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Divorced, in serious relationship, feel drawn to D/s, not sure what’s next…
Please be gentle as I am very new and not entirely sure how I see D/s playing out in my life/relationship…but was convinced enough to pull the trigger and sign up and am now just going to put it all out there before I chicken out!
Here’s my backstory.
I’m in my early40s (well, almost mid- now, not sure how that happened) and have been divorced for 4 years. About a year ago now I met and became friends with a man and we eventually started dating. Things have gotten pretty serious – we regularly hang out with each other’s kids and friends/family, have begun blending aspects of our lives, and are starting to discuss (in a broad but pointed way) what a future together may look like. I will write more about that in a bit but wanted to give my background (and his) first.
I was married for nearly 20 years. When we first got married, we were both young and I had a fairly traditional mindset about marriage. We had a baby soon after getting married and I put a lot of effort into maintaining a home, being a mom and trying to be available as a wife and lover. More babies came and the little ones and I followed my now-ex around the country for his job for several years. I put a lot of trust in him and his ability to be a provider and leader for us, and I was actually pretty cheerful about the constant disruptions and starting over all the time…at first. Unfortunately my now-ex had a difficult transition to adulthood and really never stepped into the role of caretaker or leader. We had constant issues with money and he would only work sporadically. He also OFTEN said things he didn’t follow through on. This could be anything and everything from promising he was going to be home at a certain time and showing up hours later to not showing up for an important appointment to saying he would help out with something around the house and not ever doing it, leading to expensive repairs, etc…all the while not consistently providing either. My trust slowly eroded. I felt I was keeping up my end of the bargain and he wasn’t keeping up his. We separated for a while and I found security in independence that I had not been able to find in our marriage. We eventually got back together, but by then I had started to flourish in my own career, had been able to manage the kids very well as a single mom, and I knew I could do it all on my own if I had to. When we got back together, our power dynamic had completely shifted. I no longer felt I owed him any explanations and stopped asking his opinion about almost anything. My defenses were completely up.
I’m sure you see where this is going! What had started off as one kind of toxic dynamic – me being dependent and submissive to someone who was not able to follow through on being a leader – was now just as toxic in the other direction – constant power struggles and me wildly flip flopping between wanting to please him but then not trusting him to take care of me and just going ahead and doing things my way without thinking about him at all. He could be (randomly) very controlling while also completely abdicating himself from responsibility over our family’s long-term goals, our parenting, our home/finances, etc. I felt he wanted a level of say-so he hadn’t earned and I was resentful.
Throughout it all our sex life was actually pretty decent. From the outside, it probably looked pretty great for a couple with a bunch of kids, actually. We introduced certain aspects of BDSM into the bedroom and I always thought it was fun and exciting in a way that spoke deeply to me. Ex seemed to like to take a more dominant role in the bedroom, but I got this sense that there was lack of deep commitment behind it…like he was just playing around or doing the easy thing right in front of him, but not willing or able to do the harder ongoing work of owning that role or even stepping up in the way I saw husbands in vanilla relationships doing all the time. I would find myself getting hopeful or excited about the future each time we’d had a particularly connected or intense sexual experience, but it would end there.
I don’t want to throw my ex under the bus and I know I played a role in how much our marriage broke down. I mean, outside of the bedroom, I ALSO didn’t fully commit to the dynamic we created inside of it. But, the lack of trust took a huge toll. I felt like every time I had let go of the reins and allowed him to take over, the buggy just went over the side of the bridge and into the river. So I decided I had to keep hold of the reins in all the ways that might matter to our kids (parenting decisions + money + where we lived) while trying to hold on to that dynamic in bed. I’m surprised we made it as long as we did, honestly.
Well, I’ve possibly given my former marriage too much attention in this intro post but I suppose it’s natural that it would inform a lot about the dynamic in my new relationship and how I want to move forward.
After divorcing I dated quite a few people. The first relationship I got into was actually quite exciting in a way. The guy was an alpha down to his core. Unfortunately he had serious mental health issues and the relationship went from exciting to scary pretty quickly. I got out, and after that I was spooked and dated a string of “nice guys” who were…nice. You know. We’d date for a month or two and then I’d get bored and move on.
