Love let­ters: The first day

Last night, Gen­tle­Spirit asked if it would be okay for her to pub­lish some of our ear­li­est cor­re­spon­dence. Mag­nan­i­mously I waved my hand in a royal ges­ture of indul­gence. Read­ing it, I lost myself in the past as her post took me back in time and I decided to share it here as well. We enter hers and my dia­logue after our ini­tial hel­los and me point­ing her to this blog.

Gen­tle­Spirit:

Wow… what a day. I did lit­er­ally spend 2 hours read­ing and reading.

I read many, with many more to go but I was on emo­tional over­load. The one that got to me was “Sadis­tic Love.” It was such a strange reac­tion, both emo­tion­ally and phys­i­cally. I am only now com­ing down from it, FACT.

I felt as if I had a fever, am still very warm. My face com­pletely flushed, my neck/​chest red and blotchy, breath­ing irreg­u­lar. I have been doing breath­ing exer­cises since. I am con­fused by this reac­tion and maybe it is just the inten­sity of the content.

You are very deep, hon­est and raw. There is no need to say I’m sorry or thank you… I am just being very hon­est with you about my thoughts and feelings.

Dreamwalker:

Ahh… “Sadis­tic Love” is one of the first things I wrote after I “came out” to myself. I was in such tur­moil and all the long­ing and urges and hunger were boil­ing over inside me. It’s the one piece that will make me kinda misty-​eyed when I re-​read it. All the emo­tions come back when I read it. It’s like a post­card sent from me to me.

The con­tent is pretty intense, I agree; you are essen­tially see­ing my foot­prints going through my own jour­ney. Many pieces are writ­ten just because I couldn’t hold them in any longer, like “The Power of a Sub­mis­sive Woman” or “Suf­fer­ing Love,” to name some recent ones. Oth­ers are in response to other people’s writ­ing or ques­tions or com­ments or sim­ply them act­ing as muses.

I love that you had this strong phys­i­cal reac­tion to read­ing. I can’t wait to answer your ques­tions and to cor­re­spond with you. I want to know what you think and what you feel.

Gen­tle­Spirit:

I want to tell you that I have never ever in my entire life talked with another human being about this…

I do iden­tify with this, and I am sure it is why I have reacted to it. I have never ever con­sid­ered myself in any way Masochis­tic… then I have never put a lot of thought into it. Maybe it’s shame, maybe not.

On the other hand I fear pain. I am not a cut­ter, never have been. I have, though, in times of emo­tional pain… dug my nails into myself until I drew blood, bit myself, pulled my hair so hard to be in the moment, stop the noise, just feel some­thing dif­fer­ent in times of emo­tional pain, and I have never said it out loud or in an email or any other way.

So… there is my con­fes­sion. Strange that I am telling a stranger, but after read­ing your words, you don’t feel like a stranger. I guess we are all on a jour­ney of self aware­ness on some level.

I do have ques­tions but right now I don’t know what they are because I haven’t been able to clear my head. I will try again another time. I just wanted to say all that, and I trust it will stay only with you.

Dreamwalker:

No, my dear Gen­tle­Spirit; I don’t feel like a stranger, do I? The fact that my writ­ing affects you means that you and I are cut of the same cloth in one way or another. You are not like me but you have the tools to see me and to understand.

I assure you; this is your secret, it’s not mine to give away. I am not going to betray your trust.

I know many masochists that hate pain. Per­son­ally, I make a dis­tinc­tion between masochists and pain-​sluts. Pain-​sluts get turned on by pain; some orgasm from pain. Masochists, on the other hand, feel pain just like me; the dif­fer­ence is that they can use that pain to shape their emo­tions. They can use that pain to expe­ri­ence an emo­tional jour­ney. They can most def­i­nitely use that pain to com­bat emo­tional pain, like fight­ing fire with fire.

It may be hard for a masochist to fig­ure out them­selves some­times. They may hate the pain but at the same time they may crave it for some unfath­omable rea­son. They may dread the pain yet they find that their body responds with sex­ual arousal to it. They may think that they are insane when they sub­mit to it yet they find that when it’s all done, they feel more alive and more con­nected with them­selves than ever before.

Have you ever had a lover hurt you inten­tion­ally while hav­ing sex? It can be as sim­ple as bit­ing you while kiss­ing you pas­sion­ately, or pinch­ing your nip­ples, or spank­ing you. If so, how did you feel at the time? How did you feel afterwards?

