The Perfect Beginning Ch. 19

"At first Tim needed me because he was getting over a broken heart; so I had a hook in him.  It just felt soooooooo good to be kind of a bitch to him and...well...pretty soon, like right away, I found that that was a bigger hook. 

"We kept it fun and playful, but I was hard on him.  In the beginning we both sort of needed it to feel like a game, but underneath, it was all real. 

"This is the important part: In this "game," I systematically deconstructed his ego and destroyed his self confidence.

"I'm pretty proud of the fact that I have very successfully kept him from any sense of independence.  In every way, he is dependent upon me.  His whole world comes back to me. 

"And this process was not cruel.  He needed all this to be a suitable partner for me.  Now he sees himself only in relation to me.  I know this might sound bad, but I'm proud to say that Tim has absolutely no self worth and that's because of me.  He looks to me for all his value and affirmation.  He has nothing without me, Mom."

"Oh my Lord!"

This was all so "wrong" but her lovely daughter was so proud of herself. In spite of everything Donna was taught about how things between a man and a woman were supposed to be, she was all the more proud of her daughter for this singular accomplishment.

She destroyed his confidence and controls his sense of self worth! My stars!

There was real beauty in what previously she'd have judged as wrong and perverse. It fit with everything she'd witnessed, yet still it turned her world view on its head and took her breath away.

"No, it's not like that, Mom.  Really, it's..."

"No, no, no, Honey, I think it's amazing!" 

On one level, none of this was a surprise to hear as it aligned with everything she'd witnessed in her own home, yet it actually went much deeper than she could have imagined.  As she heard Michele speak it, she knew it to be true: Tim was nothing without her daughter, or without a certain kind of woman in his life. 

And Donna was pulsing with vitality.  This sort of direct and plainly spoken interaction was not something she was accustomed to.  Everything with her parents was so repressed. 

She adored what her daughter was doing with Tim, who her daughter was and how her daughter had forged her own way.  Michele was not hiding and she respected her so much for it. 

"Michele, darling daughter of mine, don't misunderstand.  This is all just a lot for me to digest, but I want to make one thing clear: you should be proud of yourself!  You have single handedly taken, from a grown man, all his self worth and because of that, he is utterly dependent on you for all his validation.  Your pleasure and approval are his reason for living!  I...I have no words!  I'm just so proud of you.  Even that sounds insufficient to summarize my feelings about you and what you have done with your relationship...how you are living your life, it's beautiful."

"I love you so much, Mom.  Thank you.  It means a lot to me to hear you say that.

"So now, like you were saying, he takes confidence in his ability to please me.  We've developed his sense of purpose in the world.  The harder I was on him, the more he respected me.  Then I started telling him what to do...you know, like taking overt control."

"I like that.  It's sweet and...and...I don't know, is it wrong to say: romantic?"

"Not at all!  It was very, very romantic, Mom.  It's how we fell in love.  He was terribly flawed with all these false Big-Man thoughts about himself.  I made him sooooooo much better.  I showed him what a loving and controlling bitch I could be and slowly took over his life, and he fell in love with me," she said with unconsidered, smirky, self satisfaction.

Donna did not take offense to her daughter's show of superiority.  Rather, she admired it and wanted it for herself.

"Exactly what do you mean when you say you showed him your not so nice side and what a bitch you could be?  Like, what does that look like?"

"Well, first of all, a lot of it was unconsidered.  I mean, I was so young.  I was just sort of discovering myself.  Deep down inside, I guess I just sort of could not stand super, arrogant, macho guys.  If they are going to be around me, at least, they need to be brought down to size.  I was not really consciously aware of this, but it was there and it just sort of came out of me. 

"Tim came to me in quite an emotional state.  I just did what came naturally to me to help him be the humble boy I wanted him to be.  I think of it as cutting away at his ego.  I know that sounds bad, but it really has been so good for us.  I did not exactly destroy his confidence, no...actually, I did.  I crushed it. 

"First I stripped it away from him by helping him get in touch with all his flaws, especially with women. 

"Like, it was a process, Mom. You have to pay a lot of attention and get into his head. You have to pay attention to the things you say to him that affect his sense of himself.

