LifeMates Ch. 01 - A New Life

Chapter 1. A New Life

My name is Richard and I am a submissive. Sylvia, my wife at that time, had experimented with sexual dominance before I met her at university, and was an experienced Domme by then. We had dated, played together, lived together and then finally gotten married. We had been been together for fourteen years, actually married for six, and now we were coming apart. Though nothing had been said yet, she knew it and I knew it. For different reasons, neither of us was happy about the coming breakup but, like an elephant in the room, it was becoming more obvious every day.

Sylvie loved having an obedient, submissive husband, and knew I would be hard to replace. She had put a lot of effort into training me to know her moods and her wishes, and to satisfy her desires, almost before she was aware of them herself.

I was unhappy now, not because I no longer loved her, or no longer loved being submissive to her, but because I found myself disliking what this marriage was doing to me. I did not want to be as much of a slave as she was making me, and as I had become.

At first, our marriage had been the fulfillment of a deep desire (very different desires) in each of us. I loved to please her. Though it was painful at the time, I loved that she often took a tawse or cane to my bottom, either because I had displeased her in some way, or because she felt like doing it. In most things, I didn't mind -- even enjoyed -- obeying her, and putting her wishes first. I am, after all, by temperament, a deeply submissive male, and for years, Sylvie and I worked well as a D/s couple. But then I began to realize -- dimly at first -- that I was not what Sylvie wanted.

More than a good submissive, she wanted a slave. It was not enough for her now that I obeyed her, and put her needs and wishes first. She wanted me to erase myself entirely -- to have no thoughts or wishes, or even needs, of my own. To save our marriage, I had tried to comply but now was finding that I couldn't satisfy her, and didn't want to. I did and do have a mind and needs of my own. I could not erase myself as completely as she demanded. I needed to have a voice -- even a respected and significant voice -- in our affairs, even if she had the final say. Submission was not a game for me. It was much more than a sexual 'kink,' though I enjoyed that aspect fully. Submission was and is a personality trait -- one that I hope to understand some day, but that I must satisfy, somehow, whether I understand it or not. But it is not the whole of me. There is another part that also needs a place in the sun. Sylvie came to be aware of this, but she wanted the whole of me; and that just wasn't going to happen, no matter how savagely she flogged me with her cane or crop. She could and did hurt me a lot. She even had me bleeding once, which was against our rules. It got to a point where I was afraid of her; but she had reached a point of complete frustration with me -- where she was getting resentful obedience rather than joyful service and submission. I would do everything to avoid her harsh discipline, but she was not really breaking me and she knew it.

For my part, I knew by then that I wanted out of the marriage. I think she knew this too, though she said nothing. It was now only a matter of time, and a sufficient trigger.

I don't want to give the impression that Sylvie was a bad or cruel person. By her own lights and the basic terms of our relationship, she was not. When we started dating, as students at McGill University (in Montreal, where we both still live), it soon became clear that we shared a taste for spanking and bondage games: she as a modern, assertive young woman, and I as a horny, virgin youth whose taste in pornography ran that way. Sylvie took to dominance in our relationship like a duck to its pond, and spanking soon became a staple of our premarital sex life, with her dishing it out (with her hand or a wooden hairbrush), and me turned over her knee getting my bottom toasted. After the spanking, she loved to have me kneel between her thighs, naked, hands clasped or tied behind my back, to eat her pussy for an hour or more. She always preferred this to fucking, which she would not let me do until shortly before I proposed to her.

She accepted, but we agreed to wait. We still had another year of college to finish; and then she planned to go to Law School while I was thinking of taking an MBA and becoming a business journalist. Even in these career choices, I now see, our D/s personalities were reflected. She liked to play real games for real stakes and win. I liked to watch life happen and write about it.

With support from our families, student loans, summer jobs and even a bit of scholarship money, we got through our studies -- living together, but working hard. By the time Sylvie was admitted to the Bar, I had obtained my MBA, held a training job at a multinational corporation, and published several magazine articles on business affairs.

