a reality

Gerard and I think that what we're going through is probably not uncommon.  Probably lots of couples go through this, but probably most of them don't try to write sex blogs!

I used to write about us fighting a lot.  Well, we don't do that anymore.  We got over the strain of learning to live together, of being scared of committing to each other.  We still have arguments, but they are much less frequent and much less escalated.  Considering the amount of stress that we're under and the close quarters in which we're both living and working, I think we're doing awesome.

Yeah, we're not having any problem in the companionship area.  We love each other.  We're talking more often about our plan to eventually get married and have a baby, and we're both getting a little bit less freaked out by that every time we discuss it.  We support each other, we work together, we nurture each other... we spend more time together than probably either of us would prefer, but we're making the most of that (in most ways, anyway).  I can say this unequivocally: We're happy.

We're also affectionate.  We hug a lot.  We snuggle.  We touch each other.  Gerard likes to spank me a little bit every day.  We say that we love each other.  He sings me songs; I tell him why I think he's special.  We have no shortage of affection.

But what we do have a shortage of is SEX.  Sometimes I can't believe that we once had the most amazing sex I'd ever had in my entire life.  Yesterday my best friend told me this story about the mind-bending sex she had with her lover, and I couldn't even imagine what that might feel like.  It's been more than three weeks since the last time that I had Gerard inside of me, and sometimes I feel like I'm going to go crazy.

Turns out that he's sexually frustrated too.  He wants to have sex too.  But somehow we're not doing it.  I feel like I initiate with some regularity... but it doesn't work that well when I do.  We both like it when he's the aggressor.  We have better sex when he's the one doing the pursuing, and I'm capitulating to his desires (at least, that's the story we tell ourselves-- and it works!).  But he's not feeling it.  He says he just doesn't feel turned on.

I think some of the problem is intimacy.  Intimacy is scary.  Before he moved in, we always had the distance between our apartments to keep things from getting more intimate than we were ready for.  Then he moved in, and we had fighting to keep us from getting too intimate. But now... now we're here together all the time and we're not fighting.  We're more intimate than we've ever been.  Maybe regular sex would just be more closeness than either of us can handle right now.

But, presumably, we could both work on our intimacy issues and eventually it wouldn't feel so scary anymore, and we'd start having that crazy-perfect sex that was once one of our defining features.  That's the theory that I'm trying to believe in.

In the meanwhile, we have to come up with strategies to help us improve.  Gerard likes it when I explore with girls, so I hit Craig's List last night.  He also asked me to touch him in certain ways more frequently.  I gave him some feedback about the way that he touches me too.  And we're just going to try to be more open to each other.

Because, I'd like to say... having a little intrigue with other people occasionally is fun and titillating, but what I really want-- what I want more than anything else-- is Gerard.  It all starts and ends with him.

Anyway, when I started this blog I said I was going to write about the reality of a long-term relationship between two people who know they're sensitive and damaged.  You readers saw us overcome our fighting and my depression... so now we've got a new problem.  And here I am being embarrassingly honest about it.

I hope you see us get through this one as well.

postponed

Well, I have been postponed by my would-be part-time casual mistress, perhaps forever.

I have to respect her for being honest with me, and for her reasons for backing away.  She said that even though she enjoys playing around, she's realized that her real goal is to have a long-term partner.  So because of that she's not sure how she feels about casual play anymore.  She's also in graduate school, and she has a lot on her plate right now.  She asked me if we could talk about it again in a month, giving her some time to figure out what she feels and wants.

So I totally get where she's coming from.  Don't we all want that kind of connection in our lives?  It's true that casual playing around can distract a person from the quest for an actual partner, and I would never want to deny her that.  But wow, am I disappointed.

She emailed me after that last meeting, you know, and said that there were a lot of things she was interested in doing with me.  Oral sex, she mentioned, and fucking me with her strap-on, and discipline-related stuff.  Being with her was so exhilarating; I was imagining what I would wear when next I saw her, and fantasizing about what she might want me to wear.  I didn't even try to imagine what it would be like to be fucked by her-- I was saving that until the moment when I could actually experience it and know.  I loved our age difference-- she's nine years older than me, just like Gerard-- and I loved our complementarity and the electric attraction between us.  I wanted to be with that a little bit longer.

In her most recent email, the one where she explained her need to table me for now, she asked me to go to her blog to read something she'd shared, and tell her what I thought of it.  The topic was something intellectual that we have in common, but it was all written on the blog that she uses for her professional dominatrix persona.  In other words, this intellectual, academic piece was surrounded by dominant fantasies and words and the general presence of her extremely attractive dominance.  Oh, and photos of her.  So even though I knew she was appealing to our intellectual connection rather than our D/s connection when she asked me to read and share my thoughts on her piece, I couldn't get through it.  It was too distracting, and maybe even a little bit painful, to be in that virtual environment.

