Mistress160's BDSM For Beginners

Mistress160 and solipsist

First published on Mistress160's Abode 12 April 2007

"She's been my Mistress for 9 months.
Now our blog's gone and She's not responding to email"

"We were about to collar her
and she vanished without a word"

"I don't think I'm going to get to see
Her again for a long while...if ever.
She's deleted Her yahoo account. "

"How long do I wait?
I can't seem to move forward"

One day you are happy, playing with your online BDSM play partner, chatting about inconsequential things and planning your next time together.

The next day, without warning, your world falls apart. Your partner fails to turn up online. They don't respond to your attempts to contact them. Their email address bounces. Their profile vanishes from the sites you both belong to. No one in your online community has heard from them. You panic: are they ill? Hurt? Dead in a car crash? How will you ever know? You suddenly realize you have no way to find them. You search through every IM conversation record for facts about their real life - anything that might lead you to them...

Days pass. Weeks. You go from feeling concern to blaming yourself: you must have been a bad sub or Dom/me. You drove them away. Its all your fault. You must have said something wrong (but what??). Then your mood switches to frustration and anger: how dare they do this? How could they? They said they cared. You were friends. More than friends. They knew you better than anyone. Then you feel despair: you feel betrayed. How long must you wait? WHERE ARE THEY???? Then you just feel numb.

Sometimes they never come back. Sometimes they do. That can be worse.

Welcome to the world of online loss.

It's a remarkably common experience - most of us with online play partners (whether for online sex, dating, BDSM or even on games like Second Life) will unfortunately encounter it in some form. Equally unfortunately there's very little written about it, but it's an experience you don't want to go through alone. This BDSM For Beginners post will hopefully provide you with some ways to understand it, cope with it and hopefully in future avoid it.

WHY DO PEOPLE DISAPPEAR ONLINE?

It's impossible to speak for individuals, but we can draw some general observations about why / when people disappear:

Disappearing at the end of a relationship:
In this case your partner vanishes after an argument, or things go wrong. They may cut off all contact and make public statements like deleting their blogs or profiles. In these cases you have some warning that things are going wrong, so while the whole experience is upsetting (as is the end of any relationship, whether kinky or vanilla, or real time or online) at least you have an understanding of why it occurred.

Many people are sincere in wanting to dismantle the online persona they utilized with you, at the end of a relationships. However be aware that others use the threat of vanishing as a nasty means to control their partner, when an online relationship is in trouble. In these cases they may not entirely delete their profile but might delete their friends list, etc and leave a statement claiming they no longer use the site (this always looks very silly when you can see elsewhere on their page that they are online).

If your partner turns out to be playing this sort of game, while there is certainly hope you might get back together (or else why would they still be around) it might be time to have a good hard think about whether you really want to continue in a relationship with someone who plays around with your mind and heart in such a manner.

Disappearing because of real life issues:
In these circumstances, you may or may not get warning, depending how close you are to your online partner and how much they discuss their real life with you. If they do, then you will be aware of whatever crisis they are facing.

If not, they leave an email or IM message for you, saying that they have a problem and need some time offline. It may not provide all the information you want but at least such a message means you know where they are, and that your online relationship will hopefully be able to resume when their situation is improved. They may of course also leave a message that says their problem is ongoing (such as trying to fix a marriage) and they won't be back.

Disappearing for a while due to online fatigue:
Sometimes people just need to take a break for a while. They may leave a message. Other times there is no warning, although looking back you will probably recognize your partner was under stress. They don't delete anything online, they just don't seem to come online anymore and become impossible to contact.

I'm guilty of this myself. I call it Mistress Fatigue - a desperate need to have a break from your online persona for a while. I always come back. But I just need some space. If you seem to be encountering this kind of disappearance, there is one magic word that solves the problem: patience. Trust your partner. They will be back, and they will appreciate the patience and consideration you have shown.

