It’s been a tough two weeks, and with each day that passes, it becomes more doubtful that my relationship with survive. I’ve been in so much pain, and the man who I love is the one who’s caused it. It hurts even more that I can’t turn to him for comfort.

I wake up each day, and then watch the clock, wondering how I’ll make it to the end of the day. Not that things improve once I’m back in bed. I have trouble falling asleep, and once I do, I wake up early and can’t fall back asleep. Sleeping aids seem to have little or no effect. I don’t know why I’m so eager to make it through each day, but I guess I’m just waiting for some finality to the situation. One way or another, I need to start the process of healing and recovery, and I can’t do that until things are resolved. In the meantime, I take it second-by-second, minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day, week-by-week.

Time. Drags. On. So. Slowly.

He broke my trust in him. The sequence of events started with what I believe was a lie, and was then followed with a series of promises that he subsequently broke. It hurt on so many levels. It hurts because I was lied to. But it also hurts because at the same time that he was breaking my trust in him, he was pushing me away. Telling me he didn’t want to spend time with me. Hurting me because it seemed as if he wasn’t craving me as much as I was craving him.

He behaved inconsiderately and selfishly. He admits that. But he hasn’t made any effort to correct those behaviors. And he’s refused to talk to me on the phone, communicating instead through the occassional text message and email. I hate that he’s behaving childishly, and has resorted to passive-aggressive communication methods.

I admit that my behavior over the last two week hasn’t always been admirable. I’ve yelled. I’ve been stubborn. I’ve been demanding. And I’m not proud of that. But I feel pushed into a corner, driven to act out. I don’t want to be the proverbial “submissive doormat,” but he was treating me like I was one.

I’ve told him that our relationship is in jeopardy. I’ve told him that his actions send me the message that he wants out. He denies it. He brushes it off, tells me not to worry, tells me that all will be OK and that he loves me. I wonder how two people can be viewing the same situation and take away such differing opinions of it.

I’m not sure why I’ve held on for these last two weeks. Why didn’t I just end it all when the shit first hit the fan? I guess I optimistically expected that he’d fix it. He’d make it better. He’d show me that it was all a mistake.

But he hasn’t.  He says one thing, but his actions speak volumes…and they’re saying something else. His actions tell me that I’m not a priority. His actions say that he has no problem treating me inconsiderately. His actions indicate that he has no interest in saving this relationship.

Why am I still here? Why am I still waiting for this grand gesture? I guess I’m scared. I guess I’m still holding out hope. I lose a little respect for myself here. Why have I let him treat me this way? Why haven’t I just walked away? Why am I leaving the door open for him, knowing he can behave this way, knowing that if I forgive him he might do this again?

I am scared. And I love his positive character traits. I can’t imagine finding someone who is his equal. I realize I’m getting old. The dating pool is growing smaller. I’ve looked at the profiles on Alt and CM and Bondage.com, and I’ve gotten disillusioned. It seems hopeless. I want the happily-ever-after story, and I thought I’d found it in him. I searched and searched and searched, and I thought I’d found him.

Now I’m not so sure.

It’s another one of those days where I just want to melt. Hot, humid, sticky. I keep positioning myself in front of the air conditioner vent, where I can enjoy the cool breeze.

I realize I’ve been bad at posting lately. It’s a combination of factors. I’ve never told my boyfriend about this blog, and wouldn’t feel comfortable having him read my posts about encounters with other men, so I feel less guilty about it when I’m not posting. I also like keeping some of the intimate details to myself. And work has kept me busy of late!

Actually–that part about the intimate details?–lately there haven’t been many. In the last 6 weeks, I think we’ve spent about 10 days together, and I haven’t seen him at all for nearly 3 weeks. He’s been going in one direction, and I’ve been going in another.

But I woke up this morning to find a note from him, telling me to pack because we’re getting on a plane this evening and will be gone for 5 days. Hurray! This isn’t really a vacation–we’re supposed to be leaving for one of those in another 10 days–but it is a much-needed chance to spend some time together.

It’s ironic. We live just a few blocks from one another, but we seem to spend more time together in cities other than our own. Of those 10 days together in the last 6 weeks? I think we spent just one of those days together in our hometown. The rest were (not) here, there and everywhere.

