Consensual Non-Consent

I have had fantasies about someone hiding under my bed and jumping me or catching me coming naked out of the shower since I hit puberty. I don’t go for the full on beat the crap out of me type of fantasy that some people may enjoy. I prefer more mental than physical taking of control. Use of fear instead of violence. The threat to keep me still and compliant, rather than being beaten into submission. I’ve never been one for violence. Yes, I like pain, but for it’s own sake, not for taking of control. It is the mind where control truly lives. When I write or imagine such scenes, the assailant usually has a gun or a knife, some physical representation of potential violence, but they never use it.

The other day Lover and I were playing and he said he was going to force me, but when we got to the bedroom, he ordered my clothes off and I complied for no reason other than he said the word Strip. Then we played and had sex. The only consensual non-consent part of the whole thing were the nipple clamps. Later that night, I was thinking about the willingness taking the power from the scene. The idea of my pants being opened and shoved out of the way, my shirt being pulled up just enough for breast access, is far more a turn on than full nudity. It feels more non-consensual that way, feels more like there is resistance, feels more like being used.

Being used. Why is that a turn on? Why on earth would I want to be used?

It is part of the overarching fantasy of giving up all will and control to someone. Being an object, a tool, a toy for their use and pleasure. The added spike of someone taking that control makes it that much hotter of a fantasy. Sex, for me, is the most intimate act, and therefore, taken without consent, the biggest violation. Therefore, it only works with someone I love and trust, it has to be consensual non-consent to turn me on in reality. It’s a fine line to walk. How do you make non-consent hot when it is consensual?

Creating the scene in the mind. Talking as though it was real. Whispered threats and hints at pushing too far. Role playing it out, creating the roles and fully stepping into them. Allowing for resistance and the taking away of control. The element of surprise can be used as well. Having agreed to the scene, but not the time and place. Choosing an unexpected place, perhaps a place with just a bit of danger of being caught, to heighten everyone’s awareness during the scene. Doing things that are unexpected. Forcing actions that are allowed, but not particularly liked. Agreeing to continue the scene until the top is done, regardless of when the bottom is done unless there is dire need to end the scene early – allowing for emergency Red, but not for Yellow.

Communication, Goals and Separation

A day late, but hopefully not a dollar short, my dear readers. Yesterday, life and a missing power cord got in the way of my posting. It has been quite the roller coaster ride for me lately, but what would life be without some ups and downs? Today I’m going to ramble about my partners, communication and decompartmentalization, we’ll just have to see where that takes me.

This past weekend was a big event that I did not go to. Two of my partners did, with their other partners, and everyone had a blast. The trouble came, in my own mind, when Lover played with someone I did not approve of. He told me that afternoon that he was going to, I expressed some hesitation at the idea, but did not fully express my concerns or feelings. He had no idea, therefore, that I had any concerns or negative feelings. When he came back to me two days later, he was caught flat-footed by my angry, incoherent emotional state. This, eventually, a few days after that, brought us around to a discussion of my needs around his play partners. Our agreement has always been that he will listen to what I have to say, but I do not have veto power over him, none of his partners do, nor visa versa. I asked to modify that agreement, so that not only will he listen, but he will be sure to ask in advance with enough time for discussion, how I feel about an upcoming play partner. I needed time to process, get clear and feel heard before he played with this person. It also probably would have helped to know why he had chosen to play with her. We agreed that we would try to do this going forward. Communication can prevent a lot of unnecessary upset.

My weekend was about simple goals. After last week’s discoveries, I needed a way forward. Having large goals of communication and self awareness are good, but he pointed out that they are not quantifiable or immediately achievable. He wanted me to come up with things I could point to and say, look, I met that goal. Simple things, one step at a time. Friday, I stayed with be of service, I was available to him for whatever he needed or asked of me that evening. Saturday, I had more specific goals. I wore my latex skirt for him. I kept it shiny for him. I pleased him, was a body pillow for him and slept by his side. These were both girlfriend goals and submissive goals and they were all achievable and rewarding.

I have often written of keeping my partners separate, especially around play. Occasionally more than one will be at a play party or at the club, but generally, I am able to focus on one at a time, and I have taken steps to guard that. However, this week, those steps created a situation that caused upset on several fronts and I was forced to rethink my position. One particular division I had created, was now creating a public division, and I needed to think long and hard about whether that was appropriate. After discussions with all of my partners, I decided that it was time for me to change and grow. I decided to let go of the control I was holding so tightly to, and trust that we could all do what was best for everyone, while still meeting all of our own needs and wants.

It has been a a week of learning, growing and better communication. Not everything is sorted out, but the future looks bright and I am lucky to have this life and these men, all of whom are willing to work hard to solve problems and communicate clearly. Everyone knows how hard that can be. Writers do not all make the best verbal communicators, and they are all willing to accept, understand and help me with that.

