Is it all about me?

So, my last post got my wife and I talking.  And as I posted in the comments section, one of the things she said to me was, “If it’s all about me, what if I don’t want to be mean to you?” And she’s right.  

If she wants to be a kind and adorable cutie-pie while whipping the living shit out of me, if I’m the one subbing and making such a big noise about how happy I am when it’s all about her will, her wishes — I should take it.   I have no idea how it would work, but that’s neither here nor there — if I’m trumpeting about how my happiness is centered on obeying her wishes, then they should be her wishes.  Not mine.  I should be content with who she is, who she wants to be, and let that drive us.  

But of course, the reality is that it’s partly about me.  I mean, we wouldn’t be even experimenting with bondage and sado-masochism and domination and submission if I hadn’t broached it.  It’s wonderful, happy, once-in-a-lifetime luck that my wife gets off on it as much as I do, but there’s no ignoring that the reason why we’re falling down the rabbit-hole is I took us to the edge and then pushed us.  That doesn’t give me a right to drive the relationship — my submissiveness wouldn’t allow it — but it shows how elusive the ideal of it being “all about her,” or “not about me,” is.

But, unraveling the knot still further, one of the issues I have is that, frankly, as I said in yesterday’s post, my wife is mean when we play.  She’s cold and confident and likes to hurt me.  She calls me names when we’re playing.  She curses at me.  There is, no matter how much she and I deny it, a very real element of humiliation involved in all this.  When we both agree that we don’t want her to humiliate me, we’re not saying, “Don’t humiliate me,” we’re saying, “Don’t humiliate me more than we think I can take.”  Being a slave, cleaning her feet with my tongue, crawling on the floor, walking five paces behind her when she wants me to, wearing a collar and having her pull on it and twist it in her hands until my throat tightens, having her peg me while calling me a slut and a bitch, teasing me into begging for more blows while she belts my ass and my back, pissing on me, all of that — there’s a very real element of humiliation there.  Like, there’s pee involved, so there must be, because peeing is fundamentally about marking your territory and it’s a bad fluid, not a good one, and all of that.  But it’s in our comfort zone.  Cuckolding would also be humiliating, but it’s way, way, way, way outside of that comfort zone.     

She doesn’t like the adjective mean, because she associates it with real-world meanness, not consensual-between-two-adults-meanness-that-results-in-both-of-them-having-mind-blowing-orgasms.  And that makes me marvel about how much a little pocket-universe BDSM is, where within that universe my wife can be the Wicked Queen after a day of singing Christmas songs with our three-year old daughter, or where I can spend the day being the center of attention and beating folks into submission at my job, and then slide into the role of somebody who quietly licks his wife’s boots while she whips his ass with a belt.  Within the closet we’ve made for ourselves, she can be mean and unafraid of what somebody thinks, because the person she’s being mean to — me — loves it.  Would pay money for it.  And within that same closet, I can be servile and let somebody else be the center of attention and allow myself to be hurt without having to worry about hurting back or who’s winning, because it’s not about competition, it’s about letting somebody else do the driving. 

And more than that, we’re both slowly letting it out of the closet.  My wife got a massive promotion to an executive position at her agency just before we began this, and the strength she demonstrates with me at home is showing itself in socially acceptable ways at her work.  She’s tough but still caring and kind.  And me, the blissed out calm I get when I submit has helped me relax in other parts of my life, helped me to accept things and then work on changing them rather than instantly locking horns with other parties.  In our personal life, too — my wife told me she dreams now about men doting on her and desiring her, dreams about threesomes between her, another man, and me.  She’s letting herself be the center of attention, the star of the show.  And me, I find myself willing to follow her where-ever she wants to go with this.  (And by that I mean, within our comfort level, of course.)   

Soo…I don’t know. It’s definitely partly about me. I suspect the clothing I just bought for her is more for me than her, but when she puts it on and feels clothed and confident and desired, it becomes about her. Nothing’s clear cut — ha! that should be the title of this blog — the lines are blurry, what starts out about me becomes about her, what starts out about her becomes about me, and in those hazy gray areas, I suppose it’s about “us.” And that’s good. That’s what it should be about.