Femdom Relationships Continued
(or... it's not always wine and roses)

If you remember my last column, you may have thought it odd. "What's all this relationship theory got to do with FemDom?"

About eight months ago as dated by my first column for Dom-sub Lifestyle, Mistress Cherie and I were a happily married FemDom couple. My business had been blessed and I desperately wanted to retire to a lot in Sedona I had bought for us for her to pursue her sculpting, and for me to do amateur astronomy from an observatory on the house to be built there.

So to try to retire, I recruited Mistress' son from Kentucky to learn and take over my business which is cleaning up after other people<lol>. That is to say, I am the "mean ol' landlord."

It seemed a good idea at the time, bringing T out here to California. He was (I assumed a "licensed") contractor, and in visits to KY (the state) I saw some of his projects--small ones, but he was just starting out at 32, but he seemed to be on top of things. Only trouble was he was just not able to collect from some of his customers, which I know to be a major problem with small contractors. But I thought he was honest, hard working, and eager to learn. You know, he just needed a boost, I thought.

The warning signs were there, but I ignored them. First, the inability to collect was way too frequent. Second, Mistress did not want me to bring him out, because "we would not get along." Well, I have never had a man I could not get along with at work. Third, as T and I talked it over long distance, he occasionally made reference to troubles he had had with different subcontractors or workers, even nearly coming to blows at times, but "They always worked it out and now were real good friends/co-workers/etc. and "respected" others. The word "respect" kept cropping up, but it did not register that his need for respect was such an issue. Fourth, Mistress loved him, adored him, worshiped him as her favorite child. Fifth, "favorite child?" Sixth, no salary or package of benefits was good enough for him in Mistress's calculations. There was always one more thing he needed as demanded by Mistress. The price got up above $50,000 per year plus a promise to buy him a house (in So Calif. that's $250K min), truck, medical, etc.

Nevertheless, I bulled ahead against all the warning signs. I just could not believe She was serious about not wanting him out here. When She would visit back there, She would return walking on air. Still She was adamant against it, but I really thought She was just protecting Herself in case something went wrong. "In case something should go wrong?" I don't know what I could have been thinking--biggest mistake of my life, and I've made some deuzies. Oh, sure, T could not get along with Her second husband and was a big part of that divorce, but the husband was presented as a jerk.--would not work, completely emotionally withdrawn--come to think of it just like T's dad, husband #1. Yet another warning sign.

Naturally, T could not afford to move and fix his house up for sale, so I paid for the moving and advanced him $3,500 and put him on salary 3 months before he arrived so he could finish the house. I am sure he made sacrifices also, sold tools, and equipment, and left things behind, etc.

But September 1 they arrived, moved into a house I had evicted a tenant from, and started work. T and his dad drove the truck out, and I flew the kids and wife and Mistress's mother--aging and ill, so why not get T's help to move her? My only sneaky move. Mistress's half brother said Mom could live with him in a building he managed for me, so he moved to a 2 BR--I recommended 2 1BR's, but brother was firm, not wanting to cause me any more expense.

I worked with T for 3 months, and he just could not seem to get it. Anything. It seems I was way too good a teacher, and told him too much at once. So I started writing detailed Procedures for him. There were beautiful, even if they only tell, for example, how to inspect a vacant apartment for cleaning and to document the cleaning costs to make a fair closing statement to the outgoing tenant and return a fair amount of his cleaning deposit.

But worse than T's inability to be able to work was his habit of being supersensitive to occasional things I would say in perfect innocence. And the "respect" thing would come up, as in "You don't respect me." And these were intense for him then for me, but I did not really get angry--hurt, frustrated, confused, but not real angry. But he would go ballistic. And it was my fault, 100% Mistress told me each time, even though She was never there.

Finally, he blew up in front of Her, and since it was the 8th time and She had seen it and surely understood (She did NOT), I fired him. But for 3 weeks I paid him anyway. Mistress and he tried to find him a job, but to no avail. So She and I worked out a way for him to work for Her exclusively. By now I am really afraid of losing Mistress.

