Coming at it from Opposite Ends – and Meeting in the Middle

I was reading a discussion on Fetlife the other day titled something like, “What if his kink isn’t mine?”  There was a lot of advice like, “Find someone else,” and “Dump him,” or alternatively, “Aren’t you the submissive? Pleasing him is what this about, isn’t it?” Personally I find both the those approaches extreme.
While it’s true that W and I have a relationship based on the acknowledgment and acceptance that our kinks may not always align, and when they don’t, either or both of us are free (and encouraged) to explore those, and seek fulfillment of them, with others, the truth of the matter is that we also strive to find ways to meet each others needs. Sometimes that is me finding a way to enjoy a thing that isn’t my favorite thing to do, or to endure a thing because I know it gets him off, sometimes it is he that will approach something in a way that will make it work for me.  Sometimes I use “enduring it” to feed my own need for submission. (I often wonder if he does too, in a way. He knows that I need to find things that fulfill that need for me, so he “gives” me the opportunity…)
Anyway, an example of how we have come to this “meet in the middle” place:
The other day W and I were perusing Fetlife together, perving on bondage pics that we liked (not an uncommon occurrence.)  As we looked at one picture, and I oohed and aahed over it, and then another, that he had a clear preference for, I realized that sometimes we come at bondage with opposite goals.
Imagine these pictures (you have to imagine them because they are someone else’s and not mine to post):
Image one: a woman tied up on the floor. The tie was fairly simple, but challenging.  She is on her back with her legs spread, knees bent and feet tied under her and her wrists tied to the ropes around her thighs.  She is open, vulnerable, unable to defend herself from whatever it is her tormentor wishes to do to her, whether that is to shove things inside her cunt, ass or mouth, to fuck her, or to whip her exposed body wherever and however he or she chooses.
Delish.
But obviously, it is not the tie that is going to end up “breaking” her. She is tied for use, not breaking (by the tie or by the predicament itself.)  It is the vulnerability the tie has placed her in that thrills me, not the brutality or severity of the tie.
Click over to the other picture. Again, a woman tied, with her legs open and hands secured, but this time she is balancing on her toes between two bamboo poles. An interesting – and eventually excruciating – tie. Although she is open and exposed, she is not tied for sexual use or impact play, and in fact I don’t think she could handle anything of that nature in that tie, as I am often not able to in the ties that W puts me in.  “I had planned to…” is a refrain I often hear from him, but I “break” before he has a chance.  As with me, it is the tie that will eventually break her in that picture. And that is the interest factor in the tie for W: its severity, and the sure knowledge that she won’t be able to maintain it and will eventually “break.”
Me, I’m all about the orgasm or the endorphins. Tie me, beat me, make me squirm with embarrassment or humiliation, fuck me. Make me come or make me fly. What I seek is often very primal – I want force and rape and subjugation, scenes that reek of barely controlled violence and dark and twisted passions.  Just the act of being tied, imagining what’s to come, dreading and desiring it (and feeling shame at that desire) puts me in a completely vulnerable mental space before anything else even starts.
While W certainly plays that way as well, and I believe that is exactly the headspace rope puts him in (the subjugator, the dominator), I think that more often when he thinks of creating a bondage scene, it is about crafting a situation that will eventually break the bottom. (I am using the term “break” loosely, and more to denote a degree of play, not necessarily an actual, physical, breaking point–although that occurs at times as well.) He seeks to build a situation, piece by torturous piece, increasing the physical discomfort and distress until the bottom can’t take another minute of it. It’s almost clinical, in a way, an analytical gauging of physical and emotional endurance designed to bring the bottom to the brink, without actually pushing her over.
W often ties me thus. It is the tie itself, the creation of a predicament until, eventually, as he knows will happen – he will break me – that does it for him.
This is not something I had experience with before playing with him. With other playpartners I had always been tied up for sex or other activities.  The first few times we played he tied me for more “traditional” use, but eventually he tied me into an excruciating tie that was simply about that: the tie. That was my introduction to bondage for the sake of bondage (I like to think of it as Bondage-for-Misery.) I honestly didn’t like it much then, and don’t much to this day – but then I’m not supposed to. It’s about misery, it’s about endurance, and finding the edge of that endurance. I’ve learned to…accept it for the challenge that it is, and use it to push myself into mental spaces that I might not otherwise, and even to use it as a way to tap into my submission, because it is something I very much do for him. I do it because he wants me to, and what I get out of it is doing it for him.  Enduring it.  He enjoys seeing me thus, he enjoys placing me in those kinds of situations, so I do it for him.
There are other elements to these kinds of scenes that, while I can’t say I enjoy, I can at least appreciate. They are physically challenging – and sometimes mentally as well. There are times when my endurance almost has an element of “fuck you” to it, as I strive to outlast whatever-it-is he is throwing at me: “I’ll show you!” It becomes a way to defy him, and to be defiant, as odd as that sounds.
We’ve arrived at this place, where something that I didn’t necessarily like is something that we both find pleasure in, because we have talked extensively about what we do, why we do it, what we each get out of it, what we want to get out of it. I was pretty specific one day and said, “I really need there to be something sexual in this for me to enjoy it.” So he knows that unless there is that element, pleasure is not what I am getting in the scene, and I know that if he doesn’t go there, he is wanting a Bondage-for-Misery scene. He knows what gets me off, so if he chooses not to go there, I know it’s a scene that is something he wants to be that way. And, in that weird way that my head works, that makes it work for me too.
I don’t often write about those kinds of scenes, because most of what I write here is about kink as it relates to sex and emotion and relationships, and many times those kinds of scenes aren’t easy to describe in those terms. But as I was reading through some past blog posts and looking at some encounters that he had posted on Bondage Demons, I found a couple posts both here and there that really epitomize this genesis, and how, even though it seems that we come at this from opposite ends at times, somehow, we manage to meet in the middle.

