Picking up where I left off. . .
When Chelsea arrived she emptied her suitcase and other personal items in our guest bedroom and joined us in the living room as Mike calls us together for this unique “Maintenance Session” as explained in my prior post.
And as if by magic, something unexpected happened. Something that could take months, if not years, or even a lifetime for someone to articulate to someone else. Chelsea said the most amazing and surprising thing.
As I left off in the prior post, Mike stated, “. . . I don’t ask you to be anyone other than yourself.”
Chelsea didn’t say anything right away. It’s like I could sense the wires starting to connect… zzzt, zzzt, zzzzzzt!
With the saddest face humanly possible, she mumbled,
“But. But. But, what if I’m not enough? What if there’s something wrong with me?”
And then she cried.
Mike immediately went to her and held her. He assured her that no matter what, it can only be right.
I recognized Chelsea had a lot she needed to get off her chest. I felt like the setting might be intimating for her. Seemingly ready to reveal her worst fears in life, I felt the fewer people around the better. Overcoming my predisposition to be nosy, I knew my presence wasn’t valuable. While Kayla is her best friend, I sensed even having her around might be a bit much. Chelsea said what she said to Mike, staring straight at him as if we weren’t even there. I asked Mike if Kayla and I could leave the room and he agreed.
I don’t have a bad relationship with Chelsea, but it hasn’t evolved to be one best suited for what it appeared she needed at that moment. I’ve never had a meaningful one-on-one discussion with her. Probably the most I ever talked to her without Mike or Kayla around was during our threesome with TJ. A totally different context!
Mike and Chelsea were left in our living room as Kayla and I retreated to our bedroom. It was about two hours before Mike came in, Chelsea in hand. He said we will watch a movie and just relax together. (We watched The One and Only Ivan. It was okay. Various sub-plots going on and worth a watch on television but I am glad we didn’t spend movie money on it. Sort of what you probably feel about reading my blog! lol). Chelsea sat on the couch between Mike and Kayla, and I was sitting in the recliner. Chelsea was gripping Mike’s hand almost like a scared child. During the movie she ended up with her head on his shoulder, and she fell asleep. It wasn’t that late. Maybe 8:30 or 8:45 p.m.
After about thirty minutes of her sleeping, Mike gently woke her and softly asked her if she would like to go to bed. She nodded and he whispered for her to get ready for bed and he would come to the room in a bit.
He went to the bedroom and didn’t return to the living room for about forty-five minutes. He asked Kayla to talk to Chelsea, so she did. It got later and later and eventually both me and Mike got ready for bed and could still hear the mumbling of Kayla and Chelsea talking.
Kayla eventually emerged and asked Mike if she could sleep with Chelsea. “As in sleep, sleep, no sex,” she clarified. She said Chelsea didn’t want to be alone. Mike agreed and oddly, he added, “And if it leads to sex, so be it. I’ll leave that up to you.”
I didn’t ask Mike to tell me what Chelsea shared. I’ve learned from my relationship with Kayla that it is best to leave it up to her to share with me what she wants. There shouldn’t be this assumption that I “deserve” or demand to know everything they discuss or do with Mike. They are free to explore and develop their relationship with him, free from my hovering around it. In this case, Mike told Chelsea he would share things with me, thus. . .
Mike told me that Chelsea indeed has a lot of “sorting out to do.” I pretty much nailed it in my assessment that she isn’t connected to what she is truly feeling or truly wants. Mike said that’s only half of it.
I don’t intend to turn my blog into the “Chelsea life story blog.” But the run down is this:
CHELSEA’S CHALLENGES
1. She’s uncertain of her sexuality
She thinks she might be gay. Bisexual for sure. Prefers women, not to say that she doesn’t love Jaime. It’s just “different, complicated, and confusing.”
2. Jaime’s fidelity
Jaime cheated on her a lot before they got married, supposedly not since. She never really reconciled it in her mind and continues to blame herself for not being enough for him during that time.
3. She fears not being enough
She loves her husband and wants him to be happy and be the one for him to be happy with. Her guilt and insecurities (my words) made her put tremendous pressure on herself and her hopes that D/s would transform their relationship for the better. She personally likes being submissive and was eager to embrace D/s. Her expectations were very high. She feels she connected with D/s and gets to be more of her true self as a submissive. This makes Jaime’s perceived rejection of it all the more painful to her.
4. She’s loves being submissive
While loving the idea of being submissive, it only has felt right to her when Mike is the one providing direction or delivering consequences. She admitted to acting up (aka “bratting”) with Jaime so that Jaime would have to take action. Instead, Jaime would often turn to Mike in frustration.
She likes submitting to Jaime, but, in her words, “he’s bad at being a Dom.” And despite all the issues, she is convinced she loves Jaime but not convinced he loves her.