"Once you give yourself permission to do this to someone, it is amazingly fun and exciting. The hard part is venturing into saying things we were taught not to say. But when you do it, and you see that dependent hurt all over his cute, little face...oh my! It's so fun, Mom. I still love it. Love it!

"I talked to him a lot about how I view him because I want him to view himself that way.  I wanted him to fear, deep down fear, that he was not good enough to please a woman. I think it's important to do, it's good for him and it feels so good to say it," she beamed.

"I said it before and it sounds like the worst part, but he needs to feel inferior to me. Not only does he see me as his superior, be he sees me as superior to him, you know, like as a person. Getting a man to this emotional place is such fun, exciting and generally wonderful thing for a girl to get to do. Very satisfying."

"Can I say, that's just beautiful.  Like, I love that!"  The two smiled at one another.

Donna hated that she came to feel she could not please a man and knew it was because she was never turned on by them. She was never turned on by them because she always thought she had to be someone she wasn't. She was living a lie.

Yet she was confused as she knew she was not gay. Nothing had made any sense to her until now. She quite liked the idea that she could cause a man to feel too inadequate to please her and to rely on her for his sense of worth. For Donna, it went well beyond a sense of emotional safety with this. There was great comfort, and beyond that, excitement.

"The thing that is kind of neat, at least to me, is how much I learned about myself and how much I grew from the experience. I was just a girl; I mean, I know I'm still so very young, but then I really was just a girl.

"I was a little girl and I found a way to systematically destroy his confidence and sense of independence. And I was just being myself, expressing what came naturally to me. It was not planned. There was something about the situation that seemed to invite self discovery and personal growth.

"It was so exciting and fun to be so young, to still feel like a little girl but to feel that kind of power and self assurance from just sharing what girls are taught not to share.

"Like, it was fun and electrifying but it was so much more than that. It was as though when I brought him to his knees and completely suffocated his sense of self, as I took over his life, I got to see who I was. It was kind of sexy and naughty in a fun way and in the process, I started to see myself as a young woman. I gained so much confidence, Mom.

"I really do wish that all girls could begin their journey into womanhood the way I did."

Donna beamed with admiration.

That's my little girl! So proud!

"Then I taught him a little about how to please me and he found a new confidence.  I guess I just sort of came to control it or own it.  It sounds bad, but it wasn't.  And it was fun!  Like amazingly fun. 

"So I'd say things that sounded kind of mean... and when I did, he became more dependent...on me."  Smiling brightly, "That still makes me happy. And by the way, saying those things, things we are taught as good girls not to say, was fantastically fun!"

"It makes me happy too.  Like what did you say?"

"I don't know...it's like his confidence was really low and I'd just sort of reenforce that.  I laughed and giggled at a few of the mean things his old girlfriend did to him.  I kind of fibbed when I told him his old girlfriend was cheating on him and helped him understand that he kinda deserved it. 

"A lot of it was designed to hit at his sense of masculinity.  I think a lot of men get a false confidence just from being men...as though that's somehow an accomplishment. 

"I did and said a lot of things that helped him think of himself as a boy and not a man.  Certainly he knew I saw him as a boy.  I just told him he was a boy...but that it was okay.  With me, it was accepted or I guess a better word would be tolerated.  I let him know that with me at least, his deficiencies were tolerated as long as he was willing to compensate for them.

"You know, like, '...just be who you are,' sort of thing.  I encouraged him to accept and embrace the humiliation of his girlfriend leaving him because he was not man enough.  I kind of made that point seem obvious...that he was not a man.  I said it again and again and again. 

"That was important in order to undermine his confidence.  It's important to stay on message.

I was constantly reenforcing the message but like I said, it wasn't work because it was so fun. It's neat, Mom; like when you can actually see in his face and body language, his confidence just crumble and you know you are the cause. Makes me so happy. Precious. And so empowering.

"And it was kind of sexy...for both of us.  I did it in a sexy, smirky, flirty, bitchy, little-girl way.  As I did all of this to him, I gently sexualized all of it.  And he immediately began to fixate on me sexually. 

