The “Submissive”

The first kinky “relationship” I ever had was when I was just out of college and it with this Israeli dude named Asher. He was tall and gorgeous and sort of looked like a hotter version of Sacha Baron Cohen. He had randomly messaged me one day on yahoo messenger, which I thought was strange because I wasn’t in a chat room. But I liked his profile picture and it turns out he only lived a couple of miles from me so we chatted.

“Are you into D/s?” he asked me, seemingly out of the blue. He wasn’t quite fluent in English yet and he’d interpreted my screen name as dominatrix-y sounding. My sn had nothing to do with D/s, but it was quite the coincidence that he would ask me about power-exchange, because, while I’d never acted on it, I’d been reading BDSM erotic novels (yes, those existed before 50 Shades) and fantasizing about being dominated for a few years.

“I think I might be, but have no experience,” I answered.

“Do you think you are more of a dominant or more of a submissive?”

“Definitely more of a submissive.”

“Me too, but I can switch,” he lied.

A few days later we met for a drink at the dive bar across the street from my apartment building. This was the default first meeting spot for many of my bad ideas. We played a game of pool. I ended up losing so I bought the drinks.

We discussed what we were into. I told him I liked being spanked and rough sex. He told me that he liked it when a woman made fun of his penis, calling it tiny. He also liked having his manhood called into question, being antagonized with names like fagot, sissy, little girl, cock sucker, etc.

This was a guy who had recently finished a four year stint in the Israeli Army. He was tall, very masculine looking, and he oozed machismo (or whatever the Hebrew version of machismo is). There wasn’t anything effeminate about him.

We agreed that he would come over the next day to clean my apartment (you know, cause cleaning is something only girls and gays do). This was his kink, not mine, so I cleaned the place first. The idea was that I was going to make fun of him cleaning, and then he was going to flip the tables on me and dominant me for the sex part.

What happened is this. He folded a shirt or two, washed a dish, and asked me a couple of times in his thick accent, “You like watching me do this WOMAN’S work? Then he fondled my tits and got a hand job from my low-self-respect-having-self. Zero reciprocation on his part.

This continued a handful of times over the next few months. He would come over to the apartment I had pre-cleaned, pretend to clean, let me verbally abuse him (this part I didn’t mind so much). Then he would barely kiss me, play with my breasts, maybe watch me masturbate (if he was feeling charitable) and then I would rub or suck his cock, which really wasn’t even that small. He never did anything remotely dominant, except refuse to touch my vagina.

I hope none of you have ever experienced a situation like this — being totally into someone and willing to do anything to satisfy him or her, and meanwhile he or she doesn’t even think about reciprocating — because it feels like absolute, utter shit. I met this guy shortly after getting out of a long-term, abusive relationship and I had next to no self-esteem. Every time Asher left, I would feel completely worthless, but I still fantasized about this thing we’d been doing turning into a real relationship. Pathetically, I even told my friends and family about Asher, acting as if I was legitimately dating him.

At the end of the summer he announced he was transferring to another university roughly 300 miles away. He told me this maybe a week before he left.

I was devastated. I honestly believed that if I kept playing this twisted game with Asher and doing whatever he wanted, he would eventually develop feelings for me and we would live happily ever after.

After he moved, I held on to this fantasy. We talked almost every night on IM and webcam. I am ashamed to say I even wrote a few of his papers for him. All this for some fucking dude who had never even done so much as buy me a drink.

Shortly after his move he announced he was seeing someone. He would still talk to me frequently on messenger and tell me how she didn’t understand him like I did, how she was flat chested and he missed my boobs, and other such bullshit he spewed to keep me interested. One time he even came down for a big party his friends were throwing. He didn’t invite me to the party, but he did crash at my place. This kept the fantasy alive for awhile.

We would talk less and less, and eventually I found other people to obsess over lost interest. He would pop up out of the blue every once in awhile to stir up some hope/self-loathing. I hadn’t talked to him in a while and he contacted me to tell me he’d gotten engaged (but still couldn’t be himself around her, still liked my body better, blah, blah). Last time I talked to him, he told me that he recently gotten married. Then he asked me to show him my boobs on webcam. you’ll be proud to know I declined.

Even though this was another life, I still feel shame that I let someone use me and string me along like this. At the same time I know there so many other  women and men currently in situations like this, and that’s part of the reason I share these stories. Today I know that I deserve better and that I’m worth so much more. No one deserves to settle for an asshole like Asher.