I told him one day during this recent stretch apart that I needed some more dominance in my life. When we’re apart, we don’t have many rituals or requirements that I’m required to follow. So I need some dominance, a bit of Daddy time, to bring me back to center. I’m hoping I’ll feel some of that this week. I miss it, and when we’ve been apart this long, I sometimes forgot how it makes me feel. This will bring me back to center.

In the meantime, I’m heading to the airport!

The restaurant was small and dark, and it was impossible not to brush against other tables and diners as we were making our way to our seats. But the proprietor sat us at what was probably the best table in what was probably the best section; it was a table for two adjacent to the huge window facing the street.

It was later in the evening, and this restaurant was an unexpected, last-minute choice. Given that it was a weeknight, there were only two other tables occupied, and I kept glancing at the man seated in my direct eyeline. He had a weak chin that he’d attempted to hide with a beard, and he reminded me of someone, but I didn’t recognize him or his female dining companion. The other table–at which sat two men–was directly to my right and cloaked in a shadow.

We opened a bottle of wine and started to relax, chatting as we perused the menu. Almost unconsciously, I found myself glancing to the bearded man, and then to the other table. Something familiar kept causing me to look their way, but I couldn’t put my finger on it, and I didn’t try. Each time I turned to look, the action was reflexive, driven by instinctively by something, but I couldn’t say what it was. I was hardly aware that I was even glancing around, and each time I did, my eye focused on the bearded, weak-chinned man who I thought I recognized.

Suddenly I turned my head again. It wasn’t the weak-chinned man who was catching my attention, it was a familiar voice. I turned again to the two men sitting at my right, and my eyes immediately fell on one of them. My heart froze for a second, then I slowly turned my head back to my boyfriend and resumed our conversation, though my mind was hardly focused on the words coming out of my mouth.

I didn’t look again, but within a minute I was aware that the men were standing up, gathering their things, and walking out the door. My boyfriend started to ask me a question, but I halted him as I waited for the men to walk down the sidewalk past our table in the picture window.

“That guy used to be one of my best friends,” I told him after they’d walked down the street. “I haven’t talked to him or heard from him in about 5 years. I didn’t even realize that he’d moved back to the city.”

I was introduced to D on my first day at college. I was a freshman, and T was the first person I met when I arrived on campus. D was T’s his best friend, and T introduced me to D, a senior. They both lived down the hall from me, and I was flattered and happy to make the aquaintance of two attractive upperclassman. For the first month or two, I think D saw me simply as one of a gaggle of girls who competed for his attentions. But slowly, we found some shared interests and carved out something of a friendship. Admittedly, I had a small crush on him, though he showed no signs of being interested in me romantically, but every sign of being interested in me as a person.

That year flew by, and quickly came to an end. D graduated, and I couldn’t tell you what he did immediately after graduation. Maybe he stayed in town, working at a local job. Maybe he left immediately and I just got periodic updates about him. We weren’t close enough to be in direct contact after he moved away, but we shared a lot of mutual friends. I’d think of him sporadically, but he wasn’t at the forefront of my mind.

My college years were a wonderful whirlwind, and before I knew it, senior year had arrived. I went home from the Christmas holiday, and flew back to the city shortly after the new year. It was a cold, wet January day, and I decided to take a commercial shuttle from the airport to campus. The dispatcher pointed me to the van, and told me we’d be leaving in a few minutes. I climbed in and started to get settled when a voice greeted me from the back of the bus. I turned around, and it was D.

He was moving back in town after working elsewhere for several years. We spent the entire ride catching up, and, since his future roommates wouldn’t be home for another couple hours, I invited him over to my apartment to hang out. We spent hours together catching up with one another before he headed over to his new home. As I think about it now, that chance encounter probably cemented a new, closer stage of our relationship.

Within months I had graduated, and we’d both moved to homes further from campus and closer to our jobs in the city. Our offices were just several blocks from one another, so on a regular basis we’d meet for lunch. I can also recall many night spent hanging out at my house or his. By this time I was in a serious relationship, and I’d long moved past the idea that there ever might be a romantic relationship with D. That was confirmed the day we met for lunch and he told me that he was gay. I was the first straight friend who he came out to, and he was a bit let down that the announcement didn’t generate more of a suprised or shocked reaction. A few months later, at his request, I broke the news to our mutual friend T.

