sub-burbs

Before I launch into today’s update, there’s a little piece of business I need to address.  I realized a couple of days ago that I’ve never referred to my wife by name (or even pseudonym) on this site.  Since it is getting increasingly awkward due to her central place in this saga, I need to fix that.  So, meet my wife Jacqueline or Jaci.  I will also be creating a "Cast of Characters" page today or tomorrow so that new readers can keep everyone straight.

Yesterday at work, I spent a good portion of the day e-mailing back and forth with my friend Jim.  (He is the friend I "came out" to recently and also left this great comment a couple of days ago.)  He has been cautioning me that, while my wife’s intentions may be pure, it’s just not possible to turn Domme overnight.  He also warned that you can’t decide to be that way - it has to be within you to begin with.

Since Jim and his husband parted ways recently over D/s (Jim needed it and his husband was too vanilla), I place a great deal of stock in his advice.  Since Thursday’s talk with my wife ended on such a hopeless note, much of our discussion was over whether you can find the deep emotional connection to D/s that Jacqueline seems to lack.  We both agreed that it didn’t seem likely and that if one member of couple had it and the other didn’t, neither would really be getting what they want out of the relationship.

I left for home that night with the intention of telling my wife I wanted a divorce.

When I got home, Jacqueline was there.  Her plans to spend time at her sister-in-law’s house had derailed and she ended up just staying home.  I mentioned that Jim and I had discussed a great deal that day and gave her the summary of what we talked about.  I also said that I thought we were too far apart to ever find our way back to the middle again.

Rather than the screaming match I expected, we starting having a really open and fantastic talk and made a few huge revelations about ourselves and our marriage.

First, Jacqueline said that she has actually been suppressing her own D/s desires.  When she was 14, she met Jason in High School and immediately had a connection to him.  She had extremely low self-esteem and this handsome, confident guy became a source of fascination and attraction.  Although he mostly refused to acknowledge their relationship in public, the two of them met daily in his bedroom, something that led to talk of sex and spanking, a specific passion of his. 

As time went on, Jacqueline fell deeper and deeper under his spell and eventually became his sub.  While the roles were never formalized, she describes reaching what we both agree was subspace and the emotional connection she had with their time together.  On more than one occasion, she said the pain of the impact play (which eventually grew from spanking into paddling, whipping, and caning) would force this cathartic release and leave her first sobbing and then completely floating free of thought.

However, Jason’s constant emotional abuse (making her feel "less than" and never wanting anyone to know about their secret time together) started causing some deep scars.  When their sessions ended after her and I started to date in college, Jacqueline’s guilt over her willingness to do anything to be close to Jason (and the degradation she felt about the spanking after their sessions) forced her to bury the positive feelings she had experienced.

The two of them remained friends, but Jason’s emotional abuse continued.  It wasn’t until almost 10 years later, after Jaci and I got back together, that they had a final falling out that would cause them to stop speaking.  Jacqueline was growing stronger as a person and was standing up for herself, something that caused Jason to immediately reject her in favor of the other footstep-worshiping people he typically surrounded himself with.  Jaci was understandably devastated and, lumping her D/s experience in with all the other negative aspects of their relationship, buried everything.

Unfortunately, this meant that when I first had my inklings that D/s was the centerpiece and key to my own emotional turmoil, she had become aggressively vanilla.  This, in turn, forced me to look elsewhere and not explore what turned out to be the source of my pain and longing.

If that isn’t an emotional connection to D/s, I don’t know what is. 

Next, we discussed my recent revelations.  Jacqueline agreed that she had been expecting me to navigate a catch-22.  She said I should have come to her as soon as I realized that D/s was this all-consuming thing for me before I "stepped out" with Mistress Trecia, but I didn’t understand that D/s was this all-consuming thing for me until  I became fully dedicated and devoted to Mistress Trecia.

During our talk, I realized much of my desire to bolt immediately from the marriage is because, now that I know the source of this pain and emptiness that I’ve felt so long, I want to run out and do as much as I can to fill it right away.  Jacqueline said it was like parking a starving man at a buffet.  I know she can’t give me what I want immediately, so I want to run away and get it from where ever I can.

It is exactly this type of behavior that caused me to make such bad decisions with the Dommes I new in San Diego.  I would trust anyone  who could scratch my itch without regard to their experience or my own safety.

Seeing that, I realized that I probably should slow down and not immediately try to immerse myself into a 24/7 sub relationship.  Between my first fantasies at age 8 and this new discovery at age 37, I think a step back and a few months to reflect and learn aren’t a huge sacrifice and will actually be a good thing.

This led us to a talk about our own expectations as a couple.  Asking Jacqueline to go from complete novice to lifestyle Domme overnight was incredibly unfair of me.  It’s no wonder I wasn’t feeling the connection - I put so much pressure on the relationship and impossible requirements on Jaci.  Our new plan is to step back in our D/s relationship and to not try to sustain a 24/7 lifestyle.  We are going to schedule sessions several times a week during which we will experiment and "play", something that will give Jacqueline time to plan new sessions and analyze her own feelings.

We also took some time last night and started the process of reaching out to local D/s groups and the Chicago community.  We requested an invite to the Leather SINS bi-monthly dinner, planned to attend the Midway Munch next weekend, and also an requested an invite to Galleria Domain’s next new member’s night.  (Galleria Domain is a play club that also hosts frequent educational sessions.  It’s member’s only, but they invite prospective members in once per month to meet the regulars and get a feel for the place.)

We also talked about the brutal fact that we are not in a financial position to split at the moment even if we both wanted to. We’ve mortgaged our house to the breaking point in order to complete the first phase of our insane remodelling project.  To make the house saleable at all requires us complete our plan to finish this first phase and refinance to roll all the costs to date back into the mortgage.  (The house value should climb high enough with our improvements to more than cover what we’ve spent.)

The process has taken 6 years of hard work, but we are actually within 3 -6 months of completion.  Faced with that reality, we both agreed that there was no sense in trying to break up until the house is done.  Therefore, we’re going to dedicate ourselves to explore and learn as much as we can about D/s and our places in it during that time and reevaluate once we’re solvent again.

Finally, I had a realization last night about my time with Mistress Trecia.  While I know I crossed a line by violating Jacqueline’s trust, I also believe that Mistress Trecia and I crossed a line as well.  When my relationship with Mistress Natalie drifted from D/s into romantic and sexual territories, it nearly consumed me.  Despite many talks on the topic with Mistress Trecia and an agreement that the sub should give their heart to the Domme, I think I let myself fall too far.  I blame myself and my inexperience for this and am ashamed at myself for getting in over my head again.

I know this was probably my "starving man at a buffet" reaction, wanting to submerse myself (no pun intended) as wholly and completely as possible into the role.    It still wouldn’t have been healthy in the long term and has made me realize that my inexperience and soul-crushing need for D/s are at odds with each other, which is just yet another reason to take a step back and learn more about this and myself before moving forward again.

We finally called it a night at 2 a.m., embracing warmly and kissing good night, both of us looking forward to the exploration ahead.