Fifty Shades of Lame

The other day at work, during my break I was reading Ready to Heal, by Kelly McDaniel on my Kindle. Ready to Heal is an excellent book for and about female sex and love addicts. I highly recommend it. My ever decreasing attention span (I blame the digital age) makes it difficult for me to actually complete a book unless it is a highly engrossing novel or biography that reads like a novel, but Ready to Heal is a page turner. Check my blog in the near future for an in-depth review.

But what I want to talk about today is what happened while I was reading it, at work. My female boss came up to me and asked, “What are you reading?” You would think that since I was reading this book in public (albeit behind the shroud of an electronic device), I would have prepared a response to this question. After all, “What are you reading?” is a fairly common question when you see someone really into a book. But I hadn’t. Here are some of the thoughts that rushed through my head as she stood in front of me waiting for a response: What ever you do, don’t say it’s about sex addiction! Do not say ‘sex addiction’! “A book for survivors of childhood trauma?” Shit! Don’t say that, that’s almost as bad! “A self-help book?” No! That makes you sound weak and insecure. While all this was going through my head, I came up with the following genius response.

“Uhhhhh… I’m reading… a book… on my Kindle.”

“Yes, but what book?”

“Uhhhhhhhhh”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“Okay.”

End of conversation.

Really quick on my feet, there, aren’t I? Something must have been wrong with my brain that day because a full five minutes later, I thought, Hunger Games! I should have told her I was reading the Hunger Games! Seriously, it took me a full-five minutes after she left the room to think of one freaking book title that I could have plausibly been reading. Did I mention I was an English major in college?

In addition to the embarrassment I experienced over sounding like a moron, I was worried that my boss, with her diplomatic, “You don’t have to tell me” line was convinced that I must have been reading porn. Specifically, I was worried that she thought I was reading that Fifty Shades of Grey tripe, which I’ve heard is one of the best selling digital books ever. I’ve also heard it’s awful and practically unreadable. Still, it’s sliding off the digital shelf. I even had to endure the conversation below with my elderly aunt recently, after I asked her if she’d recently read any good books.

“There is a book I want to read that everyone is reading. It’s called Shade, Shade… Something. Have you heard of it?”

“No. What’s it about?”

“I don’t know, but everyone is reading it. Grey Shade?”

“You don’t mean Fifty Shades of Grey do you?”

“Yes! that’s it. The Shade of Fifty Greys.”

“Ugh. Please don’t read that book.”

“Why not?”

“I heard it’s really badly written, plus… just don’t read it.”

The way I feel about that book (a book I have never read, to be fair) and the way I feel about BDSM in general, is akin to the way someone might feel about some indie band that hardly anyone knew about. She thought they were cool and edgy in high school. Then she outgrew the band as her musical tastes matured and she went to college. A year later the band is so overplayed that even her elderly aunt is mangling their song titles in casual conversation.

It also really irks me that an alternative lifestyle I was deeply immersed in for close to ten years is now a trend. And it’s annoying that it was introduced to the mainstream by some shitty book that started out as Twilight (another book series that sucks) fan fiction by a woman who called herself “Snowqueen’s Icedragon.”

No hate towards Ms. Icedragon. She managed to turn crap prose into a goldmine. I can only hope that some day I’ll be that lucky.

But I can hate her terrible book. I give it two thumbs down, negative stars, an F-.

Nobody Loves You

“Nobody loves you,” “No one wants you,” “You are worthless,” “You don’t matter to anyone,” “You don’t deserve love, protection, happiness, success or anything else that’s good,” “You are shit!” This is what my addiction says to me. This voice formed long ago, probably before my conscious memory. It could have been formed by something as uneventful as belong left to cry a little too long as an infant. Who knows how it originally formed.

In my later childhood this voice was fortified by abandonment, death, and abuse. It lodged deep in my subconscious, then grew with each subsequent trauma. Every unfortunate event in my life gave it more fuel. I deserved it when my boyfriend hit me. Had it coming when I was raped. I believed this voice so much that I sought out further evidence to prove it right. Choose men that would beat me. Asked them for it. Choose men who were unavailable and would therefore eventually abandon me. Became addicted to those men.

This voice is somewhat quelled by the sexual act. In those short moments I know that I am intensely wanted, desired, valued, maybe even loved. I am validated by the focus and the attention. Then it’s over, and all I want is to feel that validation again, and again, and again.

Nowadays I know that this voice is a liar. I am loved, valued, and worthy of all good things. My friends love me, my family members love me, my sponsor and my fellows love me, and most importantly, I am loved by myself and my Higher Power.

That voice is quieter now, but it’s still there. And sometimes it kicks up a fuss that is difficult to ignore.

