Tina, in a long description of an experience she had with "stepping up the intensity" in her S&M relationship, asked:

>>> I genuinely want other people's opinions on this, as well as whether this has happened to other people. <<<

Dear Tina,

I'd like to throw my few pennies into this pot.

This kind of thing happens to me pretty regularly, less so than when the relationship was new and Donald and I were still learning lots of new things about each other, but still fairly regularly.

I don't up the intensity by acting uppity (I act uppity--but it never has that effect on Donald) but the rest of your experience fits me to a T. I ask for things that I think I want or things that I feel ready for and sometimes, after some talk about it, Donald gives them to me. Often my requests don't have to do with physical sensations, they have to do with increasing the level of control he exercises over me, but they have a similar effect as the experience you describe. I get shocked by how intense the actual experience is, often I freak out, and I beg him not to do that particular thing anymore, or at least not until he judges me ready.

The first couple of dozen times this happened to me it was really disturbing and also a big letdown: I had failed. I wasn't really ready for this thing after all, and maybe I never would be. But after the experience kept repeating itself and repeating itself and repeating itself...I slowly began to figure out that it was just a result of my not knowing myself as well as I thought I did and sort of jumping the gun on myself. Donald is careful about granting these things to me, we have long talks about them that sometimes last weeks before he makes a decision one way or the other, but more often than not he tries out the new or more-intense experience with me--even when he has serious reservations about its possible success. I think this is partially because he chooses to let me make my own mistakes and partially because he feels that possibly I may be right--I may be ready for this one--and that he wants me to experience it if I am right. And occasionally I am right, but more often than not, I am premature.

Anyway, sometimes we return to these more intense things after a few weeks, sometimes we've returned to them after a few years. A few things were failed experiments (these tend to be the physical things) in that we both discovered we disliked them and they won't be coming back. I think it is through these trial and error experiences that you best learn your partner and vice-versa. I suspect that your experience feels devastating to you (and possibly also to your top) because it is one of your first in this genre. It's like the first time you raise your hand in class and the teacher calls on you and you have your answer all prepared and spew it out but, ohmygod, you are wrong! What a shock that is! Perhaps after the fifteenth or twentieth such event, you'll be shrugging your shoulders as I do and saying, "Oh well, another f***ing learning experience!"

I don't know how much power you give up in your power exchange, but if it is ultimately up to your top to decide when or if this particular experience comes back, don't be surprised if it pops back into your life someday, like a horror movie rerun. What happens in my relationship is that I slowly get used to S&M experiences that are at first too hard to take through familiarization: my top talks about the experience a lot, talks about doing it again, and weeks, months, or years later, when he feels I am finally ready, he springs it on me. And usually, what I initially found so difficult and unpleasant isn't that way at all any more. My relationship with butt plugs was like that. I absolutely hated them at first. My body cramped up each time one was inserted causing me extreme physical agony and also my mind, which is (or was, that is slowly changing) very prudish about bathroom activities, found them repulsively embarrassing. Donald backed off physically when I showed a strong negative reaction to butt plugs, but he kept them in my consciousness, talking about when he was going to next use one, threatening to use one, and then finally, one day, using one again. And the second time 'round it was a very different experience. I didn't love it, but I could certainly accept it, and as time passed I grew to _adore_ it.

I hope that your dominant or top doesn't really feel too guilty about this sort of experience. Misjudging a sub and doing something that s/he really isn't ready for or has an unexpectedly strong reaction to is par for the course in dominance, and especially in long-term relationships. Donald does it all the time. You just can't realistically expect to know everything about your sub right from the beginning or even after a year or two. Really getting to know all a person's ins and outs takes lots of time. I think the only way you can avoid these sorts of "f***ing learning experiences" is to play on a very shallow (a.k.a. safe) level with a lot of different people whom you never really get to know well, and there are plenty of players out there who _only_ play that way and for that very reason: to avoid all those nasty unpleasant "messes" that a power exchange is so easily able to bring up. It's pretty easy not to make too many mistakes in your first scene with someone. There is a plethora of tried and true activities that most experienced doms know to do in a scene with someone they don't know that won't get either partner in trouble. The trouble comes when you begin to grow and probe and explore with your partner. That's when the soft spots, the tender areas usually come to light. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's part of the experience, as I think anyone involved in a long-term D&S relationship can attest.

Summary: relax, don't worry too much about this single experience and about what it supposedly "says" about you or your dom, it happens all the time to the best of us, and isn't really saying much about anything except perhaps that you two are on the right track and doing those things that will really help you to learn and grow together. And if you intend to spend considerable time with each other in the future, you might as well get used to this sort of occurrence now because, if you are anything like me, it will happen again, and again, and again.