I also was pursued by quite a few Doms. I’d be texting with someone I’d just matched with on an app, and suddenly they’d be telling me about their box of restraints and how they planned to use them on me at some point, etc. I was mostly turned off or scared off because I didn’t feel like there was the necessary level of trust to be talking to me like that yet, but also intrigued by the idea. Several of them told me I had “tells” that gave me away as a sub, even though on the surface I come off as an alpha. I’m confident, competent, and direct in my normal interactions but apparently there is something about me (according to them) that makes me look like prey. I could never tell if the “down deep I can tell you’re a sub” line was sincere or if that was just some standard pickup line that got passed around the Dom community LOL but while I didn’t pursue relationships with any of those men it did pique my interest.
Okay, so current situation. Last winter I met and befriended a man who just seemed different. On the surface, another nice guy! But underneath it all I sensed a certain intensity. He intrigued me. We struck up a strong friendship pretty quickly and would talk about everything from spirituality to relationships and much more. This was during the early pandemic so like most people’s, my social circle had shrunk to almost nothing. He and I spent a LOT of time together and it was completely platonic. This intrigued me even more! I was used to being chased by men at first and then one of us would get bored. This was more like a quiet, steady, slow pursuit, but he didn’t touch me. We went on like this for 6 months until one day he made me dinner and a strong margarita and we wound up making out on his sofa until the wee hours of the morning. The thing that struck me about that encounter was that he didn’t ask if I wanted to come over, or what I wanted to eat, or whether I wanted a margarita, or indeed whether I was interested in kissing him. He TOLD me what I was going to do, what I was going to eat, what I was going to drink, and then he made his move. It’s now been five months since we started a romantic relationship and it’s been totally different from anything I’ve experienced before. From the first time we kissed the chemistry was crazy. By the second or third time we were physical, there were definite D/s undertones. Within a couple of weeks, during an intense makeout session, I exposed my throat to him and was completely thrilled when his hands closed tightly around it. Since then I felt we have had an understanding that is thrilling to both of us quite deeply. There is a level of trust I don’t think either of us have experienced before, and while the sexual side of the relationship is exciting I also feel so much more secure than I did in even the boring relationships I was in before. It’s hard to explain, but since getting divorced, I would start dating a guy and feel immediate anxiety: where is this going, what is he thinking, what is our future, is there a future, what I do I need to DO to MAKE THIS HAPPEN. In this relationship, I am sometimes curious where we’ll go, and can sometimes feel a little impatient since I miss him when we’re not together. But I also feel very secure and steady. Like all the thrills layered on top a super solid foundation. It’s quite a game changer.
While we have been quite intimate in some ways, we have not had intercourse. He is a strong Christian and while I am also Christian, I am uncertain about what I feel the real mandate is around sex before marriage. Honestly if it were up to me we’d have done it months ago. However, for him it was a stated no-go, and I haven’t questioned it at all. I am just along for the ride and – in the bedroom at least – submit to all things. And there is something so relieving about that, I just want to cry. I don’t HAVE to be the decider. I can go along because I know he’ll stick to what he believes is right and I trust him.
So, here’s the but…
We are both in our 40s and this is not the first rodeo for either of us. At this point I’m truly not sure if this dynamic ends in the bedroom or should extend beyond that. And since we are not married or cohabitating, and we both have kids from previous marriages, it’s kind of hard to figure out how to test that out. We both have a lot of experience being autonomous and independent; I’m not sure how comfortable he’d be in taking control, or I’d be in giving up control, over aspects of my life, or by extension my kids’ lives – even if that is what we both crave (and I kind of think it is on a deep cellular level.) In his first marriage he desired to take the lead but was married to a domineering woman who refused sex and cheated on him. In my first marriage I wanted to give up the lead, but felt I had to take control to get anything done. We trust each other, but we’ve been burned. Part of me badly wants to give up my stranglehold on life and part of me is terrified of being disappointed even though I have no reason to believe that would ever happen with this man.
Maybe this is the kind of thing you just creep into with baby steps, or there’s a way to practice before we take next steps together? I’m curious if there are others here in second or subsequent marriages and how you made your way to your current dynamic. Or those who have been able to let go of the fear of disappointment from previous relationships (or even from the way your own parents’ marriages went, I could probably write an entire book about THAT) and really embraced submission. It speaks to me on a very deep level. But there is also just as much about it that’s terrifying and at this stage of the game, so out of my habit that the idea makes my shoulders tense up around my ears 🙂
Thanks if you made it this far. My apologies if this isn’t in the right forum as I’m just figuring out the lay of the land 🙂
-Meg
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