As the years flew by, our relationship grew even closer, and he became my family away from home. We celebrated holidays together. We commisserated over failed relationships. We took vacations together. We spent many a summer hour sitting in his garden, listening to music, drinking wine and cooking dinner. On the morning of September 11, I sat in front of his television and together we watched what seemed like the world collapsing.

Within a year, our relationship had fallen to pieces. To this day I don’t know what caused it, though I’ve often wondered if his then-boyfriend, always kind and cordial toward me, might have been a factor. After all, little else had changed in our friendship, but with the arrival of this boyfriend (and, perhaps not coincidentally, with the arrival of a new boyfriend for me, too) we started to see less of one another. Holidays passed without joint celebration. Our communication was reduced to quick phone calls and short emails. Then I got an email from him, “We’re moving to another state. I have a couple things of yours, but they accidentally got packed. I’ll send them when we’re settled in.”

Then there was silence.

I got no reply to my emails. I never saw my possessions. (I was less concerned with my possessions and more concerned with our dissolving friendship.) I was hurt when I sent him a note sharing some bad news but got no acknowledgement in reply. A mutual friend fell upon hard times, and I read about it in the paper; at that point I wouldn’t have expected D to contact me about it, but I was surpised that D never called when our friend died. By that time I’d given up trying. I’d reached out to him too many times in the past, and was stonewalled at every effort. The rejection was too painful. Plus, other friends also felt as if he’d turned his back on us. That at least gave me some comfort; I shouldn’t take it too personally.

And then I found myself sitting less than 4 feet away from him. I was stunned at the notion that I didn’t even recognize someone who’d been such a close friend, someone who I’d known for nearly two decade. Should I say something? Did he recognize me? What would I say after all of these years? A dozen thoughts raced through my mind, but in the end I did nothing. After all, he was a stranger to me.

I said goodbye to you tonight. It was something I’d never imagined, because in my mind you were immortal. It shook me to my core to learn that wasn’t the case. I saw so many old, familiar faces. The only one that was missing was yours. Though you were certainly present in our memories. “Remember when…?” “Can you believe…?” “Don’t you miss…?” But the biggest question was the one for which we have no answers: Why? Why did you want to kill yourself? Didn’t you see any other possible solutions? How could you not have realized that we all loved you, cared for you, would have given an arm and a leg to help you?

I hate that we had to reunite under these circumstances. I wish we could have been celebrating a birth or wedding or anniversary. Anything but a death. Anything but your death.

RIP RJN.

The boyfriend has something up his sleeve, but won’t give me any clues other than cryptic ones. Part of me suspects that he’s sneaked out of town to go talk to my parents. I’m an old fashioned girl, and I’ve told him that I’d like him to ask for their permission before asking me to get married. Of course, that hasn’t stopped him from making a dozen or more soft proposals over the last few months.

On waiting on pins and needles to find out what he’s up to!

The last few months have been amazingly busy, and the BF and I have been on the go. But several times in the course of doing out-of-the-ordinary activities, I’ve paused to think (sometimes seriously, sometimes in jest): “Such is the life of a submissive.”

When…

…we’re in his native land–a place where I don’t speak more than a few words of the local language–and I have to rely on him to translate the conversations for me, I feel submissive.

…in front of his family and friends, he tells me it’s time for me to go to bed, I feel submissive.

…I know he’s master of the manor, but I didn’t think that meant I’d find myself, armed with a wheelbarrow and rake, doing yardwork while he supervised! It puts a new spin on the idea of master and servant. *g*

…we’re visiting his friends’ house, and I’m perched on their sofa with my ankles delicately crossed. I lean over and whisper, “May I cross my legs, please?” He shakes his head, “No.” I feel submissive.

…I have to ask him for permission to go to the bathroom, even when it means waking him up in the middle of our 8-hour plane trip, I feel submissive.

…he calls me up and says, “Pack your suitcases, we’re going somewhere but it’s a surprise,” I feel submissive (and spoiled!).

