I just couldn't sit there anymore. It was worse than being new. Being new and speaking means just overcoming shyness after you've taken the temperature of the room and the conversation. No this was that I couldn't find a single helpful thing to say - not helpful for them and not leading to a helpful thing for myself. And I couldn't even share my eperience. Then, I got called out on my silence. Fuck. I'm sure it did stand out, in a group that is used to me offering my opinions and experience more than most. No, I just couldn't be there anymore. I used the first excuse I could and I left the room. We had talked about leaving early to swing by our usual Wednesday night haunt anyway. I didn't want to make a scene, interrupt or even to be seen as eavesdropping, so I walked by, knowing that he'd come to find me when I didn't come back through and then we could leave. Thankfully, I was right and we did. But I cried and had a hard time explaining why.
So I'm not great at adulting. I can manage most things ok right now but... this new world of couple-dom often throws me for a loop. One would think it would be easy. Most of our media portrays straight couples, people in serial monogamous relationships. That is what we are surrounded by. But I was raised differently and have lived differently. The fictional portrayals of the most comedic and dramatic moments of often seriously flawed characters who rarely get anything right hasn't really helped me much lately. I have spent the last decade in open relationships where I largely lived a life of separate friends and relatives. I never shared a larger group of friends, much less a larger community with my romantic partners. And actually my parents also didn't have a larger group of friends or a larger community like that. I rarely had to worry about how what I might do or say, particularly what I might say about my partner, would reflect back on them or us as a couple. Yes, of course, I have become increasingly aware over my relationships that what I vent about during a fight or during a difficult time to a friend or relative might be damage their view of my partner in ways that I later need to repair to ensure that everyone continues to get along, but I also know that my friends and relatives have always been good about treating my partners well while I was with them and not bad-mouthing them to me based on things I had vented about in anger. What I haven't had to worry about was shared friends or the larger community that we belonged to. I never even dated people in my own high school when I was in high school. And I've never dealt with that while within a Master/slave relationship.
Now, The Emperor is from a different generation, grew up in slightly more polite and refined society and family, and has spent his whole life in couples and couple-oriented social groups. Even if they weren't always monogamous, the rules were not those of the poly world or the more casual dating world. They were still very much those of the coupled world, including that what you did very much affected and reflected on your (primary) partner. He often assumes that because I am smart and can be very intuitive, I should be able to easily figure this out. But often I can't even start because I have very little idea that a thing could be a problem. And of course all this is magnified by the M/s dynamic. If my poor behavior would reflect badly on him normally then it is doubly so when he is my Master and should be in charge of me.
But...we are also just people and we are still new to this. We are still new to each other. We are still new to having an M/s dynamic together. I am still often having mental health issues. We are also very passionate people and... well, we've never really been able to use the 24 hour rule or calmly bringing up that there is an issue and we should have time outside of our dynamic to discuss a matter as equals because it usually comes to a head before that. Maybe I'm not as good at being a slave as I should be. While I want our dynamic to be 24/7, I'm probably not as good at sticking to that as I should be, as respectful as I should be. And he's never going to be one of those super serious Masters who demands I always be super serious and respectful. He likes to joke and laugh and have witty banter. All these things taken together means that the topic "how do you deal with something being wrong in the relationship? How do you discuss that with the other side of the slash?" used to jump start the break out session might have been really useful for me. But all I could think about was how this might make him look bad. Not only were there people in the room who we are acquainted with socially, but also a friend and former play partner of his, a very nice quirky woman who, strange to me but completely normal for the community, is now dating someone I went on a few dates with. Previously, when I'd gone to the local group for submissives, we met in the leader's garage and no one knew my partners then, or even knew people who knew my partners. I felt safe discussing my issues in the relationship and in balancing the D/s then M/s and the poly with the rest of our lives. I did try to balance out what I was saying with positives in the relationship and in my partners, but I still didn't worry the way I do now.
I often fall victim to black and white thinking. If a thing is wrong in this situation, then it is wrong in all situations. Or I at least can't differentiate between when it is wrong and when it is ok. It feels very confusing for me. The Emperor tends to refer to this as "fly in amber moments." Sometimes, if something I've done has gone wrong or caused problems but I didn't fully understand why, I would just prefer to not do that at all than risk repeating those results. I don't really understand where the line is and I don't trust that something I might say wouldn't hurt his or our reputations or get back to him in some way and hurt him. So I felt like I couldn't say anything. Which was horribly uncomfortable and sad for me. So I left.
I don't really know what I'm doing. I don't really know how to do this. Sometimes I don't feel like there are any right answers.
