Why Male Dominance is Scary…

I am anonymous. Anonymity gives me the freedom to be honest. And so now I’m going to tell you why my wife’s desire to allow me to dominate and have control scares the ever-living hell out of me. Some of you will probably think I’m a dick for this, and I don’t blame you — I’ve spent years running over this in my head, and I think I’m a dick.

My first real sex experience — and by that I mean, the first girl I ever had sex with, if you want to define it as oral and the like, you’ve got to go back a few girls and a couple of years earlier — was with a girl who had a lot of issues. I’ve spoken about how she handled her first glimpse of my cock and how it screwed me up for a while, but now I’ll describe how sex worked for us.

The first time we had sex, we were making out, getting hot and heavy and petting, and I started asking her to have sex with me. Most of the new vistas in sex that I experienced were always prefaced by my pleading, since she had been sexually active since she was 12 — we were both about 15 or 16 — and that knowledge gave her a lot of power. Power over me, power over how sex worked, and power over the direction our relationship took. I remember my first time as being really, really disappointing, because after I begged for us to have sex, she let me penetrate her for about — oh, say 30 seconds — and then told me to pull it out. Then, she crowed about how that was my virginity.

I told her I didn’t even get to come, and she said, “It doesn’t matter, that was your virginity. I took your cherry.” She seemed…happy…that it was such a letdown for me, that my furtive wriggling barely got a groove going before she told me to pull it out. Still, I was 16, and that was sex, so I celebrated, despite my sure knowledge that, you know, it could have been more. (I had a female best friend, and when I told her how it went down, she seemed…not horrified, but sad for me, and angry at my girlfriend.)

That’s how sex went for us — I think, out of the ten or so times we did it, I was allowed to come twice. Most of the time, I penetrated and thrusted until she reached some inner place of satisfaction, and then I was told to pull my cock out. Once when she told me to pull out, I stopped thrusting but started pleading to be allowed to finish, and she pushed me off her and kicked me in the groin. The sight of me on the floor, in pain, seemed to excite her, and soon she was on top of me, riding me.

(I have never thought about this relationship in BDSM contexts until today, but there seems to be some obvious subtext in both our actions throughout it.)

Sex was always initiated by me begging after the first time. “Please, sweetie?” And she would say, “No.” And then I’d give up and we’d go back to making out, and we’d get hot and heavy again, and I’d start grinding my cock against her panties and she’d start thrusting back, and I’d ask again, and she’d say no. When I got frustrated and gave up, relenting in my pursuit of penetration, it seemed to drive her on — she’d start becoming very aggressive and sexual until I asked again, at which point she’d pull back and I’d get a cocky “no.” Eventually, after about an hour of this constant cycle of teasing and excitement and denial, she’d say yes, and I’d put my cock inside her, and we’d have what passed for sex for a couple of minutes, and then she’d tell me to stop.

One day, she had me at a peak, and I asked for sex, and she said no, and I kept grinding, and I asked, and she said no. But this time, I realized right as I was about to penetrate, that I was grinding much harder than usual — I was being much more forceful than usual — and her last “no” had taken on a panicked quality, not the normal in-control chiding weariness. She didn’t sound like her normal self, pushing an eager puppy off her leg, she sounded frightened. And I pulled away, and realized that this time, I’d been rougher and more insistent and, sure in the knowledge that like every other time, she’d say “Yes,” I had kept pushing and hadn’t pulled back, as usual, until the whole thing got…uncomfortably close to rape, for my taste.

And I hated that. I hated myself. I hated the look in her eyes, the loss of trust between us, the fear in her eyes that I didn’t listen, the shame I felt, I hated all of it. Our relationship had a twisted, dysfunctional dynamic, and we were poisonous for one another, but that day was just…bad. It wasn’t rape, but I had lost control, and if I hadn’t caught myself, in another minute or two it would have been. And I hated myself for it.

And after that, I didn’t trust myself to be forceful. I didn’t let myself be aggressive and pushy. If a girl said, “No,” I’d stop the whole session, or at least pull way back to simple necking. The next couple of girlfriends that I was comfortable enough to be sexual with were sex-abuse victims, and the hesitancy they had — caused by what they’d experienced — mirrored my own reluctance to be forceful. They got to take charge, which made them comfortable with their own exploration of me, and I got to be passive and not push, which kept me from having to worry about losing control or being too pushy. I had a very healthy, very fun sexual growth spurt with those girls, and they seemed to grow a lot and trust more because of it. And when I told them about my night with my ex, they all assured me I wasn’t “like that.” But I knew I was…or could have been, if not for a split second realization of how far I’d gone.

I know male dominance is cloaked in safe words and trust and communication, but when I think about taking charge, when I think about having control, the part of me that gets off on it is quickly pushed back into its cage, because of that day with my ex and the way I ignored “no” and kept pushing. I know the two things have nothing to do with each other — the way I acted on that afternoon all those years ago and healthy male dominant D/s — but somehow, they’re all tied together in my head and in a knot and when I think about being forceful, having rough sex, humiliating my partner, all I feel is a massive sense of shame for that day.

And I want to get over it. Because my wife wants me to be able to dominate her. But I don’t know how, or even if I should.