Aggression, Anger and Topping: Finding the Way Through My Inner Maze

If I visualize my inner landscape as a maze, which isn’t hard to do, I can see my whole life as a journey toward the center of the maze.  What do I expect to find there?  I’m not sure, really, but that doesn’t stop me from working really hard to get there.

I can remember when I first started exploring BDSM, especially D/s, I confused topping with anger and violence and confused subbing with weakness.  I’ve learned a lot and grown a lot since then, on both sides of that dynamic equation.

When I was with Roxy, I mostly subbed to her.  I was her boy, her warrior, her challenge and her joy.  At times we switched, I topped her a few memorable times.  I wanted more of that and so did she, but I kept running up against internal barriers.  At the time, I couldn’t see how to access the aggressive dominant side of me without going through anger and violence.  It seemed to me I needed to step through those doors in order to get to a place where I could strike my lover, to cause pain.  That the pain was being asked for and was informed and consensual wasn’t enough to break down that wall.

Since then, I’ve been topped by others and continued to grow and understand myself better through those experiences.  I have also had more and more opportunities to explore my dominant side.  The first path I took in working through my internal blockage was through Daddy/girl scenarios.  I had willing lovers, I had a way to visualize my dominance that did not depend on violence and anger.  It worked for me, and them.  I could explore my desire to cause consensual pain, mixed it with sex and fetish.  Plus it was hot, really fucking hot.  Being able to meet my lover’s needs and have my needs met feels so good.  And it felt authentic, dominance settled comfortably into my role as Daddy, I didn’t feel that I was playing a role after a while, but rather that I was expressing another side of my self.

Daddy/girl became easier with practice, and my fertile imagination was eager to come up with new scenarios I could share with my lover.  I had gotten through some of the internal blockage keeping me from exploring my dominant side.  I felt like I’d hit my stride.

However, Daddy/girl wasn’t the center of that particular maze, not the endpoint but rather one of the cul-de-sacs I could explore more fully over time.  I have been feeling pulled to explore further, and fortunately, I have found an excellent fellow explorer.  I am currently involved with someone who is firing my D/s imagination along several lines of fetish.  I feel comfortable enough, trust her enough, to submit to her. I love being her boy.  I know I have new ground to gain in my exploration of submission with her.

I also have new territory to explore as a Dom.  Sometimes I am Papa to her boy, a relationship dynamic I have been fantasizing about for quite a while.  I now have a delicious, wonderful, sexy, strong boy who craves physical attention from his Papa.  It is through my boy that I was able to break through another internal barrier last weekend.   She has been asking me to be more physical, to hit her harder, to use my fists and belt and teeth and cock to cause the pain that brings her pleasure.  She’s done her best to provoke me — biting teeth, pinching fingers, punching fists, using her words — but my reaction has been to stifle my anger, to increase the control I have over my emotions as I attempt to control her.  And … let me tell you, she’s not easy to control. She’s strong.  She’s strong enough that it takes all my effort to keep her from flipping me. So why do I hold back hitting her as hard as she wants?  Why can’t I give her the reaction she’s asking for? Am I holding back out because of sexism, don’t I think she can take it as well as I can?  These are the questions I’ve been chasing around my head and I would not be surprised if she has been as well.

This past weekend, she eventually found a way to get me to hit her, or rather he did.  Sitting in her car after spending most of the weekend together, we kissed hard, not wanting to let go. I reached between her legs to stoke her fire.  Then my boy asked me to get rough with him, “Papa, don’t you think I’m tough enough?”  To say his words lit my fire is an understatement.

I pulled back and hit him in the chest, he gasped and I could see the heat in his eyes.  My boy, yes, he is tough.  I hit him again on the other side.  The world outside the car fell away, it was just the two of us, Papa and his handsome, sexy boy.

“Show me how strong and tough you are boy… I want you to beat off while I hit you.” My voice was a dark, husky whisper.  My cock was so hard for him.  Loosening his belt and fly, watching his hand slide between his legs… his moan was almost enough to make me come.