What Addicts Really Want

On kink and casual sex sites it’s common to see terms like “cock worship” and “pussy worship” bandied about. I never quite understood exactly what these terms meant, but my best guess is amazing head delivered by someone who cannot get enough of the receiver’s genitals. While not everyone on these sites is a sex addict, many of them are. I’ll go out on a limb and say I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone talk about worshipping genitals who wasn’t an active sex addict (sorry if I’m offending any non-addict genital worshipers who will undoubtably find their way here after googling “cock worship” and/ or “pussy worship”).

It’s interesting that worship, a term which literally means reverence or devotion to a deity i.e., a higher power, is used in this context. I picture religious pilgrims knelt down in prayer between a stranger’s legs. Why not say “I’m into cock adoration” or “pussy devotion,” or maybe, “I want to venerate your genitals”? These words all have the same meaning as “worship,” without the spiritual element.

I was never into worshiping sex parts, but this reminds me of other behavior I did have. When I was active in my love addiction, I spent most of my free time looking for that perfect partner. I thought once I found the man who would take care of me and make me feel whole, then I could start living my life. Having this man in my life seemed almost as essential as oxygen. Once I found him, then I could work on my career, my finances, my writing, and all my other hopes and dreams. I didn’t realize it then, but what I was really looking for was my Higher Power.

Similarly, on the BDSM sites I used to frequent I was quite literally looking for a man that I could turn my will and my life over to, which is basically Step 3. Except instead of making a decision to turn their will and life over to a dominant, 12-steppers turn it over to the care of a Higher Power.

This all seems so obvious to me now. The whole time I thought I was searching for an amazing lover I could lose myself in, who would take away all my pain; a boyfriend that would save me from myself and make life tolerable; and a dominant who would take over and make all my decisions for me; I was actually looking for a Higher Power.

I don’t presume to speak for all addicts, but it seems like this could be a major component in most addictions. We’re trying to fill a God-sized hole with drugs, alcohol, food, sex, men, whatever we can find. It’s an impossible task. There will never be enough of anything to fill that hole. Note: I don’t think Higher Power and God have to be synonymous. For me, they are, but I know many atheists and agnostics in 12 steps who put their faith in a non-god higher power—nature, for example.

The more work I do on my recovery, the greater my relationship with my Higher Power becomes. And with that relationship comes hope, peace, and serenity, and everything else I thought I would gain once I found the perfect man.

Missing the Lame

The other day I had dinner with my friend Polly and her new fiance. They met on Match.com. After he finished entertaining us with a story about his worst online dating experience ever, my friend said, “Imperfect (man, I really need a better pen name) has a lot of great Match.com horror stories.”

The funny thing is, I have never actually been on Match.com. Back when I was dating guys I had met on CollarMe or Fetlife, my vanilla friends would ask where I had met the man of the week. “Oh… on, um… Match.com,” I would reply and then quickly change the subject. This was a sufficient enough answer for most of my friends, but Polly always had a lot of follow up questions about Match, how it worked, and the kind of guys who were on it. So, I would make up a bunch of bullshit. Apparently Polly bought it, hook line and sinker, because one day, after she broken up with her last fiance, she told me that she had joined Match.com, on my recommendation. So in a way, my lies helped her find true love — well, convenient love, at least.

Meeting the finance wouldn’t have been a good opportunity to come clean about my (formerly?) kinky lifestyle so I shared my “Match.com” horror stories. I told them the one about the dude that sent a couple of tightly cropped face pics then turned out to be about 200 lbs. bigger than his profile had stated. He thought that buying me lunch gave him license to try to make out with me… in public… in broad daylight. I had to push him away several times as he lurched at me with a wide gaping maw, looking like he was trying to swallow me whole rather than kiss me. I also told them the story of the tool that made me drive an hour in rush hour traffic (his car was in the shop), acted like he was high on coke, then didn’t even offer to pay for my drinks. At the end of the date, he had the nerve to ask me for a ride back to my part of town, because he was meeting “a friend” there.

At the end of the evening, I found myself thinking, wow, I really miss online dating! Not because of Polly and her fiance’s questionable love connection, but because I miss the shitty dates that would later become entertaining anecdotes. Totally healthy, right? No drama addiction here.

Recent experiences have shown me that I’m not quite ready to start dating again. I might rock at collecting and later relating bad and even traumatic date stories, but I still suck at healthy dating.

The Psychic

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you know all about the obsession I had with HC. This fixation was the catalyst that drove me to join SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous), but it was by no means the first time I’d became hung-up on a lover. Also, my obsession with HC was kind of obsession-lite, compared to the ones that had come before it.

