BDSM relationships are never easy, maybe all relationships are complex, but relationships based on BDSM have an added complexity to them.
I realised this morning, out of the blue, that I’ve been in a period of reflection for almost a month or so. One of my relationships with a sub ended by late December and the main reason for this was distance.
I’m not only talking about physical distance, but also an emotional distance which plays a key part in the process. Usually I am an extrovert person, I like to make new friends and I don’t mind some intentional attention. In most cases I don’t have any problems with externalising my emotions and talk about them with people whom I trust. The anonymity here, on the blog, is also a huge protection which allows me to do these posts as I don’t know most of my readers on a personal level.
I have a tendency to invest a lot in feeling other peoples problems, I attach to the emotions of other people quite easily which is both a strength and a curse. The strength is that my intuition for how other people are feeling and their state of mind is quite fine tuned. The curse is that when they feel really bad, being in a mess – Then it starts to affect me as well, I pick up their emotions.
In my BDSM relationships, talking about my emotions is a necessity. It is something that has to be done during aftercare, processing or other types of decompression periods. Sometimes it is brutal, threatening or devastating as I don’t always want to look at myself in mirror. When my self image is reflected by another person it is challenging – Especially if the reflection isn’t what I want it to be.
I’ve learnt to cope with this during my years of progression into BDSM. Having my self image challenged is necessary for my own personal development. It isn’t always comfortable and sometimes it is fucking scary as well, but it is still necessary if I want to grow as a person and in my relationships.What happens then, on my part, when things go wrong?
If I’m emotionally threatened or stressed, then I shut down. I build up an armour and shut down…
I become the opposite of the usual me, I become introvert and focus on things that might not be very important and I work on them to make them perfect. To explain it in other words; I hide from the things that I cannot control and turn to the things that I can control. Most of the time I have only been able to see this in retrospect and I would say that it is hard to be logical about your own emotions and reactions when you are in the midst of them.
The emotional distance I mentioned earlier in this post is about shutting down. When things that I have to deal with on an emotional level becomes too much, then I have to shut down otherwise I will perish. I become like this if I lose control and in my case it was about my inability to lift up my partner which, in a sense, was a loss of control on my behalf. The physical distance didn’t help things either.
Mistake happens and in retrospect I could probably have done things differently. I did mistakes and I failed.
But is that a fair statement? Maybe not, because when you are in the midst of things then it’s quite hard to come up with a sustainable solution. One person is in desperate need for emotional support and you try help but have to shut down because you don’t have the energy to lift that person. And because of that the negative energy is building up in the relationship until it has to explode beyond recovery.
When I use the word mistake it isn’t used to clarify blame or guilt – It’s about reflection. The word mistake is about what I have learnt from the things that didn’t work out and not about what I have learnt about the other person.
It is all about what I have learnt about myself…
I’ve heard a lot of people only referring to their ex-partner when things didn’t work out and then it isn’t about reflection and learning – Then it is about blame and blame creates bitterness in the long run. It might be OK for some people to feel resentment towards their former partners, the question is if they learn something from it. I have done that myself the past, it didn’t do me any good.
This is what I am bringing into the next step of my journey, it isn’t what people usually refer to as luggage – It’s what I have learnt about myself.
I have reflected and rebooted myself so I can learn something from my experiences regarding myself. Rebooting myself doesn’t mean that I’m trying to forget about the past, it means that I’m looking at the future with the past as a guide while living in the present.
I’m ready for the next step…
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I found this post very insightful, thank you for posting it.