I had this yearning, you see... I wanted to go to this part of my sexual self.  The bisexual part, and the submissive part.  I wanted to try it out again.  Gerard used to play the dominant role in my life a lot more, before he moved in and "us" got more complex and messy and emotional.  I thought if I experienced it with her for a little while, it would help me figure out just what I wanted with that kind of sex within my relationship.  My main relationship.

But anyway, I can't blame her for her choice.  I want her to be happy.  I don't know her that well, but I know that finding a long-term partner is more important than getting off with someone that you know will never be serious about you.  I'm crossing my fingers, though, that she wants a little bit of casual playtime now and then while she's on the road to finding her love.  And I told her that I want to stay in touch even if we never end up in her bed together again.  Sigh.

exploring

"You should come sit over here," she said, patting the bed.  She lives in a beautiful, well-kept studio apartment, and the bed was on the opposite side of the room from the couch, where I sat.  I stood up and walked over, sat where she had gestured.

She looked at me for a moment, then commented, "You said you were going to take off your top."

"Oh.  I did, yes."  I sat there for a moment, and then I grabbed my top and pulled it off quickly, dropped it in a pile on the arm of the couch.  I looked up at her, waiting to see what would come next.

I feel this jerkiness and lack of flow as I describe these events.  And I felt that in the moment, too, although it didn't feel as awkward as it now sounds.  I knew I wanted her, so I was propelled forward by my desire, and by the fact that there was no reason not to.  But it was kind of new for me.  Unfamiliar.  I'd never had this kind of rapid meeting and ending up in bed before.  And I'm still pretty inexperienced with women.  And I haven't explored more than Gerard and I's fairly tame version of dominance and submission in years-- but here I was with an experienced dominatrix who wanted to have her way with me.

She stood in front of me and smiled broadly, but not at me.  It was more private, as if she had her own personal joke that I wasn't in on, as if I wouldn't be able to understand it if she told me what it was anyway.  She pushed me back onto the bed, and then climbed on top of me so that she was straddling my waist.  She pinned my wrists over my head and, from her overhead position, regarded me thoughtfully.

She pulled my arms down to my sides then, and pinned my wrists under her knees.  That was the moment when I was reminded that she is experienced and skilled-- I have been pinned down in painful ways more times than I can remember, but this particular method of restraint was entirely comfortable.  I didn't even wonder if I would eventually lose feeling in my wrists, because I knew I wouldn't.

It's hard to tell the story in a linear way after that, because I really let go and just experienced it.  I know that she went quickly to my breasts, grabbing them and pinching my nipples, enjoying my sighs and yelps.  I know that she put her hands on my neck, and I know that she tapped my cheek with that in-between level of force that isn't quite a slap but would be with just a little more energy in it.  I remember gazing up at her face, admiring her until she told me that it wasn't polite to stare.

One of my favorite moments was the one when she moved to my side and grabbed me by my left elbow and left knee, then easily lifted me up on to her lap before flipping me over to my stomach.  Strength and confidence-- they just ooze out of her.  So hot.  By then my jeans were off, and she unclasped my bra once I was face-down, and later pulled my panties off too.  She ran her hands over my back, but paid most attention to my bottom, spanking and grabbing and generally exploring.

It was all teasing, really.  Just stimulating me ever so slightly, physically and mentally... she kept laughing, again like it was all a joke that I wasn't in on.  At one point she leaned down as if to kiss me, and then stopped just before our lips met.  I had that sweet feeling of yearning, where I wanted to feel her lips on mine so badly and yet was afraid to initiate.  Eventually I tried it ever so slightly... she let me kiss her lightly before pulling away and then coming close again.  She allowed the slightest little kisses.  I enjoyed the feeling of being deprived, of being subject to her limits, and of yearning and vulnerability.

She draped my beaded necklace into my mouth, and I felt the silliness of its presence there, but I soaked it up... like a very gentle type of erotic embarrassment.  I heard her doing something over my head-- she had me pinned in a different way now, such that I couldn't see anything that was going on.  It wasn't until much later, after she let me up, that I saw that she was wearing black latex gloves.  They were really striking in appearance.  With them on her hands, she began to explore my body more intimately.  She never exactly penetrated me, but she poked around quite a bit, making me feel objectified and incredibly aroused.

Oh, and she never let me come.  Just teasing.  The whole time.

