I’ve been composing this letter in my head for a while, and thought it was overdue. But now that I sit down to write it, I realize that its timing is right for me.
I need more from you. Not getting on my knees and begging for you to play with me has been a colossal effort and its own kind of torture for several reasons. I wasn’t sure how you would take it. I wasn’t sure if I would be asking too much, or at the wrong time, or what I would really be asking for from you. I wasn’t sure how that much of a break in my pride would affect me, and I wasn’t ready to beg if it was only going to get me uncertain results.
Playing, and submitting in general helps me relax. It helps me to stay calm and be less anxious about everything. It is such a powerful release of stress that I have been lost without it. I’m routinely upset, frustrated and anxious. As these feelings build, they make it harder for me to communicate with you and harder for me to calm myself down. Not being able to submit to you has left me so irritated and on edge that I’ve snapped at you several times over the course of the past few months for no other reason that my nerves were frayed.
But for all the hurt it caused (fun hurt at times), I was not ready to ask for what I wanted. It didn’t feel quite right and it didn’t seem easy so I didn’t. I’m glad I didn’t because I needed to work through all those emotions on my own without any aide from you. I found out a lot about myself and my desires in the past few months. My new understanding has helped me to pick apart how I feel about those desires and how to better manage my own emotions.
I needed the past few weeks to be sure that I could work through all the pent up frustrations without submitting. I needed them to know that I could handle myself and my own desires and their accompanying emotions.
I’m not ready to share all of my conclusions with you, but some I need to.
The first thing that jumps out at me is that I need a system. However, that is a strong want, not a need, and I think it should come lower down on the list.
I need to be able to manage my own emotions before we play. It would have been bad at best if we had had any pain play in the past few weeks. Submission was out of the question. As things are now, I would not have been able to calmly submit and be happy and content with it. It would have felt like a demand and been hard to comply with – only making me more stressed. I was not in a mental state where putting those kinds of demands on me would have helped me to relax, and they would have felt like an intrusion. I’m not sure if I would have blown up at you or complied with even worse results. I’m just glad that I listened to whatever inner sense said I wasn’t ready and stopped me from begging for it.
We’re not at a place where I will always be happy to submit, or in a submissive state of mind. I do not know if I will ever choose to, want to, or be able to live in that mindset all the time. I just know I’m not there now. It takes being mostly relaxed beforehand for me to approach that level of trust with you. If I am not calm and certain in and of myself, I’m not ready to turn myself over to you. I’m going to need you to help me recognize that and tell me no if I’m not stopping myself. These past few weeks I’ve thought that what I really needed was to curl up on your lap after a good spanking and my world would be right. I’ve been moody and volatile and if I had a swing in the middle of that it would have been horrible for me and the whole thing would have felt like a violation.
I now know I need to be collected in order to trust myself enough and you enough for me to turn myself over to you. You don’t know enough about my moods and internal monologue yet to manage all that for me or to prod me into the right place to take charge of that for me. I need to do that for myself before I hand it all over to you or I’m just handing you a mess that you don’t have to tools to deal with.
I also realized that I use our play sessions that involve pain to purge myself of guilt. I sometimes think I carry enough guilt for 10 Catholics. It’s stupid guilt over failures that in all probability only another perfectionist would consider failures. I now know I can live with it and face it down and move on. It takes a lot longer, is much more harmful and hurtful, but I can do it. I needed to know that before I used you in my catharsis.
I’ve learned to better manage my submissive tendencies. I stayed out of a submissive mindset deliberately and succeeded, to be sure that I could do that when I needed to - whether that was with you, other people, or just out and about in life.
Now for my want: I want a system. I know that I do not need one, but I realized how deeply I want and crave one. I want a system for my training. I want rules. I want solid expectations from you. I want to know what I am allowed and not allowed to do with you. I want consequences and punishments for when I break the rules and rewards for when I follow them. I’ve had to retype half of these sentences and replace the word “need” with “want”.
For now, I need this training and all the rules to stay within the bedroom and our play sessions. I think I could handle them outside at times, but not all the time and I’m not fully confident about the some of the time. It would be irresponsible for me to tell you I was ready for that, or neglect to tell you that I’m not ready for it. In the contentment of figuring all this stuff out it is easy for me to overestimate my abilities and readiness. But I know that there would be days when you putting those kinds of demands on me would be too much and I would not appreciate you adding anything to my transgressions or rewards while we were out at coffee or something.
I do need for this to be utterly private. I do not like it when you mention anything to do with our sex life to our friends. That goes double if not quadruple for anything concerning BDSM between us. That doesn’t mean I don’t want you to talk about it with your friends, that I don’t mind. And I fully intend to occasionally discuss things with my friends. I just do not enjoy talking about it when we are together, especially not when we’re with a group. It makes me feel incredibly exposed and it is not pleasant. A lot of those insecurities and anxieties get transferred to you and I’m left feeling mad and anxious towards you with no real reason for my distrust. So I would need any system we/you come up with to be very private and not be touched on around other people, for now.
Now I can actually turn over the rest of this post to what I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while. Can we have a system and training? I want you to be stricter when we are playing. I want rules and guidelines and expectations. I think it would help you to maintain control of me and the situation as well. I want you to follow through with some sort of discipline when I break the rules. It is hard for me to call you Eric when I’m in subspace. It feels wrong and disrespectful, so if there is something else I can call you, I would greatly appreciate it. I’d like rewards. Not necessarily for just following the basic rules, cause it seems like that should just be expected, but for when I do particularly good. In all honesty, I enjoy the extra effort I put into doing something for you just as much as you enjoy whatever it is I’m giving you most of the time, but it would be nice if you would recognize it formally in that setting, if it has to do with BDSM and our sex life. I don’t think I’m ready for you to praise me for bringing you a Cadbury egg yet. It would not make me feel good out about it and would make me less inclined to do something like it again in the future. I’m not really sure why yet, but I know that it’s the case.
I’m not too sure what I want as part of the system yet, aside from what to call you. I just know that I want it to be your rules that guide me into the behavior that you enjoy most from me. I know it will be an ongoing process to create and learn the rules, but that’s going to be half the fun.
I would also like to know that you show as much interest as I do in all of this. I need you to take a more active role in order for me to feel safe in my role. It is deeply embarrassing and just utterly – I can’t even think of the word for it. To think that you don’t share my interest in this and that I am pushing it on you makes me feel like my entire foundation is ripped away from me. I need to know you want this just as much as I do. I need for you to match me in that or I feel like I am pushing my needs on you. It would defeat the whole purpose of it if you were to do it for me.
I would like to be able to come to you for punishment when I’ve messed up in my own eyes. I’m not sure if I’m ready to tell you what those transgressions are, but it would give me a way to deal with and move past my guilt over things like missed school assignments and lying. It would help me to be more focused and happier.
I’m rather tired and should have been asleep already, but I would like to talk about this in the near future. I would rather wait to talk about it till I brought it up again. With so much school stress I’m easily upset and I don’t want to be ambushed with this talk. I’m going to need a little time to get used to having revealed this much to you before I talk about it. And to needing to swallow my pride a little bit in admitting that I need a little more consideration at the moment.
Thank you for understanding and being understanding. I love you.