Are You a Wildmage?

I am a geek. He looked at me and asked if I get upset when my D&D character does something wrong or bad. I said of course not. He asked what is the difference? I said that was a character, a game. He pointed out that being object is just a role I choose to play, and a lightning bolt hit me in the head.

Are you submissive? Yes. Are you an object? No.

The second should not have been a hard question, nor should it have had so many wide ranging implications, but it was and therefore it did. No, I did not think I was an object, but yes, I was trying to be one. Trying really damn hard to be one, and be a perfect one, without the error and failure that is inherent to being human. We knew I have a perfectionist streak. What we did not know, is that I had gotten lost in the intoxication of the fantasy, and had forgotten that object was a role, not a goal. I enjoy thinking for myself, making my own decisions, being a smart ass, loving, living, playing and serving. Object is one way to play and serve, but it is far too limited a role to wear all the time. I am so much more than that.

What problems was this causing?

Because I was not keeping the line drawn between fantasy and reality, I was not divorcing object’s actions from self. I was carrying baggage from our scenes back into my day to day life. I was carrying guilt and blame from play into reality. Instead of using our transition ritual in the way it was intended, to shed the trappings of object, I was gathering it all up to pile on self. Self gave way under the pressure a few weeks ago, and we had been scrambling to figure out what had caused it ever since.

Viewing object as a part of self instead of as a role to put on also led to problems with the transition into object space, as well. I had trouble identifying the boundaries between submissive and object. I had trouble communicating when I was going from one to the other. I thought of object as a deeper part of my submission, so one night, even though I felt objectified, I did not identify that as a need to begin object space.

Another problem was keeping my focus in object space. If we were in public, I would give him priority, but I was also still interacting with other people fairly normally. When I would turn to address him, I would not always have my object role firmly in mind, nor his as owner. I would drop Sir, or be thinking of him as boyfriend. This loss of focus and loss of role had the potential to cause hurt to us both.

What are solutions to these problems?

One solution to the problem of leaving object’s baggage with object, is in properly using the transitional ritual he had me create. Looking back at my post about the creation of the ritual, I was more focused on limiting drop from our scene. Limiting its effects on my other partners. He spoke of relieving girlfriend of any lingering guilt for object’s actions, but I don’t think I really understood that as well as I do now. The ritual I created worked for my needs then and it covers current needs as well. The gratitude not only serves to simply be grateful for what he gave to me in the scene, but can also serve to acknowledge it as just that, a scene. Service, which often was discussing the scene to help us both process, was intended to give me time to deal with the emotions and reactions to the scene in the immediate, so I did not carry them with me back out into the world. Connection, to reconnect with him as girlfriend and finish the transition out of the role of object, back to the reality of self.

The solution to the second problem is self awareness. Staying aware of my self even while transitioning. Being very aware of what it feels like and being able to communicate that clearly. I need to keep in mind that not only do I need to take on the role of object, but at the very same time, he needs to take on the role of owner. He can only do that if I clearly communicate with him. Owner/object does not work if both roles are not fully taken at the same time. We created verbal tools to do this, my saying Sir, and his confirming with me, or his asking the trigger question of Aren’t you under dressed? and my confirming with a Yes, Sir. If he is pushing me mentally or physically towards object space, it is up to me to let him know when I arrive. He cannot know my mind, and so I must. I must be aware and clear and able to communicate with him, before, during and after a scene.

Solving the third problem is something I have had a constant struggle with over the last seven months. I had it tackled for a while, having problems only with volume and clear speaking as opposed to staying in state. I think this is part of the same need for awareness, but in this case, not just awareness for myself, but for him as well. I have a responsibility to maintain my role as well as keeping his in mind. This is not a part I can equate to gaming, we rarely stay in character at the table, and I’ve had very little experience with LARP, but theater on the other hand works. I was in a lot of plays as a teenager, and while I never had a big part, it was always important to stay in character on stage, no matter what you were doing. You don’t address your fellow actors as your friends, but only as the character they are currently playing. Sir is the verbal tool here as well, a reminder of role in every sentence I speak. A requirement of the character I have chosen to play.

These are not the only problems, nor the only solutions, but they are a place to start.

Renegotiation

When you’re going to play with someone new, you talk about the scene, you talk about limits, you talk about health. When you’re going to play with someone you’ve been with for awhile, sometimes you don’t talk at all. You just do what you’ve always done. Play in the boundaries you’ve always had, or push the boundaries you know you can push. So what happens when the rules change? What happens when the boundaries get drawn differently? How do you take a step back and say, okay, that place is off limits for now?