A few years prior, I’d been involved in a Dom/sub relationship with Anthony, a man 21 years my senior. Although, we were never monogamous (at the time Anthony described himself as “poly”), it was a fairly significant relationship… for me, at least. We dated for about six-months, and it was more than just a sex. Anthony was there when I needed a friend, something I wasn’t used to from the men I usually slept with. After I got in a car accident on the freeway and totaled my car, he showed up on the scene to make sure I was ok. He told me later that he’d been on a date when I texted him and left early. Anthony helped me when I needed help, and got involved in all areas of my life — even meeting some of my friends. Maybe he did all of this because he was really into me, maybe it was because he liked the drama, or maybe it was a combination of both.

Anthony also had a high tolerance for crazy. I brought the crazy harder than I had ever brought it before, or since. I set up fake accounts on the dating site we were on and pretended to be other people in order to extract information from him. Then I would confront him with the information I’d found. I would insult the other women he was dating. I would throw tantrums. Now, I realize what I was doing — testing how much I could get away with, how much he really cared; and at the same time subconsciously pushing him away, acting out the pattern that started with my father leaving me (through his death) in my childhood. For whatever reason, Anthony was willing to put up with a lot so my craziness progressed to full-on bat-shit insanity. Eventually he reached his limit and suggested we take a break.

Around this time I’d gotten it into my head that I wanted to visit a psychic. I was feeling kind of lost. I didn’t have a full time job and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I was even debating going back to grad school. I wanted someone to guide me and tell me what I was supposed to be doing with my life. What I really needed was to turn the reigns over to my Higher Power and let him guide me, but I hadn’t realized that yet.

I wanted to go to a legit psychic, someone who had a real gift and would give me the answers I needed. I went online and tried to find reviews of psychics in my area.  I found a lot of information on a psychic named Lillian. She had positive reviews on City Search, and yellowpages.com (this was before Yelp was big). She also had a website rife with grammar and spelling errors (everything on her website is “copy write of Lillian the Psychic,” for example). But, I figured, I was going to her  for psychic guidance, not editing services so it didn’t matter. She also had a lot of bullshit on there like “Voted #1 Psychic in the State” and “Licensed, bonded, and certified,” without saying whom it was voting, licensing, bonding and certifying her. By the way, did I ever tell you that I was voted “Number #1 Blogger on WordPress”? It’s true.* This stuff should have given me pause, but Lillian had a coupon on her site. I’m a sucker for a bargain so I dragged my friend Marie over and we each got a reading.

My reading didn’t exactly blow me away, at first. She said a lot of vague things that she could probably tell just by talking with me for a few minutes — that I’m creative, intuitive, good with people, etc. She said a few other things I’ve forgotten. The only specific thing she told me was that I would die at 86, and it’s not like that one can be proven anytime soon.  Then she said I had just ended a relationship, but would eventually get back together with that person, because that person was my “one, true soulmate”. Now, that caught my attention. Almost as an aside, she mentioned that she could help me speed things along, if I wanted.

Marie went next and I remember her reading being more specific than mine.  Lillian said that Marie would have a fatty tumor removed in a year and a half. Marie was about to start a new job, and Lillian told her that her soulmate would be someone she would meet not at this new job, but at the job she would get after this one. Marie, who is a healthy skeptic wasn’t impressed by her reading. She had mainly gone along to keep me company. I, on the other hand, was totally buzzed by the thought that I would soon be getting back with Anthony.

A few days later, I took my friend Allison to see Lillian. Allison and I had a lot in common when it came to sex and love issues. At the time Allison was obsessing over some dude and whether or not she should move for school, which would put her closer to this guy. I don’t remember exactly what Lillian told Allison, but she was convinced Lillian was legit.

That  one vote of confidence was all I needed. So I told Lillian I wanted to “speed things along” with Anthony. The way it worked is that she would get this special candle, imprint Anthony’s and my names and our dates of birth on it, and meditate every night on it until we were together. Then she gave me a candle and anointed it with special oil. She said that I was to light the candle every night, meditate, and visualize Anthony and I being together. Then at the end of each visualization session, I should leave a message on her voice mail to let her know I’d done it. Lillian said she would do all of this for free, because she believed in true love, but she needed money to buy this special candle, which cost $200. She said that Anthony and I would be back together in a few weeks.