"And from a distance, I encouraged that.  In his mind, I was linking his inferiority complex with sexual desire.  That was another essential link. I liked being my cutest and used my most flirty energy as I destroyed his self worth. God, it was so fun! 

"I think that telling him what to do, you know, sort of commanding him around the house, just reenforced the lesson.  And his willingness to do what I told him to do was just a natural way for him to compensate for his deficiencies.

"Like, inferior people should serve superior people, like, in a romantic relationship, that is. Just makes sense. I think as he began to accept that he was beneath me, it just seemed reasonable to both of us that he do as I told him to.  It was natural. And we just got closer and closer this way. 

"Some guys respond well to this. I love that he's our maid."

"Yeah," Donna agreed, half out of breath.

"Another thing I did to destroy his confidence was to convince him he had a small endowment.  I was so inexperienced and my knowledge about the world of men and women was ... limited, but I knew just enough to know that men think that their penises define their masculinity and their worth to women.  They think big is good and bigger is better."

"You can say that again," Donna said contemptuously.

"I'd watched enough tv and seen enough movies to know this to be true.  I guess I just reasoned that if it was, then the opposite must hold true.  If he was a little guy downstairs, then he was less of a man.  And it's not like I see it that way but I knew men did.  

"So I convinced him he had a small penis."

Donna's jaw hit the floor and Michele laughed.

Smiling, "Yep, he thinks he's small.  And he's not, Mom.  He's probably leaning to big, but he doesn't know it.  I convinced him that his old girlfriend had spread rumors about his size and then when I finally saw it myself, I just poured it on." Michele had a hard time controlling her laughter with this.  "And Krista helped me with this too.  He thinks that, in part, his place beneath me is due to his small endowment."

With a smile, "Goodness gracious, young lady!  I'm speechless...again." 

Both women laughed. Even though she believed every thing her daughter told her, it defied what she thought she knew about the world.  It was as though her daughter took her by the hand and walked her through a door, in their own home, which opened to a world with an impossibly blue sky above a vast and vividly green meadow upon which grazed stunningly beautiful, wild but gentle unicorns.  Her own daughter showed her the undiscovered world. 

Am I in a Jules Verne novel? Is this real?

"And the size thing is just a fun, little part of it. I could have done this to Tim even without it. It was just one more fun thing to do with him.

"This is clearly not for all guys, Mom.  You know, like what I've done to Tim.  This is for boys.  It's not his penis size, it's his personality that keeps him beneath me.  And me," she smiled, "I keep him there too. I have a part in all this. And I love my part!"

All this time, I played the wrong part!

"Anyway, early on he did something to upset me and I just did what seemed natural: I put him over my knee and spanked him. Boys get spanked."  She smiled at her mother who looked upon her daughter with a mixture of awe and joy.

"And there was so much self discovery!

"I should say that before I did it, at least on a couple of occasions, I sort of floated the idea to see how he'd respond.  Like before we were together, I helped him think that spanking should be part of any healthy future relationship...or at least could be.

"I think he knew it would be preferable to me, at least. And I'd never thought of it before.  Tim brought something to the surface which had been hidden within me.  And I went with it.  It's both kind of funny and cool, I guess.  

"Now I do it like all the time, spanking I mean.  Actually, we probably do it almost every day, though usually not very hard."  Now keenly aware that she was giving an endorsement, she made eye contact with that same open and warm expression, "All I can say is that it's wonderful and I love it and I could never see going back...at least with Tim. I even love the word, 'spanking.' Like, I even love saying it. I spank my boy." She smiled with relish.

"Why?"  Donna knew why she wanted to do it, but she wanted to hear her daughter tell her she did it for the same reasons.  She tried to hide the excitement in her voice, but it was all over her face.  "Tell me why you do it...the spanking... like every day. Especially since he is so well behaved."

"I've been talking with Krista a lot about this.  And to a lesser degree, Sister Ann.  You know we are working on another book, a big one and it's all about women, not girls now, women like us and their relationships, you know, the men they select.  Discipline and punishment through spanking will be part of it.  I hope this does not make you feel uncomfortable, but sometimes it's pretty eroticized, Mom.  