A Difficult Scene

From my perspective:

The other night he hurt me. Not in the yummy, “oh this hurts so good, hit me again, baby” kind of way, not in the way I “like”—the kind of pain that sends power surging though me even as he wields power over me—but real pain, real torment, pain that battered me until I finally gave in and begged him to release me from it.

From his perspective:

All that was left for me to do was to stand back and casually take photos, circling as I watched her self destruct. It was exquisite…

You can read more from my perspective and see the rest of the photos (without being a member) at Bondage Demons. Click on Feature Galleries>Jade>A Difficult Scene. For the entire scene from his perspective, see A Difficult Scene, Wood Demon’s Perspective.

More Cage Fuckery

I don’t have a “my perspective/his perspective” for this one, but I have a blog post that epitomizes how far I had come in allowing my own perceptions of things to be co-opted (corrupted?) by his. This was a fairly straightforward predicament tie that was mostly about endurance…except in my head.  And, apparently, whatever was in my head leaked into his, because it led to some hot sex. You can see all the pictures that go along with this post at Bondage Demons as well, titled Caged Thoughts, 1 & 2.
Embedded in the post above is also a link to this post:

That post really captures my complete subversion to W’s dirty fantasies, all on my own and without his verbal prompting.  (He just posted the rest of the pictures to this set on Bondage Demons under “What’s New”>Headcage Fantasy as well.)

Riding the Rope

From his perspective (found on Bondage Demons under the same title):

During the initial application the rope was pulled upward and firmly tightened while the spikes of her high heels barely touched the floor. Time passed as she settled in. After a while a spreader bar was run beneath the arch of her high heels and attached to her ankles. It further separated her legs and held them in position, increasing the tension in her crotch and limiting her movement.

…

More time passed as I observed and took photos. I didn’t touch her at all until the experience overwhelmed her and she collapsed in a puddle of fatigue and emotion as I took her down. It was a truly perfect experience.

I really feel that his write-up perfectly captures how he approaches a scene like this, and the pleasure he finds in such a scene.  As for me, by the time he brought me down, it didn’t matter what the scene was about, I was a quivering ball of goo at his feet.  It is the essence of the type of scene that four years ago I wouldn’t have thought was that interesting or hot, and yet turned out to be exceptionally so, and took us both where we wanted to go.

And just where I want to be.