quote:

ORIGINAL: RUaPhdStudent

I'm asking for detailed relationship advice in this thread. If that bothers or bores you, move on.
Because we're a very sexual couple, I need to delve into details of our sex lives. If this bothers you (a laughable idea for this site's audience), move on.

This thread is in "General BDSM chat" because my wife and I started off as a kinky couple; the major problem is that for the last few months she hasn't been so kinky. I'm curious as to what you guys think about our relationship.

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I met Joanne on Halloween day about 5 years ago at a haunted attraction. We met through my high school sweetheart (Robin), who at the time I was only friends with. Joanne and I immediately developed a crush and friendship with each other. However, Joanne was dating someone else and didn't appear to be interested in kink. It took until late in college when I moved in with Joanne and Robin for me to discover that Joanne was very interested in the idea of a 1950s household. After we started dating, we discovered that she was also into bondage and punishment. Joanne would often times beg me to choke her; she'd say things like "I wish you could rig up a way to suffocate me while I was sucking on you." She loved being restrained and I loved restraining her.

I made (and still make) great efforts to use safety words and ensure her safety. Regardless, it turned out that Joanne's depression problems sometimes manifested themselves during sex, both vanilla and kink, as seizures. Today, I know that Joanne's problems with depression are a _lot_ more severe than I had initially thought. She's been hospitalized (or committed) for depression twice while we've been dating; neither of them were at my prompting. I’ve had to hospitalize her once for uncontrollable, non-epileptic seizures.

Joanne is incredibly prone to self isolation. She always enjoys socializing once she’s done it, but I’ve got to really pressure her to get out of the house. We moved to NYC together last year for us to continue our education at different schools. The experience has been great for me and horrible for her. We live together at a halfway point between our two schools. Whereas I’m enjoying my graduate education program and making friends in it, Joanne hates hers and spends as little time on campus as she can. She never socializes outside of her on-campus duties. I’ve asked her repeatedly if I can spend a day with her and her school friends; she says she’s working on it. While she’s isolating herself, Joanne typically stays home and mopes about, getting nothing done and staring at the ceiling. She can spend whole weekends like that.

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A large part of the problem between us is that Joanne is very financially dependant on me. Even before we moved to NYC she had no money of her own; basically, she’s never had a real job. We were both fine with this at first; we were both fine with the idea of a 1950s household. In fact we were more than fine, we enjoyed it. In particular, she loved being my sexy 1950s housewife, with me spoiling her financially and her doing all sorts of things that a 1950s housewife ought to do ;)

Now that we’re in NYC her financial situation is more troubling. Her parents have stopped giving her money and she is paying her tuition via loans. Due to the generally bad economy and the fact that she works in one of the hardest hit sectors of it, she hasn’t been able to find a job while in school. In contrast, I’m getting a tuition remission and paycheck via a teaching job at my university and do day trading on the side. She owns no car, I own two. I’ve had to cover her half of the rent more than once. Her financial situation is bad and continues to deteriorate.

We eloped this past summer so she could have free healthcare through my employer (my university). Her financial need was a large part of this; she saved about $1,600 by marrying me (due to her depression, she _needs_ health insurance). To my benefit, she now has access to much better mental health care. Our elopement was my idea; we both signed an extensive prenuptial agreement at my insistence because of our vastly different financial situations.

Simultaneous to her developing financial need, Joanne is making positive leaps and bounds in treating her depression. She has been seeing a mental health professional for about a year now (even before we were married). For example, she no longer spends whole weekends staring at the ceiling of our bedroom. Unfortunately for me, as she makes positive strides with her depression she has become less interested in kink (sexually and in terms of lifestyle) and more interested in vanilla sex and a vanilla lifestyle. I say “unfortunately” because I find vanilla sex and a vanilla lifestyle extremely boring. I usually can’t even perform during vanilla sex because it’s uninteresting. Yes, I’ve got problems too.

I offered Joanne a solution to which she at first enthusiastically agreed. A few weeks ago, I offered her a high hourly rate to be kinky with me. I miss our early relationship, when we both enjoyed kink together and she loved me being rough with her. I’d do anything short of relapsing her into depression to get it back. At the time we brought up the agreement, she told me she still enjoyed kink, and would enjoy it more if I paid her for it.

Unfortunately, our arrangement has relapsed her into depression. She’s back to spending weekends staring at the ceiling. Yesterday she was very depressed all day, having spent much of the morning crying. I tried to comfort her but every time she started trying to rough-house with me. She has always tried to do this while she’s in her depressive fits. Finally I gave in and started rough-housing with her. It snaps her out of her moods temporarily, but I’ve always known that it will end badly someday (we’ve done it many times before).

Yesterday was the day rough-housing ended badly; I ended up fracturing her nose and needing to take her to the ER. Before you cast judgment on me, know that while rough-housing yesterday she bit my arm to the point of drawing a good amount of blood AND kicked me in the balls. In the past, she has dislocated my shoulder while rough-housing. I only engage in rough-housing with her because it cheers her up; I’ve always told her that one day it will end badly and she has always agreed with this. Be aware that she’s about a foot shorter than me, weighs about 60 lbs less than me, and that I bench press 180lbs; minimally, I’m guilty of using excessive force on her while rough-housing.