I’m a faithful reader of the smut on ASSTR.org, as well as the stories posted on Alt.com and similar sites. A few years ago I read an incredibly hot story that I think was posted on ASSTR, but I’m unable to find it, even doing a pretty detailed search via Google. Maybe someone else remembers it, and can point me to a link? As best I remember it…

The story featured a woman who met up with a dominant guy. They drove to a store where he bought a box of pens or pencils, then made her stick them in her pussy, one by one, slowly stretching her out. At another point in the story, he put an inflatible ball of some sort (maybe a football) into her cunt and inflated it. Toward the end of the story he pierced and padlocked her pussy, then left without contacting her for a month or two. The story was a bit extreme, but very hot, and I’d love to read it again!

If anyone can supply me with a link, I’d be very grateful!

About a month ago, I spent time with one of my childhood friend, and a couple weeks later I spent time with another childhood friend. They, too, were friends as children, but now I am the conduit through which they keep in touch. The three of us (and many of our other childhood friends) are spread across the country and globe, so I don’t often have the chance to see them in person, though we keep in touch via phone and email. At times, however, as much as a decade has passed between face-to-face visits.

Because we haven’t grown up together in-person (we were together in our early teens, but not during high school or college or post-college), I think our views of one another are sometimes stuck in the past. I can spend hours talking to Mona on the phone–hearing about her husband and their daughter–but when I see her in person, she is at least partially still that pre-adolescent girl who I met a couple dozen of years ago who is barely old enough to babysit. Or Ricki comes to visit, and I’m happily surprised at the woman who wants to nest for the weekend because I still remember the teenager who thought she was missing something if she didn’t go out every single night.

Ricki’s in a relationship with a man who I consider to be dominant, yet mentally abusive. This isn’t consentual D/s, unless you consider the fact that she was fully aware of his personality when she chose to marry him. In their relationship, it’s all about him, and he fails to take into account their collective interests when making a decision that affects both of them.

For example, they’ve twice relocated because of his job. In one case, they moved to a place where she was all but unemployable. After several years she was finally able to obtain a job, and then they promptly moved again. They now live 10 minutes from his office, and 90 minutes from hers. He easily makes 10 times her salary, yet he insists that they evenly split their housing costs. She suffers from some moderately serious health problems, and after a long week at work, there are weekends where she just wants to chill out at home. Yet he becomes irate–and threatens divorce–blaming her for the fact that they don’t know many people in this city where they’ve lived for about a year.

I may be a submissive woman myself, but when I spend time with Ricki, I just want to tell her to get a backbone. The fact is, her husband’s a selfish jerk. He only cares about himself. If he’s not having fun, he’s going to pack up his toys and go home. But is it abuse? Do the pros outweigh the cons? I can only guess based on what I’ve observed. He’s successful. He’s charismatic. He’s rich. He’s smart. He’s gregarious. He’s drop-dead gorgeous. But he’s also selfish. He’s shallow. He’s childish. He’s unsupportive.

I think Ricki feels as if she’ll never find another man who matches up to his good qualities (even though she herself is smart, worldly, fun and model-beautiful…she could attract a wonderful man, and in the past she has). It frustrates me, because I remember the girl who I first knew, who wouldn’t put up with crap from anyone, and loved and respected herself. As much as I adore her, in her 30s she’s become a bit shallow. I think she likes having a rich, handsome husband. But is it worth the pain? I think not. But then again, I’m not in her shoes. Might, someday, I be married and have my friends wonder, “What does she see in that jerk?”

The other day I realized that Valentine’s Day is rapidly approaching, and my mind started to wander back in time. Last year, I was going on a first date on Valentine’s Day with Guy #3, or so I thought. Then I remembered, it wasn’t one year ago, but two. Where does the time go? I thought about it some more, then realized what I was forgetting: That I’d wasted almost a year with the Dark Horse. At one point, he was the first person I thought of when I woke up in the morning and the last I thought about before falling asleep. He was also the person I talked to most frequently each day–we’d often spend hours on the phone. Now, I might trade an email or IM with him once a month or so. The last time he called, I let it go to voicemail. Isn’t it odd how people come into our lives–people who we think will be in our lives forever–and then disappear as quickly as they appeared?

