Over Before It Starts?

I told you before that I met someone.

It didn’t end there.

After that initial encounter I didn’t think I’d hear from her again. I had opened up totally and almost cried in front of her when she asked about my frustrations of finding someone like her. For some crazy reason she was interested in getting to know me and very recently we have been spending more time together. I make her laugh and the passion between us is amazing.

But….

Yes there’s a but.

But she’s not sure if she can go down this path. She calls me the “rabbit hole” because she’s worried once she goes to BDSM she won’t want to go back again. A close friend suggested that I explain it as though it were a menu. It’s not that you can’t enjoy the things you enjoyed before, you’ll just have more things to choose from. More options.

She’s enjoyed being dominant with vanilla men but being dominant with them means something very different than being dominant with me. WIth a ‘nilla man the bar is much lower than it is with me. WIth me she has almost endless options.

She’s a sadist, I can tell, I can feel it. I know it and so does she, but it’s a part of her she’s never addressed because she’s never been with someone like me before, someone who needs her to not hold back. She’s said she doesn’t feel comfortable yet and may never feel comfortable with that part of herself. She knows she wants to and daydreams about it, but can’t bring herself to it. She’s not scared of me, she’s scared of herself.

A few nights ago we were walking around and she told me about some of the guys she’s been with. She’s been proposed to by many and said yes to none. As we were talking about it I could almost see how this would end. I put it out of my mind.

I’ve introduced her to many of my closest friends, I’ve never done that before. Last night she met one of my best friends, my dear ‘nilla friend who knows all about me. Seeing them talking and laughing made me adore her even more. I want to introduce her to my Domme friend, so she can see that you can be dominant, sadistic and still “normal”.

Thankfully she’s being honest. She’s told me that she may never be able to go down that rabbit hole. We both agree that we want to be something to one another, but that something will probably be friends.

I know I should just enjoy the time she and I have and not worry about it. Maybe I’ve been hurt so many times that I naturally expect it will end with me back at square one, looking for someone like her.

Feeling her body next to mine makes me wish I didn’t need what I need. I tried to tell her that it’s OK if she never goes down the rabbit hole, but she knows that I need it, she can read me like a book.

On the way home from work tonight I had my IPhone on shuffle and this song popped up:

And So It Goes

Damn you Billy Joel.

How do you explain to someone that it’s OK for them to let themselves go when they know they want to but just can’t seem to bring themselves to it?

How do you help someone who’s scared what she might become if she goes down the rabbit hole?

5 Comments

“How do you explain to someone that it’s OK for them to let themselves go when they know they want to but just can’t seem to bring themselves to it?”

If you figure this out, please let me know. I’m feeling a bit like your friend right now, and if it’s explainable, it would make the world seem so much clearer. The rabbit hole is a strange, scary place. I think the fear that if you go down, you might not be able to come back up is a legitimate one.

In a bad analogy, it’s like food. If you *loved* asparagus, and merely liked brussel sprouts, wouldn’t you eat asparagus more? Maybe so much that brussel sprouts would no longer appeal?

wow… i have no experience being close with people who can get right up next to the things that they fear and yet hold back from taking the leap. to know that they want something, something central to themselves, but try to avoid it. it’s fascinating… thinking about sarah’s example, what’s the matter with losing brussel sprouts if you no longer found an appeal in them? and conversely, why worry about losing brussel sprouts if you’re sure that you like them? if they are really important to you, i’m sure you’ll find a way to keep eating them. it’s not as though asparagus makes brussel sprouts poisonous.

i think that you can help this woman. just because we are submissive doesn’t mean that we can’t be strong for the person we want to submit to. there are lots of things that you can do to help her to feel safe about this part of her. introducing her to your domme friend is surely one of them. and i would think that just having the goal in your head of doing whatever you can to help her to feel safe is another good idea.

learning to accept yourself and to understand that you can feel empowered by exploring your inner self is something that is good for everyone. i think that *you* should feel empowered by the fact that– should she be open enough– you could help her to really discover herself, and to become a person more whole, more healthy, and most likely much more happy.

“Why worry about losing brussel sprouts…”

I think part of it is just a fear of the unknown. Sort of… if I try something new, am I going to be able to go back to the way I was, or will I be changed forever? That’s a bit melodramatic, but I think that’s part of it. If you’re content with the way you are now, and you have a choice that will alter a significant portion of your life, even if it is in a very positive way, it can still be scary, because there’s the potential of hidden downsides. And if something goes very wrong, or you find out you don’t like it really, will you be able to go back to how you were before? I don’t think you can, and that’s probably why it’s intimidating.

I remember the rabbit hole and I was terrified of it. I knew for quite some time that I wanted to be more sadistic, but it actually took me years before I could say that “I am a sadist” instead of “I have sadistic tendencies.” It may sound like the same thing but it wasn’t. Not to me. I was terrified of what I might become.
It took a very special man who had the patience and the understanding of me, of how I think and function, to finally accept and embrace it. He showed me that it was okay, that he trusted my sadistic self, and now I am never going back.

Sometimes I still feel like I’m going down the rabbit hole. In fact, I’ve felt like that a lot this past month. The difference is that I’m a lot more sure of who I am now than I was ten years ago. I know what things I would never do, what things I might do under the right circumstances, and what things I really, really like doing. I have a lot less shame about who I am.

I hope it works out between the two of you.