Relationships Are Only As Dangerous As The People In Them.

My ex and I did not have a well established dynamic of any kind however we did have a choice few rules that were indicative of our dynamic. One of those rules was that I don't say no to anything he tells me to do or endure. Basically, I don't say no. No matter what.

One time we were having penetrative sex after some fairly intense genital flogging and it so happened that he entered me at an angle that was extremely uncomfortable. As it is my vagina actively resists penetration and at certain angles it really is just excruciating. My body responds to pain with arousal, it's past the point where I can help it anymore possibly due to years of conditioning or a genetic predisposition; it doesn't matter if it is good pain or bad pain, I will get wet but that does not mean I am necessarily enjoying the pain. While we were having sex, I resisted him but then I resist sex fairly often (another result of years of conditioning). The resistance was not the same as the usual resistance, in that I screamed more (and even cried eventually), didn't moan at all and ultimately devolved into sobs accompanied by the word, "*Please...*"

I never said no because that wasn't part of our dynamic. However I could have said any of the million other words in the English language. I was forbidden through our dynamic from deciding when I want things to stop. I wasn't forbidden from saying, "You're pounding my cervix at a weird angle and i am going to get cramps," and seeing what he did about it. I should have said that, but I didn't.
However, this partner and i had been together for seven years when this incident occurred so I am comfortable saying that he *should* have been familiar with my body language and normal response to sex but to be fair the differences between my normal responses and the response I had in this situation are rather subtle. The point is that neither of us (both equally responsible parties) did what we should have done. I will never know if he would have stopped if I had vocalized my discomfort in so many words, and I have to give him the benefit of doubt over whether he could even pick up on my discomfort. There's a good chance he did, but there is also a good chance that he thought it was working for me. There is also a good chance that he didn't care that it was the kind of discomfort I didn't enjoy. Because I didn't speak up, I will never know for sure.

And therein lies the problem with a dynamic such as this one. Ultimately it did not matter that we had known each other, loved each other, fucked each other for a *long* time. It didn't matter that we were comfortable with each other. It didn't matter that we were tuned into each other's normal physical responses. It didn't matter that we had talked about sex, our relationship, the d/s (or something like it), limits, fetishes or anything. It didn't even matter that we had (our version of) trust in one another. Although to be perfectly honest, I couldn't trust him with safety and he couldn't trust me to tell him when I couldn't take it anymore, and that was part of why we got there.

The thing is that we got there, the CNC (or whatever you want to call it because that term really annoys me on a technicality) backfired and even though I was only mildly injured in the grand scheme of things, I was aware that I was sustaining injuries while I was sustaining them. Possibly he was aware too. The thing that made all the difference though, was his (and my) response to the situation. After we were done I continued sobbing for at least twenty minutes, in this time he went and took a piss, drank some water and lit a cigarette. Finally he came and sat next to me and pulled me up by the hair. He asked why I was crying so much and i told him that it had hurt in a way that would lead my uterus to cramp terribly, and I was in excruciating pain. He laughed and said he'd fucked me way harder before and I was just being a drama queen to get his attention.

And that was that. That was the end of our conversation about this incident. Given his callous approach to it, I spent 20 hours in pain and as the pain faded so did the memory, I never brought it up again and he didn't either. The questions however remained. And it was questions like this that ended our relationship because incidents like these did become the norm in our relationship. I won't blame him entirely because I often encouraged him. I won't say that he was the only abusive one in the relationship because there is some responsibility here that is mine to take. However he was proud of his behavior. He used to say to me that if he was with any woman other than me, he would be in jail by now, and as much as I hate to admit that I encouraged a predator, it is true that I did. I don't know which one of us was more to blame but I do know that sometimes two people that have personalities like we did should not engage in a relationship dynamic (like CNC) that makes it easy to make "mistakes" but more importantly ensures that the damage caused by these mistakes is never dealt with properly.

Several years later after I left my ex and started seeing the man i am with now, we did not retain the same kind of dynamic exactly. However my sexuality is perhaps trained in a way that I won't say no; very often I consent to being traumatized because that is where my pleasure actually lies and in that moment I am not the best judge of where it should stop. I am not a "challenging sub" who needs to be forced into submission or earned into submission; all I am is someone who fetishizes victimhood and in that state of mind I am not reliable, I cannot be relied on to cater to my physical well-being and take a step back when I need to. The only difference between now and then, is that I am honest about it.

For instance a few months back we were impact-playing and sometimes pain makes me very angry. Especially if you hit me in a way that isn't exactly how I want to be hit. Our dynamic is fluid in that we don't negotiate the things we will do, and we end up in headspaces that were unprecedented when we started playing so it was perfectly natural to me that in my anger (which was really just my way of saying no, but instead of saying it like a responsible person I had an emotional reaction) I leapt at him and grabbed his throat. He grabbed my throat and literally flung me across the room with his hand still at my throat. Not an advisable scenario, but we were both consenting to be in scenarios like that. It was beyond hot but I had already had enough pain. I knew this, he knew this. I always want more pain than enough, he knew this too. I will never say that I am at the end of my endurance. I can say it now but in the midst of hormones and endorphins, I forget myself.

But instead of pushing me past where I was, he pulled me onto the floor and held me down until I calmed down. I shouldn't have attacked him in that situation, I should have just said that I wanted him to consider stopping. He shouldn't have attacked me back but he was only defending himself on a reflex. We always knew that situations like that can arise. What I did not expect was his response to it. Instead of chastising me, or finding someone to place blame on, we sat down and talked about things. I apologized, and explained that the pain just got to a point where it threatened my self-preservation and I attacked him without thinking. He apologized and explained that he is trained to attack when physically assaulted. We talked about being aroused by the introduction of anger and non-consent in our relationship, and we talked about how that was a dangerous thing given my history with it. We laid it all bare. With love and concern for one another. And it made all the difference in the world.

Because ultimately love, respect, trust, communication or the length of your relationship cannot always protect you from being in a situation where things go wrong. To me there are only two things that matter now.

The first is that sometimes two people need to measure their personalities against each other's to deduce what kind of dynamic they can sustain. My ex and i should never have been in a relationship like we were; a predator and a willing victim only *sound* like they belong together. My current partner and i can sustain our dynamic because he is far more careful and thoughtful in his sadism than than he is violent, and he does not relish creating victimhood. My ex would never stop in situations that warranted it (physically) because his pleasure lay in making it worse, as did mine, but my current partner will stop (even against my wishes) if the injuries sustained exceed past sanity (no matter how much more I want).

The second thing is that it makes all the difference in the world how we handle situations that should never have arisen but did anyway. My ex and i swept it under the rug; I blamed myself and i think he blamed me too. My current partner and i communicate about everything under the sun but more importantly we extricate responsibility from blame and take it seriously. If he accidentally hurts me or I accidentally overstep my boundaries, it's not the apology that matters but the realization that we did something that shouldn't have happened, and once the possibility of something like that becomes open you remain alert to it.

The point is that in intense relationships, shit always has the propensity to go badly but risk awareness is a lot more individualized and personal than it seems. You can't look up an article on Web MD and make a list of risks, you have to be honest with yourself and your partners. Communication and compatibly are things we should take seriously.