We had lived together for almost eight years already before we actually 'tied the knot' -- before a judge, with a family dinner afterwards and a more elaborate collaring ceremony a few days later among our closest friends. The basic patterns of our marriage were already set, but there was one big change still to come: A few years later, when Sylvie was a busy, prosperous lawyer striving for a partnership, she had me quit my corporate job and become a househusband.

In some ways the change was good for me, as it was fairly clear that the corporate job might keep me employed for life, but had no exciting promotions in store. I was not expected to do all the household chores myself, but could use a cleaning service and order food delivered during the day from a nearby catering service. I had only to hire and pay and generally manage our home. I could still write my free-lance articles. I began to write some erotic stories on the side -- and began to think about a D/s novel. But my relationship with Sylvie changed, and not for the better.

Before, with a corporate 9 to 5 job, I had been a career-person like herself, a voluntary submissive in our marriage, earning less than she was, true, but essentially an equal. Now she began to see me as her slave -- something less than a friend and partner, wholly dependent on her to keep up our standard of living.

Which was basically the truth. Writing paid me enough to live on after I left her, but in nothing like the luxury I had enjoyed before. From seeing me as a slave -- and perhaps too, in response to my own insecurity and defensiveness in this new arrangement, she became much harsher and more demanding than she had been in the past. My bond to her was fraying, but she never noticed. Preoccupied also with her legal career and her ambition she came to take me for granted, forgetting that obedience and submission were my gifts to her, treating them as something to which she was entitled as a matter of innate superiority.

I was aware -- we both were -- that in Femdom erotica, the women are always superior mortals (if not goddesses) whose favours and torments the lustful male, enslaved by his own desires, can only aspire to or humbly and gratefully accept as they are given. But a real-life female-led relationship is more complex than that. The connection has to work much as any marriage does: as a life partnership, not just a sexual game. The submissive partner may defer to the Dominant but still wants a say that is heard and weighed even if finally over-ridden. The Dominant may make all the final decisions, but must make them in the interest of the ongoing relationship, getting the sub to trust that this is the case.

Sylvie never understood this, nor did I so clearly at the time. To her, my attempts to have a voice were just 'topping from below' -- something that good submissives are not supposed to do. For my part, I felt unjustly disrespected and increasingly resentful -- as if my obedience and service were not a gift of love, but something owed to her by Divine Right. The break came one evening when she showed me a cock cage that she'd just bought for me, and ordered me to strip so she could put it on. I just looked at her for almost a full minute. "No," I finally said. "That's not going to happen."

She stared back. "You don't say 'no' to me!"

"I do now," I answered. "I have my limits, and you're crossing them. As things stand between us, I am not going to wear a chastity cage for you without a long discussion of what's gone wrong between us: a discussion I don't think you're prepared to have."

"Richard," she said. "I don't 'discuss' with you. You do what I tell you, or we're through."

"Then we're though," I answered. "This is only what I expected from you." I turned away from her and started up the stairs to my room.

"You don't live here any more," she screamed at me.

"No, I don't," I agreed. "Don't worry, I'm just going to pack a few clothes, and take my lap top. I'll be out of your hair within the hour. I'll come back at some point for my books and personal possessions."

She opened her mouth to object, but I continued, "The house is half in my name, as you well know. I'm not going to fight you for it unless you give me trouble moving out."

Those were the last words we exchanged that evening. Sylvie just went to her room, looking stunned. It was obvious that my rebellion had taken her by surprise. I did just what I said: got dressed, packed a small valise with clothes and my laptop and used my cell phone to call a cab. Once in the street, I called an old, close friend of mine and asked if I could crash at his apartment that night. "Of course," he said. "What happened? Did Sylvie catch you looking at another woman?"

"Nothing so simple, Joe" I answered him. "I'll tell you all about it when I get there." The cab came and we hung up. Half an hour later I rang his doorbell and he let me in.

