When Do Broken Hearts Mend? Not Soon Enough, If You Ask Me
By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com 
www.sensuoussadie.com 

September 2007

 

This Series
My Promise to Vladimir 
That Old Monogamy Commitment Fandangle 
Caging my Submissive Spirit 
The Perils of Transparency 
A Very Short Love Affair
They say you should never sleep with your friends
An Ode to Master Xavier (and tell him not to get a swelled head over it either)
When Do Broken Hearts Heal? Not Soon Enough, If You Ask Me

Photos of Vladimir

This series is the end of the story of my relationship with Vladimir, who lives just over the Canadian border, not far north of my home in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to being my (now former) Dominant, Vladimir is a writer and editor himself and had full editorial control of this essay.


Here in New England autumn comes almost unexpectedly, visiting upon us in a day, in a weekend. I’ll be out there on my floatie soaking up the rays, and then all of a sudden BAM! the air tickles and shivers me and I run ever faster to the shrinking patch of sunshine on the dock. It just so happens that I’m in the White Mountains having just stumbled over this Fall day, although you can still burn the jalapenos out of your hot sauce if you catch it noontime. But it’s two in the morning now, and chilly on the nose and fingers, especially in an unheated cabin. I’m up writing because I’ve been thrown off my usual vacation serenity. You see, last summer I introduced Vladimir, my now former Dominant, to this very vacation spot in New Hampshire and this summer, much to my consternation, he’s made it his own. I’d heard tell that he’d come up here a month ago with his gal "Suzannah," but he reminded me that he’d told me all about her before; she’d been his Submissive eight years ago, and now they were just friends.

And so it was that I went for dinner last night and was surprised by the both of them. I figured I’d like her because he chooses thoughtful and intelligent women (like me of course), with the bonus being that she and I work in similar fields. Nevertheless, as I gazed across the lobster claws and shallow bowls of glistening butter, my stomach clenched at the memories assaulting me from every side. It was of course the heartbreak of having Sir Vladimir - my best friend, my lover, my Dominant - commit to me, and then decompensate a month or so later to reject me out of hand. I suppose after a year it shouldn’t come back with such intensity, because I have seen him twice this year at scene events, but at those times my defenses were well in place. Here in the mountains I am nothing really to do with "Sensuous Sadie," just quiet with God, and the cool green waters of a lake that goes on around the trees as far as you can see them. This arrow went straight to the soul.

Later on I found Suzannah and engaged her in conversation because it’s always fun to hang with the exes, if only for the sheer guilty pleasure of comparing notes. But then, she didn’t realize how much it hurt me to be around Vladimir so I explained my feelings right off. I knew if I didn’t, we’d all end up at some Japanese restaurant downing sushi and pretending to have a good ole time, while all along I’d be busy hiding the shaking inside and yearning for that vice cigarette that I couldn’t get outside fast enough to smoke. What Vladimir feels about me is a great mystery, because on the surface he says and shows nothing, now as then.

My conversation with Suzannah took a deeper turn as those of women so often do, despite Vladimir butting in occasionally, as meddlesome man so often do. She had of course read my columns about him, and, interestingly, characterized our relationship as simple "incompatibility." Ah, incompatibility. What a light and dismissive word that doesn’t begin to touch on the intense feelings that he and I shared both as friends and lovers, much less how we fought to figure out what was happening to him, or my anguish as I struggled to wait until he was ready to engage in intimate activity. I replied thusly in the lightest of ways: that it’s difficult to know if you are sexually incompatible if you haven’t – in truth – made love or been submissive to your partner. True enough, although this statement is as silly and as dismissive as hers was. But then, can any word, any sentence, or even any column ever hope to capture the totality of two people’s connection?

Suzannah then asked me what he’d told me about their relationship now. I knew she was concerned that I might be feeling jealous – which was kind of her – and I assured her that he’d told me that they were just friends and that she need not worry about my feelings about them. Oh, but the rub. Turns out that the "just friends" thing wasn’t quite just the facts ma’am, which would have become obvious soon enough by the fact of their staying in the same room. On the one hand, presumably Vladimir lied to me in order to spare my feelings, but could he have supposed that I would not ever talk with Suzannah, or notice them interacting as a couple does? On the other hand, he denied their relationship to me, which couldn’t help but hurt her feelings. I empathize deeply from my one degree of separation because I remember attending BDSM events with him when he sometimes acted like we weren’t together, and it cut deeply. She need not worry about me though, because I would never offer again my gift to someone with so little commitment to a relationship, even though I discovered from his flirtations at a recent event that he’s still attracted to me. Perhaps having not seen me for a year, he’d forgotten the tremendous ordeal we’d been through.

