Resisting Romance

Love had not been in my plan.

Not that I really had a plan. Being neither dominant nor Type A, I don't have anything as organized as a plan around which I construct my life. But even so. Some things are in my mind and some things aren't. When the philosopher broke up with me exactly 2 years after we first met in person, I signed up with FetLife as an attempt to maintain my submissive identity. Meeting a Dom was certainly in my mind. But he would have to have been be a very special Dom. I have my needs and I have my standards. Love, on the other hand, would be premature.

I was still in love with John.
Broken heart and all, I was still in love with John.

So much for expectations. Within a month and a half after the sadist found me, I was scolding him (such chutzpah!) about mentioning both Shakespeare and James Joyce's Ulysses in the same e-mail because it was stirring up feelings that had not been invited. When I finally admitted outright to loving him, he said he'd known it before I did.

So there it was.
I loved him.
Not much I could do about that.

I loved him. but I wasn't in love with him.
You know?
I've had deep, warm feelings for him,
but none of the gooey romantic stuff.
No mooning over memories of his face,
of his smile,
of his mouth,
of the warmth of his body as he lay next to me.
Oh no.
Not me.

Not till now.

Because things have changed. It's inevitable for things to change when the parameters change. And boy, have they changed. It's not merely that we have made it a good way back from perhaps the most serious falling out we've ever had. It's that he has confessed to feelings for me. Those feelings are rather vaguely defined, but they are most definitely feelings. Combine that with the added openness that came from trying to recapture some of what we had and the clear sense that we were working on it together, and there was - is- no longer any denying it. We are a "we."

It's still D/s.
That is who we are.
It's not a game.
This is who we are.
But walls have come down.
And I see things now that I couldn't see before.
He has revealed things that he was masking before.

And I find that I've fallen in love with him.

Which is very scary.

That last bit I realized only as I wrote it.
That it's scary.

[she pauses to acknowledge the weight in the pit of her stomach.]

Not that being in love with him will make any difference in the overall scheme of things. Our mode of interaction is defined, as are the limitations. Which is just as well. I think I'd OD on seeing him every day. I'm grateful for the assorted other people in his life. Especially for his masochist slave, who has literally saved my ass many times.

It's his confession of feelings, and our renewed recognition of how important we are to each other, that has made the biggest difference. Especially on Saturday. After all the distance, both emotional and geographical, all the misunderstandings, all the hurt inflicted on both sides, whether inadvertent or deliberate, and then all the extraordinary progress we managed to make, our need to see each other was insurmountable and characterized by far more than sexual urgency.

There were moments during our reunion during which the D/s dynamic was eclipsed by the passion and joy of two lovers at being in each other's arms.

And now I've fallen in love with him.

Damn.

Oh well.
Too late now...