* * * * *

The days that followed were surprisingly peaceful. I had expected to suffer regrets and second thoughts after the breakup with Sylvie, but there were none. I knew I had made the right decision, and just felt free and happy after almost two years of feeling neither. I knew Sylvie would have trouble adjusting to her new situation; but that was her problem, not mine. She was too busy and proud to squabble with me. When I made arrangements to store the items I wanted to keep (mainly books) and sold off my personal furniture that would be much too large for a small apartment, Sylvie gave me no trouble at all and didn't complain about anything. In return, I kept my word and signed the house over to her. There were no children or pets -- no custody issues of any kind. It took a year or so, but in the end we went through a no-fault divorce and ended -- not on amicable terms, exactly -- but without recriminations, at least. I think Sylvie too was happy to make a new beginning, once she got used to the idea.

My friend Joe Vespucci was a prince. He was not altogether surprised by the end of my marriage after I told him what had happened. He knew all about my submission to Sylvie, and had thought we were a permanent couple, but he had seen her tendencies to lean too heavily on my obedience. Being gay himself, he is not inclined to judge others. He was between boyfriends at the time and knew very well that I would not refuse him if he made a pass at me. I had enjoyed gay sex in my training as a submissive; he and I had gotten it on before. But he also saw that I was in no mood for casual sex at that time and knew I'd have no interest in a real homosexual relationship, even if he wanted one with me. I just slept on his sofa; and my virtue, such as it is, was spared. He put me up for almost a month while I finished a first draft of the article I had been writing, handed it over for my client's review and then went looking for an apartment.

Out on my own, I was relatively poor, but far from destitute. I still had saving from my days of corporate employment, and my writing contracts and free-lance business articles gave a smallish, but reliable income. I couldn't afford many luxuries, but had enough to live on. I bought a used car for myself, to replace the one I had shared with Sylvie.

I found myself at loose ends, however. One phase of my life had ended, and I had no clear idea of what I wanted for the next one. I think this is the real reason why submissives need Dominants to tell them what to do. Given a firm goal to reach or direction to take, we can function very well, but we lack clear motivation of our own. Like everyone else, we need to keep ourselves occupied, and this is difficult when the outcomes don't really matter.

But some basic outcomes did matter to me, and so I got along well enough. Needing a roof over my head I found myself a nice little flat in Montreal's inexpensive ethnic neighbourhood up around Van Horne. Needing a steady income, I finished the article I was writing and won the contract for some ghost work -- writing for a retired executive who wanted to leave a memoir. Needing a bit of a social life, I took Joe out for dinner a few times to thank him and reaffirm our friendship. And I began looking at ads on some Websites, thinking (though not quite ready yet) to find another partner.

It was in this last activity that I ran across a column from Keyholders Corp. ('KI' -- often pronounced 'key') pushing the use of chastity belts and cages -- not to prevent sex, but to make sex more mindful and meaningful. Now, chastity had never been a special fetish of mine. I enjoyed tease-and-denial games for, at most, hours -- not weeks -- at a time. I loved the times when Sylvie had forbidden me to cum till she was fully satisfied and had given permission. But I was primed to think about chastity in BDSM because of my clash with Sylvie; and so an article entitled 'The Cock Cage for More and Better Sex' could not fail to catch my eye.

In brief, what the piece pointed out was that a lot of our sexual activity is mindless and rather automatic, aimed at release of a tension which does not really exist, or has not gone very far. It argued that delaying sexual release, and using the extra time to build the tension and enrich the relationship behind it, would make the activity which followed more intense, more pleasurable and more meaningful, especially in a loving relationship. It explained the role of the KI company in:

• renting and selling chastity devices;

• mediating the negotiation of contracts between the 'keyheld' (aka 'locked ones' -- and their keyholders;

• mentoring the keyholders and locked ones in the maintenance of such relationships; and

• adjudicating conflicts that might arise.

