Thursday, June 7, 2012

The healing embrace of a good relationship

We like to cuddle. He wraps his arms and his leg around me and I'm wrapped in his body, his warmth, his love. I can feel it, that love, as it responds to mine.  It's a sort of pulsing power source, and it's amazing. It takes my love, amplifies it, sends it back to me in waves. We're connected by it as surely and irrevocably as any physical tie. More so.

"Can you feel it too? Is it just me?" I ask him, sometimes. I'm convinced that I could be crazy, or just tuned to a different emotional wavelength than everyone else.

"I think I can feel it too, love," he assures me. We make happy noises, wrapped up together like that, and I feel like the luckiest, most loved woman in the world. I talk a lot about how amazing he feels to me, to the point I worry that I talk about it too much.

"I like to hear your love," he says, allaying my fears for the umpteenth time.

I could feel that power source a month into our relationship, when he was thousands of miles away from me, an ocean between us, and we'd never met in person, 12 years ago. I could feel it. I wrote him an email about it.

Amidst a sea of rambling, trying to feel my way to my point by writing there, I got to this:
I'm frightened at the depth of the feelings I have for you. I mean. . . Gah. I usually feel things deeply, but. . . This. . . this is. . . gah. Suffusing my entire being. . . not that I didn't feel sort of that way before, with him. I did, else he couldn't have hurt me so badly - and twice! - but it was. . . different. This is..... gah. I keep saying gah like you know what I'm trying to say. Sometimes. . . Sometimes, I just want to devour you. 
Okay. . . I don't really want to sound corny, but. . . the thing is, I can feel your feelings coming back at me. . . I mean, as opposed to having these feelings and dumping them into this giant black hole, and losing all this energy due to it, it's like a whole other power source. That frightens me a bit too, because I'm not really sure of the whys of it. . . Not that I'm not glad of it, I am, but.... I.. mmf. I don't think I deserve it. 
We'd known each other for some time, but the relationship was new. It terrified me, seeing as how in my previous relationship, all the love had come from me, into the other guy, and sort of died there. New relationship energy, you'll say, but it wasn't. It's only grown stronger, so that now when we are together, it just pulses there, a bright thread of love and life and contentment and true, honest-to-goodness happiness.

It healed me, that love. I was seriously heartbroken, not that long before we got together, and pretty damaged from the treatment I'd received in that previous relationship.

He was so incredibly sweet, patient, and good, that when I began to reveal my true needs - my submissive nature, my need to be dominated - he didn't balk. He has accepted every single kink I've revealed to him as if it's just a thing people do. He's amazing, and even when I was struggling with him being a nice guy, with wanting him to have more demands of me, he handled me beautifully.

How can two people who've never met be so connected? How could those threads pulling us together, connecting us across all those miles and all that water, even exist?

I'm convinced we were made for each other. Over the years, we'd been friendly acquaintances, always too distracted by other things going on and, of course, for me anyway, by the extreme distance. I once asked a friend: "Why couldn't I have fallen in love with someone like him?", due to his extreme sweetness and niceness and general all around great person-ness. Another time, another friend suggested I get together with him, and I laughed. "Hahaha, right, me and him, sure." I felt confident in making that into a joke, because I had spent a lot of time with him. We'd spoken on the phone. We kept winding up alone together in various instances. The universe was trying to tell us something, but we weren't listening. We weren't ready to listen.

But... it wasn't such a joke, after all. We even talked about it later, something trying to get us together. He put it well.

"It's like something was saying look, you'll be good together, and that's that."

Something kept telling us that. It's kind of amazing, considering the many hour time difference between us, that we were ever around at the same time at all, to be honest. For it to keep happening, over and over?

Surely there's some design in that. Or our souls just pulled to each other, furiously, irresistibly, despite our conscious selves ignoring it. He was pulled to me so fiercely that he crawled out of the womb early to be born just after I was.

We're meant for each other. Yes, I really, really believe that. I'm not sure everyone has a missing part of themselves out there in the world, but we did.

Submitting to this man is not always easy, but it does tend to be, because he adores me. What he wants is our mutual happiness and the health of our relationship, and for us to be together for a long, long time. Ideally forever, though the both of us realize that's not terribly likely to happen. The choices he makes, the things he asks from me, make both of us better, because - here's the awesome part for me - he's a better person than I am.

