to articulate it or question it - until now."
.
Walking beside me in his flannel-lined black jeans, three flannel shirts and winter boots, he replied, "It is no wonder you're so fragile. It is your way of creating boundaries."
.
I nodded sadly, wiping my runny nose on my mittens. "I don't know how to change that. That belief feels like a boulder of immense dimensions."
.
In another conversation that same week, between Christmas and New Years, I said to Paladin, "I lost myself in my relationship with Dragon. I didn't eat the foods I wanted. I smoked even when I didn't think it was good for me. I watched television shows I didn't like. I listened to his music, not mine. I didn't even dress as I wanted to. I gave up my gothic clothing, I started waxing my eye-brows and getting my nails done for him. I dyed my hair black when he suggested it."
.
"Wait," Paladin said. I waited and let him collect his thoughts. "You are sensitive to music and movies. You're sensitive to polyester clothing. You're sensitive to foods and smoke. Everything you just listed is something you have an extreme sensitivity to."
.
My eyes widened. "Oh. My. God. You're right."
.
My body had created boundaries. And I stayed up late with Dragon when I didn't want to, watching television. Now I'm sensitive to monitors after dark.
.
I had let my boundaries be horribly violated, and my subconscious - bless it - was protecting me. It was thrusting forward a part of me that honored myself more than "fitting in" and "getting love."
.
And now I'm even sensitive to masturbating . . . because I can't respect my own boundaries and turn the damn vibrator off when I'm tired of it. Because I use it as a crutch to help me get to sleep, to help me get warm, to help me find pleasure . . . when honestly, there are dozens of other things I know I would prefer.
.
It made so much sense that it was hard to believe I'd never thought of it before.
.
But what can I do? It was as I said to Paladin in yet another conversation that week, "I'm living with two primary partners. It is no wonder that I keep panicking about whether or not I'm a good enough partner."
.
Twice in seven days I had cried (rather epically) about feeling like I was not a good partner. After all, what could be more important than that? If I am not a good partner, then what is to prevent me from being emotionally abandoned? And in my fear of my partner emotionally abandoning me, I chose to abandon myself.
.
Boundaries was one theme of several running through the course of our conversations during the ten days that Hibiscus was away in the east, visiting his parents and friends. It was a healing time for us. We took the time to discuss polyamory, and where we both were with our emotions on that subject. I uncovered a large aspect of my fear of him having another partner, rooted in my fear that Paladin would close off part of his life and his heart to me.
.
We caught up on things as simple as shopping for new clothing for Paladin, an experience I enjoyed immensely. It was in sharp contrast to the disparities of taste which I'd been experiencing with Hibiscus.
.
Hibiscus himself was a major theme in my conversations with Paladin. Even if I had tried to avoid Hibiscus as a subject of conversation, I couldn't have done it. By the evening of December 30th, 2015, I was driven to distraction with my desire to objectified.
.
"Please hurt me," I whispered. I hadn't been so direct in years. Exposure to Hibiscus had striped away some of the pretense and self-restriction I had put upon myself for Paladin's benefit. Paladin and I were curled up in my bed, one of the only nights that we were thus. Most nights I went to my room alone, him staying at his computer.
.
His response was just to touch my shoulder gently. His touch said, "You know I can't."
.
I nuzzled his neck and put my lips to his ear and whispered, "I want you to throw me into the wall, bite my neck, and growl into my ear threats that pin me there even more effectively than your body. I want you grind yourself against me, molesting my breasts and my hair. I want to hear you speak in dangerous tones, and feel your anger on me."
.
"Too many directions," Paladin said, deflecting me, as usual.
.
"At least I'm specific," I said, sad and beside myself with need. "At least I know what I want. How many women would know what they wanted and tell you so specifically?"
.
"Not many," he said.
.
I sighed. It was no use. My hips stopped their endless grinding against him. My entire body stilled, the bottled-up hurt in my heart becoming the dominant sensation. I squeezed my eyes shut and buried my face in his neck. I wish Hibiscus was here.
.
I had even fantasized about Hibiscus the last time I'd had sex with Paladin. I'd never done that before; at least, I couldn't recall a time I'd had fantasies about a specific man that I knew while having sex with another.
.
"You told me that the darker aspect of you was disgusted with my fragility and thereby found me useless and wouldn't use me," I said. "You could use that disgust to humiliate and degrade me."
.
He looked thoughtful. "I guess I could have tried that," he admitted. "My desire for violence and my desire for sex are very separate. Control and sex, yes. Violence and sex, no."
.
"Lack of integration," I chided.
.
Paladin lowered his chin, looking at me over the top of his glasses in a sort of give-me-a-break way.
.
"I was being funny," I said, "But also serious. You have all the same aspects in you, they're just combined in different ways than they are in me."
.
"Be thankful my desire for violence is not combined with my sexuality," Paladin said seriously.
.
I pursed my lips. I know you have dark impulses. So do I. And I'm learning to integrate mine instead of repressing them all the time. Won't you play along? Won't you try? Why are you so convinced that your fantasies and mine are incompatible? Can't we do something about this?
.
I'd already given up a long, long time ago. But time and time again, something would spur me to try again. This time it was withdrawal from my Hibiscus-fix. Everything that reminded me of him made either my heart hurt or my cunt throb, or both. It's only been a week, I thought. Perhaps I was doing myself a disservice for not recognizing that I'd only had a few days with him since I had returned from traveling south to visit Paladin's parents and visiting my parents in Snowland before Hibiscus left to visit his parents.
.
Hibiscus thinks I focus too much on how much I enjoy sex with him. But he doesn't realize how agonizing the dynamic I've had with Paladin has been. I hadn't really expected to be experiencing that dynamic anymore. I thought with Hibiscus in my life, I'd stop craving these things from Paladin . . . These things he either can not, or will not, give to me.
