Chucked myself into the deep end with Poly M/s and well . . .
It isnt going well.
First, some background. Bear with me, it got kinda long . . .
After my crash and burn LAST winter (the 2014 one, not the one that we just got rid of) I realized that I have really been in several committed relationships under (unbeknownst to me) false pretenses. I did not realise or recognise what I was doing, but I was trying to submit to my partners. I was giving myself to them, and they didnt know what the hell to do with it, so they failed to meet my needs. Since I didnt realise what those needs were, it was confusing, it hurt and felt like rejection, and every time, it ended on a sour note. Once I found the puzzle piece of BDSM and D/s I figured out where my head had been at and I felt kinda bad about the whole mess, but I resolved to seek out a partner in the correct pool.
The thing is, I was a mess at the time that I figured this out. I had just come off an absolute train wreck of a relationship (the freaking jerk turned out to be married, but thats a whole other story) and I decided that since one of the key elements to a healthy D/s relationship is honesty, I would be brutally honest about myself and where my head was at. I joined a couple of groups on Fet after making my profile and did some exploring. I made a couple of friends, received a few messages, but nothing that raised any flags. I even had one Dom message me saying that it was fairly clear I had things to discuss outside of BDSM, and if I wanted to, hed be happy to be an ear.
Shortly after I opened up my profile, I had a seriously scary moment in my life. My day had gone especially badly and re enforced every disparaging thought I had about myself. On my drive back home (definitely with my tail tucked firmly between my legs) I thought to myself that I would stop disappointing everyone if I just drove off the road. I have never had a suicidal thought in my life. I have always held the concept somewhat in contempt, to be honest, though now I have more sympathy for those who think about it. The fact that I had that thought, even for that smallest instant, terrified me. I got on the computer when I got home and poured my heart out in a public journal entry. I also messaged the Dom who had volunteered his ear a few days earlier. He immediately recognized that I was about to start drawing attention of the bad variety and took me into his protection.
Im not certain when, but this developed into an M/s dynamic, but with very little in-person interaction, as he lives a good 40 minutes away and I am perpetually broke and couldnt visit him often and him being in a tight budget crunch as well. He pulled me out of my tailspin. He straight-up fixed me. As soon as I had to report to him and follow his orders, my train got right back on the tracks and we established a routine of constant, open communication and a daily routine that I desperately needed. He seemed to be taking his time with me, as we had not really done much that one could call unusual yet. He decided that though I identify as a submissive, a lot of the ways I live my life indicate that there is some dominance there as well, so he wanted me to be his Alpha slave and be in charge of his other subs/slaves. To start with, he put one slave in charge of training me to be in charge. This slave is a man a good 17 years older than I, which was a BIG adjustment for me. The other big adjustment, I dont feel dominant unless I am doing something I KNOW. I am dominant at work, I am sure as hell dominant in my business, where I sell merchandise at renaissance fairs, but in BDSM? I dont know my ass from my elbow, so Im entirely submissive. Now suddenly I have to tell a man 17 years my senior exactly what to wear every day via email. I have to define a routine between the two of us and include our Sir/Master. It was tough, but I was managing it. We finally got to a point where I was comfortable with him visiting with me and we had one visit. It was informative, it was fun, it was eye opening, it was not repeated. Shortly after that visit, things took a hard turn.
The holidays came. My brothers family visited from WAY out of state and uprooted my routine badly. They decided to help my mother to begin her gutting/remodel of our only bathroom and suddenly every aspect of my routine evaporated. I could no longer complete my daily tasks, which unsettled me. As unsettled as I was, I began missing communications between myself and Sir and my.our slave (let's call him m for now) and found myself doing a lot of apologizing. Eventually my apologies began to ring hollow in my own ears, so I did less confessing of my sins. I hated admitting to Sir that I had failed him. . . And so began my latest spiral into hell. When I get stressed and/or depressed, I stop talking. I turn inward to avoid bothering people, to keep from seeing my own judgement of myself in their eyes.
Sir is one who does not like to chase after wayward subs. He has said quite clearly, despite my indications that going quit is a bad sign from me, that if he hears nothing, he will assume all is well. Well, communications continued to break down, ms work life got crazy and he dropped off of the radar entirely and without warning. I didnt hear from him for many months, despite repeated attempts to get ahold of him.
