Unegotiated Exagerations

By Anonymous with names changed

She pressed the sweaty padding of her fingers into the leather bound handle of a cheaply articulated whip When she told me that she'd be willing to attend the Halloween party if she could be a dominatrix, and though I was yet to be told that my presence as her submissive was the prop that made it "work," I naturally acquiesced. After all, our relationship had largely been built upon my unfailing willingness to humor her every whim. I missed the irony as I sat dismantling spiked costume jewelry and wallet chains, conglomerating remnants of goth and punk phases into an absurd attempt to fain her command. The night ended in the only way it could have: my dragging three socially petrified bodies by the chain fastened around my neck in retreat from the intimidation of the crowd.

When I reflect on the past, the texture of drifting maple leaves camouflages my memories of a 24/7 DS (Dominant/submissive) relationship I participated in without even realizing much less negotiating it.

She was experiencing emotional turmoil, combating memories of her abusive childhood through bing and purge sessions punctuated by bouts of extreme social anxiety. Newly returned from a season of volunteer work abroad, I was drawn to her in part by the parallels between our pasts and in part by the desperate conviction that I could proved how different we were by feeding my own craving to take care of everyone else but myself. Micheal's lighthearted chuckle balanced out my austere sense of obligation as we became the parents she never had.

Micheal and I would take turns walking her as she stopped leaving her room alone. We brought her three meals more a day than she was willing to eat. We decided whose bed she would find comfort in when she suffered from night terrors. We discussed strategies for convincing her to depart from the cloistered comfort of her room. Two virtual strangers lingered into the night arguing about what was best for her. Even white knights clash sometimes.

There was a total power exchange guiding and shaping the relationship that we all managed to remain ignorant of despite its glaring obviousness. She gradually gave up all agency in her life, her choice subsumed by her profound insecurities. Accordingly, we were there to pick up all the slack we allowed her, structuring our lives around what we instructed her that she needed. Availability had new meanings.

She got sexually assaulted, for it seemed her knack for perpetual vulnerability attracted two types of people: those who feel compelled to caregive and those who feel compelled to take advantage. In the aftermath, I found myself restraining Jeremy even while I snarled at the assailant from across the lunch room. Despite my skipping class to drive her to the Crisis Center and AA meetings, her eating disorder worsened. When I began to evaluate the life that had so quickly become identical with my own, I realized how her whole life was a succession of unhealthy power exchanges.

In her lucid moments, she could tell you how she grasped for some illusion of control through her addictions. If she felt like she had no control over her life, it was because she had learned to establish relationships exclusively through giving away as much of it away as she could.I was enabling her to give up on herself even as I was trying to prove to her that I wouldn't.

I realized that my willingness to put together the fragments of her life was contributing other increasing unwillingness to do that for herself.

I used to think that DS relationships were merely exaggerations of the relationships we all form everyday, but sometimes it seems that they about negotiating the exaggerations that are there whether you acknowledge them or not...