Emotional Play - Anonymous

Emotional Play

I’ve heard my Dominion brothers asking about emotional play and I wanted to say something about it, because it’s not easy to know what it means or how it really feels. Not all emotional play is the same but here is something I have experienced.

Sometimes it starts with a simple question, “What are you thinking? What are you feeling?” I try to express what inane thought is in my head at the time, but we both know that isn’t what she is looking for.

“What are you feeling?” she asks again.

I stammer and stutter, searching for words to describe my emotional state. And that only seems to provide her with more fuel. She picks up on something I have said, questions it, and while I am searching for answers to that question, she changes direction. My head is spinning, my heart racing. I am constantly trying to anticipate the next question, but it comes at me from a completely different direction every time, knocking me off my feet time and time again.

I have lost track of everything, everyone else has slipped into a dull murmur in the background. My focus has become total. Soon, I am exhausted.

She recognizes this and stops, caresses my face, tells me that I have done well. I splash cold water on my face, and we begin to chat. But my head is still spinning. We talk about interests, about books and movies, about families and friends. We talk about work, past, present and future. We say goodnight. But my head is still spinning as I drift off into sleep.

The next day we converse again, brief conversations during stolen minutes at work. I count down the time until we can talk again, distraction free.

Finally, we’re alone.

“What are you feeling?” she says, and again I am clinging to my raft in a tumultuous sea, knocked off my feet by unseen waves. Today the talking feels different. The questions are pointed, directed. It seems like everything she has learned about me is now used as a tool, prying me open. She focuses on one area, exploring the depths of my feelings, selecting her questions with surgical precision, bringing a tremendous sadness back to the surface. She lingers here, on the sadness, allowing it to ebb, and then dragging it back to the surface again. Memories and feelings that I thought I had left behind in my past come bubbling up, threatening to spill over. She has brought me so deliberately to the verge of tears, making me relive my sadness, my sense of abandonment and loss. One gentle push will send me over, I know it will, but it doesn’t come. She doesn’t do it. I wait for it, expecting it, almost leaning over the edge, but when it comes, I am looking in the wrong direction.

One comment from her and I am yanked back from the edge and away from my sorrow. She has made me angry.

Now I want to defend myself, to fight, to yell and hit. I raise my voice, my blood boiling. Seething. My hands ball into fists, the sound of my blood pounding in my ears. I don’t want to feel this way. I pause to catch my breath, to let the tension out. But she just winds it back up, bringing the fiery anger back to the surface.

Then I am caught completely off guard. My anger is extreme… but she holds my face in her hands and gently kisses me. And just like that, the anger dissipates, melting away. She smiles at me. “You’re such a good boy,” she whispers.

As I slowly regain my composure, it dawns on me, finally, that she had planned it all, that she was picking and choosing the emotions I was going to feel, that they were hers to play with as she wished. Our conversation wasn’t just talking, it was a scene. She reviews it with me and shows me exactly what she did and how. The repercussions of that knowledge were still echoing in my head as I went to bed that night, flashes of her filling my dreams… and I awoke in the morning, only wondering when she was next going to ask, “What are you feeling?”