Things with the BF are wonderful. Our relationship has felt very comfortable–but passionate–since the day we first met. I think one of the reasons it works so well is that we both work well together in a variety of roles. When we’re alone with one another, it’s Daddy and his little girl. When we host a dinner party, we naturally work well together as host and hostess. Recently we were in a resort destination for a board meeting he had to attend, and I was quite happy to be his intelligent, attractive arm candy–as comfortable seated next to his boss at dinner as I was talking to my BF’s subordinates and their spouses over cocktails. He knows I’ll make him proud in any of these situations, and I do my best to make him proud.

Just a quick post to let you know that I’m alive and well!

I have rosacea. It’s an affliction that affects a lot of people, but I’ve never read anything about dealing with rosacea while in a D/s relationship.

If you’re not familiar with rosacea, it’s a skin condition that’s actually a variant of acne. But unlike acne, it involves a lot more than zits (and sometimes involves no zits whatsoever). There are a lot of symptoms that accompany rosacea, and not every person who suffers from it experiences the same symptoms. One way that rosacea manifests itself as a bulbous red nose; Bill Clinton is a famous sufferer. Other symptoms include highly sensitive skin (which may react to heat, to cold, to sun, to wind, to anything abrasive, to florescent lights, to alcohol, to hot beverages, to sugars, to cosmetics, to stess, to exercise…in other words, to just about everything), redness across the face, watery eyes, broken blood vessels and small bumps on the face.

Last night my BF and I got home from a great night out. We’d enjoyed a delicious pre-Christmas meal with a friend. It had been a few days since we’d last seen each other, so when we got home, things quickly got hot and heavy. We were kissing, there was spanking, there was a lot of hard fucking. It was wonderful. Until it wasn’t.

My BF gets a fairly heavy 5 o’clock shadow. By 9 or 10 p.m., it’s even more dense. And when he’s kissing me hard and rubbing his face against mine, it can become too much.

By the time all was said-and-done, I was suffering horribly. I was crying, and had to jump out of bed to race to the bathroom. Imagine that you’ve gotten a horrible sunburn on your face–it’s red, the skin is hot and tight, it hurts to just touch it, and some spots are even a bit swollen or blistered. Now imagine feeling like that and having a stiff brush rubbed against your face dozens or hundreds of times. That’s what I felt like at the time. Even today, 12 hours later, my face feels like it got run over by a truck–and it looks it, too. From my upper-left forehead, across my left cheek and upper lip, down to my chin, I look blotchy and still feel a stinging sensation, even when I’m not touching my skin. My most soothing moisturizers made my face burn.

For people who don’t have rosacea, it can be hard to understand. And I hate to sound like a whiny girl who ruins the mood by asking my lover to shave his face. Several times I’ve tried to explain my condition. A few times I’ve talked to him about it when we’re not in the heat of the moment. And I understand how easy it is to forget. After all, when he’s stubbly, he doesn’t feel any pain.

I’m fortunate in that my rosacea is relatively mild compared to many sufferers. So I’ve never thought of rosacea as a handicap that limits my D/s activities. And I’ve rarely had a lover who was so passionate that it irritated me so seriously. (Though, more times than I can count, I’ve asked past BFs to shave before bed.)

Obviously it’s time for another discussion about my affliction. I hope I can make him understand without sounding like a nag or a girl who’s crying wolf. If you have rosacea, how have you helped your partner understand the problems it can cause?

Best wishes to all of my friends out in the blogging world! I hope you find that Santa’s left lots of presents under your tree.

Always Aroused Girl has made a couple posts about her experience with a trusted lover who promised her that he was using condoms with all other lovers. In time she discovered that this man had betrayed her, and was actually going condom free with several other lovers who each also believed that she was the only one with whom he was condom-free.

It got me to thinking about an incident I’ve tried to block out of my mind.

Earlier this year, I woo’ed by, then dumped by, a man I met online. He lived halfway across the country, so we spent several months getting to know one another through emails, phone calls and text messages. We discussed our expectations in anticipation of our first meeting. We talked about the best- and worst-case scenarios. (I thought) we opened our hearts to each other.

