Shock and awe

Over the past couple of months I have been meeting and talking more and more with Majeste, with a view to us developing a D/s relationship. It's been a process that has revealed a lot of nervousness and skittishness that I hadn't really been aware of particularly around certain areas of my sexuality and emotional outlook.

I've always put the word "kinky" before "bisexual" when in a situation where labels were required. I'd usually go on to elaborate - and to ensure I sounded appropriately right on and bohemian - that it is more important that my partner is kinky than they are either male or female. In a sense, this is true. I need to have kinky sex partners. However, the vast majority of my ongoing play partners and certainly all of my long-term relationships have been with men. I could never see myself settling down with another woman in a loving, sexual relationship. And I hate to admit it, because to me, being able to say that I am bisexual means that I never had to admit that my desire turned on gendered lines. I wonder if it does? On a day to day basis, men turn my head more than women do. Yet women do. But my desire to fuck someone is not the same as my desire to say hello to them in the morning and make them a cup of coffee then discuss the day. There's a difference between the animal lust and of wanting to have that specific person around for more than a few hours.

I've never wanted to play the gender card and had often argued at length in discussions that started "men do X and women do Y" because I thought that they were grossly stereotypical and paved with socially conditioned truisms. But I'm finding that there is a difference. For me, the difference is exactly that - in the sense of difference because I feel that the relationship we are negotiating is in a new and strange (perhaps queer would be an appropriate term here) place compared to my previous ones. Relationship is the key word here - the decision to make something ongoing and to create parameters for interaction. Rules of engagement. For the first time, I'm doing this with a woman and the process feels different - I'm trying to work out whether this is because she is a woman or simply because she is new. I feel as if I might be making crass, sweeping comparisons here, but perhaps every relationship and ever interaction is new and deserving of being discussed in this light, but because when we do not see the difference so easily we do not take the time.

So let's take some time. Why is this valuable and worth pursuing, why am I finding it "new" and why has the process been difficult? Start at the end, to ring the changes. It's been a challenge because both of us have brought nerves to the table. I've been nervous because of her passion and intensity, which is exhilarating because it is an obvious and strong desire for me (clearly very flattering) but also frightening because I do not know whether I will live up to these expectations. It's been scary because of how she plays - a new area of balancing fear and pain that I've never done before and thinking about it makes my legs curl up on the chair like a teenage girl watching a horror movie. For her, she is returning to BDSM after a long gap, and has worries about skills with implements which are not helped by my own internet published range of experience. She's been worried about being a "good enough" Domme for me. Which is also extremely flattering.

It's fascinating for me to see the other side of the coin - the Domme twitches rather than just my submissive tics. It's also been a process of helping each other along with this, of talking and clarifying through many emails, texts and sundry other online media about what we meant by this. It has also included a lot of checking in, of making sure that one or the other was ok. For once I do not feel like the solely emotionally inclined member of the relationships - no longer was it like pulling teeth to get the other person to say they were feeling anything. Again, I feel a terrible stereotype coming along but we talked as much in terms of desire and we did in feelings. But feelings are part of our shared D/s desires: fear, protection, care, adoration, objectification. These are all emotional at their core, and whilst I was initially thrown by these conversations, finding them a bit much, a bit overwhelming (mostly because I wasn't used to having a dialogue about this, normally it's me, monologuing here) having spoken about it and been very forthcoming I now understand more about where we are both coming from and feel more at ease.

A lot of this is the shock of the new. For both of us. That drawn out process of getting to know someone new and trusting them enough to let go and to trust in their response. That they won't freak out. That they will take you places and bring you back. That they will not hate you afterward or want to call the police. That they will still be happy with you even though you did something "wrong" or stupid. We put a lot of ourselves on the line when we get into a power exchange and you need to trust you'll get all of it back plus have an amazing experience.

For me, a lot of the new is because she is a woman with whom I am seeking an ongoing power exchange relationship and I have never done this with a woman. I've played with women, many of them more than once, but we've never formulated an ongoing dialogue or attempted to make space in each other's lives. She's a woman and I'm interacting with her in a new way, for me, in a space previously only occupied by men. Until very recently been much more of a boy's girl - often to the extent of being an actual tomboy - I still do not feel entirely comfortable in the presence of other women. I particularly do not know how to interact with women on a "relationship level" so things like being taken out and wined and dined by her put me on the back foot. It is a new thing. It is exciting and an adventure. It also leaves me without a roadmap.

Finally, but not least. The value. It's all about her, really. She has the ability to make me feel both intensely awkward and uncomfortable, then reassured and looked after. She makes me wanted to the point of feeling frighteningly under the spotlight of her desire. She is without doubt a very powerful, dominating presence - in a way entirely unique and special to her - which forms a large part of the attraction. I fear her, sometimes, I am drawn to her, often. She is quite, quite magnetic.