Last summer communications with m were re-established. He had sold his company and was done working and being in charge and wanted to enter into a full-time dynamic. I told him that I was still uncertain of whether I could make a good Mistress for him, but that if I couldnt I would help find one who could. I also asked him, clearly marking this as separate from our relationship, if he would be interested in extending me a business loan. He had repeatedly offered me stupid amounts of money, all of which I refused as it seemed an unhealthy way to go with the relationship, but if he could offer me a loan, with paperwork and all the bells and whistles, I could get my business running properly.
He was excitedly on board with the idea. Right down to making sure I could get a cusion for him to sit on the ground on next to me in the tent as I worked. We began crunching numbers to figure out what we were looking at. And then things went sideways again. He was diagnosed with diverticulitis and might need surgery. I then lost all contact with him until October. For all I knew, he could have been dead. When I finally got him on the phone, he said they had had to remove several feet of bowel and he would be 2-3 months recovering. He was depressed and felt like a burden on his family as he needed care and help getting around while he healed. I sternly ordered him to make an effort to keep me updated. I havent heard from him since.
Emails with Sir have fallen to the wayside as well. I feel like I am in a relationship with nobody. As it is, I want to break things off with Sir. He obviously doesnt understand my flavor of depression. He also has done one or two things I do not like. I DO like m. He has never made me uncomfortable. What he HAS done is lie to me. He said, and I quote, ‘If I am on a business trip in CHINA and you call and say, m, I need you, I will get on the next plane, But where is he? I have sent him so many messages and emails, I feel like Im talking to an empty room. I promised him I would not give up on him, but I can't keep letting men promise me their devotion and walk away. Its freaking killing me. But, cursed as I am, always see the other side. I know that he does the same shit I do. He gets stressed and/or depressed and shuts himself away. If he lived locally, or hell, even stationarily, I would drive over to his place, berate him, comfort him, and help him work through his shit. But he could be anywhere. The last time I was about to do that was in October, when I found out he was recovering at his brothers house in Florida. I don't want to break my promise, but I am starting to think I may have to.
And then there is the entirely self-serving and selfish aspect. No business loan means no shop staff to help me cope with the business. It means no new and renny appropriate tent, no workshop, no booth staff. It leaves me, with my stress/depression turning me into a useless damn deer-in-headlights staring at fair season approaching like a freaking freight train with no stock ready and orders waiting to be filled from last season. So theres a new aspect to the self recriminations. How dare I worry about the money he was going to loan me when he could still be ill?
As per usual, I have no idea what I am looking for here. Feedback? Advice? Comfort? No freaking clue. But I cant post ANY of that on Fet because I know Sir will see it. Despite the fact that he has never been judgemental or unpleasant with me, I do not want him seeing this accounting of failures on my part. So here I am, with a nice, anonymous forum of folks I can spill my guts to.
Thoughts?
@MissingALink
I'm sorry that things haven't been going well for you! It sounds like there is a lot going on, and both m and Sir aren't responding to you as frequently, making things tougher to deal with as well.
I don't have much thoughts, except to ask you what you want moving forward.
I feel like I may have answered you in a different forum post as well? I remember a post recently talking about fear season and backorders from last spring.
developments!
I got text messages from m out of the blue today. Things are a bit unclear. It seems he fell off of a ladder in early January and had to have surgery. He cracked his pelvis and looks like broke his arm(s)? He sent me x-rays that look like elbows with pins in them. So I can (almost) understand his silence from January until now-ish. I still have no idea what was up with the 4 months leading up to then.
He wants to talk on Monday to, 'discuss your (as in my) dominance) before we start things back up.
I am torn. My first reaction (which I did not send him) was a huge wave of hurt and rejection. It sounds like he wants to break it off because I don't seem dominant enough due to my struggles this winter. But then I started to think about it. Now? I'm freaking PISSED. I will NOT have ANOTHER man tell me that I am in the wrong because HE disapeared with no warning and I was unhappy about it. HE is the one who failed to check in even ONCE in 6 months. HE is the one who left me trying to be dominant to an empty room. I already told him AND Sir that I only feel dominant at work and in my business. I was 100% open about that, but he wants to call me on a lack of dominance when I was new to trying it outside of those parameters and couldn't handle his disapearance dominantly enough?? Seriously?? ANYBODY would look weak and needy if they were concerned after your health and trying to get ahold of you and got nothing but silence! I sent emails and messages over and over and got nothing. But MY dominance is in question here? How about his submision? How is THAT not in question? He failed to follow orders and check in with me. For SIX MONTHS.