I've become a much better person in the time I've been married to him, so that that may not even be true anymore, but if it's not? It's all thanks to him.

I once struggled with wanting him to want more, in these endless cycles, infinite loops where I would resolve to be okay with it, but then the need to be overpowered kept coming back. I'd spend whole months perfectly fine and then I'd rebel, and after years of that, in large part thanks to spewing out my inner turmoil on this blog, I had a realization: Just submit. Just do it. Show him what it can be like. So I began to look for little ways to please him, making "I'll do whatever you want," a reality, not just inside the bedroom. If he asks me for something, whether it's a cup of water or a particular dinner or to go for a walk with him, I try my darnedest to give it to him.

Then the magical thing started to happen: he responded. He responded beautifully. I gave more without him forcing so hard, and then he became more comfortable taking. The thing I was missing all those years was the way he works, while I'd been so focused on how I work. I should have noticed it. It's been there all along. He's quiet, but he dominates the way a gentle stream can cut channels into rock if given enough time. It's even the way our relationship started: he was just there, until I couldn't imagine him not being there anymore. He's slow, but especially now, pretty damned sure of himself, and I am softer, more yielding to him.

I once told Kitty that submission feels like softness - and that's what it feels like for me. I just stopped struggling so bloody hard and let it happen, let him dominate the way he can dominate, because a submissive who's always trying to shape her dominant is not being submissive. My periodic internal struggles arose from the fact that I was trying to submit to an idea of dominance rather than the very real kind he was giving me, from the fact that I was an oxymoron in myself and my submissive nature balked at it.

The power that I give him in this power exchange we're in becomes a part of that power source that binds us together, is fed with our love, and feeds it back to both of us, restoring us from the ravages of living in the world. I give him the power, but it feeds both of us with positive energy. It's beautiful.

He is my jasmine. He's gently intoxicating, unassuming yet overpowering. He surrounds me and I breathe him in and my life is infinitely better, happier, for having done so.

I can't imagine being happier in a relationship. Being wrapped in him makes everything better, even if it's just for the time we spend cuddled together, though often enough it lasts well beyond those moments. It's literally a healing embrace, and I'm delighted and feel like the best-cared-for woman alive to be able to experience it so often.

23 comments:

  1. " I just stopped struggling so bloody hard and let it happen, let him dominate the way he can dominate, because a submissive who's always trying to shape her dominant is not being submissive."

    erm how is it you say so eloquently the thoughts that are scrambling around in my brain?

    OK i'm having a particularly bad couple of days. but still... I just wrote about my own version of forcing the Domination from BIKSS.

    and then realising i shouldn't push him. and when I stopped wanting I realised he has been asking more and more of me consistently and i was too damned full of myself to notice.

    women! eh?

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    1. The cycles I describe were much like you're talking about - resigned acquiescence, rising need, struggle, struggle, resign. Yeah. Then I took a look at him and thought "wtf am I talking about?"

      Glad to be of use. :)

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  2. "Can you feel it too? Is it just me?" I've asked Musicman those exact same words before, very early on in our relationship. I feel that same kind of energy with him, it cycles through us both and grows and grows and it feeds the relationship.

    I find it interesting that you don't think it is likely that you will be together forever. I have never considered anything but being with Musicman forever.

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    1. It's amazing, and I'm almost 100% sure it's not a terribly common thing, just based on my observations of people.

      No no, you read me wrong. What I meant was, one day, we'll die, and we won't be together LIKE THIS anymore. Actually, when we were planning to be married, my husband said to me that he didn't like the whole "'til death do we part" aspect of marriage, as "It feels too limiting." Love him. :)

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    2. When I say forever, I mean forever, I don't believe death will part us either. I guess maybe I think of it more like your hubby in that respect :)

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    3. We're kind of on the same page then. I believe that too - but in the post I was just referring to the way we're together now.

      Funny, I said to him the other day - "It must be frustrating to be married to a dead person, though."

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  3. Submission is softness is actually the best thing I have ever learned here (blog land). When I can access the softness, I know I am doing it right.

    I love this post so much. (And the tag sappy, btw.) Especially because you touch on something that isn't always blatantly mentioned - that love returned grows truer and stronger than love that is only given. When two feed off of each other, it can only get better.

