A client chooses to explore the depths of her submissive sexual kink after keeping it hidden for decades. Her reluctant “nice guy” fiancé slowly warms to his own dominant counterpart.

“It was incredibly empowering… to reveal the secret desires I had hidden away for decades. I finally met this young girl who has been with me, in my fantasies or mythic desire, as you call it, in nearly every orgasm throughout my life…I felt so enlivened, so awakened by the experience.”

A client couple was divided by an unbridgeable erotic mismatch at the start of our work together. The woman had intense life-long sexual desires to submit to an aggressive dominant man.  Her partner was taught growing up to treat women with respect and tenderness.

During the course of their work with me, her enlivened passion began to wake up the dominant, sexual masculine within her fiancé. Up until this point, he had been the kind, sweet masculine presence he had been raised to be. While this made for a generally easy-going, loving day to day relationship, it also left his partner’s fierce authentic erotic desires unfulfilled. The erotic divide threatened the deep union they both sought with each other.

Their story models the opportunities as well as the complex resistances encountered in bringing our most taboo sexual desires into our personal awareness and then into our relationships. The sexual aspects of this particular relationship happens to fit the male dominant model. I have also worked with couples who aspired to a female dominant model in their sexual expression.  Both of these sexual styles, and everything in between occur within the full spectrum of what I call Fetishsexuality, aka Kink or D/s-BDSM.

The personal narrative of her experience begins below. Both her and her partner had just attended a recent Conscious D/s-BDSM workshop I had led.  Her thoughts from that workshop and her personal work with me are woven into her reflections.

I feel that her reflections map out well, the inner terrain and operation of her Personal Erotic Myth. A PEM contains the fantasy imagery, storylines, mythic personas, props, attire, dialogue and actions that drive a person who has a PEM to orgasm or other deep erotic states. This mythos is often expressed in Fetish, Kink, and D/s-BDSM oriented sex, where symbol, myth and archetypal personifications abound.

Here is C’s story of her journey into her life-long Fetish desires

(In a follow-up email, I had asked her about the sense that something was missing from our previous session)

“Very perceptive- I appreciate that about you and your work.  Yes, something was missing.  My mind was wandering and I found myself more than once wanting/wishing that it was my partner who was owning me, possessing me.  But I think there was something more, and I don’t know what it is.

One possibility is that I wanted to resist more, to be overtaken, against my will, or to have that sense.  In the workshop, I found myself telling L (her partner), that I wanted a simulated rape.  I wanted him to chase me down, force me to hold still, tie me up.

The methodical exploration of limits that you and I have pursued in our sessions has served me, but I sense in this last session, also limited me, or that part of me that I am craving to embody.  And afterward I thought, maybe I’m done.  Maybe it’s time to explore this with my partner, and not on my own.

At the same time though I should acknowledge that L has been really struggling with feeling that he is not the kind of man that could be what I seem to be seeking.  He’s been feeling threatened by my attraction to the strong, forceful masculine. He can get triggered into his pain/wounding of not being good enough. His last partner left him because she needed a man who would push back, give more resistance (be more firmly in his masculine). There seems this tension inside him between being raised by his mother to believe fighting is for animals and a good man is a gentle man. He is a generally kind and gentle being in the world. These darker elements of his selfhood are there, but have yet to be embodied and expressed in a healthy and conscientious way. But they do leak into our relationship by the occasional explosion of his anger.

All of this has contributed to my own sense of pulling back from this exploration emotionally.  Perhaps that was also at play in our last session.  I am feeling some uncertainty, some fear around the cost of my foray into dark Eros, I am feeling less driven to find “her.”  I’m feeling confused and somewhat out of touch with my longing.  I’d welcome some support.

But, regarding my overall experience.  I have so valued the sacred container you have provided for my experience, and the skill and finesse in which you have invited these aspects of my being. The first session was so powerful.  I finally met this young girl who has been with me, in my fantasies or mythic desire, as you call it, in nearly every orgasm throughout my life.

I don’t remember having such fantasies when I was very young, as you indicated is often the case, but certainly, from puberty on.  My budding sexuality was not embraced or celebrated in any way.  I was an early explorer, masturbating by age 5, and soon engaging other little girls to play with me well into puberty. 

But it was always a hidden, shameful thing.  I got caught a couple of times. Once at home by my parents, once with a girl friend at her place. Her parent’s discovered us in our play, and forbad me from going to her house from then on (I think I was about age 9/10). 

An embedded sense of shame kept me from verbalizing/sharing my fantasy with my first husband or any lover.  I was sure something was wrong with me, that I would have to envision being raped or punished against my will, in order to have an orgasm.

It was incredibly empowering to explore these desires I have had for decades during our initial session.  To hear “Daddy” speak to me, to be punished for my transgressions, to submit to his firm but gentle authority was ecstatic.  Your tone and pitch perfect inflections whispered to my “slutty little girl” were entirely compelling.

I felt so enlivened, so awakened by the experience.  I met this wanton young girl who could not own her own desire and so incurred the wrath/or desire of those in authority (father, teacher, priest, doctor) to control her, punish her, deliver to her exactly what she wanted.

Later that eve, I performed the inner dialogue, differentiation ritual you taught me, to bring “her” into clearer focus. It was powerful to ask her what she wanted.  And to learn her name: (omitted for privacy).  She spoke to me, so clearly, in her own voice.

