Do we write and rewrite the story of our past just as we are constantly writing and rewriting the story of our present, our future?
Is it possible to set ourselves aside and become another person for the sake of a relationship? Is that sustainable? And how does it work for seduction purposes?
Can any one of us become anyone’s “someone” ?
Where are the lines between truth and fiction? Imagined reality and rememberance of reality? What is the role of memory and forgetting?
Can martians be good lovers? Share intimacy?
Apparently, no woman is allowed to be an amazing lover without having a troubled past. Furthermore, she is not allowed to be any good at begging or kneeling or pleasing her love, especially if he may be a man, and doubly so if he happens to be older than she.
That is what I learned in the beginning of my relationship with a Dominant/Master/Trainer. Let’s call him 2.0.
Such attributes in a woman (especially a young twenty-something woman) must point to some horrendous abuse in her past, he explained. Otherwise, from where did she get the experience?The highly infectious desire? The willingness? The ache, the burn for submission?
“What’s your number?” he used to ask me. And by that he meant, what is the percentage of your feeling that you are making all these stories up just to please me, to sate a near-stranger? Thelower your number, the more you believe that the memories you are recovering are true. The more you believe that they are yours. The more you stand behind them and certify their validity.
Was it all an elaborate game of brainwashing? And on whose side? (Both of ours, perhaps?) And isn’t all seduction subtle manipulation anyways?
We want to know our lovers. It could be argued that more than that, however, we want to create our lovers. We want to make and remake them to fit the specifications of our fantasies, our neuroses, our compulsions, our desires, our dreams.
2.0 had me watch Hitchcock’s Vertigo, paying special attention to the way that the main character molded a random woman that he met to become the living incarnation of his dead wife.
Maybe I was the convenient pawn to be molded, to be remade.
Is it any coincidence that all of his slaves happen to be victims of terrible abuse? Surviving shock and trauma in their childhoods far worse than the stories that make the news? And a concentration of hurt, wounded, traumatized women all in one area… How does he find them all? Or is he playing a role in fashioning their identities?
Yes, it may be true that it is easier to control a woman who has been abused in her past. She is wounded, weak, some go so far as to use the word “broken” in description. But what of thewoman that was not abused or wounded, lived her whole life without that stigma, and then meets a man who suddenly implants such an idea into her head? She becomes vulnerable only to him. She can’t run to her family. He effectively disables her support structure, naming them as themalignant tumor from which evil has spread.
“The reason you have these sexual desires,” he might say, “is because of the things they did to you when you were young. Terrible, terrible things.”
And you start to question your memories, and your lack of memories. Remembering and forgetting become all-important. He insists that you’re running away from yourself and from intimacy when you don’t remember, and in the echo of Pavlov, he “rewards” you (well) when you remember along the lines that further his purpose, serve his case. You fall deeper and deeper inlove with this man, this stranger, this Dominant.
Suddenly he is not just a lover in the distance, but therapist, teacher, healer. And he is the only one who has the magic salve. The only one who understands what happened to you. The only one who will listen to you. The only one who can heal you. The only one who knows where the entrance to the cave is. (Perhaps you are playing right into his hand. Perhaps that has been his plan all along.)
And as you are questioning your own memories, you question his motives. He is quick to dismiss your doubt and continue programming you. “Outsiders often tell my girls that this seems like a cult.”
“Good,” I tell my girls in response. “It should.”
And is it? And do the “true” stories that you share have more behind them than undeniable truth? And do they have a purpose beyond creating more fear, more instability in us? Furthering thevictim-mentality that brings prey closer to your doorstep.
2.0 teaches you mantras. Infuses them into you like breath. “You’ll hurt me, but you’ll never hurt my heart.” / “You’re mountains and sun. You never turn away from a girl. You’ll never turn away from me.” / “I need. I need. I need. I need You. I can’t live without You. I need You to teach me how to live, how to breathe, please.”
To every lingering doubt of yours, he has a response. To every question, an answer. It is all formulaic on his end, perfectly scripted. He gloats about his consistency and assures you that consistency is a marker of beliefworthiness. “You ache to be beliefworthy to yourself,” he tells you. And with a single statement he has dealt another deep blow to your self-trust, effectively disabling the alarms that are going off inside of you, covering the red flags, hiding the warning lights and muting the sirens (at least temporarily, until the effect wears off– at which point he is ready, and waiting, anticipating your every move (external and internal, conscious and subconscious). “You ache to be beliefworthy to yourself,” he says. The repetition echoes inside of you, and the effect is more solid this time. Your response more thorough, your mind falling into step more quickly than the time before.
And it goes on like this. One night he tells you to google “Stockholm Syndrome.” You do and you tell him what you’ve found. He proceeds to explain that the reason you love your family so much and have been close to them for all of these years is because they were your abusers, and you became close as a way to cope. A neurosis. “A sane response to an insane situation,” he says. “It happened, but it’s not your fault. Anyone would have broken to THAT. Anyone would have done just what you did to survive. It was so smart. You were such a smart little girl.”
The problems begin when he falls for you harder than he anticipated. You capture him. You seduce him. And he starts slipping. Your eyes are open, and you begin to see his game. You begin to see through him. The illusion is shattered. It doesn’t crumble instantly, but takes weeks to slowly erode (because the brainwashing was so thorough, so penetrating). He is hopelessly inlove with you. He wants to leave the old ways behind, which he must do if he is to share real intimacy with you.
Your mere presence threatens his whole adult-identity, all of the lies that his life is built upon, that his other girlfriends/slaves/lovers subscribe to. You threaten to destroy his reality or break his heart. He can’t have you and his old games, and he knows it. The tension builds.
(No need to watch your favorite soap on tv anymore. You get it all live.)
NOTE: Yes, this happened to me. Yes, it’s a true story. Yes, I’m lucky to have escaped with my sanity, and my life. Yes, I know many other girls who are still trapped in that hell with that abusive prick.
If you, or someone you know is in a similar situation, please seek help. I can offer resources. Message me privately, anonymously at MistressArabella AT live DOT com and I will do my very best to get resources to you and/or your loved ones. Relationship abuse is not a joke; it’s not a game. It damages lives, and it takes lives.
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