Before our first date, I warned him that I don’t sleep with men on the first date. In fact, I don’t have sex with a man until I’m sure it’s likely to become a relationship. He told me that he’d had a relationship with every woman he’s slept with. Even if no sex was involved, I told him, I hoped to spend the night sleeping wrapped in his arms. And we both agreed that in some respects it didn’t feel like a first date because we’d gotten to know each other so well. Even though we’d never met face-to-face, I felt as if a level of trust had developed between us.

That first night we went out to dinner. There was wine involved, but the quantities were relatively modest. I wasn’t drunk, and I don’t think he was, either. After dinner, we went back to his hotel room. That, in itself, wasn’t a surprise. I’d met him before dinner at his hotel. I’d even been up to his room before dinner, and he was a perfect gentleman. I wanted to go back to his hotel room.

Clothes were removed. Body parts were touched and kissed and fondled and bitten. Soon, he made it clear that he wanted to have sex, and I agreed. Get a condom, I insisted. He initially balked, but finally got one from his toiletry kit. We started to have sex. We stopped to engage in more fun that didn’t involve penetration. We started to have sex again. We stopped again. He removed the condom and we continued in our passionate ways, minus pentration. We were both having fun, and there didn’t seem to be any pressure to rush things.

I rolled onto my side, with my back to him. Suddenly he forced himself into me. “No Daddy,” I whimpered. “Please, no, stop.”

He didn’t. It lasted only a brief moment in time–maybe less than a minute–before he came inside me. “It’s OK, baby,” he said. “I’ve been tested. I’m safe. I haven’t been with anyone since I was tested 6 months ago.”

I didn’t argue. We curled up together an fell asleep.

I saw him one more before he left town. There was no sex involved. But in the back of my mind, I had a nagging feeling. Without any discussion, he’d fucked me without a condom. I hadn’t given permission. I’d asked him to stop. He didn’t. But for some reason, I found myself willing to overlook it. After all, I cared about this man. I’d fallen for him, head over heels, before we even met. And the rest of our time together–you know, except for the part where he was fucking me against my will without a condom–was magical. For whatever reason, I felt willing to forgive him for that heat-of-the-moment transgression.

He left town and we started to make plans for our next visit. Then, without warning, he disappeared as quickly as he’s appeared.

In my anger over what could have been, I also started to get angry over the sex. I was upset and bothered on a lot of levels, but I was also upset with myself, because to some extent I was willing to forgive him. Some of the things that went through my mind when dealing with the ramifications:

• I said no, and he ignored me. But in the BDSM world, when does “no” really mean “no”? We hadn’t set a safeword, so should he have listened to me when I said “no”?
• If I’d really meant it, couldn’t I have pulled away from him, gotten up and walked out the door?
• He never asked if I’d been tested, nor did he ask if I was on birth control. The irony is that he has two children under the age of 5 with two women. The younger of the kids–the one who wasn’t even a year old at the time–was an accidental pregnancy with his ex-girlfriend. Shouldn’t a man who’s recently made that mistake ensure that he takes all precautions to prevent another unplanned pregnancy?
• I have no insurance, and the cost of a full battery of STD tests costs real money. I walked into my local free clinic a month or two later, and immediately turned around and left. It was dirty. The clientele looked seedy. The wait would be hours, and they took no appointments. Eventually I broke down and got the tests from my OB-GYN. It was an expensive lesson, but fortunately the results were clean.
• This man was previously a law-enforcement officer. And not just any old small-town police officer. He worked for a federal law enforcement agency. (And, yes, it’s the one you’re probably thinking of.) He’s now an executive at a big company, where he reports to the CEO. (The kind of position where you worry about your image, and don’t do things outside of work that could tarnish your image at the office.) Aren’t these the kinds of people we should be able to trust?
• He has daughters who are close to my age. How would he feel if a man treated one of his daughters this way?
• If you agree to sex under certain conditions (with a condom) and then the conditions change (the condom is removed) and you say “no” is it date rape?
• Why was I willing to forgive him for ignoring my wishes when I thought things were going well between us, but I became so angry about the incident when things fell apart?

I’ve asked myself all of these questions, and more, over the last six months. And I don’t have the answers. Most of the time I’m able to put it out of my mind, but Always Aroused Girl’s recent post brought the memories back to me. It’s still upsetting because of what happened, and because of the way that I reacted–or didn’t react–to the situation.