Disappearing without warning:
This is the scenario I outlined at the beginning of this post. You get no warning at all: they are simply gone. The worst scenario going through your head - that they may have died - is unlikely (although I know one sub who did lose a great friend and Mistress this way, when she died unexpectedly). They may be in hospital, or have close relatives in hospital, and be unable to get online. Their computer may have broken down. They may have forgotten to pay their wireless bill. Or gone on an unexpected business trip.

All these reasons work well in the short term, but they don't work after a week or so. Nor do they offer comfort if your partner has deleted their online personas. At some point you may just have to face up (as I once did) to the cold hard fact that someone you care about simply does not care enough about you to get in touch and explain their actions.

Although nothing has been specifically written about BDSM online relationship disappearances, you can find responses (such as B Z on datingdame.com) documenting reasons for vanishing during online dating:

"When I mysteriously disappear online, it usually means I am afraid of rejection. I am afraid of the person saying, "Hurrumph, she said she was not fat". I am afraid of becoming all nervous and silly and making a fool of myself by saying the wrong things. And if I do manage to overcome these worries, I have the secondary fear of rejecting. If the person is, in real life, dull or bad-tempered, I don't want to have gotten all excited about a date only to have to turn down their request for another one."

But these reasons don't seem to apply to online only BDSM relationships, unless your partner vanished just before you arranged to meet. You may find some hint in your relationship's history (I was told much later that my gone-without-warning sub did not want to tell me she was moving to a real time dominant). But let's be honest, you may never hear why. Perhaps the only "why" we will ever know is one Dragon Lord touches on indirectly in The Views From The Dragon's Lair: Dealing With Running:

"Ever notice how many people are running everyday? Running here and there, running to their jobs, running to their homes, running to make money, running from debt, running from so many things: pain, love, commitment, the past, the future. Sometimes I wonder if they really know what they are running from. In this life from a Dominant's perspective we see a lot of this running, we encounter it constantly ....

"[Some people even run] from their goals. Once they realized that you were not the other person, that you were true to your word, then they became scared of the commitment that will incur their desires coming true. ..... There are so many different reasons that people run: i.e. the fear of not being needed, the fear of disappointing, the fear of having disappointed, and the fear of rejection, of acceptance, of success and of failure".

WHAT DO YOU FEEL WHEN THIS HAPPENS?

Well, obviously you feel like shit. I grieved for months. Another friend who is currently experiencing this recently wrote:

"I understand real life comes first. There have been times where I've walked away for one reason or another. I've hurt people in the past, never intentionally but it has happened and I still regret it ... Understanding doesn't make it any easier though ... [I'm] feeling abandoned, confused, lost ... just wishing to have one last conversation to talk things over. There are no hard feelings, just things left unsaid and questions left unanswered ... ".

I felt exactly the same. He also faces the same terrible double bind - the uncertainty of whether to move on or to wait: "If She does come back soon, I don't want it to appear that I have been disloyal, or unfaithful. But what if She doesn't come back?". People in other areas on online life face the same issues, such as Carly, who experienced the disappearance of her marriage partner on Second Life:

"I don't know what to do. I'm normally a pretty aggressive, take charge kind of woman, but right now I feel so pathetic. How long do I wait to move on? A month? Two? Three? I don't know how long I can stand to feel like this. I went from having it all to having nothing but ashes. I don't want another girl, I want the one I had..."

But on the other hand, you have to start to think of your own needs, as my friend did:

"Will She be back? How long will it take? How long should I wait? That last [question] is kind of a big one for me. I use my time online to express myself, to satisfy that submissive itch that I have, that cannot be ignored. If it goes too long without being scratched I find myself depressed, irritable, and just not myself".

This brings us to the next question: your survival.

HOW DO I COPE, IN PRACTICAL TERMS?

Firstly, and most importantly BY NOT BLAMING YOURSELF.

The fact your play partner has vanished IS NOT YOUR FAULT. You are not a bad sub or a bad Dom/me. You did not fail. You did not drive them away. Their disappearance is about their issues, not yours.

