My last relationship was my first to explicitly incorporate dominance and submission in an integral way. It was also abusive. There was gaslighting and manipulation and emotional terrorism. There was also slapping, choking, whipping, and restraining, as one might expect in a kinky relationship. Some of it I genuinely enjoyed, some I didn't. Some of it occurred in a sexual context, some didn't. But all of it was at least superficially consensual, which puts me at a loss for words when I'm asked whether there was physical abuse in the relationship.

I had kind of a weird experience just now.

Last time i talked to NHB, he wanted me to give him more of an explanation about what I thought was abusive about our recently-deceased relationship and I couldn't explain very well. He seemed to want to continue the conversation and to get more information from me. So today I emailed him a link to Trauma by Gaslight, with a little disclaimer that if he feels like he's had enough of my attempts at explanation, he should just say so and I won't send him anything of the sort ever again.

Within five minutes, I get three voicemails and three e-mails in which he claims he is "literally struggling to speak," demands to know "why you keep sending me this stuff?", saying he doesn't know what in the blog entry applies to us, and pleading urgently and repeatedly for me to call him. So I sent him an e-mail apologizing for upsetting him and saying i won't bring up the subject to him again, and he replied with an email that just said, "please be ok." I replied that I am very ok, and I hope he is too. Fin.

This kind of overdramatic reaction to things is typical of him. Perhaps this instance was particularly upsetting to him because of the past-tense nature of our relationship, but this was his modus operandi when we were together, too. And the kicker is, it still works. It's still effective in making me unsure of my own motives ("why are you sending me this stuff?!?" when I'd already clearly established that the intent was to share potentially helpful information with him) and it even got me to doubt whether I'd ever experienced gaslighting at his hands in the first place.

The last Drupal 6 update apparently deleted the anonymous user (UID=0) so I created a new User Zero and violá! Comments appear again. Thanks, commenters, for your contributions. I would never get rid of all the comments on purpose!

So, it's been a minute. A few notes about that, and this very site in general:

• It appears something has gone wonky with the comments. It still lists the correct number of comments on each post, but it only displays ones by me. This is not my doing! I know it makes it seem like I'm a weird delusional lady talking to myself! I don't see the user comments in the approval queue or the content list or anything. So I'm working on figuring out where the hell they went.

[update: I just re-watched this and I think it totally sucks. WTF is with the sound? Why does he spend so much effort awkwardly ripping her shirt? Whatever. Apparently I found this really hot at one point, so I guess I'm leaving it here.]