Things went on for another 3 months by which time T had learned to reconcile a bank statement!! And do the payroll!! (I thought he was a contractor--hasn't he ever done a payroll? It's only 5 or 6 checks!) No matter. This will work, I keep telling myself. Meanwhile, Mistress starts going to T's fundamentalist church, where before the thing She loved about me most was my spirituality and sense of Oneness with All-That-Is, a mystical high consciousness that I thought she shared. And family dinners every week. And picnics, and evenings over at T's, etc. etc. I had lost my wife to a younger man, her son!!!

I was not a happy slave. So, totally inappropriately, my hurt and fear turned to hostility, criticism, sarcasm, and anger towards Her. I missed Her so, and was losing Her to him and to this new lifestyle. I was either home alone or at some inane vanilla picnic peopled by a bevy of fundamentalists and their children. Not a whip or set of handcuffs in sight!

Finally, after asking on 3 consecutive days, "Do you think I am 100% wrong?" and getting the answer, "Yes," I asked Her, "What could I do to get you to forgive me and accept me?" The answer was, "Nothing," to which I started to say, "But....." then I paused, and thought, and thought, and the truth dawned. "Oh," was all I could say. And I walked away and went to bed. The next day I suggested that we should separate. That night She announced She was going to stay tonight at J's, Her younger daughter. She has not been back, and will not talk to me, unless she calls me. We communicated through a friend who seemed pretty fair.

Then T refused to do a simple job and walked off the job in a huff and has not been back either.

Now I am without a wife, a Mistress, and still paying $2,187 per month in house payments, truck payments, medical insurance, gardener (!!!), another car payment, and other monthly payments, not to my WIFE, but to her SON!! And working the whole business alone! But I just turned only 60 so 16 hour days are a piece of cake <groan>.

I don't make this stuff up. I should write for daytime TV, I know, but please don't laugh, this is my life.

I am either the biggest fool ever or the best slave ever. As a slave the slim hope She extends to me is intoxicating. Maybe tomorrow She will like me, accept me. I am sure She loves me, but She can be so cruel, all the while telling me how I caused it all, and how She told me this would happen. I must have set a new high in samminess to deserve this. Or else She is milking me to support T as long as possible.

It is now over. After a disastrous therapy session in which the intermediary friend and her laid all the blame at my feet--the same blame I had accepted in writing to Her and begged forgiveness for weeks ago--I saw the light at last. It is over. And I did my part in destroying it. It was wonderful just 8 months ago.

I have filed for divorce. I may be a slave, but I want, I need to be # 1 to my Mistress.

For my part, I have learned two very important lessons. This friend that intercedes is a rageaholic. And I would get so angry at her. Finally, I asked myself how was I experiencing it just before I finally got angry, and I saw that the common thread was a belief that "I was seen as being bad." My childhood was spend thinking that if I was bad, I would be abandoned and at 3 or 4 years old, that was death. My little boy inside me still was thinking that--and still does. But the adult me realized that when the little boy felt they were probably thinking he was "bad," that, what the hey, the adult can pick up the child and nurture him and assure him he will not die. It has really worked. I don't get triggered with my anger, which was really fear of dying.

The second lesson was that when this friend would tear into me, and then at the end of the phone conversation would say, "I love you, semanticus," after the 3rd or 4th time it meant nothing. And that is my sin against my Mistress. I did abuse Her verbally, out of my pain and my fear, that pain and fear left over from my childhood, and from Her very real abandonment. And in the process I destroyed the trust.

In my opinion We have all three messed up horribly, me, She and T. But I have been in recovery 18 years, 9 months and 25 days. I should have known better, maybe, but I did not. And pain is how I learn. And I am really learning.

Thanks to many supportive friends I have been healing, but of course have a long way to go. I will be alone for some time. I would not put my emotional baggage from this on any other Lady.

But even alone I am now in a place of peacefulness, contemplation, meditation, that is, solitude, not isolation. Not ever isolation. I have my feelings very available to me, I have learned a great deal from this pain--that is, after all, the purpose of (non-play) pain.