Later, she told me that she'd been very close to getting her strap-on out of the closet.  We've decided to meet soon to discuss limits and desires.  Gerard says he's happy to be able to give me an adventure that fits into his comfort zone... we've also had a lot more sex since that night than we've had in quite some time.  So this seems to be working well for everyone.  I absolutely can't wait to see her again and explore some more.  How lucky am I to have a skilled, sexy, attractive dominant woman be into me, and a loving boyfriend who welcomes me to go out and explore?

a date

"I feel bad about Gerard-- canceling the original plan, you know, and excluding him."

"Oh, don't feel bad about that."  I waved my hand dismissively.  

"Well, I don't actually feel bad.  I just wanted to acknowledge him, say something to let you know I acknowledge him."

I laughed.  "He has no problem with it at all.  He likes it.  I never really explored anything with girls alone before I met him-- it's really only with his encouragement that I've started to realize that I'm bisexual."

"I don't really want to do the photo shoot anymore," she said, "That was sort of an excuse... to get us talking.  I used to use photo shoots as an excuse to play with people, back when I was in a relationship and I wasn't really allowed to play with people but I was allowed to have photo shoots."

"Well," I said, emboldened by wine, "you really don't need an excuse with me."

***

She and I just have a sexual connection.  We met through a mutual friend... a friend of mine who is kinky and who frequents local BDSM events.  The two of them met in that scene, and then she and I met at a party he hosted.  My eye had been drawn to her as soon as she walked into the room.  I thought she looked perfect... beautiful, fit, confident, sexy.  Later, she asked our mutual friend for a picture of me.  The next time I saw her, she admitted that she'd wanted the picture as an aid to fantasizing during masturbation.  I was more than intrigued.

Gerard isn't attracted to her, which amazes me since her physical appearance is completely his type, and beautiful.  But I think it's just because she's so dominant... he's attracted to vulnerable, submissive girls like me, and she's probably the opposite of that.  So even though Gerard would love for us to get involved with a third person together, he's happy to let me go off alone with her.  He imagined that I might have some submissive fantasies fulfilled with her-- the ones that go farther than what he's interested in.  And I've imagined that too.  She's worked as a professional domine, after all, in addition to being dominant in her private life as well.  How could my fantasies not run wild?

In the week before I met her for a drink, I had three or four sexy dreams about her.  And when we were there in the bar, sitting next to each other, after we'd discussed the non-kinky subjects that we had in common for half an hour or so, I got what I thought of as confirmation of our complementarity.  I mean, I'd been thrilled to come meet her.  She'd made it clear that she was interested in me, and that alone was exciting.  But then she started to talk in more detail about her kinky interests.

I already knew that one of the big things that she is into is the feminization of men.  I don't have any real connection with that kink... in fact, I know very little about it.  But she mentioned that her "twink" had recommended the bar that we were sitting in.  "What's a twink?" I asked.  She explained: it's a man who is interested in allowing her to feminize him-- to make him wear high heels, stockings, panties, and eventually to let her fuck him with her strap-on.  She told me that she'd always been into more feminine men, and that she just loves to dress them up.  

"How is it different with women, then?" I asked.

"It's not really different," she told me.  "I like to do the same things to girls... I like them in the same stockings and panties, really.  I've got this thing for objectification... it's just really arousing for me.  And I like very feminine women, just like I go for feminine-- or gender-neutral-- men."

I laughed.  I couldn't help it.  It's so funny to me how our instincts draw us to people who match us.  Objectification of femininity has got to be one of the main themes of my fantasies.  I shouldn't have been surprised that it was her fantasy too.  Plus, I know that I'm extremely feminine, and it was exciting to know that I fit her desires.  I felt my panties getting a little bit damp as she talked about it.  The idea of being alone with her was so exciting-- and strangely not intimidating, even though I've had very few experiences with women and zero experiences alone with an experienced dominant.  

I let my interest in her be clear.  I don't think of myself as being any good at flirting, so I stumbled through it.  It was probably an odd combination, my usual nonverbal, mostly-inadvertent cues with my very direct blurtings about how compelling and sexy I found her.

Foreign forwardness aside, I think it's fair for me to make this judgment: Flirting with a woman is so different than flirting with a man.  Most notably because I had to try a lot harder.  I still felt like my girly and submissive self, even though I had to initiate a lot more, and put myself out there a lot more than I've ever needed to do with a man.  She kept calling me on my inadvertent flirtatious behaviors-- the subtle batting of my eyelashes, the way I touched my hair.  But I was direct, too.  I told her outright that I'd had sexy dreams about her, and I made it clear that I wanted to be alone with her, although these revelations didn't make her jump to her feet and try to rush me off to her bed, as I know a man would have done.  Also, I kept waiting for her to touch me.  With men, it's so easy.  They're always dying to touch you, and they always initiate touch quickly.  Not so with her.  In fact, she told me there was no assurance she would ever touch me at all.