.
When I finally got to sleep I was a mess of emotional pain. I woke in nearly the same state.
.
"I need serious processing or serious exploiting today," I said to Paladin after he'd woken up. It was the last day of 2015, and my mind was locked on one thing. I couldn't just "follow my impulses" because all my impulses were the same impulse. Bite him. Scratch him. Make him fight me. Make him hurt me. Beg for it. Ask for it. Get him to play along. There has to be a way. Find it.
.
I expressed my feeling of "stuckness" to him, laying on my purple yoga mat on my bedroom floor.
.
"What does stuckness feel like?" he asked, initiating a process. I ventured through stuckness and made my way to a fear of emptiness.
.
"Where do you feel the emptiness in your body?"
.
"Everywhere," I said. "Except, nowhere, because I don't want to feel the emptiness. It is too scary."
.
"What things are closest to emptiness?"
.
"Everything is equally close," I said, feeling a sense of everything being a painting that was sketched over the emptiness.
.
"There is nothing more far away from the emptiness?"
.
"Sex is farther away," I said.
.
"And what is closest?"
.
I felt around inside myself, trying to find the brink of emptiness. "Video games," I said at last, knowing Paladin would not enjoy that answer.
.
He hesitated for a moment, but then said in a normal tone of voice, completely masking any reaction he had, "What do video games feel like?"
.
"A thread. I'm trying to balance on a thread, and its too small. It will break and I will fall into the emptiness."
.
"Expand the thread," Paladin said. "Watch it expand under your feet until it is large enough to see and feel, large enough to support you."
.
I visualized the white thread growing large enough for my feet to stand on comfortably, and then spreading out several feet wide. It had images on it.
.
"What is the thread made up of?" he asked.
.
"Memories," I whispered, thinking briefly of Hyena. Memories are all I have, Hyena had said to me. They are precious to me. I was thirteen at the time, and I felt the depth in what he said even if I didn't fully grasp it. I felt my throat becoming tight. "Time."
.
And then, without any idea why, I began to cry. The observer in me puzzled over it, trying not to distract me from my emotional release. What am I crying about? How does time form a thin thread that protects me from the emptiness? I didn't have the answers. I settled for having tears.
.
.
Later that day I was still craving violence.
.
"It isn't even sexual," I said, when Paladin remarked on my endless arousal. "I just want to feel . . . used." And useful. Needed. Wanted. I want my space confirmed with my senses, I thought. I want my use to be confirmed with sensation. I want my autonomy stripped away for a time so that I can appreciate what it means to have control of my body and my time. I want to feel the force of your needs, your emotions, so that you become realer to me, truer to me, bigger to me. I want to be taken from myself, taken from my thoughts and reality and brought somewhere else. Hypnotize me by exploiting me. Drag me into subspace unawares, unable to resist.
.
I dragged him into my bed again, needing his touch, whatever I could get of it. He gave me a little pain with a couple minutes of lymphatic body work before his hands became tired. Briefly, while I thought perhaps he was hurting me for the sake of hurting me, I felt a spark go off in my mind, a release of some sort. It was a small nibble of the meal I wanted so desperately to devour.
.
I talked of the things Hibiscus would do to me and how much I enjoyed them. I talked of my fantasies. I talked of splitting myself into two people so that I could do things to myself externally. I hate being stuck inside myself. If I could separate the parts of me out . . .
.
I became so frustrated and aroused that I grabbed my glass toy and liberally applied jojoba oil to it. I put it on the wall and backed up onto it slowly, my body over Paladin on my bed. I mouthed at his belly. Within a minute he had gotten the message and took his pants off. Nothing like the promise of oral sex to get him to be mine, I thought wryly - bitterly.
.
His cock in my mouth, the glass toy in my ass . . . I'm being exploited, I thought, consciously choosing this thought for the excitement it brought me. But I wasn't entirely fooled. I'd initiated the situation, and I had complete control of it.
.
Then he grabbed my dreadlocks and began controlling my pace. Pleasure flooded me even as my scalp hurt from how hard he pulled. He pushed on my shoulders, causing the glass toy to push into me further. I moaned.
.
I touched myself with one hand, and steadied myself with the other. All the sensation and fantasy was there, but I felt my body becoming too tired to orgasm. I pulled away and rested my face on his belly.
.
"Is your neck bothering you?" he asked.
.
"Yes," I said, suddenly feeling like the toy was uncomfortable instead of hot. That frustrated me. I moved to the yoga mat. He followed and put his cock back into my mouth. After another ten or so minutes my mouth was exhausted, and I really didn't want to deal with cum in my mouth anyway.
.
Paladin watched me spit into my compost bag and wipe my hands. He said, "I'm going to take a shower."
.
"Don't leave me!" I cried.
.
"Come with me," he said.
.
I stood, highly aware of the weight of the toy inside me, and followed. Once in the bathroom I bent over the sink and continued touching myself. Paladin watched me. I backed myself up against him. He touched the toy and I moaned. He started to spank me gently, causing the toy to shift in me. I moaned with each slap.
.
Taking his time he slapped a little harder, and began to pull on the toy a little. Finally he began to pull it slowly out, and push it slowly back in. On the seventh time or so pushing it back in I orgasmed, screaming and shaking, my entire body lighting up inside like fireworks.
.
Afterward I pulled out the toy and joined Paladin under the hot water of the shower. For one of the few times in our relationship, I looked at him with utter satisfaction. It was hard to get, and time consuming, and usually involved oral sex and touching myself, but on occasion we had a sexual encounter that left me ravaged, breathless, demure and delighted. This was definitely one of those times.