blackheads
From a zoomed out perspective, it is easier to see why people stay in violent relationships. There are patterns that emerge. In many peoples’ experiences, this can look like cyclical lovebombing after stretches of time without affection.
In my experience with M, they only lovebombed me at the very beginning. Their pattern of drawing me back in was much more covert, and on a very, very short timeline. It felt like being so zoomed in that you can’t even tell what you are looking at.
If you have ever witnessed someone shift between states of being - a significant and sudden shift - you might recall feeling a lack of safety. As a person who believes in Mad liberation, I am sensitive to the oppressive bias that is intertwined with that perception of lack of safety. Even still, there are times and moments that our mindbody is sending us appropriate information about danger.
I witnessed these kinds of shifts in M on a regular basis. My stomach still twists when I think about those moments. Quick to judge my own discernment, I remind myself that this was happening in repetition, and always ended in me feeling - at best - confused and defeated. My body’s alarm system was continuously going off, and it did not take long for it to get burnt out.
In other relationships - both romantic and platonic - M has a history of being very on-again-off-again. Others who know them have shared that they have experienced confusing breaks in relationship, and in some cases the end of those breaks were sudden, dictated by M, and too much, too fast, too soon. If they didn’t end the break by demanding a incredibly specific and factually questionable apology, M would end it with lovebombing.
Being that I lived on the farm, there were not stretches of weeks or months where M and I were “off” and not speaking. In the absence of those stretches of time, what might have otherwise been lovebombing, morphed into something else.
We were always off. Fleeting moments of relational peace typically lasted less than an hour. Even in those moments, I was still on edge.
Often times, those moments looked like us sitting at a two-top in an upscale restaurant. M on their phone. The air between us taught and oxygen-less. My shoulders hung forward, an oversized button-down draping towards the tablecloth.
Sometimes those moments looked like us in the garden, weeding in silence.
Once touch was no longer part of our daily interactions, these moments started to feel more and more like a Cheshire Cat smile. I found myself alone in an unfamiliar place, and smile would appear out of thin air… and despite how badly I wished for the comfort of a friendly face, I could never quite believe the grin.
M asks me to do something. I don’t want to. We go back and forth negotiating a few times. Suddenly, their demeanor shifts. I look into a face that is somehow both smirking and eye-rolling.
“for a million kisses?”
Okay.
“Million kisses,” is something I have always done with my small dog. With all of the love and cuteness aggression in my heart, I hold his tiny head in my hands and press my face into it while I make kissy sounds.
M loved to treat me like a dog.
The wholesome and good practice of million kisses was tainted by their performative kissing of the air around my head. A reward. Turns out I respond best to training if I am affection-motivated.
While their mockery of million kisses was insulting, it wasn’t their most sadistic flavor.
Binaries are false but it is perhaps true that there are two kinds of people in this world - pimple poppers and those who don’t. I have never been a popper myself. It seems to me like popper people do tend to find joy in popping other people’s pimples, so I don’t fault M for that.
As a “reward,” they would offer to touch me by way of popping my pimples. Isolated and touch-starved as I was, it worked. By design, and with immense success, M’s manipulation had become so all-consuming, that I would let them under my skin.
I would lay down and let them use their unwashed farm hands to squeeze out non-existent blackheads. They would pinch and dig their nails into my face until I was bleeding. I would squirm, yelp in pain, or say stop/no. They would keep going with a sarcastic offer of, “you’re so brave.” When they were done, I would roll over and let them do the same to my back.
Since leaving the farm, I have asked other pimple popping friends to look at my face and tell me what they see. Resoundingly, the answer is that there are few to no blackheads on my face or back. Certainly not enough to warrant the regularly scheduled sadistic facials I was receiving from M.
More than a few times during my time on the farm, I told M that I did not agree to, or want, a 24/7 sub/domme relationship. The blackheads were the least of that. I didn’t agree to or want them to dominate me at all. I wanted partnership. I believed them when they insisted that is what we had.
Instead of trying to explain on why I stayed, I am committed to telling what happened. What you make of that story is up to you.