The moment I lost control

A few years ago I saw a therapist regularly to help me through a process and once I had gone through that process, I didn't feel the need for therapy anymore. However, recently, I reconnected with my therapist for other reasons.

If you've read through this blog, you may have seen a continuing theme laced beneath the posts; a theme of inner conflict settling beneath shades of gray and black. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has had such feelings about being submissive and yet when surrounded by so many in the community who seem to just have it all down, it can be hard to relate.

From the beginning, I learned very quickly how easy it was to get hurt and be taken advantage of. My first date with a Daddy/Dom from FetLife was like nothing I'd ever experienced before and things came tumbling down around me so very fast.

He had given me explicit instructions as to what to wear to our first date and even asked me to send him pictures of different outfits that he could choose from. He chose the sluttiest clothes I owned at the time (of course) and I found myself waiting on the corner of a street in downtown Seattle before I realized the picturesque view I was giving off to all around: a prostitute looking for work. It was my first real humiliation scene and I hadn't even met the guy yet!

Of course now I look back on that and laugh. How naive was I, giving my submission and submitting to humiliation without even having had met the 'man in charge' yet? And yet I can easily remember that same inner conflict brewing within me during all of this. Desires for love and sex, intense and deep raced through my veins while opposing fears crawled through my mind. Would he pick out my clothes all of time from then on? Would I no longer have my own style and personality to put forth? Did I really want to give up that control to anyone?

Here in the present day, my heart is now deeply connected with a special man I call Daddy. He's not that first Daddy I met and he wasn't the next either. In fact, our relationship took months to get to that point. I realize now, that I needed it to happen that way: to build trust. We have many facets in our relationship and many of them are vanilla-centered. I learned fairly early on that when Daddy moved into 'scene-mode', he might say things that he would never really do. The first few times he did that, I was introduced to fear play/mindfuck and it sent me tumbling through confusion.

As our relationship progressed I asked him if he would take more control of my life, in particular, the things in my life I didn't feel like I was disciplined enough to deal with. We also delved more into D/s some, we worked through some punishment scenes, and we ran into landmines.

Each time, I'd look back on myself and wonder 'why did I freak out? Why do I ask him to take control but when he does so, my first knee jerk reaction is to rebel?'. Now that I think about it, the inner conflict in these situations is not much different than with that first guy I met from Fetlife and how he made me feel. Yet here in this relationship, where there was true built up trust and love, it was still happening.

And so I sought out my therapist, hoping to seek out some sense of understanding of myself and the conflict within. We talked about my special relationship with Daddy. We talked about how the helplessness of bondage was freeing for me. We talked about my desire to give up control in certain areas of my life. And we talked about the part of me that seemed to 'freak out' at every turn.

She led me with questions like 'What were you feeling in that moment that caused you to freak out?' and 'What is it you are so afraid of happening if you lose control?'. To which I answered 'The fear that things won't turn out the way I expect them to when I'm in control.' And I thought to myself what if things didn't turn out the way they were expected? Would I lose something? Would I not add up or something? Then she asked, 'Does that sound like anything familiar to you?'

And faster than lightning her words rang true. My whole life, I learned to be in control of myself. I learned to do what my parents asked of me, expected of me, and more. I subconsciously put aside inner parts of myself, knowing that they would not fit into the paradigm that was my family. And years later when I came to realization of those inner parts of myself and took action on them, suddenly I was no longer the child they were proud of or even wanted anything to do with anymore.

The moment I lost control, I let them down. It was probably the most painful event of my life and of course it's not the kind of pain that just disappears; it fades slowly over time.

When I was thinking about it more on my own, I realized there was another way to look at it as well. For most of my life, I submitted to my parents. They had control of my life. Then I broke free to live a totally different and rewarding life and found joy in that freedom. So maybe the idea of giving up control again, uproots fears of repeating a past where I chose to live a lie to please someone else.

I hadn't considered how my inner conflict pertaining to control and submission related back to my parents, yet there it was and it made sense. I don't see anything really changing going forward. I'll still want Daddy to take control in different ways and I imagine I will still have those 'kneejerk reactions' when he decides to do so but hopefully with this new knowledge of possible origins of my fears, we can work through them together, in time.