If you can use pain as you described to dull emo­tional pain, you can also use pain in good ways, to cre­ate good, com­pelling emo­tions. It’s just a mat­ter of you want­ing and dar­ing to try it. Note that I’m not try­ing to talk you into it; I’m only say­ing that it is pos­si­ble for you to explore—in your own time and at your own speed—that aspect of you safely and that there are peo­ple that think that masochists are the most beau­ti­ful and mag­i­cal crea­tures alive.

I sense that you have a lot of think­ing to do before you will make up your mind about explor­ing that part of you fur­ther and I will be happy to answer any ques­tions that you may have.

Gen­tle­Spirit:

Thank you, Dreamwalker, for your insight. Please do not feel the need to tell me that you are not try­ing to talk me into any­thing. I know this. It would never cross my mind because while I do have a very strong sub­mis­sive nature, I am also an inde­pen­dent thinker, and believe me, my need to self pre­serve is prob­a­bly the strongest instinct I have.

Nobody could “talk me into” any­thing I didn’t want to do, so regard­less what is said between us, I will never think that. please speak freely with me, and offer your input. I will either accept it or reject it if I feel it is inac­cu­rate. I enjoy the exchange.

To answer your ques­tion, yes I have asked lovers to inflict pain, albeit mild in the past. In my last rela­tion­ship, I told my part­ner that I wanted him to slap me across the face as hard as he could which he did while we were hav­ing sex. He hated it, I loved it. He never did it again.

I also liked to be pinched, bit­ten, hair pulling. I even asked him to act out a rape scene with me, which he tried but was imme­di­ately turned off by the whole thing. It actu­ally was the begin­ning of the end of our rela­tion­ship.

Funny, at the time, and up until this moment, I felt it was just being a lit­tle kinky. Now, I think maybe it was more. I don’t know where the line from D/​s crosses over to S/​M. How far does it have to go? Is it a grad­ual jour­ney? I am not sure about it.

You are the first per­son I have ever talked to about this side, and I cer­tainly have never revealed the info in my ear­lier email to any­one. I never gave it much thought, but then putting it together with the stuff from my rela­tion­ship, then maybe there is some­thing to it.

I am for sure not a pain slut. I know this much. The rest I just don’t know. It is more com­pli­cated again as I don’t even want to think about it, to decide. It’s all part of my desire to sub­mit, I just want some­one else to deal with it, some­one I trust com­pletely. Like you said in your writ­ing, turn off the crit­i­cal mind.

I want to sur­ren­der to some­one who will love me in return for that sur­ren­der. I no longer want to be a slave to my mind. Does this make any sort of sense? I feel like I am speak­ing a for­eign lan­guage.

Dreamwalker:

Ahh, yes, bit­ing, hair pulling, and pinch­ing while kiss­ing her is the way I express my affec­tion for her. I don’t think I can kiss a woman I am attracted to with­out her walk­ing away with bruises, a burn­ing scalp, ten­der nip­ples and tou­sled hair. Not that I have had any com­plaints so far.

I espe­cially love it when the lady tells me later (or emails me from work) and relates how she can’t turn her head with­out feel­ing the bite marks or that she can’t move with­out her nip­ples burn­ing against her bra. It’s like I’m with her the whole day.

It is a for­eign lan­guage to me when you say that your part­ner hated slap­ping you across the face. I under­stand the words but they don’t com­pute. How could he feel that way? How could it not make him want to jump you that much more?

I know, I know… I work a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ently from other guys.

But what you are say­ing makes all the sense in the world to me. You want (or need) to sur­ren­der, to let go of the buzzing in your mind and to have some­one else take the wheel while you focus on feel­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing. I know that very well. I have the same want and need, only from the per­fectly com­ple­men­tary position.

I need to con­trol my lover. Not as in hav­ing her fetch my drinks or bathe me (although I wouldn’t mind) but as in see­ing her sur­ren­der in her eyes and feel­ing her trust that I will look out for her while she gives her­self to me. And I’m arro­gant enough to think that me tak­ing what I want from her is sat­is­fy­ing for her too. In so many ways I actu­ally live the expe­ri­ence through her.

She’s the hub, if you will, and I am the rim. That is where I want her; in the cen­ter where every­thing comes together, where she is shielded from con­tact with the road, where she is con­nected with me in all direc­tions with rib­bons of light from her heart to mine.

I can’t imag­ine any­thing more beau­ti­ful and emo­tion­ally sat­is­fy­ing than the female sur­ren­der­ing to me because she’s found me wor­thy of her sur­ren­der and get to shield her and pos­sess her—love her—because of that very sur­ren­der. I want her to tell me to take her, to do with her as I will, because she trusts me to keep her safe and to use her for both ours plea­sure. To use her, to pos­sess her, to make her mine.

