Denying Thumper

Sunday night, there was much horniness. Then there was some yelling. Then a little crying. Then good talking, replete with revelations and realizations.

As to the horniness, that was all me (surprise!). It wasn’t just the “gee, I haven’t had an orgasm in 50 days” kind of horny (which is like background radiation now in the way it persistently saturates my brain). It was a more mega-super-ultra kind of horny where every little part of me (including my spit and my toenails) wanted some action. Any action. NOW. Of course, she still had her cock locked in the device, so the only open avenues to “action” went though her and, even though I was doing me best sexy lothario impersonation, she wasn’t having any of it. How she could resist me at my most breathily passionate is beyond me, but after much kissing, grinding, and petting (of those areas I’m allowed to pet without explicit permission), she basically said, “OK, time for bed,” and rolled over.

That was hard. I got up to extinguish the candles and got back into bed to find her back facing me. She expected me to spoon into her as usual, but I was too far gone to do that and still maintain control and find sleep. I laid next to her and placed my hand on her arm as a compromise. Understand that while I was seething inside and struggling to deal with the vast sea of disappointment and psychic pain, I wasn’t mad at her. My issues were my own. As I’ve written here recently, I do worry that she’s less interested in sex with me lately, but my frustration with the moment wasn’t so much centered on her as it was my inability to predict when and for what reasons she’d let me engage with her sexually and my struggle with needing to engage with her.

She asked, “Is something wrong?” even though she already knew the answer. My actions made it pretty clear that things weren’t right.

And this led to the yelling portion of our program, though she did most of it while I contributed only a little at the end. I told her how hard it was for me at that moment. That’s about as far as I got before she started being defensive and saying she didn’t know how to deal with my seemingly unending appetite for sex. Her tone was accusatory and defensive and I was immediately upset because I saw where we were going and I didn’t want to go there. I wasn’t looking for a fight, but she naturally followed the well-worn path left from of all the dozens of times we had had this very same kind of conversation over the fallow years of our marriage.

But, of course, this wasn’t the same. In those days, we hardly ever had sex at all. Our sexual relationship was practically nonexistent. Now, it’s everywhere all the time. I don’t do anything anymore where I don’t feel the tug of our D/s dynamic and, as I said, the levels of sexual desire I carry with me throughout the day is a constant reminder (as is the device nestled in my crotch). And besides that, in the old days, after we fought about sex I’d just wait for her to go to sleep before slinking off somewhere to jack off. Now, that’s entirely out of the question, and not just because she’s locked up the only cock in the house. So I tried to tell her, not only is it hard for me to do what we’re doing, it’s hard to even talk about it because I’m not sure where the boundaries are. What’s acceptable for me to say I want? I want sex. Well, of course I do. What else is new? But is there a line between wanting sex and having it denied and wanting sex and feeling as though it’s being ignored? Turns out yes, but it took us a while to get there.

So, the raised voices and general angstiness continued for 15 minutes or so. I was doing my best to hang on to my headspace, but was losing the battle and eventually was raising my voice right back at her. The urge to claw the CB6K off my body and throw it into the corner was growing. This is the part where I cried. Then, she said the first wonderful thing of the night.

I was saying something about “this thing” we’re doing, meaning the D/s overlay on our marriage, and she said she didn’t really think of it that way anymore. It wasn’t “this thing” separate from our relationship. It was our relationship. She liked the dynamic and had no interest in ending it or ever going back to the way things were. Despite the conflict and emotions in the air, hearing her say that sent up an immediate flare of hope that caused a surge of pressure in the tube.

“Do you want to stop doing it?” she asked me (which was a switch – I’m usually the one to ask that).

“No,” I replied, “Not at all. I gave you my sex and I want you to keep it.”

“Good, because I don’t want to give it back to you.” With that, I was pulled quickly into subspace. Yes, we were having a heated discussion, but everything was still good. It helped me express the issue at hand in a new way.

The revelation is one of those things that, in retrospect, shouldn’t have come as a surprise but was because we had never used the words in the right order until just that moment. It’s truth is obvious and I’ve been writing around it a lot lately, but its application in our relationship hadn’t yet become explicit. I told her that our D/s was built on the foundation of my gift. The gift of my submission. The gift of my sexuality. I had taken from inside me a critical component of who I was and how I saw myself and entrusted it to her care. Not only did she have control over my sexual expression, she also had ownership of the very organ that defined my gender, which, of course, is a huge part of my identity. She accepted all that and wasn’t interested in given it back, which is great, but along with it came responsibility. Perhaps unfair responsibility and certainly responsibility neither of us fully appreciated at the beginning, but it was now primarily her job in our relationship to make sure my sexual identity was being cared for.

It’s like I had removed a vital organ from my body and given it to her to maintain. She could have just left it in a box until she felt like dealing with it, but that would have had negative consequences. When I was as desperately horny as I was that night and she didn’t even acknowledge it in anyway, it was as if she had slid the box containing the vital emotional organ of my sexual identity under the bed for later because now was inconvenient for her. Being denied wasn’t hard. Being horny wasn’t hard. Being ignored in the face of the hormonal surge was hard. Absent sex, I needed confirmation that she knew I was horny and she knew it was hard, but that nothing was going to happen. I needed to feel she appreciated where I was and what I was doing. She could have been cruel about it and teased me or she could have been sweet – either way would have been good for me – but I needed her to validate my condition somehow. Not feel sorry for me and give me what I wanted, but show me she saw where I was and liked it.

This kind of talk has helped us both see this power exchange in a new way, I think. I gave her my power – control over my sex, and in turn, over me and a large part of my mental health. All the struggle I’ve had in dealing with that hasn’t been because I couldn’t deal with my desire. It was because her actions didn’t always communicate to me that she took her responsibility seriously. In fact, I didn’t always trust her with what I had given her.

It’s like our old house. It’s right down the street from our new house. I drive by the old one every day. The people who bought it don’t always take care of the lawn as well as I did and, in general, don’t seem to care for it as much as we did when we lived there. I don’t regret selling it to them because doing so allowed us to move into this new, better house which I love with all my heart, but still, it’s hard to see someone take control over something we cared so much about and not put as much energy into it as we did. In the same way, I don’t always feel as though Belle is putting as much energy into the care and feeding of all that I gave her, willingly and which I do not want back. I’m not saying that each and every time we’re together that she needs to be “on” and showing me how much she adores what I handed over, but I do need to see that she’s actively involved with its maintenance. When I’m particularly struggling, I need her to provide a little extra care. I need a little extra attention.

Really, all this boils down to one of the most important truisms in tease and denial play: Denial does not equal neglect. Belle was not neglecting me, but she also was not calibrating her response to me in the right way and it felt like neglect. In fact, my level of desire was a hang-over from that morning where I was similarly all over her and obviously very desirous of her attention. Right after shutting me down and getting out of bed, she turned to me with a kiss and said, “I know it’s hard.” And I was fine.

Sometimes, what I need more than anything else is just that. In essence, for her to say, “I am not ignoring you, I am controlling you. I know you’re horny and I know it’s difficult, but I need you to deal with it because this is how I want you.” When the serpents escape in my psyche, that kind of input from her allows me to put the lid back on. It gives me strength and I need that.