Afraid of the Darkness

Well, my life is taking a not so happy turn again and I’m absolutely empty at this point. John Patrick and I are on another ugly level. There are several reasons I don’t want to get into, but I’m not giving up on what we’ve shared. He’s dealing with a bunch of shit like I am, but our love is strong. What I realized over the last few days is how terrified he is of his dark sides. Yes, he has two. There are various shades of darkness and you’ve seen my writings about both. There is darkness within all of us, a deep seeded level of depression that sits on the very edge of our humanity and when times get tough, we often have difficulty being able to see the light of day.

Darkness regarding BDSM is something else entirely. In my relationship with John Patrick, I came to learn he has both very clearly positioned within him, but often he’s not able to decipher between the two. In our journey together, he’s shown me both sides and I can tell you both terrify him. I honestly didn’t realize how much so until the last few days. The dark and foreboding part of us can be debilitating and I’m not making light of the concept at all.

With John Patrick, he told me early on he knew he has a side that can simply shut him down, the intense emotional shut down refusing to be able to deal with the every day around him. When he’s fallen into this state over the years, he couldn’t cope for various reasons and had to go away – whether taking a couple days off from work or getting in his car and driving. I heard recently from his best male friend that pretty much no one was able to deal with him when he cascaded into these moods. They stayed away, realizing after a short period of time he would be harsh, perhaps biting in basically every conversation. He was never violent in any manner, but he simply was unable to cope. So he removed himself from society and plop into a dark hole.

I faced this very intensely concentrated place for the first time over a year ago. At the time we were chatting about how happy we were that we found each other. Suddenly for no apparent reason, the ugliness hit him hard. All of a sudden he told me he had to go away. Me being me, I refused to allow him. I made him continue to just talk to me and after about thirty minutes, he commented I’d been the single person in his life to drag him out of the ugly pit. I really had no idea at the time how deep the pit was – until recently. I certainly have realized because of the passionate man he is, that he takes various aspects of life very seriously, sometimes creating a heightened level of friction in his own mind. I love him no matter his thoughts or needs. We talked through various very open conversations, enabling me to understand to a degree why he’s dragged himself into his own level of Hell. But not completely.

When he and I started talking about entering into a journey of D/s, I didn’t give it a second thought there might be a conflict with his other dark side. Now I know I should have paid more attention. We long to please those around us and for him, often this is paramount to the man inside. He has to have confirmation he’s an okay guy, doing the right thing for pretty much every family member and friend. He worries about what his friends’ wives will think of me. That’s how concerned he is about doing the right thing.

When he and I were having a discussion the other day, he went down the path of telling me the dark man, the one craving sadism, he’d become terrified of. As we continued the discussion, at the time I was mortified he was going down “that” road again, the one where he believed he was such a horrible man, very abusive, a comment told to him over and over again. I call him amazing and he began to tell me he’s nothing and certainly not amazing. You can see we have two very distinct dark sides bursting to the surface.

I was honestly angry as well as hurt and asked if he believed the D/s portion is just as wretched as the way he’s looking at sadism. He couldn’t answer and I was totally perplexed, completely in tears (which I still am today) and tried to figure out where this was coming from. While he continues to have rather negative outside influences, I have one of those light bulb moments after talking with his guy friend. They’ve been best friends for years and we’ll call him Mike. John Patrick and Mike go back to another time years ago and in another city.

They’ve remained friends through marriages and girlfriends. Mike has also seen his very dark moods and knew when to just give him some space. He gave me several observations about how unhappy JP has been for years and how when he talked about me there seemed to be such joy in his eyes. He was curious about the BDSM and JP explained to a point. For the first time, I had the opportunity to sit and talk with someone about JP, where I had never before. I came to this utter light bulb moment and was able to give John Patrick something to think about.

He’s been so unhappy for so long that he fell into the depression darkness often, becoming moody and difficult to be around. Since our relationship began, he hasn’t fallen into that pit but once and I was able to pull him out. The safety net I cast around him with my love, trust and the ability to pull him from the darkness. This allowed him to explore the other dark side, the one initially only including the need to be my Dom. He knew I’d given up my control freely to him so he was able to balance the two sides.

When he came back to me, he came back hungering for intense darkness, sadism to a heightened degree. The few weeks he was nothing but the Dom becoming a Master. I even asked him at one point if he felt any of the vanilla for me as he had before. The answer was no. Very shortly thereafter the comfort and safety, love and trust came again and we were sharing both sides in a similar fashion as we had before. Was there more of an edge? Yes. Was I hungering the same way he was? Yes.

When he was pushed recently more and more by guilt and worry, that’s when he became terrified. As I texted John Patrick earlier, he was petrified the sadism would overtake, bringing out the other dark man and our relationship would be destroyed. Now, he can’t breathe, has no way of grabbing onto reality. I further reminded him I have a dark and light side too and his ability to allow me to give up control kept my dark side at bay, allowing me joy. We are each other’s glue and the glue has been stretched, not once but twice, and is ready to snap. We’re in a free fall and the emotions are wired, raw and incapable of healing.

I’m starting to reflect on his kink needs as well as my own. I honestly don’t know where they’ll go from here. I trust him implicitly and have no fear of any aspect of the man. He’d never hurt me. Sadly, his mind is tortured, poisoned at least for now to the fact the kink darkness is part of him. He argued with me it’s only a choice. Whether or not to participate is very much a choice. The hunger, the longing isn’t. You have or you don’t have. Do others bring this side out? Absolutely. Just like in vanilla relationships, some people bring out the worst in you and all you do is bicker, argue, belittle, whatever. These kinds of relationships are toxic and truly can’t be fixed because our innate needs don’t change, they are simply masked.

JP has a chain around his neck and several masks on his face, hiding the man I know better than anyone. Did D/s or BDSM have a part in this? Perhaps, but I think his own personal demons are to blame. I’m still here. I refuse to give up. He’s an amazing man.

Eyes wide open, baby. You need to see you as I do…

Kisses and spanks…

Cassandre