I am per­fectly open with my dis­po­si­tion for rough sex. Or vio­lently ten­der sex. Not angry sex but pri­mal sex, aggres­sive in its pas­sion. It’s about want­ing to be so close to your lover that you will go through her skin just to get inside her. I’m sure that you will get a sense of my almost des­per­ate need for inti­macy with the lady in my writing.

I like to say that I shy away from the “dom­i­nant” label because I feel that it does not con­vey the forces that drive me. Even though I cer­tainly take the dom­i­nant role, obe­di­ence does not move me nearly as strongly as forc­ing my lover’s sur­ren­der and shap­ing her emo­tions and expe­ri­ence with my inti­mate touch.

I am not a remote, clin­i­cal sadist, although I do have my “mad sci­en­tist” days. I am pas­sion­ately aggres­sive and in her face and raw and messy; pain is pri­mar­ily a tool for me to achieve inti­macy and con­nec­tion with my vic­tim. My vocab­u­lary is in the empathic lan­guage of the tor­turer and the tortured.

I’m not a Mas­ter This or a Sir That and I’m cer­tainly not going to whip you into 12 dif­fer­ent slave posi­tions. In the end, it is sim­ply about her and me and us com­mu­ni­cat­ing and con­nect­ing the way males and females have done for aeons before we started both­er­ing with crit­i­cal think­ing and polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. Or lan­guage, even, for that matter.

I have no idea when some­thing crosses the line from d/​s to s/​m. Frankly, I don’t have the time or energy to fig­ure that one out. Every per­son you ask will give you a dif­fer­ent answer so I fig­ure that the answer is largely irrel­e­vant. All I care about is if the way I express myself and com­mu­ni­cate gets through to you and you under­stand what I’m con­vey­ing. When I slap your face, will you under­stand that I am sim­ply try­ing to pen­e­trate your aware­ness? When I bite you, will you under­stand that I’m say­ing, “I want you?” When I pinch your nip­ples until you scream into my mouth, will you under­stand that I’m say­ing, “You are beautiful?”

If me yank­ing your hair to keep you still while I kiss you feels abu­sive to you, if me becom­ing even more aroused when I see a tear trickle down your cheek feels scary to you, if me pin­ning you to the wall by your throat feels like an assault, we don’t speak the same lan­guage no mat­ter the labels we use.

It is most cer­tainly a grad­ual jour­ney although the jour­ney can be faster than you think. Once you embark on it you may find that it feels like com­ing home, like you are freer than ever before and you can’t wait to expe­ri­ence more and more and more. It is actu­ally quite com­mon; if any­thing you should worry about being able to con­tain your­self and move in a rea­son­able speed.

I hope I’m mak­ing sense so far.

Gen­tle­Spirit:

Yes, you are mak­ing per­fect sense to me. Really.

It’s amaz­ing how fast you can get to know peo­ple here. It’s funny, some­one mes­saged me a week ago with the fol­low­ing: “All I want is to see tears stream­ing out of those eyes.” It scared me. It did not turn me on in any way, shape or form.

When you say it, I feel dif­fer­ently. I think its because of trust. I have known you about 8 hours and through just sim­ple open talk­ing and shar­ing I don’t fear you in any way. Maybe I am silly (LOL). What I mean is you are not scar­ing me with any­thing you have said so far.

The thing with my ex is that I think some­how it messed with me because he was dis­gusted by me after that. Up until that, he was so into me. He was very angry with me and didn’t sleep with me again after that for a year. We lived together so you can imag­ine how that was, and he was very ver­bal about why and that he thought there was some­thing men­tally wrong with me.

The sex came back even­tu­ally, but it was never the same, I dis­con­nected. I have a deep deep fear of rejec­tion so I am not sure the effect all of this had on me, but I know it did have an impact emo­tion­ally.

I did read the writ­ing about you and your lady. Again, writ­ten very beau­ti­fully, and I found your imagery very pow­er­ful. I was not scared read­ing it at all. Noth­ing you have said scares me. The unknown is what scares me, to be a fail­ure scares me, to dis­ap­point some­one I love scares me. Every­thing pretty much scares me. I am attached to fear. I don’t know why. I have to let it go, even if you look at my pro­file, it is full of fear. I need to let it go, to sur­ren­der, so I can trust and love and give and accept it all back.

Wow… where did that come from? I find speak­ing to you very ther­a­peu­tic, very heal­ing. Your writ­ing has this effect on me too.

Thank you for not judg­ing me, and for being so kind to me. I am in a very unfa­mil­iar place within myself today, I am very affected by your writ­ing, but I can­not iden­tify what it is I feel. I just know I have never reacted so strongly to any­thing ever before and I am try­ing to work it out in my head. That is prob­a­bly the first mis­take.

