Expert: Robert Rubel - 10/29/2011

Question
Hi Robert,
Your expertise in communication glitches would be very useful for my boyfriend and me so i would really appreciate your advice on this. I recently started seeing someone who has a very dominant personality. Period. My deposition (sexually) is very submissive and our sex life almost from the beginning has been charged with D/s undertones. As we have gotten closer which has been extraordinarily fast and quite possibly fallen in Love that dynamic has gotten much stronger and started spilling outside the bedroom.
This poses various problems for someone like me. I am having a lot of trouble reconciling my masters level exposure to gender issues, travelling to a lot of different cultures and general independent existence up until now with calling someone master. Even during play i find some of the things that an M/s relationship entails a little disturbing and sometimes just plain scary. This physical side is one aspect. As we are both new to most of the stuff that has been going on sometimes both of us end up dropping the ball on it and i end up physically going beyond what i feel i can do. Its a strange feeling letting go of the pain impulse i think because its a natural defense against injury. If you train yourself over time what if you dont end up asking for a halt when you should have? Im feeling the submissive thing on both a physical and emotional level when we are engaged in play (I love that about him - to get someone like me to want to make my boyfriend happy through sustaining physical pain probably hasn't been just anybody's task) so i think i want to please him through being able to sustain any punishment he metes out to me. However that also means that im taking pure physical pain in places im not at all used to and have always thought of as delicate. I have a extraordinarily high threshold for pain (i play a lot of sports and run a lot... mostly because i naturally enjoy breaking my barrier for physical strain) but bruise easily and have been getting hurt in our play a little. But i have trouble communicating that during play because i am mentally completely his. So i trust him to know when to stop. I trust him not to hurt, well not a lot anyway :) something that belongs to him. But because he is also new to this i am not sure if he always sees that i am sometimes close to tears. That doesn't happen much but i need to know that he will have the oversight when push comes to shove to put my comfort and safety first.
Then there is the Spillane onto our lives outside our physical dynamic. Actually accurately i would say its no longer our physical dynamic, our relationship has always been very D/s which seems to be evolving on his side naturally into M/s and im having some trouble. I am not sure if it is possible to keep such a strong dynamic confined to play. For instance recently as our bond has been growing stronger when we fight he almost always ends up physically restraining me when i refuse to engage and sometimes hurting me as a consequence of my fighting back. Also even though its a very hot way for the fight to end but sometimes when he punishes me i feel like i have been treated unfairly because in the real life situation i wasnt wrong. Dont get me wrong, when i was and he punishes me it is sublime but in real life both people are right and wrong at different times and if one person in a loving relationship is always punished not matter what then it is tricky to manage.
So many conundrums there. What hasn't been said and is contextually relevant is that i love his dominant confidence and it mostly feels healthy to want to be completely his. Some stuff i am not comfortable with here, i would like to gradually be able to accept. In the bedroom it is such a charged experience that now even physical proximity completely reinforces our growing sexual dynamic. It is like i said sublime. But i am not sure i would ever be the sort of sub that enjoys humiliation (ever), wears a collar or calls someone her master outside of play. Also i am not sure how far he is about to take this and if i can go there. Some of the more extreme side of BDSM is kind of scary to me. In discussion it seems like it could end up going pretty far (by my standards of comfort) but mostly i am just almost embarrassed at the level of excitement i sometimes feel at stuff that we are programmed to see as incredibly offensive that he seems to be getting off on to such an extent that i get incredibly turned on simply by the virtue that it excites him, though i think part of me is also about 75% of where he is terms of how far i am willing to let it get to. Getting dragged up the stairs when i want to go home as we are fighting, thrown across his bed, tape wound around my mouth so i cant protest that this is no way to silence me on real issues, bound, stripped naked, him spanking me and then writing (his name)'s Slave on my body should offend me but as i write this i am shocked at how excited that makes me. Its not even something that in itself turns me on, its the fact that it is him that is doing this to get his point across. The sex, the foreplay, even mild physical touch like holding hands is just charged, we both love it. There is also tenderness which is something that on my end helps me sustain my end of the role play. I think while writing all this i get to the crux of the problem. It is to me very long very permanent role play. Physically i have no trouble being his possession to do with as he pleases but within some kind of framework that makes me feel safe. Emotionally there are more considerations that i feel he needs to make because in the end even a master slave relationship is consensual. He has power over me because i choose to give it to him. I am having trouble with the concept that i cant just revoke that right. But walking away or being made to would be like throwing the baby out with the bath water i think because there is so much that we are sharing on so many levels we haven't before (i don't think that my submissive side had ever found the right partner and from the extreme level on which he is operating there was a previously unfulfilled side to his preferences too).
Anyway sorry about the ramble but any thoughts on what to do here?
Many thanks :)

Answer
I have been typing to you for nearly an hour and just lost the whole thing.

I'm sorry, but I simply cannot go back and rewrite it.

Please write to me at PowerExchangeEditor@yahoo.com and I'll send you a reading list.

If you would like to call me, I'll walk you through my thoughts, but I am not willing to take another hour to write it out.  If you email me and wish to speak on the phone, just tell me.

Dreadfully sorry,

Bob