I was writing about renegotiation of my submission yesterday, and the comment came to mind that it was incomplete submission. That without giving up all control, I was holding back, keeping something from him. Over the last six months, I had been striving to not hold back, to give him all the control he would take. So, for me to say that I cannot do that right now, that I have to put a limit back on the table, was difficult. The dream of no-limits submission is seductive, but it is not always possible. Even in the way we were doing it – in short spaces of time, not 24/7.

I find myself struggling with my sense of self – self awareness, self confidence. There is a picture on a book about the female brain that is a large mass of tangled phone cord. In one of my favorite fantasy books, the city designed by the female deity is akin to a labyrinth. Sometimes I feel that way about my own mind, it takes me a while to navigate and process and distill what is really going on for me. A friend commented she thought I had been getting better at this over the last few months, or at least at articulating it. She gets to talk to me only after I have done a lot of processing, though. I want to be better at on the spot self awareness. As well as the confidence to trust in myself and my instincts and act on them in the moment.

What does all this mean? What am I on about? Some of our more rough mental play hit harder than expected, and I had trouble dealing with it appropriately. I broke and let things spin out of control. Now I have to heal and grow, and pick up the pieces. I aim to come out of this an even stronger person than before. I have a wonderful life, and so many amazing people in it, who support and love me and help me grow.

Clear Communication

Everyone says communication is they key. I have talked about it being one of the most important things in poly. He and I have discussed how important it is to maintaining and protecting our relationship. In scene and out of scene, communication is the avenue to safety for all involved. Communication is what keeps people together. So, when communication fails, things fall apart.

I fell apart recently, and I took communication down with me. Clarity followed pretty close behind with self-worth tagging along for the ride. At so many points during this fall, communication could have kept me from hitting bottom, but I was so wrapped up that I did not catch the offered hands, or reach out for the sides of the hole. When I hit bottom, I started trying to climb back out on my own, trying to find my way back up, but I just ran circles in the dark for a while, reinforcing doubt and confusion to the point where I just gave up and sat down.

He tossed me a torch, like he has so often done, and I picked it up and looked around, but still could not find my way. So he tossed down a few more, the hole was now well lit and getting very hot, but I could finally see more clearly. I looked up and saw him waiting for me about half way down, I had pulled him down with me and we have quite a climb to get back to the top. So, I picked up a torch and started climbing. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, to get back to him and get back out of this hole together.

That is a lot of words without saying anything very clearly, but it’s an illustration of how I have felt these last two weeks. I’m a writer, I get a little flowery at times. I am not ready to put details here, and while they are important to him and myself, they are not the point of this post.

Clear communication is. It took me quite a while to get clear with myself so I could be clear with him. The first weekend I appeared to be clear with myself, but I was still reacting blindly and from a place of broken confusion. I sounded rational and clear to some people, and while some of the things I was saying were true and in need of addressing, by the time I got to him, I was still not in a place to be truly clear. This caused the damage of miscommunication to multiply.

It took another week, two more conversations and two very long writing sessions and some reading, for me to finally be fully open and clear with myself, to find the truth in my actions and my heart. So that now I can start clearly communicating with him again.

Over the last six months, I have worked on communicating with him more verbally and less through written word. I often would write him emails about scenes or to answer questions I felt I had not fully answered. We chat online almost every weekday. However, talking, face to face, makes for much better communication, much clearer reading of meaning, intention and tone.

He is a public speaker, a leader. He is used to thinking and speaking on his feet. He often asks me to think out loud and expresses frustration when I fall silent. I am not a social person, I write and am afraid of public speaking. I form my thoughts and words more slowly. But I have been trying, for him, to be more communicative. I have been trying to learn let myself ramble even if the thoughts aren’t fully formed. It is unnatural for me, and I am not good at it, yet. I still fall silent quite often, I stare at the floor or the ceiling or the wall, or just off to the right, trying to compose in my mind, gather my thoughts before speaking. He occasionally asks if he needs to get me paper and let me write so I can talk to him, trying to tease me into speaking, and it sometimes works, and sometimes hurts because I am truly trying to speak.

In trying to be more verbal, however, I have left myself lacking. He found it odd when I was talking to myself the other day and generally I don’t do that out loud, unless I’m scolding a joint for hurting, but that’s what my writing is. I get more clarity for myself by writing. I am more honest with myself with a pen in my hand, or a keyboard at my fingertips, than if I just sit with my thoughts. I have been making less time for writing lately, and I have suffered for it. So, in my plan to create better and more clear communication with him, I have included writing, so that I will be more clear with myself as well. More writing about my other relationships probably wouldn’t hurt either. All the better to have good communication and healthy relationships.

So, my dear readers, what methods of communication do you find work best for you?