I don't know when I became an emotional masochist. I don't know if that is something that you can even become. I didn't aspire to it nor did I plan on it. I was really happy just having the living daylights punched out of me. In fact, when I first started dating my ex, I hated that he hurt me emotionally.
For him it was the ultimate sport. He'd tell me he thought it would be hot if I slept with this friend of his, and then after I did it he'd say I was a slut and he couldn't stand me so we couldn't be together anymore. Then he'd turn his phone off and I'd stay up all night, feeling devastated and calling him over and over. In the morning he would tell me that he was just playing. It excited him to think of me desperately pining for him. He liked seeing me with a waxen face and swollen puffy eyes. He liked punishing me for being a slut. I'd beg him not to do this again but sure enough, often as soon as the next night, he'd be back to playing this game.
I remember, very clearly, that I cried for an entire year. That entire year was hell. Every single night he'd give me another reason why I was unlovable and take away his love. The next morning he'd shower me with it and tell me it was all just a game. Every night he'd insist it wasn't a game and he couldn't deal with the fact that I would just do it with anybody. Every morning he'd tell me that was part of the game and it got him hot that I was so, so bad and there was so, so much to exploit. Of all the things he did to me, this was the one that truly ripped me to shreds. I just wanted it to stop. I begged him to stop but the more I begged the more he wanted to hurt me. If I begged him not to make me cry anymore, he did his worst to ensure I wouldn't ever stop crying.
I was sure I would die suffering for him.
And then one day, in the middle of one of these episodes — I call them episodes because they were, they came on suddenly and disappeared just as suddenly, we'd be talking about ice cream and he'd suddenly start telling me why he couldn't be with me anymore — as he told me everything about me that he hated, that he found reprehensible, that he thought were the reasons why I couldn't be his girlfriend, just his bitch, I started getting turned on instead of broken up. Something happened.
It is a strange and very different kind of turned on. The best I can break it down is, you know that stab of pain you feel in your chest when you are sad? It's that, but also you know that electric jolt you feel when you suddenly get extremely turned on? It's also that. But they are both going over your heart simultaneously. It's like your heart is a sensitive clit and someone is stroking it just a little bit too hard. It comes over in waves. Travels out of your chest and into your shoulders and keeps going till the finger tips. It's unmistakable, if you've ever felt it before. The first time, though, it was confusing. And I didn't want to admit to feeling it either.
I didn't want to admit to feeling it because I know it didn't come on for good reasons. I got used to how he treated me. I became distant enough from my own life experiences to treat them like fodder. I gave in and started playing his game. It was not a good thing.
But it's been many years since all of that. Yet I still can't say if it is a good thing. I'm not that person anymore. I refuse to be with a person who makes me powerless instead of just making me feel powerless. I don't fuck around with angry people, nor do i have anger stored inside me. I'm not the same person. Nor am I with the same type of person.
Oh, this one hurts me too. He nullifies my worth and my value and belittles my beliefs. He makes me feel ugly and small. He makes me feel pathetic and unworthy. Like I am less than human.
But with him,
It really is a game.
I wish there was an exact science for being able to tell the difference. I think the difference is how you imagine they'd describe you to other people. My ex didn't just tell me I was shit, he told everyone that. He didn't just tell me he thought I was disgusting and unworthy of love, he truly believed that and if I imagined him in an introspective conversation with a friend, that is what he would say about me. My partner would never do that. He may tell me I'm vile, but he'd never say that about me as if it were his belief. He wouldn't tell his best friend that he thought I was worthless scum. He'd only tell me that.
But there's something else.
It stops being a game the moment you start withholding your love. When my ex said these things to me, he didn't love me. He wouldn't stop if I was genuinely drowning. He wouldn't stop hurting me even if the world was collapsing around us. His hated of me was the most real of his emotions. The love was conditional. He loved me as reward. But being with my current partner, I realized, you can be really cruel to someone but you don't have to stop loving them to do it. Your love doesn't have to be conditional just because you like making someone feel like shit. You don't have to hate to degrade someone.
With him I know the game stops, the moment reality intervenes. Violence and degradation are not our reality. That's the game we play. It's virtual reality. It seems really real.
But it can never be real.
Because when it's real, it takes away your will to live, and no fucking orgasm is worth that.
SOURCE: https://fetlife.com/users/2913277/posts/5275041