Shelby wrote me this nearly two days after canceling a date with me at, literally, the last minute. Doing so unceremoniously, with barely an apology. In fact, barely even cancelling.
Moments after sending that text – a text which didn’t even include a question mark – she sent a smoking hot photo of her, wearing a short dress and thigh highs, one leg lifted to reveal her pretty cunt in a pretty, tiny, black thong.
Shelby presents me with a conundrum: on the one hand, of course, of course, I want, I need, that cunt. I’m just not wired in a way that makes it easy for me to say “no” to a hot woman proposing to do whatever I might wish. And were Shelby to make herself available to me, I have zero doubt she would do whatever I might wish.
The problem, though, is that I don’t feel safe with Shelby.
Partly, I don’t feel safe because she has communicated quite clearly, on more than one occasion, a willingness to inconvenience me, to cost me, by prioritizing her needs over mine. This is a problem. It has cost me money. It has cost me time. It has cost me, caused me, pain and disappointment.
More than that, though, I don’t feel safe because her communication, her words, have made clear that my feelings don’t really enter her consciousness as a concern. That she simply can’t be bothered with the basics of decency, with the basics of empathy.
This latter challenge feels more challenging to me.
I have no doubt she can make it up to me. What I fear is that she won’t. That the pattern of behavior she has demonstrated is sufficiently patterned as to be inevitable, as to be a necessary feature of our interactions. And I have zero interest in that, in repeating my disappointment. My frustration. My feelings.
The answer, I think, is that yes, she can make it up to me, but that if she is to do so, if I’m to give myself the chance of collecting her amends, to take the risk of not collecting them – yet again – it will be she who takes on much of that risk. It will be she who reserves the hotel. Who provides assurances – compelling, convincing, binding assurances – that my disappointment will not be repeated.
Will she accept this framework? My instinct is no, she won’t. That she knows herself well enough to know that part of what she gets off on isn’t just the collection of the punishment and rewards I might have to offer her, but also the flexing of her muscles around depriving me, around being the more powerful one, in this particular way.
Perhaps I’m wrong.
Perhaps Shelby wants me – my rope, my hands, my mouth, my cock – enough that she will suck it up and organize herself to make herself available convincingly, committedly, bindingly.
I think she knows that if she does, the rewards she collects will be well worth it.
But I fear she can’t give up the power I would need her to for me to feel safe signing up for the possibility.
Time will tell.