Of course, I gave her the money. I mean, $200 for “happily ever after” is nothing.  To start, I went back to her office the next day, where she turned off the lights, lit some candles and incense, had me lay back and close my eyes, and anointed my forehead with oil. She stood over me and prayed, or something… maybe went through my purse, who knows. Right when I closed my eyes I had a moment of What the fuck are you doing, girl? You need to get out of here fast! (bitch was right about me being intuitive), but I dismissed this warning voice, and let this woman do her thing.

I should probably mention that Lillian’s office was decorated with a lot of Catholic imagery — statues of the Virgin Mary, saint candles, crucifixes, etc. She sprinkled her psychic bullshit with a lot of religious talk. She spoke about her church and acted the part of the pious Catholic. While I am not a pious Catholic, I do come from a Catholic background. Believing Lillian to be a devoted follower of the church I had grown up in, I trusted her.

Every night I would light my candle, and sit and meditate, visualizing Anthony and me together. I honestly think if it wasn’t for this nightly exercise, I probably would have been okay. I would have been obsessed with Anthony for a month or so, then I would have met some other dude and gotten over it. Wash, rinse, repeat. Not saying that would have been right, but it would have been okay. Telling a love addict to participate in a nightly ritual visualizing her and her ex back together is a recipe for some bad, bad shit.

After a couple of weeks of this practice, Lillian told me she wanted to hold another session with me. It would be free, of course (bitch knew how to work the long con). Again, when I closed my eyes, that warning voice came back. Get out of here, right now! Again, I dismissed it as paranoia. After this “prayer session” Lillian told me that things were going well. In fact, Anthony had had a dream about me the other night. Her meditations were working, and I was on his mind. There was a problem, though. For whatever reason, there was some dark energy that was blocking us. At this time, it had been more than a month since I had last seen Anthony. I’d heard that Anthony was now seeing one woman exclusively. I was sick with jealousy and desperate to remove this block Lillian spoke of. She said in order to do it, she need to purchase these two specially charged crystals that cost $1,500 each, for a grand total of $3,000. I told her there was no way I could afford $3,000. She said that it was the only way we could ever be together and she would try to work something out.

A few days later, Lillian called me and said that she had gotten the price down from her supplier. The price was still more than I could afford. Then she said that she believed in this relationship so much, that she would dip into her own money to help me buy the crystals. I’m ashamed to say that I wrote Lillian a check for $1,500 to buy the two crystals. This was more than my rent money.

We went through the whole process again — the nightly meditations, checking in with her, one-on-one sessions, etc. for maybe another week or two. Can you guess what happened next? Lillian said that the block was stronger than she had initially thought, and she needed another outrageous sum of money to buy some more shit to remove the block. I was so sick with my addiction to Anthony that I briefly considered trying to raise the funds, but I also started looking into her claims. I went to a Wiccan shop and talked to the woman that worked there. The woman told me that I had been the victim of a common scam. According to her, the city was full of these fake psychics shops. Many of these “psychics” would come to her shop, she claimed, to get their auras cleansed after conning people out of thousands of dollars. I also did some research online. If you’re interested, google “psychic gypsy scams.” I found account, after account that told my story with Lillian, almost verbatim.

Lillian is still in business. Her shop is on a main street, and I have to drive by it often. Every time I do, I fantasize about throwing a brick through her big picture window, something I would never actually do. I googled Lillian’s real name — I give everyone I mention on this blog pseudonyms — which I’m sure is a fake name (wrap your head around that one), and the name of her business. She now has a Facebook page and tons of positive reviews on google, yahoo, and other sites. On Yelp, she has 1 star and all bad reviews, but when you google her, six other links come up before her Yelp listing. I really wish that I could give out Lillian’s real info on here to warn people about her, but that’s not the way this blog works. If you do want to visit a psychic, the best advice I can give you is to stay away from shops and small houses you drive advertising psychic, palm, or tarot readings — businesses that only do readings. A safer bet is to visit a new age or metaphysical bookshop. Most of those places will have a few readers on staff. I guess they could be scam artists too, but from what I’ve heard the storefront psychics are almost exclusively fraudsters.

I debated about telling this story for awhile. I consider myself a shrewd, logical person. The fact that I was conned out of a huge (to me, at least) sum of money due to my love addiction is something I’m extremely ashamed of. But telling these stories is healing for me, and I know there are a lot of other women and men out there who can relate. I still stumble in my recovery, but now I have a relationship with my Higher Power. I used to spend my time obsessing over and trying to change things that were beyond my control. Now I accept the things I cannot change, pray for the courage to change the things I can, and know that God will take care of the rest.

