Q&A about Don

I have been getting quite a few questions about the Don posts so I thought I would post some of them here in case others have wanted to ask but have been too shy. Really I am open to questions on this....so don't worry you will be upsetting me or intruding.

How do you feel about posting about all this for everyone to read?
I don't mind posting it for everyone to read. For the most part blogging is so a part of my life now that it feels like just a natural place to write about that time in my life. I have gotten all sorts of comments and emails about it...every thing from they can't believe it - to they get turned on - to they can't wait for the next part - to they are angered I went through this and so on. I don't want people to feel sorry for me though and that is what seems to happen the most. That is why I try to state often that this is a relationship is a part of me...because those experiences made me who I am today.

How do you feel after you post each entry?
Well depends on when you ask me. If I would have been asked this question a week or two ago I would have said I have dealt with all of this long ago. So for the most part it is kind of just ho-hum. But I have to confess last weekend I did have a little freak out about it. I worried that Don might read what I wrote and see that I am talking about him and I and possibly contact me. And that thought freaked me out quite a bit.

I have dealt with what I write about though. I went through the anger, shame, guilt, resentment, denial - oh the denial, depression, the flashbacks, the therapy and the acceptance. The acceptance has went through lots of changes in and of itself too. I accept it much differently today then I did 10 years ago. I think of it and write it with a much different attitude then I would have a 5 to 10 years after the event. I accept my responsibility in this. I accept that what he did turned me on and felt like a place I needed to be. Not all of it was good and I probably should have left before it ended but I didn't so I accept that I did stay. I accept these experiences made me the person I am today. That time in my life taught me a lot about myself.

What are your feelings about what happened to you?
I kind of answered that above but I will get into it a little more. After the relationship ended, I tried to pretended that it didn't happen. I was not quite sure of my place in the world after he and I broke up. At that point I had heard that "people don't do that" and "it is wrong" and so I felt "bad" for liking parts of my relationship with Don. Also by the end I was so mixed up...not knowing what was okay for me and what wasn't...I just lumped it all into "bad." I also had all this structure and someone always there in my life and then I didn't.....so I was lost. I had lost my confidence and self-esteem at the end also. So I pushed the whole experience down further and pretended it didn't happen. Finally I started suppress it where I forgot most of it for quite a long time. It was like it was there but locked up in a big box -- so that I didn't think about it, feel it or acknowledge it happened to me.

Then one night a long long time after it happened (about 7 or 8 years)....I started getting nightmares. I would wake up screaming. At that time I was married - to my now ex-husband and he would ask me what the nightmares were about and I couldn't tell him. I saw them clearly in my head but I didn't want to say it outloud. But soon it was hard not too. I had to admit it outloud. Flashbacks, nightmares and insomnia because I was scared to sleep and get nightmares became constants in my life. I became very scared and angry with Don after I admitted I lived that life. As the nightmares continue I realized I was very turned on by the things he did to me. I would wake from nightmares and be very aroused. I felt guilt because of that. I was in therapy at the time and so we discussed it all - the guilt, shame, anger and fear. We dealt with it very much as a rape survivor - at that time. And from how I was feeling about it then...that is what how I viewed myself - a rape survivor. It took me years to not feel anger, fear and guilt about it on a constant basis. I didn't tell my therapist all of it. She never heard most of what I wrote here. I told her about several things I haven't written about yet. And that was it. I have problems - today - calling myself a rape survivor. I just don't know if that is accurate because I feel there was consensual non-consent going on in our relationship --- even though I didn't know that at the time....so there wasn't really consent but there was in the questions he asked me....such as if I would do anything for him...I answered yes. So I did give him consent. But I don't know if I really knew what could happen or what that meant when I said it. Again I own up to my responsibility. I should have asked more questions. I could have done things to slow it down or stop it and I could have left but I didn't. I get confused if I think on it too much. I go by what I feel when I think of it now -- today.