5. Swinging/swap conflict
She hasn’t fully reconciled the whole swinging/swap stuff within our COT. Part of her feels it’s Jaime’s way of demonstrating she isn’t enough for him. But at the same time, she said they both found it exciting and they connected in new ways. They both were open with each other about what they did, what they felt, what they liked, what they didn’t. She cherished those conversations and it made her feel good that he enjoyed it and enjoyed her enjoying it. But she isn’t 100% convinced. Again, lots of insecurities.
6. She’s in love with Kayla
Yeah, there’s that. She admitted it.
WHAT DOES JAIME KNOW?
Mike asked her how much of this she discussed with Jaime. Virtually none!
She thinks sharing her thoughts about her sexuality would be unfair because she hasn’t figured it out herself. “What if I am wrong and he freaks out over nothing? What if he thinks it means I don’t love him or that he is inadequate in some way? What if he leaves?”
She wants a life with him, as his wife, kids, all that. My thoughts are that she’s not gay, bisexual for sure, and will hopefully come to terms with it at her own pace regarding what it means for her and her marriage.
She’s mortified to address their D/s and our COT. “What if I am right and he never wanted it or liked any of it. I feel so embarrassed for liking it myself.” My two cents is that he enjoys her submission and the COT. I think he is just as insecure as she is. That insecurity comes off as indifference. There’s just too much left unsaid between them and their individual insecurities are filling in the gaps.
She said they did have conversations about the swinging, but she never revealed her motivations behind it – motivations based on pleasing him. And while they mutually shared the genuine excitement and energy it brought to their relationship, she never told him that it also includes feelings of not being enough or being discarded. Despite her liking so many things about it, at its root it represented her failings as a wife. Those horrible feelings were conflicted with the thrill it also brought to both of them and their relationship. And her love of the eperiences with other women was conflicted with her concerns about her sexual identity.
All of this was from her eight hours with us! Things sure move fast in my kink-vortex! I’ve got a theory about why that is, but I’ll save that for some other post.
MY NEW NARRATIVE
The next day we followed through with our plans and Chelsea shadowed me much of the day, and then shadowed Kayla the next, she even saw Kayla get spanked. And I’ve now had the opportunity to talk to Chelsea one-on-one for quite awhile and I’ve adjusted my narrative about her.
She knows who she is, she’s just afraid to show it, both to herself, and to others. A fear based in her childhood that she carried forward to her marriage. Her ability to articulate what she wants is hiding behind the thinnest veneer. Once punctured, she has been very articulate, clear, and more importantly, confident.
She wants to be married to Jaime. She wants to let him lead and needs to work with him on defining what that means on his terms, not hers. She wants an open marriage, especially wants to explore her sexuality more. She understands that may be hard on Jaime as he may fear her leaving him for a woman. They’ll just have to work that out and it is no different than her fears he could leave her for another woman. “Who knows,” she said, “maybe we find a win-win and get ourselves a third!”
She likes D/s and loves the idea of submitting, to Jaime, to Mike, or to a woman. She feels the most comfortable in a submissive role, including being disciplined. She said she always felt fine being spanked as a child. Not that she enjoyed it, but that it didn’t make her feel defective and she doesn’t feel scarred by it. To her it was effective and she believes it is “appropriate for a husband to spank his wife. ”
When she said that, I was ready to denounce that concept. I don’t buy into it as being “appropriate” in the way she was using that word. She was using it as meaning “natural order of things.” Ug. That’s not my belief. I’ve ranted about that before so will spare you another rant. Suffice to say, I bit my tongue and accepted that if it was right for her, then so be it. (120. Is this submissive a feminist, and 350. Equity and Fairness)
WHAT NOW?
For now she is waiting to have her deep dive conversation with Jaime. She wants to continue talking with us, flexing her ability to articulate her feelings and better understand what it is she is feeling. And by us, I do mean us. She’s opened up to me and I think likes the attention from all three of us, especially Mike. She Facetimes every day with Jaime, and Jaime even noted her upbeat demeanor. It seems she is feeling good about the direction she is headed.
BTW, Chelsea didn’t have sex with Kayla that first night. They just cuddled and went to sleep. There’s some things that have to be sorted out there because Chelsea loves Kayla. Kayla loves her to but not in that same way, so it’s unfair to pursue the sexual activities if the feelings are unbalanced. And there is the whole thing of what role Mike plays in Chelsea’s life and her dynamic within her marriage. But all of those things flow from Chelsea first needing to establish a stronger sense of self. Once that is done, everything else should be much easier to sort out.
I’ve always stated that when you allow yourself to be vulnerable, or go down a path of exploring kinks (which is related to vulnerability), the experience serves as an AMPLIFIER for what your relationship already has. If there are fears, insecurities, and confusion, they will be amplified ten-fold. If there is trust, acceptance, and confidence, that too will be amplified ten-fold.
And Domestic Discipline amplifies all of them even more.
Domestic Discipline, Jenny style! 