I’ve been following a certain Dominant for about a month, and he’s been very prolific in his postings. However, within the last few days, he suddenly went completely silent. Not only on my feed, but his Instagram account disappeared as well. I wasn’t sure why (it could easily be any number of reasons) but with every blogger, there are occasional dry spells. It’s just the ebb and flow of the writing process, usually.
As it turned out, on my feed is/was one of his submissives, and she posted an update yesterday explaining the silence. Apparently, he has/had an understanding with his (I’m guessing vanilla?) spouse about his BDSM activities. It basically said if there came a time when she was no longer comfortable with what he was doing, he’d stop. And apparently, that time has arrived, as he informed his online submissive that he would no longer be able to be her Dominant and that he was discontinuing their relationship. Which is an honorable thing to do, but on the other hand it’s pretty devastating for the other person in the situation, as one might imagine.
Sure. we’re all grown-ups here, and in her own blog post, she stated that she went into the whole situation with open eyes, understanding that this could happen at some point. Of course, no one expects the worst to happen, even when it does. I haven’t yet posted a reply to her post, but will soon after I post this. For support, if for no other reason. Just reading about it pains me, as I have my own agreement with my wife that is similar to this.
Without going into too much detail, my wife and I decided early on when our relationship shifted that we would ‘open’ our marriage to outside persons of interest. When we first got married, we were monogamous and things were pretty squared away in the BDSM realm. Then one of us (yes, you guessed it, me) decided we weren’t the way we felt when things began. Which threw a wrench into our relationship. The bones of the marriage were still there, but the BDSM component couldn’t continue without some tinkering.
So, after a long and detailed conversation (certainly more than a few tears were shed) it was decided we were going to stay married, we loved one another too much to just chuck the whole thing, BUT we both wanted to have BDSM in our lives, so we constructed our compromise. Open the marriage a crack, and let others in, however, there wouldn’t be any fluid exchange between those partners. Anyone who wished to enter into the marriage would have to be aware of that ironclad detail. If they weren’t ok with it, then the door was clearly marked.
It’s been 30 years now and the compromise is working, though it’s had hiccups along the way. The vast majority of my BDSM relationships have been long-distance, including my current one. My wife has had long-distance relationships for the most part, though there was one submissive who lived with us for about a month. He was mostly a ‘service submissive’ and did chores around the house, and was a pain junky, so there were a few times I ‘helped’ out when my wife was unable to swing a flogger or paddle with sufficient force to satisfy his needs. Once that task was accomplished, I left the playroom, I wasn’t interested in staying to watch.
I’m sure by now (props if you’re still reading) you’re more than likely wondering when I’m going to bring this bird in to land. Here’s the landing strip. Marriages and BDSM are a volatile combination. Especially when they get opened up to exterior players. I’m not saying ‘my way is best’, because it isn’t. It doesn’t apply to everyone else’s marriage, it works for mine. Certainly, my wife tomorrow could say ‘I think I’ve been patient enough, it’s time for you to come back to me and rescind our agreement.’ But thus far she hasn’t gone to that extreme. Yes, she essentially ‘retired’ from the scene many moons ago, but the agreement didn’t say once Partner A stops, Partner B stops as well. So long as we both adhere to the agreement, it continues on. Again, this doesn’t work for everyone.
I absolutely feel terrible for both of these people.. I didn’t know either of them for very long, and while their relationship has ended, I can only hope they both can continue on and make post-relationship life work.
Thanks for this thoughtful look at how you and your wife have made this work for the two of you. I didn’t have an understanding before my relationship with Sir Jon started, but we were able to begin to come to an understanding before it ended. And as it turns out, it looks like his understanding was not as clear as I had thought. But I have a lot admiration and respect for how you and your wife have managed the situation. Thanks for sharing it.
💜 olivia
Honestly, I don’t often talk about my marriage and BDSM, but your post seemed to offer a chance to do so, and perhaps help someone else out who might be either in need of a little guidance, or assurance that it can sometimes work, but it takes a good deal of fortune as well as hard work to make it happen. I was saddened to hear that this wasn’t the first time Jon’s been in this sort of situation and that he magnified the problem by being a bit disingenuous with more than one entity or personage on his way out the door, as it were. I’m glad to see you’re bouncing back, writing can be cathartic and help ease some of the pain.
Thank you for the very nice compliment. It’s appreciated. I’m attempting to get back into writing, and we’ll see where things go.
I read this post last night and I wanted to comment, perhaps because of my own experiences with Jon, but also being involved with a kinky married man in my own right.
Jon and I originally got along well, over some mutual personal matters that he emailed me about and didn’t want to make public. I kept those secret for him and I assumed we had a mutual respect for one another. Jon often made flirtatious comments on my posts which sometimes felt a bit “too far” but he did email me once and apologise, I told him in no uncertain terms that I’d joke with him in the comments but I wasn’t interested in serving him as his submissive. I thought that seemed fine and understood.
So I was surprised when, after I broke up with my ex partner, Jon took my scenario in a post of his own and modelled me as a “bad” submissive (for standing up for myself) – that seemed like a rather hurtful thing for a “friend” to do. I mentioned his reaction in another post and said that I felt like he may have been offended by me rejecting him and he emailed me again angrily, threatening to “out” me unless I cleared things up, even if what I’d said was my truth. So I exposed him and his email in another post, because I refused to be threatened and I was not going to sit by and let people believe he was a nice man when he was treating me this way.
That his wife should ask him to stop a few weeks later, I found almost ironic. I feel compassion for Olivia, of course I do, but I have no respect for Jon.
Unfortunately, in my own case, I met a man through a penpal app, who wanted to be “more than friends” with me. I agreed, and he would become another Dominant partner to me. That started off great at first but it quickly became volatile with jealousy (of my husband) and frustration when I discovered that his wife didn’t know about me. She later found out, and though he and I broke up and they improved temporarily, he emailed me a few months later to tell me that he is now getting divorced.
Unfortunately, nothing good ever comes when partners of partners have veto power over us – It causes us anxiety, turmoil and usually ultimately heartache. I was naive once, but I won’t ever be naive again. Boundaries are one thing, but vetoes are quite another.
It sounds like you and your wife have a good thing going on though, which is great to read. I wish you the best with that.
Thank you for the very detailed comment. Certainly it brings a bit more light to the Jon story. I had expected there were more layers (Ogres have layers, like onions) to his interactions. When he had commented more than once on nijnte’s blog and had stepped over a series of lines more than once, I began wondering if this was common behavior for him, and apparently it is, and was. One would hope that he’s learned from his missteps, but I suppose the proof in any pudding is in the eating.
I understand all too well how unusual my pact/arrangement is with my wife. There have been more than a few times when I thought it was going to go ‘kablooey’, and at times it’s hung on by a thread. But it continues, and I’m grateful for her patience with it, and me. One of the thing that we made sure each of us understood and agreed on was, if one of us was interacting with someone and wished to make it more of a ‘play’ relationship, if that person had a spouse, that person needed to be in on the information, no secrets, no ‘I’ll tell him/her eventually”. Either it’s done immediately, or what we were building came to a screeching halt. Suffice it to say, that stipulation caused more than one or two possible relationships being consigned to the dung heap. But what we were doing was just TOO important, keeping a spouse in the dark was never going to have a happy ending.
I wholeheartedly concur with the aversion to veto power concept. It will never end well.