So I guess the question I pose now is this. Do I try to maintain my calm, rational and diplomatic demeanor as I usualy try to do in person-to-person interactions? Or do I unload all of this rightious anger on him when we talk on Monday? I am so angry right now, I can't even express it properly. This is not the first time a man has dropped off of my radar and tried to turn it around on me afterword. I felt like a jerk for breaking up with the last one (we were not in a bdsm dynamic of any kind, it was a vanila trainwreck) and was rational about showing him how he went wrong, but still got the blame for the communications gap dumped on me. This time? I made every damn effort. I tried being domiant and demanding, I tried being reasonable, hell, I even emailed him about my depresion and how badly I needed him to just show the fook back up and SERVE if he was serious. I got NO response. for SIX FREAKING MONTHS. My next action was going to be to call him, but I was having a tough time actually summoning up the emotional strength to pick up the phone and dial. I couldn't take more freaking silence. I wanted to call him and tell him to either shape up or we were done.
GAH! I'm going away today for the weekend and now I get to have THIS stewing in my head. What the hell am I going to do with this?
So m never did call me back to talk, and in my current state, calling him was as impossible a task as turning lead into gold, so it has been nothing but silence on both sides for weeks. Well, I broke the silence today. After posting in Relationships about being a square peg in a world of round holes, I finally felt able to compose an email to the both of them. It started out quite angry, but I think I managed to bring myself back to rationality by the end of it. I can't believe I finally emailed them though - I am worried as hell about the responses I might get . . .
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I have no idea what to say. This is going to get a little aggressive, a little crazy and more than a little disjointed before I am done. I will try to edit some sense into it before I hit send . . .
I haven't kept in touch with You, Sir. Not at all.
m, I tried to keep in touch with, but got no response of any kind until recently. and then what I got basically verified that he was healing, but not responding to me until he hurt himself badly in January, at which point I obviously continued to hear nothing until a couple of weeks ago. Oh, and by the way, I was then told we have to discuss my dominance and how it may have changed.
I. Am. Not. Dominant.
I said this from the beginning.
I was willing to explore the role, as Sir made a good point when pointing out that in some situations, such as my job or my fair work, I can get quite dominant, but I said from the beginning that this was not a natural role for me. I said I would try and I would learn what I could and that if I could NOT fulfill that role for m, that I would try to help find somebody for him who could.
I said I was high-maintenance. I know that I need a certain amount of contact/supervision/reassurance on a daily basis. I know that without it, I tend to self sabotage and spiral. Well, guess what happened guys? I started screwing up (in my eyes) felt my apologies were entirely insufficient, and started spiraling. I started to resist/fear contacting Sir as all it did was highlight my failures. I couldn't get a response no matter how I tried from m, which re-enforced my feeling that I was a screw up and a burden that nobody wants to deal with.
I don't think either of you realize how bad I got this winter. I had bad thoughts. Thoughts that terrified me. But I was too worried about bothering either of you with them that I kept it to myself and kept spiraling. As budget conscious as I am, I saved and spent $380 on a tattoo for the specific purpose of taunting myself into sticking around. I will see this image every day for the rest of my life, and it will remind me how dark things got and how I can't stop fighting. It was expensive, but it was cheaper than a doctor and I needed something.
My business is faltering badly because of the fallout of my severe depression this winter. This may end up being my last year trying to make a living out of this. And it may sound self involved and selfish, but DAMNIT. I worked out an understanding with m that we would try a business loan to get my business running properly. We were going to rent workshop space, get me a real tent, hire a small staff and MAKE IT WORK the way I KNOW it CAN work. m was going to run my books and help me at fair, where I can and WILL ALWAYS BE dominant and commanding, because my tent WILL run the way I want it to run. Instead of this happening, poor m had to fight with his illness. I understood having to put this on hold for health. It's an obvious choice. But it added stress to my already stressed mind that I had a tough time carrying. I worried about m, I worried about my business strangling under the weight of my mounting stress levels and my orders to stock ratio. I got him to agree to check in with me and let me know how his healing was going back in October, but instead of DOING WHAT HE PROMISED TO TRY TO DO, I got left in the dark again. Until LAST MONTH. You DON'T do that to friends! I was left to worry, and my depression grew. I was taken to dizzying heights of hope, and then left in free-fall. Let me tell you, that fall was terrifying and I'm still looking for a parachute. My contact with Sir became more and more sporadic as I pulled into myself more and more. I have said, multiple times, that when I get quiet, it is BAD. But this was not heeded. I was told that silence would be considered a 'no problems to report' occurrence. Saying that something is so, does not make it so. Let me repeat. When it comes to ME. . . SILENCE IS BAD. Be afraid of silence. Silence means I am pulling into myself, that I am judging myself, that I think I am a bother and a burden and that I should be able to handle my problems solo. News flash - I CAN'T. I am just not built that way, it seems.