I’m such a bad blogger! This is supposed to be my journal that details dating in the BDSM world, and as soon as I meet someone wonderful, I drop off the face of the earth. I’m sorry

Things are terrific, and I could hardly ask for more. He’s met some of my family. I’ve met some of his and will meet some more family members shortly after Christmas. We’ve been traveling together a lot, and have some more trips planned for the next few months. We’re meeting each other’s friends. We’ve looked at collars (at Tiffany’s!), and we’ve talked about getting engaged. It’s fast, but it feels right.

I’ve waited all of my life to meet a man like this, and now I know it was worth the wait!

First things first: I’m sorry that I went MIA! But there’s a good reason. The man I mentioned in my prior post? We’ve spent a lot of time together, and I couldn’t ask for a better guy. My feeling for him grow stronger by the day. I just returned from a weeklong trip with him, and I’m already missing him already. (We’ll be apart for a coupld days.) But this weekend we’ll be together again, and I’ll be meeting some of his family. (He’ll be meeting some of mine over Thanksgiving.)

The one thing I’ve come to realize: My previously, albeit limited, experience with D/s hasn’t been real-world experience. On the handful of times that the Dark Horse and I had honest-to-goodness, face-to-face dates (as opposed to hours spent on phone calls and trading emails), I was seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. Everything was wonderful because we didn’t let the outside world ontrude on those 4 or 6 or 8 hours at a stretch that we were together. The same is true of other dominant men I’ve met. The only exception would be my relationship with J2, but while ours was a relationship between a dominant man and a submissive woman, we didn’t use those labels, or incorporate a lot of D/s elements into our interactions.

So for years I’ve been fantasizing, and imagining the “ideal” D/s relationship. I’d forgotten that reality often interferes.

Before I talk about interference from the real world, let me just say that he’s great. (And, yes, I need to come up with a nickname for him.) He’s funny, charming, intelligent, successful, kind, strict, a gentleman and a dominant. And I adore him for being all of those things. And he adores me. But the real world? More often than not, I now realize that it can easily interfere on that “perfect” D/s relationship.

Last night I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. We’d had a bigger than normal dinner, and my stomach was aching. I had a butt plug in my ass, and wanted nothing more than to take it out because, as I said, my stomach was aching and (at the risk of providing TMI) I was a little gassy. He and I prefer to sleep in rooms that are different temperatures, so while he was comfortable–and snoring–I was cold. With an aching stomach. And an uncomfortable butt plug buried in my ass. Did I mention that I also have cystitis? Too much great fucking, of course. But that isn’t really much consolation when you have to run to the bathroom every 15 minutes, even when almost nothing comes out. That comes on the heels of me having had a cold and the flu (separately, of course). So I’ve been healthy for about one day during the entire time he’s known me. This weekend I also had an allergic reaction to some new lube we’d bought. We finished having sex, and I ran for the shower. Nothing like a burning feeling on top of already feeling as if your pussy’s raw. Oh, and remember the never-ending period? Yeah, I’ve been bleeding 3 out of the last 5 weeks. So I was lying awake in a hotel room last night, aching stomach, UTI, uncomfortable butt plug, cold, listening to him snore and thinking about the fact that I was probably bleeding on white sheets (because he wants me to sleep naked and it’s sort of hard to believe that I’m still bleeding). But there are a lot of things we have in common. Like the fact that I love to suck cock, and he has a cock Just one little problem, one I’ve never encountered before. He has a huge cock. So big that I can now understand how you could get TMJ from blowjobs.

I’m not complaining. I absolutely adore him, and could see myself with him til I’m old and gray. I’ve just finally come to realize that even in the best of situations, sometimes the real world can interfere with the best situation! But we’re both making the best of it, and we’re both able to laugh about it.

I just spent a few wonderful days with the man I mentioned here and here. Any regrets? None so far! Our time together just reconfirmed my first impressions. And I know I got some grief for my post about my ideal man, but I just reread my list and, from what I can tell, he is almost exactly what I described. (I don’t know him well enough to know whether he meets several of the criteria.) Is he perfect? No, but none of his flaws are dealbreakers. And I hope that none of mine are dealbreakers to him.

This is going to be a short post, but I wanted to let you know that I’m alive, I survived the trip and I had an amazing time!