Do you think I am crazy yet?

Dreamwalker:

It’s the bane of my life; nobody fears me once they get to know me. Pout. Espe­cially the masochists. I’m just a big teddy bear…

Kinda. Sorta. With sharp teeth and claws.

I speak of really intense things but I think it comes through that I hurt my lovers through desire and pas­sion. I know about a lot of sadists/​doms that build their ego on their bot­toms’ expense and those brutes I would be afraid of. It is obvi­ous that I care deeply for you when I hurt you, that I hurt you because I find you so desir­able that I need to do it. And when you feel desired you aren’t afraid even though the expres­sion of that desire hurts you.

I know so very well how much it hurts to be thought of as being men­tally wrong. When I came out I was accused of being a psy­chopath. Still, that wasn’t a rejec­tion like the one you suf­fered. I can’t even imag­ine how much that hurt or what kind of impact it had on you, emotionally.

The fear of the unknown is nat­ural, Gen­tle­Spirit. It really helps to have some­one take your hand and help guide you through nav­i­gat­ing some­thing as com­plex as your own emo­tions and desires. Espe­cially when you are taught to think of them as wrong and not healthy. I wish I had had some­one calm and expe­ri­enced to guide me through my ini­tial steps.

I had help, though, from the Spi­der, but she mostly pulled me out from my shell; she was not together enough to actu­ally give me direc­tion and a sense of right­ness and safety.

I once was for­tu­nate enough to play with a very expe­ri­enced painslut and she taught me a lot but I didn’t have an emo­tional attach­ment to her and I need that more than any­thing else. I don’t mind casual sex or casual play but it really doesn’t sat­isfy me. I just wind up being hun­grier afterwards.

I don’t think your pro­file is full of fear, Gen­tle­Spirit. You sound cau­tious and with good rea­son, I think. I can’t even imag­ine how scary it must be to have the urge to sur­ren­der and ven­ture into a place where you are imme­di­ately greeted with “All I want is to see tears stream­ing out of those eyes.” I doubt it feels very good or gives you a fuzzy feel­ing about the whole thing.

I had a con­ver­sa­tion not long ago with a friend of mine where she related her expe­ri­ences in try­ing to get her needs met in vanilla rela­tion­ships. It was heart-​wrenching to lis­ten to how vul­ner­a­ble and exposed a sub­mis­sive woman feels and how much strength and courage it takes to ask for what you need.

In a vanilla rela­tion­ship, I, on the other hand, don’t need to ask. In fact, it may be prefer­able from both sides of the coin that I do not ask. All I have to do is to push, gen­tly or not-​so-​gently, and pay close atten­tion to her response.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is essen­tial, but the over­whelm­ing por­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is non-​verbal, and a woman com­mu­ni­cates so much with you with­out need­ing to say a sin­gle word, as long as you pay atten­tion to her.

All I have to do is to push and all my lover has to do is to yield, all I have to do is to lead and all she has to do is to fol­low. I don’t need to ask for any­thing and I don’t need to ver­bal­ize my needs or wants. All I have to do is to reach for some­thing that may or may not be there.

But being a sub­mis­sive, you have to com­mu­ni­cate what you want and need. You have to expose your­self and be vul­ner­a­ble and hope that the ones you choose to trust will meet those wants and needs. That must be so hard and so frus­trat­ing. Just find­ing a way to ver­bal­ize and com­mu­ni­cate what you need, expos­ing your­self, putting your­self out there that vul­ner­a­ble, is in itself a feat.

If your need is to be taken, if your need is to sur­ren­der, you have to find the strength and courage and con­vic­tion to ver­bal­ize what you want, per­haps even give him a man­ual or a recipe for suc­cess. You have to reduce and con­dense what you are and what you need into some­thing that can be com­mu­ni­cated intel­lec­tu­ally. When you nego­ti­ate needs, you have to do it far removed from the emo­tional space in which the needs will actu­ally be fulfilled.

That is the crux; as a top I can bring you into an emo­tional state of mind and keep you there while I push and prod and test your responses. The less you think, the bet­ter. The more you feel, the bet­ter. The more of your aware­ness that pours into your body from your head, the bet­ter. And the nego­ti­a­tion between us about what I need from you and what you will give stays pri­mar­ily in a non-​verbal, emo­tional, high-​bandwidth space.