So when m finally gets back to me, what am I told? Not that he is getting better and we can get back on track. No apology for cutting me out. I am told that we need to talk about my dominance. Apparently one of the many tactics I tried to get a response with made me look needy and weak. Well, I AM needy. I have said that from minute ONE. and then when I log onto Fet, what do I then see? m posting a response to a couple seeking a slave and saying that Sir is moving far away.
Guys.
Sir.
m.
You are BREAKING ME. I KNOW neither of you mean to, but you are. And what's worse? I am letting you do it. Well I can't anymore, so here is where I stand.
1) I think you are actually both amazing guys, and you both showed me the beginnings of the world I am stepping into. I am grateful that Sir took me under his wing and that He intentionally avoided letting me go sub-frenzy with too much too quickly.
2) I would absolutely prefer to remain friends with the both of you, go to local clubs/events with m while we both try to find a niche, but I cannot let this dynamic break me any further. I have to break this part of our relationship off before I freaking end entirely, and in case you missed the hints earlier, yes, that thought did occur to me multiple times this year. I need more contact, more reassurance and more daily interaction and guidance than either of you are prepared to provide.
3) I am NOT angry at either of you over this whole disaster. I am angry at myself. A bit more self awareness and backbone and I might have avoided the complete crash and burn of this winter.
4) I would still love to have you come with me and help out at the fairs m. I could help you get some of what you need in that role, as I am an exacting taskmistress at fair, and your help on site would be invaluable. If you still want to work out the business loan, I am more than willing to go for it as well, but the two ideas do not have to be linked together if you want to come out to help but aren't feeling the loan. Without it, I do have to seriously consider closing doors after this season though. I can't keep working a crappy part time job in the hopes of this working. My mother needs me to be able to support myself, and if I can't manage it soon (like, within the next two years or so) she is going to sell her house and try to drag me to Texas to live with her and my siblings in Austin. I can't do that, my entire life is here in New England. I am willing and excited to travel to fairs all over the country, but my home base needs to be in New England where my life is.
5) I am a reconstruction in progress. I am writing again, and sharing my writing on 7cups.com under a different user name. I can't share that name or I will stop sharing my writing. When I know somebody that I know and care about can see what I post, I gag myself and don't post anything meaningful. This is an outlet that I needed to help me find my parachute and slow the fall. I think, if you guys aren't mad at me and we can alter our relationship statuses, that I can share some of it on Fet if you would like to read it though . . .
I know this email got pretty angry at times, and I am sorry for that. This is something I have had to build myself up to doing for a while now.
I need more than either of you can give me right now, and that's ok. Just because our dynamic turned out to be a bit of a mismatch doesn't make anybody a bad person or anything. It just means that we weren't the right fit. None of this means we have to break contact either. If either of you would like to keep me in your life, I am happy to stick around, just not in our official D/s dynamic. I need to find a Dominant who can take me on full-time. Or at least a service Dom who can help hold me together until I can find the One who can take me on full-time. I definitely learned one thing for sure - I can't do this long distance. I need face-to-face time on a frequent basis or things go south in a hurry apparently.
I don't know how to end this email. I didn't know how to begin it either though, and I managed it, so lets try this. I don't know what kind of response I am looking for here. I understand if you are both angry or don't want to see me again. You may not have met my needs, but I KNOW I also failed to meet yours, and I have no idea what that failure on my part meant for either of you. All I can do is hope that you will accept my apology and choose to remain in my life in some form or another.
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So there it is. I did it. I spoke my piece, I laid it all out for the both of them. I am waiting for responses now . . . I am afraid to hope this will end well . . .