I hit him over and over.  Chest, shoulders, arms, inner thighs.  All the while he stroked his slick little cock, face growing flushed, eyes at half mast.  I looked intently at his face.

“Do you want to come, boy?”

He moaned and nodded his head frantically, “Please, Papa, please…”

I started pounding him again, “Yes, boy, yes, come for your Papa.  Come for me, my good boy!”

Afterward, I kissed his sweet face, tasted the come on his fingers.  “Good boy” I purred, “My good, sweet boy, such a good strong boy for Papa.  I love you so much, my sweet strong boy.”

He positively glowed.  I was proud of him, and proud of myself.  I’d gotten through another barrier, with his help.

I held her and kissed her and didn’t want to let go. My home was beckoning, and my life and responsibilities.  I knew I had to go, we both had to go, but neither of us wanted to let go of that moment.

“You know, your girl is tough, too.”  She said quietly, “I’m strong enough to take all of that and more.  He has the same body I do, we can both take everything you give us.”

I know she’s strong, I know this is what we both want — to have the full range of our desires available within the beautiful, fiery amazing love we are building together.  I told her that she had done the right thing, going to Papa this time.  She had accessed that part of me in a way I could relate to and be enthusiastic about and which sidestepped the issues I have about using anger and violence to top.  She would love to see me to be less controlled, she wants me to react, to hit her in reaction to what she’s doing to provoke me, but I don’t know that I can do it as an anger reaction.  Even with her asking me to.

And why is that?  What is that barrier about?  Well, first, I don’t know that I want to get to a point where losing control is the way I top.  But I do want to make use of my power, my strength in a way that my lover finds sexy and which serves both of our kinks.  I can do that without losing control, the Papa/boy scene in the car gave me some insight into a path I can take to make that happen.

In examining my internal barrier and my need to control violent aggressive impulses, I followed another familiar path.  The one that leads back to my childhood and examples of violence and aggression that I did not want to emulate.  My mom didn’t manage her anger well, neither did my brother.  My dad, in contrast, got more calm in a crisis, quieter, more patient.  I’ve always been a lot like my dad and he’s been my role model in a lot of things.  And that childhood experience in different ways to deal with anger is the foundation of the way I deal with it now.  I am very afraid of the potential for hurting people non-consensually out of anger.  So I clamp down on it, I breathe through it, walk it off, talk it off until I can speak and act calmly.

And that is why when she was biting the back of my arm, and pinching me until I howled, I got more controlled rather than less.  This is how I’ve dealt with flares of anger since I was a kid.  There’s a story about anger and violence I’ve been telling myself since I was very young and that story has a lot of power over me.  Not a bad thing, my pattern for dealing with anger, it’s certainly kept me out of trouble over the years, however, now I find myself wanting to tell a new story in some circumstances.

I think another obstacle that I need to overcome is rooted in sexism, sadly.  I think I’ve  internalized the message that I wasn’t to hit girls, that I was to hold back from delivering the full measure of my strength when playing with girls and women.  Which is interesting considering that on the soccer field or the basketball court, I had no such self-enforced limitations.  Maybe I need to see my D/s partners as fellow athletes, maybe that is something I can use to turn my attitude around.  So apparently the script I’ve been following splits physical activities into sexual and non-sexual.  When engaging in non-sexual activities, I am ‘allowed’ the full expression of my strength and competitiveness, but sex is another category.  I know I’m rambling a bit here, but let me finish this train of thought.  What is it about sex that causes me to hold back my strength?  Is it my old way of connecting sex with romanticism?  Can’t hit someone I’m in love with?  Can’t be aggressive and dominate my romantic partner?  Hmmm…much to crunch on.

What I do know is she and I will continue to explore our edges together, and so will he and I.  There are so many fabulous ways for us to connect, the possibilities are nearly infinite.

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