I think speak­ing to me feels ther­a­peu­tic because you can sense that I am gen­uinely inter­ested in you and what you are feel­ing. I have no stand­ing in judg­ing you or any­one else. I’m the one who likes hurt­ing women, for chris­sakes. As glasshouses go, mine is pretty darn frag­ile. Still, I can’t judge you because what you are is incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful and mag­i­cal to me. You are a trea­sure and I am just happy to help you fig­ure out how to pro­tect that trea­sure and to appre­ci­ate it for its beauty.

Nope, not crazy in the least. In fact, you sound saner than most. And real­iz­ing that try­ing to fig­ure out this in your head is a mis­take just goes to show how sane you are. You are of course cor­rect; your brain is largely super­flu­ous in this case. It will get in the way most of the time. In fact, you are here to a great degree because you want to take a break from it. Just like that “gone fish­ing” remark I made in “Why Do I Want to be Hurt?”

The fact that you have never reacted this strongly about any­thing ever before is a sig­nif­i­cant indi­ca­tor that you should invest the time and effort in research­ing this aspect of your­self and explore it. If just read­ing about this causes such a reac­tion, how do you think expe­ri­enc­ing it will feel? For bet­ter or worse, you will never want to go back. You will be ruined for “nor­mal” sex for the rest of your life. And you won’t mind a bit.

What you can expe­ri­ence with some­one who is your per­fect com­ple­ment and you both descend into the pri­mal and ele­men­tal con­nec­tion between a male and a female, where the female sur­ren­ders all of her­self to him, is not out of this world. It is the world. It’s the kind of expe­ri­ence that makes you happy that you are male (or female in your case) and that you are alive.

Gen­tle­Spirit:

I do have a cou­ple of ques­tions to ask. Is it nor­mal to have fear and to be afraid when you are explor­ing this? Have you ever been with some­one that you could see was afraid of what was hap­pen­ing, or what might hap­pen? How did that make you feel?

Dreamwalker:

Of course it’s nor­mal to be afraid. You are essen­tially stand­ing on the ledge of a chasm and you’re con­sid­er­ing jump­ing in, fig­ur­ing that you’ll learn how to fly on the way down.

Yes, I have been with lovers that were afraid or appre­hen­sive but every­one took my hand because they trusted me to keep them safe. That must be one of the biggest rushes I get; when I see the anx­i­ety in her eyes and the only rea­son she chooses to go through with it is because she trusts me. Me. It means so much to me because I trust their judgment.

The answer to your ques­tion about how it made me feel is that it made me feel hon­ored, it made me feel very pos­ses­sive and intensely pro­tec­tive. I felt like I was entrusted with some­thing frag­ile and pre­cious and it made me want to live up to that trust even more.

And it has always been such a reward to see the tri­umph in her eyes and pride and sheer awe afterwards.

“Oh my G-​d, I didn’t know I could feel this way!”

I have been lucky, though. I have been priv­i­leged with hav­ing mostly pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences. But that’s prob­a­bly because I am picky about who I engage with. I need an emo­tional con­nec­tion before­hand and if we already have that, we are already well on our way.

The only expe­ri­ence that con­cluded in a non-​positive way was the one I wrote about in “I Touched an Angel Last Night.” I believed her when she over­stated her expe­ri­ence and I went a lit­tle too deep the first time. I am dif­fer­ent in that I go for your heart rather than try­ing to make you hurt and she had no expe­ri­ence with an emo­tional assault like that; she was used to the more com­mon flog­gers and whips and crosses and imper­sonal dun­geon stuff.

I came at her with an emo­tional inten­sity I believed she was yearn­ing for and we came across an emo­tional land­mine with her ex. She crum­bled and cried and needed to stop. We met again two weeks later and worked very well together but we never met again after that; we didn’t really mesh personality-​wise.

Gen­tle­Spirit:

Just so you know who you are speak­ing to. The brunette pics are last cou­ple weeks. I was blonde up until then. The third pic is a cou­ple of months old, and the last one was me being silly for my sons exhi­bi­tion foot­ball game. This one is about a year ago. Again, it prob­a­bly goes with­out say­ing, but for you only.

Dreamwalker:

I think I like you bet­ter as a brunette, but I have a thing for brunettes and red­heads. Long hair, please; it’s more to grab hold of and I tend to keep my hands in the lady’s hair a lot. I just like her hair. Shrugs.

Hav­ing grown up in Swe­den where every girl was blonde (slight exag­ger­a­tion but only slight) made me think that brunettes and red­heads were exotic.

I like your eyes and you have a lovely smile. “pic” is my favorite of these pictures.

So what’s your nat­ural hair color? Or don’t you remem­ber? Grins.

Read our con­tin­ued cor­re­spon­dence in Love let­ters: The sec­ond day.