Fifthy Shades of Grey…
WAIT! I promise I won´t really talk about the movie or the books. Neither about how good they are supposed to be nor about how bad they are.
Mostly because I haven´t read or seen it.
The first things I heard about the books was that it is poorly written. I saw some examples and as far as I understand also the German translation istn´t great.
Shortly after that I read and heard the first reviews. My vanilla friends seemed to love it. But what I read from people who know their ways around on BDSM was clear.
I was convinced that there was no need to read the books.
Now that the movie came out, I decided to keep quite and wait for the excitement to pass.
Sadly, Facebook didn´t allow it. Since Wednesday my TL there is flooded with reviews and polls and comments about the movie.
So, out of boredom, but also curiosity I started reading them.
One was from a psychiatrist. Here a quote:
1. Girls want guys like Christian who order them around and get rough.
No! A psychologically healthy woman avoids pain. She wants to feel safe, respected and cared for by a man she can trust. She dreams about wedding gowns, not handcuffs.
To be honest, I didn´t even continue reading. Because that answer made me angry. But that´s not the point of this post.
I kept on reading other posts. (Click on each sentence to read the posts)
That one I really liked. It´s a letter to a woman´s kids.
This one was more entertaining.
Then I saw that one. It describes 50 abuse moments in the relationship.
As I kept on reading something happened inside me. I couldn´t explain it. So I tried to feel it. And that was hard. It was on my mind. Till today´s afternoon when I came across this post:
http://www.themarysue.com/i-dated-christian-grey/
All this woman was writing made so much sence to me. It felt like she was talking from inside me. Although I couldn´t relate to all of it, still there were so many similarities. It was scary.
I haven´t been abused or raped.
In my teen years I never fell for a guy saying that if I didn´t sleep with him it meant that I didn´t love him.
I never understood why women stayed with men who beat them (I think I was too young to understand).
When a friend told me that her boyfriend doesn´t want her to have male friends and she was totally fine with it, I only looked at her in disbelieve.
I was taken advantage of. For sure. But I also did my part. I suffered. But it was not more than others. I don´t know anyone who didn´t. It all made me who I am today.
It all changed when I came into contact with BDSM.
And as I read the way how Christian Grey treats Anastasia I see myself and different men.
Some of the examples I read could have been taken from my life, not a book.
That scared me.
The more I think about it, the more examples come into my mind.
– being told that I´m too stupid for something
– pushing me to do thinks I didn´t want to do
– scaring me into situations where there was no out
– making me feel bad about my limits
– blackmailing me by giving me the only the option to do it or break up
– being a secret
– not allowing me to talk to my friends about certain topics
– giving no aftercare and telling me to “deal with it”
I could go on and on and on.
All day I have been asking myself: How could it be that I wouldn´t take physical abuse, even just a slap across my face, as an ex did once, and break up because of that, but would allow any of the things above?
I know that they are wrong. I knew it back than.
So I did, what a lot of people do. I tried to find the answer within me.
“I was punishing myself.”
“I thought I didn´t deserve better.”
“…”
But that´s not right. None of that is justified. Me feeling like damaged goods doesn´t give anyone the permission to treat me bad.
None of the things which happened to me, happened within the first days of a relationship. It happened after I was broken down. Instead of building me up to be strong I was broken.
Today I see the aftermath.
I feel bad when I make demands. I feel that it´s not my place. Of course it is. I am in the relationship too.
I feel bad when I´m not around when Sir writes or texts. But I slowly understand that it´s ok. Neither is he. We both have a life outside of our communication.
I feel bad a lot of times. Even in my vanilla life.
When I make a mistake, right away, I feel like a disappointment.
I can´t accept that I did something well, even if it wasn´t 100% perfect.
I can´t accept and believe when Sir tells me that he thinks of me often.
As I think about my past experience, the men, the “Doms”, I automatically start to make excuses.
After all, I chose to be with them, I allowed them to treat me that way.
But that isn´t right.
To come back to the beginning:
Fifthy Shades of Grey and the numerous posts about it showed me something I have yet o admit to myself.
And even writing it seems so very, very difficult.
I am a victim of abuse. Not physical, but mental, emotional.
I never saw myself as that. I still don´t eventhough I feel that it´s right. It´s a long way to accept it.
PS: As I think which title to give to this post my thoughts are going crazy again and I wonder: Am I really a victim? Maybe I´m over-reacting…