Today she is accusing me of being abusive and controlling. She’s claiming that I married her to increase her dependence on me, and that I offered her the aforementioned hourly kink arrangement to do the same.

My responses to her accusations are:

1) I’m not overly controlling: I don’t call her every 2 hours we’re away from each other, I don’t impede her friendships (in fact I actively try to help her make friends, since she’s so prone to isolation), I don’t humiliate or degrade her, I don’t force her into sex when she doesn’t want it (which, lately has meant I don’t get sex), and I actively take interest in her academic work and offer compliments related thereto.

2) I’m not physically abusive: yesterday she made me bleed first, and I said no to rough-housing with her at least 3 times. Yesterday was the first time I’ve ever caused an injury to her which will take longer than a few hours to heal (recall that in our early relationship she enjoyed being dominated). Since our hourly-rate-kink agreement, I’ve been very proactive in ensuring her safety and comfort during kink (safety words, safety actions, written list of hard bounds, etc).

3) I’m not mentally abusive: I’ve actively tried to help her with her depression (recall that I was motivated to marry her in part to get her access to better mental health care). I’m not restricting her access to family and friends. For example, I ask her to socialize with her friends at school very often. Similarly, her parents like me and I like them; I communicate with them via email on a bi-weekly basis (her dad day trades in the same market sector as I do, which helps).

She had some responses ready for my responses. She says that I can be overly rough with her. The sole examples she could provide were yesterday’s nose incident and the fact that I’ve always had a habit of grabbing her from behind while she’s walking to kiss her (in our early relationship, she loved this). She’s also convinced that I’ve intentionally tried to make her financially dependant on me; my response was that I’d very much like her to find a real job, but she can’t, and therefore feels the need to blame someone for it.

My questions to the community here are as follows:

1) Am I abusing her (from what I've described, of course), either mentally or physically?
2) Should I give up kink for her ?
3) Given that I love kink and am very hesitant to leave it behind, is breaking up with her the only way to practically express my love for her?
4) Is our hourly kink agreement inherently bad?
5) Is our hourly kink agreement bad given her history of depression?
6) She has always maintained that she was sexually abused by her dad as a child. Do you think this fits well with her depression symptoms?

quote:

ORIGINAL: happylittlepet


Edit: I was not going to respond to the OP because of the inconsistency in his post. However, his was the pre nup idea, his was the idea to elope, all because of her financial 'issues'; they have a '50's household but she is 'blamed' for not having enough money - duh, that's one of the paradoxes for women in that time: even if they wanted out of the relationship, they couldn't due to lack of funds/job etc. And lack of job was because it didn't fit with the social norms in that time (and with the ego of the male bread winner). With other words, she was damned if she had a job, and damned if she didn't .

You made her dependent on you, but you don't take the responsibility for her, or, if you do, grudgingly.

Maybe this is what keeps the partner of the OP in a helpless mode, feeling useless, and blame herself for it. If she is able to to keep up her studies despite all this, I applaud her, it's very hard to do.

quote:

ORIGINAL: RUaPhdStudent

@Elisabella:
We're both of the opinion that marriage isn't very serious. We lived together for 3+ years prior to marriage. Our elopement changed nothing between us besides making her eligible for awesome mental health care; the prenup we signed ensures that not much changed. Our marriage is secret and kept that way; our families and friends (short of you guys) have no knowledge of it. We both intend (and she very much hopes) for a more proper wedding, complete with an engagement period and ring. Be clear, though (and it may be construed as abusive) that she didn't have much of a financial choice in marrying me. It has saved her at least $2,000 in only a few months.

Also, you and someone else are missing the point that she doesn't do anything when depressed except stare at the ceiling.

that said, you should see my previous post. We went for a long, long walk together, talked about our relationship, and have planned on seeing (together) the aforementioned kink-friendly relationship therapy business. To be clear, this girl is worth it to me but sometimes things get rougher than I can handle. My original post has the flaw of failing to mention what she's like when she's not depressed (she's heavenly!).

quote:

ORIGINAL: RUaPhdStudent
Be clear, though (and it may be construed as abusive) that she didn't have much of a financial choice in marrying me. It has saved her at least $2,000 in only a few months.

Also, you and someone else are missing the point that she doesn't do anything when depressed except stare at the ceiling.

that said, you should see my previous post. We went for a long, long walk together, talked about our relationship, and have planned on seeing (together) the aforementioned kink-friendly relationship therapy business. To be clear, this girl is worth it to me but sometimes things get rougher than I can handle.

quote:

ORIGINAL: RUaPhdStudent
6) She has always maintained that she was sexually abused by her dad as a child. Do you think this fits well with her depression symptoms?

quote:


As it turns out, the pay-per-hour-of-kink idea was a horrible one. Joanne felt as if I was intentionally trying to manipulate her (in much the same way she felt I married her to control her). To be clear, she didn't at all like the idea of involving money with our love life, but felt as if she had no choice. I have bolded "at all" because this point wasn't really mentioned to me prior to the stupid agreement.

quote:

ORIGINAL: RUaPhdStudent

We both intend (and she very much hopes) for a more proper wedding, complete with an engagement period and ring.