And today I just feel this was part of my path. If I had not met Don I might not have figured out about the masochist side of me as well as the slave part. Granted I wish some things would have gone differently, but really we take out his gambling the things that happened in the relationship I enjoyed. I was his slave even without knowing the word that described what it is that I did with him.


How could you be happy in that situation?
I was happy in that situation up to a point. I loved the control he had over me. I know I have not talked much about the daily control but there were little things all day long that reminded me I was his. And I loved that. I loved all the little things that made his life easier by me doing them - laundry, cleaning his room, getting him drinks and such. I loved the sex and SM. Even the SM that was harsh and more extreme. I loved feeling like this object he could use. Why? Well the why I stopped trying to figure out a long time ago. I just know it makes me feel good and turns me on.

In my relationships before Don, I was used. I was used just for sex so what was wrong with being in a relationship where I got more attention, where I got more pleasure, where I was able to express my sexual desires more easily and freely without fear of being rejected. Don gave me so much more then I got in the other relationships.

I should write about some of the times where I think those reading would see more positives...even though I don't think what I have written so far is negative -- I do understand it is more extreme then some can understand or accept as a good thing.

Would you do it again, knowing what you know now?
I go back and forth on this one. Part of me says yes in a heart beat. And the other part says no. But then I fear I wouldn't have found out about this side...ever. Maybe?

Being brought to the lowest I was even in the bad times --- excites me. I crave those moments with him often still...being absolutely nothing...humiliated and degraded to that level makes me extremely turned on. So although I left broken in ways, I sometimes crave the feelings I got when I was humiliated and degraded to the depths of my soul.

If you could get to where you are today without doing this, would you skip it next time around?
If I could be with Don without him gambling, I would want to repeat it and not skip it. But again part of me just feels it was necessary for me to be with Don all the way through -- even the bad parts --- that it was a part of my life that I can't just wave away and make me become this person. I know that probably sounds very strange...why I would subject myself to him again knowing what I know now...and if I could get here without him. I just guess the realistic side me kicks in and says well that can't happen so why bother with the whatif of it -- I got here and survived and I am who I am because of it. Also just to be clear....I am not saying Don's "abuse" made me masochist or submissive. I am just saying he made me realize there was more inside me and that I could be that person.

Do you think you will stop doing the history posts?
I don't plan on stopping the posts but I do see them going up and down in frequency. But it is my goal to get the whole story out once and for all. I have thought I might be boring people with all this and so give breif thought every once in a while about just writing them but not posting them or post them private just for Master and I on livejournal. But it does seem like some of you out there want to read them. So thank you for reading and thank you for your comments!

How long did it take you before you left? And what was Don's reaction?
I wasn't with him all that long actually. 3 months 13 days. He broke up with me. A friend of mine felt Don was abusing me. One night he went and had a conversation with Don -- later that night Don broke things off with me. I became very lost and actually begged him to take me back a few times but he didn't. I don't know exactly what the friend said to him but I know whatever it was Don was not backing down from being apart. Shortly after I ended up with my ex-husband. And I also know Don got help for his gambling problem shortly after the relationship ended.

Do you think he has continued on now that WIIWD is more widely known to the internet? Do you think he is involved somewhere?
Since I continued to work in the same place as him for quite some time after I always would hear about him and the things going on with him. He started dating a girl while he was with me that his parents "approved of" and he got engaged to her. I then stopped working there but had friends who worked there after I left that told me Don and the girl did get married, eventually he finished med school and moved back to where he was from.

Sidenote: She also has the mirror that Mike gave me. Don gave it to her as a gift.

I can't see her liking SM or D/s. So, if he is involved it would be through affairs as I also can't ever see him being monogamous. I guess it is possible he is out here on the internet and doing what we do. I guess I have tried not to think about it. I did go through a whole phase of what if he is with someone else and does what he did with me with them....had the guilt. But it really started hurting me - where I was going through a self-destructive phase because of the guilt that he might hurt others. My hope now is if he is out there that he is 1) not gambling 2) knows more about D/s and SM and so is doing it in a more consensual way.

Please feel free to drop me an email or comment with any other questions you have about Don and my relationship with him.