Submitted by the jerk over at nanking-decade who bullies me about my tagging habits.
<3
relationships
It’s hard sometimes negotiating dynamics.
So, Craftsmate and I are involved in what can be considered a “vanilla” relationship (boyfriend-girlfriend) and a kinky BDSM (chocolate?) dynamic. And I’m happy about both of these. But sometimes we have trouble finding a balance, if that makes any sense. I feel like it’s the basic Secretary-style problem of “we can’t do this everyday”/“why not?” sort of problem, except both of us seem to embody both of those opinions at once.
So, I guess I’m soliciting some of you guys here: how do you do it? Most of my relationships either had very bedroom-only BDSM dynamics and several of my “serious” BDSM arrangements have not been with primary partners. Sometimes, it’s hard to figure out where one dynamic ends and the other begins.
Contributions, anecdotes and advice would all be appreciated. You guys seem to have it together, so lay some wisdom on me.
Let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room.
Marc Hack (via thelittleyellowdiary)
Things changed when I started letting him sleep over. The first time was an accident: we dozed off on my couch together after a long conversation and I woke up with my head on his chest and his arm draped over me. It’s hard to explain why, but it felt strange and different to see him in the morning. I just never had before.
And then he just wound up staying over some nights after he had untied me. We’d go to sleep together and I would find myself curled against him in the morning. It was this strange, hollow phantom relationship that existed exclusively in my bedroom. Which makes it sound like there was nothing there, but the terms of play partners was something I had never had to traverse before.
Except we started violating our own terms. We kissed each other, eventually in front of our friends aided by alcohol on Halloween. We started going out on dates, something he first suggested that I initially balked at. We broke rules constantly about how we could touch each other and for which reasons we could.
And, cheesy as it sounds, feelings started to develop out of ambivalence and confusion. I ate my words about it just being a strict “play partner” arrangement, something he now teases me about having said on here.
If you were to ask friends, they could give you a partial story about two people with some banter that figured it out from sharing a bed. Which is true. Something happened when he started sleeping over.
“My girlfriend and I are Roger and Jane,” the Southern Gentleman commented as we watched Mad Men.
I blinked. “Please don’t tell me that. She’s a nice girl.”
Last week, he’d complained about her talking dirty not because she actually genuinely wanted to but to make him happy. It was unenthusiastic and a little sad. He’s always conflicted about her and he always comes to me about it.
“She’s so fun and beautiful and happy,” he continued, “but so…just…she doesn’t look beyond herself. She can’t look beyond herself.”
I sighed, “this is me saying this to you as a friend. But please promise me you won’t shack up with just another version of her. Because I know that’s going to be the easy and safe and fun option for you and it’s what a lot of the people around you are going to like. Please pick someone I can bear sitting around on a porch and smoking a joint with.” I realized how deep I’d just gotten and tacked on, “end of preaching, I promise.”
Somehow, he seemed all right with what I said and replied, “can we talk about this some more later?”
“Yeah, man,” I returned my attention to the tv, “woah. This is a really hip Viagra commercial.”
When we have these conversations, it’s when I realize I value him more as a close friend than as someone I mess around with. It’s strange to care so much about someone you’re physically involved with but to want to imagine being friends with them 20 years down the line than being with them. I know we’re not meant for each other and I don’t want to force it. But there’s a sensitivity there between the two of us. We really, honestly care about each other. We genuinely understand each other. And while we have really awesome sex, there’s something a lot deeper there that isn’t romantic so much as a really deep compassion between two very similar people. This blog tends to really capture only the silliness and sexuality which, while key to our relationship, is not its entirety at all.
Yikes, this was deeply personal post. Can we please end on a moment of silent appreciation for the pink towel on Roger’s head?
Great Moments in Freeze Frame #1696 – Mad Men
That guy from my frat. I still haven’t named him. I promise, I’ll get around to it. I just can’t figure it out.
Somehow, later on in the evening, he and I wound up separated from the rest of our friends, smoking a joint and talking. I simultaneously impress and scare myself sometimes when I consider how natural inhaling has gotten for me, especially since I don’t smoke tobacco. I have a lot of things about myself that leave that sort of impression. One of those things is my bravado, which it appears he’ll never see the bottom of.
I just have fun being a little mean to him. I made him wait outside of a crowded ladies room for me to stand in line for a stall then fix my hair and makeup just to get a dance with me. I tease mercilessly. It’s just bad.
So, I decided to be kind and gentle when we were alone. Because ever since I was a kid I’ve been told I intimidate the opposite sex for one reason or another. And, because I didn’t want to completely crack the poor boy’s ego to bits; he’s a nice guy.
Of course, I still bullied a bit. He has a long-distance girlfriend from back home and, when pressed about the terms of his relationship, he gets a little evasive. This is something called a red flag in my book. So, finally, I poked, “what’s going on with your lady then, Mr. Fidelity?”
“We’re trying,” he shrugged.
“Trying what?” I asked.
“Trying,” he sighed, “but she has a different definition of fidelity than I did.”
“And what’s that?” I pried.
After all the assumptions I’d made about him being the one making some poor little unknowing girlfriend cry and get into polyamory, he was the one who had been cheated on. I felt a little bad for all the mocking I’d done. Poor kid had his heart broken and was just trying to salvage something. How could I tease?
Our conversation jumped around a bit before I formally apologized a second time. It wasn’t my fault, he repeated. He brushed some ash from my joint off of my thigh. “I don’t know how to ash stuff,” I admitted, “I don’t know how to flick it right. I was really lame in high school. And boring.”
“You’re not lame anymore,” he smiled.
We went and grabbed some 3 am munchie-medicine-food afterwards. I think we’re going to be friends. For real.
It’s really funny, actually, the things that grow on you simply because you care for someone. And, beyond that, the things you actually start to like. It’s as if your mind is justifying the thing you can’t stand with the fact that it’s being performed by a person who manages to stand you.
For instance, I used to not be able to handle snoring at all. If I heard it through a wall, I couldn’t sleep. But, I started dating someone who snored and tried my hardest to sleep through it because I was tired of flipping my poor bed-mate over in the night like a patty to try to stop the snoring. Sometimes, it worked. Sometimes, it made it worse.
And then one night I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare. I was covered in a cold sweat and as I came to and calmed down, all I heard was the snoring. And there was something incredibly comfortable about it. It was this reminder, beyond the feeling of warmth beside me, that I wasn’t alone.
Now, I’m actually kind of comforted by snoring. I find it endearing.
But, no, I don’t think I’d ever, ever tolerate anyone who ate mayoneggs. That’s too fucking far.