The Real Us

Are we into BDSM because it lets us reveal our real personalities, or are we into BDSM because it lets us pretend to be different people than we really are?

I suspect the question is badly framed — I think personalities are more than simple black-and-white, this-or-that phenomena. But I’ve been thinking about this question as I struggle with my own identity.

During the day, my goal is to be strong, driven and successful. I don’t mind conflict. I don’t mind being the center of attention. I kind of naturally attract it. I’m funny, I’m smart, I’m personable. This isn’t me bragging — it’s just kind of who I am. I can trace those personality traits directly to my father, and even though my mother kept me away from him for the first 18 years of my life, I ended up just like him anyway. I have some major social anxieties, but I’ve learned to push past them and be a very gregarious person. I am, for want of a better word, the center of attention.

My wife is the opposite — she’s socially adept, sweet, charming, gracious, but she’s not the center of attention. She’s happy to linger at the periphery, to let me run the show, to let me be in the spotlight. I don’t necessarily want to be in the spotlight — I like not having to carry the social scene. But it’s just the way things roll out. My wife is, IMO, the most wonderful, charming woman on the planet, at turns intelligent, funny, insightful, compassionate, and equipped with a biting wit. But my wife came from a family environment where her mother and sister demanded the spotlight — they were impossible to deal with if their needs didn’t have primacy, if the focus wasn’t on them. This carried over into my wife’s friendships, too — my wife was always the best friend to the really pretty vivacious girl, or the best friend to the loud, driven girl. My wife was happy being co-pilot or passenger. And my wife evolved to basically function in that kind of environment, hiding her candle inside a bushel basket.

And the thing is, when we’re playing, my wife becomes the kind of person she should have always been: she becomes the center of attention. She runs the show. All of those qualities she dampens down on in front of her family or her old friends come to the fore — the control, the assurance, the humor, the strength to let the entire scene rest on her. Her personality becomes more dominant, more there.

And I drift off to the side. I don’t worry about entertaining or being insightful or making sure everybody’s happy. I get carried off in my wife — my Mistress’ — wake. Our roles switch completely, and then increase by degrees until she’s not just the center of the attention, but the only thing that matters, and I’m not just comfortable being passive, but I’m also utterly willing to allow her to annihilate me. It’s absolute — I happily, willingly, give over utter control and focus to her. We don’t just switch roles — we switch roles and then let those roles become far more powerful. As husband and wife, she doesn’t disappear, at all, but as Mistress and slave, I — I disappear .

And part of me regrets that it can’t be like this all of the time. Part of me would love to just give in to that notion and just let her drive the relationship, let her be the personality that moves us in whatever direction she wants. There’s a deep-seated part of me that wants to just obey her and sublimate my own self into her self. To be strong and driven and successful at work, but the minute the tie is off and the suit’s hanging in a closet, to just be her husband — to be identified by my role in her life. To give up our friends and our current social framework and exchange it for one in which nobody knows that I was ever the center of attention, or that she was ever happy letting someone else be the focus of the conversation.

I’d love to do that this week. I’d love to just spend the week riding in her wake. Letting her control and drive and dictate. Being her pet, being her junior partner, existing in her shadow. Letting her pick my food off of the menu, her telling me what’s appropriate behavior in her presence, correcting me when she wants to.

But would it really be letting the real me out, the real her run the show? Or is it just roleplaying? When she becomes the Evil Queen is that the real her? Is it just an act? When my eyes roll up into the back of my head as she pegs me and I get a visceral, pleasurable rush as she calls me a whore, is that the real me? Are these sides of our personalities that we’ve kept tied down and repressed, or are we just letting loose and play acting? Could we sustain these roles permanently? Could we live in them?

It doesn’t matter. I ask these questions because it’s my nature to worry through issues and discuss them out loud, and by doing so realize that they don’t really matter. We have a good time. We’re happy in our new roles. They suit us, and only time will tell if they’re the real us, some buried facet of ourselves, or just fancy dress-up we play when we get tired of being who we are.