My sister, who is also here with me in these rapidly cooling mountains of New Hampshire, also wonders why he would bring his Submissive to our vacation spot when he knew I’d be here. It is an act on the edge of a razor blade, emotionally sharp but with just a line of blood. But then, as you may recall from last summer, Vladimir was the master of a thousand cuts, never deep but just enough to incise another line of pain. And since Suzannah had read my columns about my relationship with him already, there were no secrets between us, so I felt free to open up to her without reservation. I let her know that I held no hard feelings to her, and that most of all I deeply hoped that he was able to translate his intellectual ideas of BDSM into reality, because I would not wish that kind of sexual rejection on any woman. I don’t know how they’re doing in the bedroom, and I don’t intend to ask, but I offer prayers that she not suffer as I did. As you can see, the dynamics here are complex enough to boggle the mind. Still, I believe in Girl Power, and having opened lines of communication with Suzannah, I know that there will be no more funny business going on with Sir Vladimir and what he might tell one or the other of us about this or that.

It’s worthy of note that I focus on my own sexual rejection, because of course my heart was broken just as well. I cried for the better part of last summer. My pool buddies told me that they liked me so much more this year, and I realized that a year ago I may have been present sunbathing, but living in quiet desperation. I suppose it has something to do with my pride. I don’t think I’m God’s gift to men, but I like to think I’m attractive, and being that I write about BDSM, it’s fair to say I know a bit of the ropes. So to have someone who bills themselves as "20 years of experience" in the scene (a bit of spin perhaps?) refuse to dominate me was hard emotional going. Of course I loved him and lost my best friend as well, so truly, I could not have lost much more last summer.

My sister, being quite sensitive to the waves of feelings I was experiencing (perhaps suggested by my early exit from the lobster spread) gave me a talk last night about techniques for re-building trust after a betrayal of this magnitude. I recognize that as possible, although to wit both parties would have to be pretty motivated to do so. Late last summer after I’d mostly recovered from the worst of it, I realized how desperately I missed his friendship and so did he. We decided to attempt to rebuild our friendship, and we came together – again here in the White Mountains – to talk it over. I told him that in order to trust him again, I needed two things. The first was that all the criticism cease immediately and completely. I felt that I’d been criticized enough in the last eight months to encompass the rest of my life and I simply could not hear one more thing or I’d just go ballistic.

The second was that although we had always had lively and stimulating intellectual conversations, Vladimir rarely asked me any personal questions about my life and as a result knew almost nothing about my family, personal life, and passions. In fact, despite our common interest in BDSM and spirituality, he showed no interest whatsoever in my spiritual path, and surprisingly never pursued this avenue of exploration with me. I told him that I needed him to express interest in me as a person, and not just in intellectual ideas. I knew that he was a bit rusty in the social skills area because he’s a bit of a misanthropist like me (someone who doesn’t like people), not to mention he works alone out on his farm in Quebec. So I even provided a little crash course on conversation skills, many of which I learned myself in the book How to Work a Room. For his part, Vladimir did not ask me for anything but did agree to these two things. This was not an easy series of conversations; there were arguments and pain and hugs, but we got through it.

Sadly, as the week progressed I saw that Vladimir was not able to even make the attempt to do either of these two things, much less actually make real change. His inability to adjust was explained later when he said that in fact, he didn’t believe in compromise in relationships, that he felt I should accept him entirely as he was in every way (ironic yes?). I disagreed of course, as I believe compromise is essential to long term getting on, but that explains why he chose not to go ahead with our friendship.

It was at the end of this period together, in August of 2006 that I called Master Xavier and eventually returned to his arms, in sadness that I could not resuscitate my connection with Vladimir, but perhaps freed also to move on to someone who could love me, and make love to me though the magic of BDSM.

Where does that leave me now, with the scent of nearby campfires filling me with that strange sentiment of nostalgia? Where is my broken heart when Vladimir and Suzannah lay together not one-half mile up the road? I hope that whatever disabled his intimacy has moved on and he is able to be with her in every respect she deserves. When my own Dominant, whom I affectionately call Papa Bear, arrives in two days, the drifts of smoke from those long ago campfires that so burned my heart and soul will have lifted on the wind and up and over these beautiful White Mountains. I will open my arms and my heart to him as he brings me the warmth and love of a big bear, and hibernate there snug and safe until winter passes.



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