* Voted by members of the Imperfect household: Imperfect and Charlie the Cat.**

**Charlie abstained.

Image via Flickr, by user “Gunshots”

Straddling the Line

I try to stay fairly positive on this blog. One of the reasons I started it was to give hope to other sex and love addicts still suffering in their addictions. I have been having a hard time the last couple of months, though. I slipped up a bunch in December. Since then I have been more or less sticking to my bottom-lines. There is a big difference between following the letter of the law and the spirit of the law and I’ve only been doing the former, finding sneaky ways to act out without breaking my bottom lines.

I met Carson at the end of December. In The Downward Spiral, I mentioned that I was going to meet someone off of Craigslist. I did meet him. Like me, he’s the typical person you’ll meet on Craigslist: damaged. We have a lot in common, actually. Carson is attractive, and talented; but going through a hard time. He recently lost his job, he’s broke, he just got a DUI, and he’s extremely depressed. If it wasn’t for SLAA, I would have had sex with Carson that night. Instead I just listened to his sad story.

After our initial meeting, we had some flirty texts and phone conversations until I felt guilty about leading him on and told him I was in SLAA. I also told him I couldn’t have sex outside of a committed relationship. Carson, who really is a good guy, understood and we started a platonic (ish) friendship. Which would be fine, except that Carson is an unavailable male and unavailable men are my drug of choice. I’ve been using Carson.

I keep trying to see how far I can push things with him. Then I get mad when he respects the boundaries I had previously put forth. I keep twisting his words around, using them to play out this sick narrative I’ve had in my head since childhood: I’m the girl that nobody wants. In my head, Carson (who has completely valid, healthy reasons for not wanting a relationship) doesn’t want to be in a relationship with me, because no one ever would want to be in a relationship with me.

The thing that is surprising to me about this “friendship” is that there is the same exact dynamic going on that was present in all of my previous love addicted relationships. I would choose men who were clearly unavailable for a longterm relationship, start a casual sexual relationship with them and then get hurt when they didn’t want a longterm relationship with me. I thought taking sex out of the equation would magically change all of this, but apparently that’s not how it works.

Friday I was working near Carson’s apartment (I work in different locations everyday) so I stopped by for a drink after work. I was more than sufficiently buzzed after two beers (they were strong), but had a third. Carson also appeared to be buzzed after two beers, but kept drinking…. and drinking, and drinking. I had previously suspected that Carson might have a drinking problem, but Friday confirmed it.

His intoxication was not attractive. I wanted to leave, but I needed to sober up before I could drive. At one point I was laying across Carson’s couch, and he came up behind me and swatted my ass. This spanking was the closest I’ve come to sexual activity in eight months and it really turned me on. At the same time, I was repulsed by how drunk he was. When I stood up, I let him push me up against the wall and spank me a few more times. But I pushed his hands away when they tried to go down my pants and up my shirt.

If he had been less intoxicated, I know I would have let Carson fuck me, but instead I found him gross and out of control. When, barely able to stand up, he slurred, “Let’s go get a bottle of wine,” I knew it was time to leave.

I’ve been straddling the line between acting out and recovery since December. I am not having sex with anyone, but I’m also not doing step work. There has been no forward motion in my recovery, or my life.

There is another inappropriate relationship I’m engaged in as well. I reestablished a friendship with my ex-Dom Anthony. I have started to write about Anthony at least half a dozen times on here, but there is so much complicated backstory I don’t even know where to begin.

Yesterday I was talking to my sponsor and she said that I am making Anthony my higher power. She’s right. She also said that both Carson and Anthony need to go on my bottom lines list. She’s also right about that, but I don’t want to deal with adding more qualifiers to my no contact list. One is hard enough already. I told her I wasn’t willing to cut off contact with Anthony and Carson at this point, but I would pray for willingness.

I’m also struggling with food. I don’t want to do anything right now but eat, or act out. At some point I know I am probably going to end up in Overeaters Anonymous, but I feel like I have to get my SLAA issues under control before I add another 12-step program to the mix.

For today, I’m praying for willingness — willingness to stop stuffing my face; willingness to stop doing whatever it is I’m doing with Carson; willingness to stop my dependency on Anthony; willingness to start Step 4; willingness to get out of bed; willingness to clean my apartment; willingness to find a better job; willingness to become a healthy person.

What Are Your Limits?

This line is the, “What’s your sign?” of the BDSM community.

When I started out in the kink lifestyle, I had a fairly long list of hard limits, but toward the end of my involvement in the community, my list had whittled down to just four things: no kids, no animals, no permanent marks, no scat. From the conversations I’ve had, these are pretty typical hard limits.