She wants to possess her captor as he possess her.  She wants the freedom of having no choice.  No will.  The power of surrender.  She wants to be known and seen in all of her wild and nasty ways.  She is Irresistible.  Her true power lies in her capacity for seduction, and for surrender.  She willingly submits to the man who will possess her, own her. The man to whom she belongs. The man she has given herself to. The man who loves her.  Who is himself unable to control his desire for her.  Who must possess her every which way he can.  Who will show her off.  Share her with whomever he pleases. For she will do as she is told –  willingly, and with a sense of relief.  He relieves her of any responsibility for her sexual inclinations or expressions.  He controls how she will open to her own desire.  He rescues her from her own accountability, responsibility, perhaps from her shame (?).  He takes her, takes her like he owns her.  He takes care of her, of her sexual needs – which she dare not openly confess – but which he knows and understands.  He takes care of her as he would his most precious belonging.  And she knows she is safe.  She is where she belongs.

I later came to realize that there were two aspects to this young girl, two different personas.  There is the young girl dispossessed of her own desire, seeking the punishment (and pleasure) which she could receive not through her own will and desire, but through her transgressions. 

And there is also the wanton young girl, again overpowered but more of a willing sex slave, who shows up in fantasies of being gang raped or held to serve multiple men’s pleasures (e.g., the football team, boys who take her into the back field, the school bus).

I thought I would encounter her again, and looked forward to it with great anticipation, in our second session.  But she did not show up.  Instead, an angry and ornery woman, fierce and certain of her sexual power showed up, invited by the forcefulness of her restraint. 

No longer that child with no will/desire of her own, this woman knew her power. She knew her possessor, and, initially, fought him, anger coursing through her body, her voice roaring in primal animal fashion.  Subdued by his sure and forceful presence, she gave into her bondage, and I found myself delighted by her beauty, her raw sexual desire, and her capacity to allure and entice desire in her captor.

I discovered new elements of pleasure playing in my dark Eros: red rope corset, standing shackled, legs free, I felt the sexual charge course through my body, my blood, and I felt a timelessness to this energy.  It was not just a part of me I was feeling, but something eternal in womankind.  A connection to those brave and beautiful women who were enslaved, forced to submit to their captors, and understanding that was her place, and her power. 

This second session was also a big experience, in a different way.  Shackled and restrained, glorious in her beauty, she wanted what she deserved: to be fucked, to be fully taken by her captor.

In our third session, I went in not really knowing what limits were awaiting to be discovered, what submerged sexuality might be revealed, who would show up.  I wanted to imbibe my Eros in a deeper way, and to learn more about my desire, and my limits.  My Eros was perhaps even more fully engaged and appeased in our third session, but I did not find that inner power in my surrender.

This exploration into my shadow, my secret fantasies, my submerged sexual identities, began as a solo journey.  I wanted to taste the experience of what was in my head when I orgasm, without having to process or consider my current partner’s feelings and fears.  When I brought him in to my explorations I was surprised and relieved to hear that he would like to know this young girl in my inner erotic myth, that he wants to love all of me.  I knew from the many times he’s told me, that he could see her often when we make love.  I was encouraged to reveal my fantasies with him as I’d never done with any man before.

And yet it has not been a straight forward journey.  His fears of not being that kind of man, his identity as a kind and gentle man, his desire for tender intimacy seemingly at odds with engagement in any power play. These threatened my sense of safety, even our future as a couple, as he told himself I’m just not that kind of guy, and you may need something I can’t give.  I found myself realizing I was defending the rights of someone I hardly knew in my brief encounters with her.  I found myself wondering just how important this was to me, whether I could just let it go.  At the end of the third session a lot of my longing had dissipated, perhaps because of the dichotomy between self-exploration and my love and desire for mutual exploration, which was uncertain at best.

My partner and I initiated counseling with a therapist known by many in the Polyamory community, and it was helpful to have him explain the healing capacity and possibility of enhanced intimacy and connection that is available through power exchange to my partner.

We then attended the workshop you facilitated, which provided a safe place for my partner to witness how one might step into power play, and to better understand the necessity and form of creating a safe container and agreements around the exchange.  I see new excitement in my lover, and I’m relieved and excited myself to begin to more intentionally and consciously explore this realm with my man.

And that is where I have arrived as I write of this journey, sincerely grateful for the support and the education you have skillfully and gracefully provided.”

Excerpted from Decoding Your Kink – Guide to Explore Share and Enjoy Your Wildest Sexual Desires available on Amazon

About the Author:As a sex-positive therapist and sex-educator Galen has worked with hundreds of men, women and couples who’ve sought support to be honest and empowered in who they are sexually, and heal from the decades of fear, shame, trauma and harsh judgments that held their authentic desire back.  He has a Master’s degree in Transpersonal Psychology, with an emphasis on authentic sexual expression. He regularly presents at a variety of Sexuality related conferences and lectures at universities and grad schools on sex-positive psychological models. Galen has been interviewed and written for numerous media such as Playboy radio, Mic, the Good Men Project and others for his innovative views and research on conscious sexuality and the nature of Fetishsexuality, aka Kink.  He has been advocating for sex positive approaches to understanding the complex nature of sexual desire and active in the Sex-Positive Psychology, Fetish/Kink, and Conscious Sexuality communities since 1998. His private client practice is located in Portland, OR. In person, phone or Skype sessions can be arranged through his  website Galen Fous MTPLook for his new book, “ Man on a Mission – defining your personal code of masculinity”in the summer of 2016.