Secondly, treat yourself gently. You are in mourning and in shock: give yourself your normal post BDSM scene aftercare. Look after yourself.

Here are some issues you might have to deal with:

Trying to find them:
Okay so you are convinced they are out there, injured somewhere, or alone and hurt. What can you do? Well again this entirely depends on the information you exchanged during your online relationship. If you have a real name and a city, you probably CAN track them down. But think this through; you don't want to be accused of stalking so use the info you have to make sure they are alive and well - and then let them be. If you never exchanged real names its going to be tricky to find them. You might be able to do it on the basis of other information.

Its also important to talk to others in your online community - they may have more recent information (I heard one story where a Mistress left a message for her sub with other subs in a chatroom, when she had to leave the country in a hurry) or be aware if your partner has done this in the past, before you came on the scene

Contacting them again:
Some people will tell you after any relationship finishes (vanilla or otherwise) to burn the photos, chuck out the momentos and never contact them again. So re contacting someone who has disappeared, I guess it comes down to how badly you were hurt during your period of loss.

Sure, if it doesn't feel good, then leave them be. But if you still feel something for them, and you believe they are out there somewhere and still picking up their mail, then why not drop them the odd line? Wish them Happy Birthday, Merry Xmas and Happy New Year. It lets them know you are thinking of them. There is also the chance they may respond.

In the online dating world, B Z advises that when she disappears online, what people should do in response is "DON'T go all stalkery on me, sending email after email imploring me to respond. The best thing to do would be to continue to send the occasional email just to keep in touch. Perhaps ask for my help with something - you need to buy a present for a teenaged niece, or you need to translate something into a language I know. You might invite me to a group event. If you are painting your house and inviting everyone you know over to help paint and then eat barbecue, I just might show up".

What to do if / when they turn up again:
This is the hardest part of all. You go through weeks, possibly months of grieving. You finally move on ... and then one day they reappear. Invariably this happens long after you have stopped dreaming of it happening! In many cases, the person hardly gives any explanation but often seems to expect the relationship to pick up as if they had never been away.

Many Dom/mes have spoken to me about this. It's rare that the relationship is resumed, because trust has been so profoundly broken - would you ever believe their promise that it wouldn't happen again? But why don't you at least try to preserve the friendship? However: do be prepared. They often disappear again.

WHAT CAN I DO TO AVOID
IT HAPPENING (AGAIN)?

A lot of this has to do with personalities and individual relationships and it seems impossible to generalize, but there are a few things you can do:

Exchange real names and contact details. I've made this a part of all online sub contracts since my own experience.

Set up a contact scheme for emergencies: Some Dom/mes arrange for a third party to be involved, to contact their subs if the Dom/me has a family crisis, health emergency, etc. Discuss with each other what might work for you both.

Talk about online disappearances. Make sure the topic comes up in conversation with your partner during good times. Ask them if they have ever done it, what their feelings are about it. It sounds trite and sure some people lie, but this remains a fairly successful way of finding out what they think. It also gives you an opportunity to get your own thoughts about it across. If your partner knows you'd be worried sick if they vanished, they may try more to keep you in the loop regarding their plans.

Never take your online relationship for granted: the truth is you never know when someone might disappear - or other things might go wrong - so remember every time you meet online to really appreciate your play partner and the wonderful BDSM times you are having. Your appreciation will be visible to them, and will make them appreciate you more as well.

And good luck!

All BDSM For Beginners posts are dependent on kinksters sharing their experiences and thoughts. If you have a story, or would like your views added to this post, please drop me a line via the cbox.

REFERENCES AND ONLINE RESOURCES

When I first wrote this post there was very little online about this subject, but there are now (late 2008) discussions you can join, if you'd like further support or to tell your own story. One example is Fetlife, where there is a good thread on "disappearing acts". I'll add more here as I find them.