Sometimes people would also say, “no death,” which I thought should go without saying. As if someone might respond, “You’re not into death? Bummer! That’s totally my thing! I like to murder the person I’m dating. Guess it’s not going to work out between us. Let me know if you ever change your mind.” Or during a play session someone might think, Well, she never said death was a hard limit, so I guess she’s cool with it if I kill her. I figured if I ever had the misfortune of meeting a murderous fiend off the internet, he’d probably kill me regardless of if death was on my hard limits list or not. Not everyone I met in the BDSM lifestyle was… shall we say, the brightest bulb in the box, though.

The fact that my hard limits list was so short was emblematic of my unhealthy boundaries. I thought so little of myself that I would have let a guy do almost anything to me in exchange for a little attention.

These days I’m taking much better care of myself. My boundaries still need some work, but they are getting there. If someone were to ask me now what my hard limits are, in addition to the sparse list mentioned above, I’d add: no sex outside of an exclusive relationship, no objectification, no lies, no disrespect.

What are your hard limits and/or healthy boundaries?

Leigh and The Fun House

A few years back, I had just ended a relationship, of sorts, with Anthony. I was still obsessively hung up on him and hoping we would reconcile so I wasn’t ready to start dating again. I was, however, quite ready to start having sex again. I turned to my old friend/foe craigslist.

At the time, I was very into the dominant daddy/submissive little girl roleplay dynamic so I searched for “daddy” under m4w in casual encounters. I had plenty of choices. I don’t remember what the text of Leigh’s ad said, but I do remember he posted a charming picture of his penis.

I met Leigh the next day for coffee. He was a few years younger than me and a recent college grad from a fancy private school. Leigh was very good looking and seemed normal enough. He told me where he lived and I knew the apartment building. It was a nice place. He also brought his adorable puppy with him, a black lab. All of this made me feel safe.

Since there were no red flags (and since he was hot) I agreed to meet Leigh at his place the following evening. His place was nice, and he also had a cat. I usually have pretty good instincts that tell me when I’m in danger, but the fact that Leigh was an animal lover with two pets (he also claimed to be a vegetarian) perhaps gave me a false sense of security. Wrong or not, when I picture a serial killer, I don’t see a vegetarian with pets.

We had a couple of glasses of wine and then started making out on his couch. He took off my clothes, put a blindfold on me and then led me to his bedroom, where we proceeded to have sex. At some point he also tied my hands behind my back. I met him knowing we were going to engage in D/s play, so the blindfold and the restraints, while maybe not a good idea, were inline with what we had discussed before hooking up.

The sex was good. Maybe a little too good. I asked if he was wearing a condom. He assured me he was. It didn’t feel like it, though. I began to get a little paranoid that this guy who I’d just met was fucking me without a condom. I asked him again and he got mad at me, said I wasn’t being a good sub.

Eventually he untied my hands and flipped me on my back. Bad sub that I was, I took the opportunity to remove the blindfold. Surprise, surprise. Not only was this stranger who I had just met on craigslist inside of me without a condom, he was also holding a video camera.

My immediate impulse was to knock the camera out of his hands, which I did. Then I demanded that he erase what he had filmed. This asshole had the nerve to get pissed at me, claiming I had broken his camera (I hadn’t). He then attempted some smoke and mirrors bullshit while he fiddled around with the camera, claiming to delete the video, which I still don’t think he actually did. He also was pissed that I had “ruined” his film. He apparently was planning the big reveal for a more dramatic moment. Sadly, this wasn’t the first time I’d had a throw down with a sex partner over a camera. You can read about the first time here.

At this point, I was in a situation that any sexually adventurous young woman could have gotten into. I had met Leigh in public, felt safe with him, and agreed to go to his apartment the next day. I had even let a friend know where I was and texted the address to her before I went. I’d been responsible enough and there were no warning signs that this guy was a creep. Here’s what separates a “normal” sexually adventurous young woman from me, a sex and love addict with unhealthy boundaries: I didn’t get the hell out of there. I stayed and continued fucking him (but made him put on a condom).

He was pretty rough, which I was into, but he was also into slapping me in the face, which I wasn’t into. He slapped me so hard that the next day little purple spots, broken blood vessels, decorated my eyelids.

When the sex was over, things started to get really weird. I was in his bathroom, sitting on the toilet, peeing, when all of the sudden he bursts in and just stands there, like an idiot. “Um, do you mind? I’m trying to pee.” He continued to stand there with a huge grin on his face. “What the fuck are you doing? Get out!” I screamed. No reaction. “Please leave!” I told him. Leigh leaned over and kissed me full, on the lips, then finally left. What a weirdo.