"If we go back to my apartment, will you take off your top?" she asked at last.

I didn't hesitate (and by the way, this is so unlike me).  "Sure."

"Do you need another drink?"

"No."

"Well, then let's go."

getting hot again

He pinched my nipple-- not very hard-- and I yelped.  It had been aching since I'd gotten up that morning, and Gerard knew it.  I didn't bother opening my eyes to see him smile.  He doesn't necessarily want to be a sadist, and he hasn't acted like one in months.  But it always amuses him to see me just a little bit tortured.  Even if the initial torture wasn't at his hands.

With one swift motion, he removed my jeans and panties.  Then he flipped me over to my stomach.  I was lying horizontally across the bed, my eyes looking down onto the hardwood floor.  Gerard smacked my bottom and I cringed at the sting.  It hadn't hurt last night at all... I hadn't even thought that she had spanked me that hard... but when Gerard gave me a friendly smack earlier in the day, it hurt a lot more than it was supposed to, and I realized that I had taken more than I thought I had.  Or maybe my bottom was just out of practice.

Gerard pulled me up onto my knees, and I felt him pressing himself against me, then pulling away and smacking my bottom again.  "That hurts, doesn't it?" he asked condescendingly.  "This is what happens when you let other people do what they want with you... aren't you embarrassed?"

My face flushed.  He knows that this type of gentle humiliation is erotic to me, but he has rarely used his knowledge.  I buried my face in the bedspread.

"I'm waiting for your answer, Aurelia.  I said, aren't you embarrassed?"

"Yes!" I relented.  Through my arousal, I marveled at how much he was nailing it, saying everything right, being so dominant, and clearly having so much fun.  We hadn't had sex like this in months.  It reminded me of how hot we were when we first got together.

He spanked me some more and I whined, "Ow, it hurts!"

"And do you deserve it?"

"Yes!"

His clothes were off, and he was inside of me.  He moved me so I was flat on my tummy.  The palms of my hands laid against the floor, supporting me against the force of his body over me, and I rotated my hips so that my bottom lifted up to meet him.  He slammed into me.  "Does this hurt your bottom a little bit, having me fuck you so hard?" he asked.  It didn't, but I told him yes anyway, because it was hot to me to think that it could hurt, and I knew that was what he wanted to hear.

I had two amazing orgasms, and then Gerard flipped me over to my back and lifted my legs over my head.  This position hurts me if I'm not aroused enough.  I haven't tolerated it for a long time.  But tonight I complied-- maybe because I was feeling really submissive in a way that I haven't for a while, or maybe because Gerard was feeling dominant in a way that he hasn't for a while.  I was turned on enough that it felt completely natural.  I screamed with pleasure until he came inside of me.  

And I was on cloud nine.  Suddenly, we have found our sexual connection again.  After months of meaningful lovemaking, full of intimacy but lacking the sexual oomph that defined us for so much of our relationship, we are HOT again.  

histories

It's weird for me to think that Gerard and I have been together for almost two and a half years now.  We've definitely passed the point of "significant life investment."  In fact, I feel us moving to more and more official, grounded commitment.  It's scary for both of us, but it's feeling less scary lately.  And I've finally realized that, for Gerard and I, this is a pretty fucking big deal.

We both have big histories, relationship-wise.  In a way, it's kind of odd that neither of us has already been married, because we're both romantics, and we both place a high value on love relationships and falling in love.  We've both had passionate love affairs in our past... long relationships and big commitments... major life steps taken while holding the hand of another (at-the-time) treasured person.

We've both lived with other partners in the past.  I've lived with two other men, Gerard has shared an address with three other women, plus several who traveled around with him for various periods of time while he was living in a camper van in Australia.  We've both thought, in the past, that we had met the person we were going to make the lifetime go with.  I've been engaged twice, and Gerard bought a condo with his most recent ex before me.

That's our respective relationship histories, of course.  We also each have pretty extensive sexual histories.  My history includes several threesomes with married couples and male friends of boyfriends, plus a couple encounters with girls.  Most significantly, I spent a year and a half living as the submissive pet of a dominant couple, which led me to all kinds of crazy sexual adventures.  Gerard's history isn't so kinky, but he eclipses me with his sheer quantity of past escapades.  It seems that his sweet, unassuming charm has never failed him with getting a woman into bed, whether that meant a quickie in the restroom at a wedding reception or a week in the back of his camper van.  In a way, Gerard feels to me like a mythical kind of man, the kind that I never thought I'd actually know personally-- like a character in a Hugh Grant film or something.  But then again, maybe I too have some kind of crazy archetype that could be assigned to me based on my sexual history.