    :)

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    1. Usually when I write, it all just comes flowing. This was a bitch to write in a cohesive, non-rambly sort of way, as you know, so I'm really glad it turned out well.

      Returned love really does make such a huge difference. You may think you have enough love for both of you, but all that does is wear you out.

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  4. So much happiness in this post! If only you could bottle this and dispense it to the needy, think how much good you could do in the world!

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    1. I do what I can, Jake. Glad to know it expresses the proper emotions. :)

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  5. What a beautiful fierce song you sing in tribute of your love. The universe hums with it now.

    How can two people who've never met be so connected. I don't know but I am. I doubt we'll ever meet but I can never stop hoping we will. Because that connectedness, yes, it's telling you something.

    Heartstopping beautiful, this.

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    1. That's confusing. I doubt I'll ever meet Him, but I can't stop hoping.

      Not that I don't feel quite connected to you as well in such a short time. And thank you for Twitfollowing me back. I'll probably never be on when you are but at least I'm no longer completely untethered. :)

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    2. Oh, wow, thank you.

      Is the doubtful nature of your meeting due to other obligations you both have? I was so young when I met my husband that the only thing in our way, truly, was money. Immigration too, but you get that.

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  6. I just happened upon your blog, and this post has blown me away. You have expressed so eloquently what I have struggled to try to express at times myself. It is when we stop striving so hard to be submissive and simply begin to please that we finally feel our submissive nature to its fullest. The way you have explained and described the way your man is and the way you finally reached the softness of submission rather than the struggle is exactly how my Padrone and I are now. He is the patient, easygoing man who simply wants what he wants but will not take what is not offered. I am the submissive woman who finally learned to offer all I am, and that one change has made a world of difference in our relationship, in who I am, and in how he is as well.

    I think that shift came as I trusted that he loves me as I had always yearned to be loved...for myself, as myself. He didn't see me as the person I see myself as being - he sees me as so much more, and he sees me as the person who completes him. When I finally started looking beyond my own nose and realized a lot of things I felt stupid for not realizing before, I was able to shift into being the submissive who knows she is pleasing just as she is.

    Hard to put into words, but you did so in a way that has resonated strongly with me. I will be back to read more! Thank you for sharing so openly and so beautifully.

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    1. Wow. Thank you.

      It's odd how you can struggle so to give more - "Ask more of me, I can prove myself!" - while not really realizing how contrary and exhausting that is to the other side.

      Fair warning - mostly I write sex.

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    2. She does mostly write sex, and it is pretty amazing sex at that. But I butted in to say that I know you worked hard on this one, and the results were wonderful, so I for one, would be happy to see more of this from you. ;)

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    3. I try to avoid treading the ground so many others have already gone over. Given a topic I might have a unique perspective on, though, I don't mind running with it.

      So, y'know. :)

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  7. It's nice to read some good news these days. Genuine happiness seems to be too few and far in between...

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    1. There's a lot of it out there in the world, but as a percentage of everything? Not so much, really. Kind of hard to come across, indeed.

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  8. Well, I like all of your writing. This one is different yet it seems like it was time for you to share what you feel. There are people who will never experience what you have. Luckily you see what you have and you appreciate it. I can also see the trust that you have in him. Softness feels safe, enjoy!

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  9. Oh, thank you! I have a fair few like this, but the other kind tend to swamp them just a bit.

    "Not one couple in a century has that chance, no matter what the storybooks say." - We both feel like that. :)

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  10. Conina, I'm catching up on your posts so sorry I'm late here. I just have to say I loved this post. Its beautiful the way you've expressed yourself here. You've also given me a fair bit to think about. Maybe opened my eyes a tiny bit (ok maybe more than a tiny bit.... again :) to how I try to 'shape' things to fit with me! I'll be going away to think on this more lol!

    Dee x

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    1. Dee, it happens to all of us. Sometimes my feed reader doesn't show me updated posts until everyone else has already had their say and I'm like, humph! I don't mind comments on anything though, no matter how old it is, it's always good to know someone's thoughts on a topic.

      Thank you for the lovely compliment. :) We all have to shape things to suit us to a certain degree, it's true. Communicate communicate communicate, right? But finding the moment when we can stop trying to shape what will happen, and let our top half shine in his own right, can be a struggle.

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