When I got out of the bathroom, I found Leigh standing over my purse, with my cell phone is his hands. He was going through my text messages. “Wow, you really have a lot of Daddies, you little slut!”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Give me my phone back!”

Leigh went into grade school mode, holding the phone above my head, just out of my reach, laughing hysterically as he continued going through my texts. This was a grown man, a college graduate with his own apartment.

I was not in the mood for this childish bullshit. I went to find my shoes, so I could leave. But I couldn’t find them. This motherfucker had hidden my shoes. I used to do this same brilliant move to extend playtime with my cousins when I was five and it was time for them to go home. “Where did you put my shoes?” I asked, exhausted.

“Why would I put your shoes anywhere?” Um, because you’re a psycho, I thought.

We got into an argument with me searching his place, demanding that he give my shoes back, and him insisting that he hadn’t hidden them. The conclusion of this was him reaching under one of his couch cushions, and thrusting my shoes at me with a, “Here! They’re just where you left them!… under the couch cushion.”

At last, it was time to leave Leigh’s fun house. He walked me to my car and kissed me good night. He told me he’d had a nice time and wanted to see me again, acting like we’d just gone to dinner and a movie. I would have been sick enough to see him again, if he had ever called me. But he never did.

The Downward Spiral

There is no easy way to say it. I’ve been fucking up left and right. The holidays were extremely hard on me and my recovery. While I haven’t quite had a full on relapse, I am headed there. Here’s a list of my bottom lines (the behaviors I am supposed to be abstaining from to be considered sober) and how I’ve been acting out on them.

1. No sex, dating, or romantic involvement with married/attached or otherwise unavailable men

     Last week I was in contact with Paolo, a former lover. He now has a girlfriend. I saw him online and we had an extremely sexually charged conversation. I told him that I was currently in a relationship. This is a lie that usually helps get me out of trouble, but it seemed to only encourage him. “It’s not cheating if I break in and rape you,” he said. This actually isn’t as fucked up as it sounds, because while we were seeing each other we had talked about rape fantasy. In my head, I tried to justify this. If I just happened to give him my new address, and then just happened to leave my door unlocked at a specified date and time, and he just happened to show up and force himself on me, this wouldn’t be acting out, right? Luckily, my window of opportunity has passed on this one, because he is out of the country for the next month, and when he gets back he’ll be living with his girlfriend.

     There is also SN. I haven’t gone on a date with him yet, but I’ve been in heavy contact with this guy, a dominant, who is in an open relationship with his submissive. We have been speaking daily and have had phone sex. I’ve also watched him masturbate on cam. We have tentative plans to meet tonight, but I will probably cancel. The flirtation with these two guys isn’t new. Looking back on past blog entries, I wrote about both of them  back in August. Making plans to meet them is new, though.

2. No sex outside of a committed relationship

     This is the one bottom line I haven’t broken. It’s a big one. Breaking this one would constitute a full relapse.

3. No reading, answering or posting ads on craigslist personals

     Two days ago I answered a casual encounter ad. I’ve been talking to the guy quite a bit since then. He actually seems like a decent guy and we have a lot of non-sexual things in common. I’m thinking of telling him about SLAA and how I can’t have sex outside of a committed relationship and see if he still wants to meet me. My sponsor gave me the go ahead that I could start dating again in January. I am most certain she didn’t have CL casual encounters in mind as a venue for meeting appropriate people, though.

4. No contact with my qualifier (HC)

     Yep, I blew this one too. I emailed him a few days before Christmas and we have been in contact ever since. I hadn’t contacted him in more than seven months. I have no plans to see him or have sex with him ever again. Our emails are friendly and completely non-sexual. I know where things will lead if I keep in contact with him, and I sure as hell don’t want that again.

5. No spying (online or otherwise) on qualifier or anyone associated with him

    I suck. I do this every day now.

I also have four middle lines, which are behaviors I am only supposed to be engaging in with extreme caution. They are: contact with anyone I have had sexual or romantic involvement with in the past; phone conversations with men that last more than 20 minutes; masturbation; and using pornography. I am doing all of these things daily, and with not a lot of caution.

I feel so lost. I have no idea how to find my way back on track. Things aren’t as bad as they could be, I know this, but they are headed there fast. Because I need a reminder myself, here is a link to the blog I wrote three months ago today, reminiscing on what things were like just before I started my recovery. Today, I would have 6 months of sobriety. Some people would argue that I am still sober, because I am sticking to one of my bottom lines. I don’t feel sober, though. I feel like I am spiraling out of control.