When we first got together, I think we were both taken aback by the other.  Gerard didn't imagine that a girl like me would be satisfied being with one man... I didn't imagine that life with me could ever measure up to the romantic globe-skipping he'd done with all those flings of the past.  But we still each respected what the other brought to the table, and saw the ways that our pasts molded us into a person that the other could fall in love with.  And gradually we realized that we were looking for the same thing: a stable, passionate love relationship with one permanent partner.  Our histories didn't change that-- it just showed how much we were both willing, throughout our pasts, to explore and forage for new experiences on our paths of self- and other-discovery.

And now, after two and a half years together and nine months living together, the histories aren't so important anymore.  Maybe some of that is feeling the weight of our history, and what we have created together.  I mean, it's not all that much in terms of time... but the amount of investment we've made in each other in these two and a half years makes it feel like more.  The histories are still important... we each keep those volumes on our shelf, and we revere them-- but now we're fully invested in the the life's work that we're going to write together.  We're writing it every day, and every day the words flow with more ease and sincerity and promise.

sunny days

It's gotten to that time of year right before Daylight Savings Time begins, when the mornings are really sunny.  In our cold climate, it's still really cold-- but the birds are starting to sing in the mornings, and the sunshine is bringing people outside.  Gerard and I live in a first-floor apartment with our bedroom windows looking out on the street, and we often hear little strollers or scooters going by in the early hours of sunshine, adorable under-5-year-olds emitting cute comments to their parents or nannies.  I'm getting out of bed earlier now, sometimes earlier than Gerard, and writing in my journal or prepping breakfast for both of us.  And it's so weird to realize what a change this is.

Without getting into details about why, I would like to share that I'm a VERY educated consumer when it comes to the topic of mental health.  And I've always avoided psychopharmacology because... well, even though I know I've always been sort of anxious, I always felt like I knew what the problem was stemming from, and I wanted to work it out psychically instead of using meds.

I already mentioned all this in a previous post-- but basically the stressors of unemployment were too much, I was feeling unbelievably miserable without pause, and I knew it was time.  And now that I'm feeling so much better, I'm shocked by the change.  Gerard has stopped commenting about how different I seem, but I've slowly been considering his perspective, as he's expressed it over the course of many months.  Especially since we moved in together last summer, he's often said that he thinks of me as a pessimistic person.  And that always felt so strange, because I've always considered myself to be pretty sunny.

Here's the thing, though.  My life has been very clearly the opposite of sunny for a while.  I've been pretty slammed for the past several years, and just trying to pull myself out of it.  And so it sort of makes sense that I became someone who seemed kind of dark, and that I presented myself that way when Gerard and I met and for most of our relationship so far.

Four years ago, I was engaged and had been living with a man for three years.  The wedding was six months away (invitations already printed) when suddenly one day he went into a rage and threw me out of the house, asking for the ring back, canceling everything.  One month later my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  I got a new job and moved to a city near my parents, and four months later I was fired after I tried to stop some unethical behavior in the department I was responsible for. Two weeks after that, my mom was pronounced terminal and brought home on hospice.  For a little over a month, I took care of her at her home, until she finally died.  She was only 56 years old.

Then I spent a year grieving heavily.  For that entire first year, I was constantly sick with all kinds of crazy ailments, and I was an emotional wreck.  I started working very part-time about a month and a half after my mother died, and then slowly added more working time to my week as I could.  I met Gerard while I was trying to stabilize myself... understand my grieving and also continue to put my life together in some way.  And I continued to do that during the first year of our relationship.  There were all the anniversaries, there was the trauma of my father starting a new relationship... but I was getting through those things.  I felt like I was starting to move towards being firmly planted as of this time last year.  And then I lost my job (a job I loved).  It just brought back all the waves of loss.  And then Gerard moved in, and we had all this adjusting to do... well.  It's been a difficult four years.

I know I haven't been sunny during this whole time.  How could I have been, honestly?  I shouldn't be surprised.  But starting to feel sunny now makes me realize the difference.  And I don't mind if it's drug-induced, because I need a reminder of the person that I'm able to be.  I need Gerard to see that the girl he fell in love with isn't always so dark.  It makes him feel more secure about us, and more loved, and that's better for me too!  With these boosts, I think I can make my dreams happen, and then I can go off of the meds and enter a world without crises waiting around every corner.  And that will be a welcome change.