I remind all my friends and posted back to all who so warmly supported "poor me" on a Yahoo group that a balanced view of this breakup is necessary. I certainly had my part. Basically, I did not know how to express my hurt and pain at being replaced by the son without turning it into anger, hostility, criticism, sarcasm and the like. That may be a typical man's way, and it may work well in the business world or with other men, but it was entirely inappropriate and very harmful to Mistress Cherie's feelings. On the other hand She was very over sensitive, especially to any discussion about Her son, so that fueled me, and my anger/hostility/criticism fed her fear and so on and so on and so on. My great gift is that I have learned why I reacted so badly, learned about my anger.

It had become quite evident that even if we could have fixed it, it would never be the same, it will still be broken from my point of view, I will always be #2, and I will be an outsider, even anathema to her family all the while financially feeding their needs to the very large degree that they are unable to care for themselves. A real slave role, but not exactly my kink<lol>. Further, I fear for the active 24/7 Femdom lifestyle we both formerly loved, only now it has been made clear to me that will be diminished drastically. I do not think it is necessarily unhealthy, and I want it badly, so I must move on. It gives a whole new meaning to my expression of submission I used to make to Her, "What's a slave for?"

And so, I release Her with love remembering the wonderful times and feelings and experiences and powerful Mistress-slave relationship and how much joy it brought me, and, I would like to think, brought Her. She said it did, and photos of her whipping me showed a radiance in her face, and she drew a crowd invariably with her skill and caring mixed with cruelty and power and control. Many pro Dommes asked where she came from and where she had been practicing the trade, a line of questioning and admiration she appreciated. So I believe she did like it, but I also believe she will not be able to return to it, because of the extreme Fundamentalism she has adopted in codependency with her son. And fetish balls are similarly out according to Her decree. So she has outgrown me or regressed. Anyway, we have grown apart in an irreparable way.

I have not done a single dirty trick, nor do I intend to. I will have more money. I only hope her conscience lasts. Today I applied for a home equity loan line of credit to pay her $23,000 credit card bills and to get cash for She cleaned out the account--perhaps she will eventually pay them, but my financial responsibility will not allow me to pay 15.5 - 18% when I can borrow at 5%. In short, I can stand whatever she needs to do to me in her pain and fear, if she can stand doing it.

I do not stop loving or loving her or the son, just because I appear not to be loved at the moment. They are in much more pain than I am as shown by two lovely people acting badly for the moment. And I am loved, I love me, I have a lot of very supportive friends in and out of the lifestyle, and in fact, I am Love, as we all are. It is my firm belief that we are all one with the One, which I call All-That-Is. How else can it be? As a physicist and mathematician, I know that there are many levels of infinities, but keeping it simple for the time being, It is either infinite or It is not. If it is infinite, we all must be a part of It, so how can we hurt each other, how can we bicker, how can be act out as if in hate? For we are in Reality, only acting out against another part of our own Self. Just because we cannot see the connections to each other, all of us part of the One, does not mean we are not connected, so we must love, forgive and love and love and love. Love is all there is.

Mistress Cherie is not a bad person, only one with some past issues, just like us all. If you pray, pray for her also. That'll work!! For you, for me, and for her. She is a lovely person. A Real part of God.

As for the son's "bad habits," as one friend put it, I believe not in badness, only that we are in separation from our Source. And that is true for the adult me when the inner child me hears "you're bad."

So I guess the Femdom message is that Femdom is a relationship and subject to all the rules and dangers of any intimate relationship. Femdom did not break us up. A lack of ability to deal with our old issues broke us up.

Thanks to you all for letting me write this. It is good and necessary to journal, to write, to talk, to reach out.

semanticus

PS: Remember, there are no atheists in foxholes! <ROFLOL>

PPS: Please do not write to me asking for me to adopt you. There are 3 or 4 others of Her family I am supporting to some degree or other, and I am out of the caretaker business