"Mom, I know this sounds bad...almost evil, but it's not.  This is really good for me and good for Tim.  It's all about power.  It's about power and control.  I've just...I've just come to realize that I kind of like to have the power."  Michele looked at her mother in a way that said, "Please don't hate me."

Donna gently put her hand on Michele's shoulder, as she gave her daughter a comforting smile, "Oh that's nothing new to me, honey.  I've known that about you since you were three years old.  But..."

"But what, Mom?"

"Do you ever...  Have you ever thought...  Goodness, I hate asking you this.  I hate any implication...  Could any of this be abuse?" she openly cringed.

As she was in the pre-writing stages of her next book, she and Krista were deep diving into all angles of what they were about.  Her mother's curiosity represented the market demand aspect of their project.  She especially appreciated this question as it represented what she and Krista imagined as a real market barrier to so many women who would otherwise thrive in a relationship like her own. They were bumping up agains the whole, 'hitting is wrong' or the completely misguided and inappropriate 'violence,' barrier.

"That's a great question.  I'll just keep this short, but know we can discuss it more completely later on. 

"It can manifest in so many ways.  A great deal of what motivates or propels an abuser is deep seated jealousy or profound feelings of inadequacy.  The abuser harms his partner in a misguided attempt to control his own life. It's control through harm. It is about hurting another person.  It might be emotional, it might be physical.

"I see an inadequate, out of control  man systematically destroying his wife emotionally.  I see a hulking man slapping his woman to the ground, kicking her or taking his belt to her.  He's bigger than her and stronger than her and he's whipping her with a belt. 

"It's disgusting and sad. And he does it all out of emotional weakness. He feels deficient and does not know how to deal with it all.

"What we do is nothing like this...even when it's punishment.

"I fully admit that I can be possessive of my boy, but I'm not jealous at all.  Nor am I insecure or wracked by feelings of inadequacy."  To this point, Donna agreed in full.

"I'm not trying to harm him in any way.  He needs this, Mom.  This is the opposite of abuse.  If domestic abuse is destructive, what we practice is constructive, beautiful and loving.  It's foundational to our relationship. 

"I don't punish him, spank him, slap him or emotionally abuse him to do him harm or to compensate, or in some way deal with my issues, fragility or failings.  What we do is beautiful.  What we do is ceremonial and underscores our mutual affection and our commitment to our relationship. 

"Sometimes I get goose bumps from the emotional excitement I get when we reaffirm our connection to one another with Tim draped over my knee.  I know how it might look to some so I'm not blind to the irony, but, Mom, really, it's the opposite of abuse.  It's done with love and in the name of love. 

"Obviously we are not married, but we have been in a committed relationship for decades now.  There are times, when spanking him, that I feel like it's akin to restating our vows to one another.  It's that meaningful, Mother. 

"I can't stress enough how delightful and satisfying it is to put that boy over my knee for a spanking.  So no, there is absolutely no hidden abuse in this. It's all love."

"I think I understand, honey."  Instantly, Donna was relieved of this guilt inspiring shadow of doubt about her own inclinations.  Her enthusiasm only grew.

"Well, I've come to realized that as I've become more mature, that I especially like power over my man and there are certain parts of his life that I want control over.  Spanking is a ceremony that demonstrates, sanctifies and celebrates my power over Tim.  No matter my stated reason for spanking my boy, it always reenforces my power over him. 

"It's a total power trip; it's pretty intoxicating really," Michele said while consciously trying not to float too far away with the feeling of it all.

"Back to what I was talking about: I spank for different reasons.  Most of the time I put him over my knee because it brings us so close together.  Love making. Oh my god, when he is bottom up over my knee, he's like all mine, like he belongs to me. 

"Oh my god, and telling him he's going to get a spanking is like nothing else!  Seeing a big, strong man fold, just break, right in front of you and knowing you did it!  It's breathtaking, Mom. 

"It's hard to say exactly which part of the spanking is the best, but when I'm really mad, sometimes that, watching that change come over him, is the best, or at least the most satisfying.  Especially when he starts getting big for his britches, gets a little attitude, I just love telling him he's earned himself a spanking. 'You have just earned yourself an appointment with the paddle, young man. I hope your satisfied.' It's like it just snaps him back to reality."