All for very reasonable fees. The article further explained how the use of a chastity device with a trusted keyholder could be used to make a binding promise to oneself or another party, and how KI itself would act as neutral keyholder or judge in the enforcement of such contracts. If, for example, a KI client wished to get into better shape, or give up drugs or drink or smoking, it would be easy to write performance tests into the contrast (or else rely on an honour system) and then unlock the device only when performance targets were met.

Reading this piece, what struck me was that if Sylvie had enrolled us as keyholder and keyheld under a KI contract, I would probably have consented to wear the cage, and we would still be together. We could have negotiated a contract for our D/s relationship and re-negotiated this at any time as needs or conditions changed. It would be the perfect way to maintain an on-going 24/7 D/s relationship, while ensuring that the necessary communication and contracting took place.

The article ended up suggesting that readers phone for a free initial meeting with a KI contracting officer, and I resolved to do so, to see where their process would lead me. Before phoning, though, I had a pile of Web browsing and reading to do for the background information I wanted. This is what I learned:

KI had been founded only six years ago -- which explains why I had never heard of them. Its founder and CEO was a woman named 'Amanda Cummings,' known to all as 'Mistress Amanda,' who owned a controlling interest in the company's stock, and also in her husband George who served her in every way possible, and served their firm as its senior attorney. It seems that wife and husband had been into chastity play from the early days of their marriage, and had one day gotten the idea of turning their hobby into a business. Their idea -- just what I had read in that article -- was that there could be all kinds of reasons for wearing a chastity device other than chastity itself, provided only that both keyholder and keyheld were held to their agreed contract by a neutral third party, who could also serve the couple in a counselling or mentoring role. In this way, the Dominant partner gained a high measure of control in the relationship, while the submissive was protected from abuse. Either could claim that their contract was being violated, or that it was now obsolete for some reason, and needed to be rethought or re-negotiated.

KI was now highly esteemed in the BDSM community, for the useful service that it provided and for the reputed integrity of its managing partners, Mistress Amanda and her keyheld husband. It was this reputation, more than anything, which persuaded me to give them a try.

* * * * *

When I phoned that Monday morning, it was pleasing that my call was answered, not by an automated switchboard, but by a live human receptionist who asked me, in a warm female voice, how they could help me.

With some embarrassment I answered that I wasn't sure yet -- that I was a potential customer, and needed to speak with someone to discuss that very question. The voice asked me to hold for a moment while she consulted the appointments file, then told that, if it was convenient, a contracting officer named Charles Thorncliffe could see me three days hence, on Thursday afternoon at 2 PM. When I told her that would be fine, she took my name and contact information and wrote me into her file.

Then she told me to bring a resume with me, and to come an hour early to fill out their application form with information that Mr.Thorncliffe would need in opening a file for me and deciding with whom to place me. From the reading I'd done, I understood what she was saying -- that with my resume, they could take the first steps toward assigning me to a 'keyholder,' who would play Dominant to my submissive -- handling me, on behalf of the company, to perform their side of our contract. I agreed to do so, we exchanged pleasantries and she hung up, saying that she looked forward to greeting me on Thursday -- that I would be directed to her desk when I came in.

I'm going to skip the details here. I came in Thursday at one o'clock as instructed, handed over my resume, and filled in a form with further personal information. That chore completed, I read a booklet that I was given about KI's varied services, then waited ten minutes until the receptionist called my name to tell me that Mr. Thorncliffe would see me. She escorted me to his office, knocked on its door and told me to enter.

Thorncliffe stood, offered his hand to shake, and at once engaged me in a very personal conversation. He had already glanced over my resume and the form that I'd just filled in, and only needed to confirm in dialogue what he already knew -- that I was an experienced submissive, recently divorced and in my early thirties, interested in safely exploring my D/s interests under KI's supervision while losing some weight and getting back into shape.

Then he told me that KI would be happy to be of service to me, and gave me another form to fill out -- this one a detailed questionnaire about my BDSM experience and limits. "I think I know just the keyholder for you," he said. "We'll have to see if your interests and limits match with hers, and if she's interested to take you on."