I am a really good partner. I know that may seem conceited, but I know that I am. Primarily, this is because I care about what my partner wants and needs, and I prioritise achieving those things. I spend an awful lot of time and energy thinking about what would make my partner happy, what makes them feel loved, what problems they are facing and how I can help overcome them. If my thoughts, actions or behaviour are at risk of compromising any of those things, I will seek to change them. When I have a partner, I am never just ‘me’ – I am half of ‘us’ and looking after ‘us’ will always trump looking after ‘me’.

In the past, I have been criticised for this approach to relationships. Many people seem to believe that only they can be the centre of their universe, and everyone else – family, friends, lovers, partners – are separate entities, circling them at a distance. They may be quite close, or they may be further away – but they can never be part of the centre.

I understand that view, and I’m sure it’s a very good, healthy way to be. But it’s not me. I’m not the sun, with everyone spinning around me. I’m the moon, and my partner is the Earth. I face him, he holds me close, and we travel together.

Short break for an out-of-post discussion:

_At this point in the metaphor, you may be thinking ‘well, who is the sun then? Who are you and your partner jointly circling?’ and I would not blame you for that. It’s a very reasonable question. And the answer is, of course………..God.

Ok, I can’t pull that off. It’s not God - neither Tea nor I are religious. The actual answer is ‘no one, I didn’t think this far forwards into the metaphor, I just liked the sun and planets/Earth and moon thing so much, I was reluctant to drop if when I realised it actually became a bit nonsensical at this point. So, let’s all just skip over that bit, and nod understandingly at the ‘I’m the moon’ part.

Back to the post.

I am someone who needs my partner to care about me. In part, this means them caring for me – looking after me, making sure I’m safe and well, that I feel loved and valued. But that is only part of it, and it stems from something that is much more important to me: I want my partner to know me. I want him to have spent time asking me questions and listening to the replies, and thinking about what I said. When I ask him questions, I need him to give me honest and sincere answers, and for him to expect me to remember and take heed of those things in future. I want him to have watched my body language as I speak and listen, when we’re out together, and when we’re intimate. I want him to have reached a hypothesis about how I will feel or react to something, to have tested that, and then noted the results.

I can forgive, and recover from many things – but I find it extremely hard to forgive carelessness. My partner makes me suffer, for him. He does that by knowing exactly the right way to hurt me, how much, and for how long. Hurting me in that way tells me how well he knows me - how much care he has taken to learn those things about me. In contrast, hurting me due to disinterest or carelessness would shake the foundations of who I think we are.

I’m aware this sounds incredibly self-involved. ‘I want, I need, I want’. I get it – I am needy, and I understand that I would be way, way too much for some people. But I know I give all that back to him: I let him learn me, inside out, so that he can make me into what he wants. If I am struggling to do something for him due to fear, disgust, pain, or any other reason, he will see that, understand it, and know how to motivate, or coax, or bully me until I can do it. If we do something that leaves me shaken and sad, he knows how to soothe me. He knocks me down, he picks me up; he makes me panic and he calms me. He makes me feel dirty and worthless, and more valued and loved than I have ever been. He knows what makes me feel really good, and what makes me feel awful. And he knows all those things because he’s been paying attention. He has been caring about me, because I am his.

One of the questions that often appears in the BDSM subreddits is ‘why would someone hurt the person they love?’ Newcomers to kink, or those outside kink, seem to struggle with the idea that you can simultaneously love someone, and want to see them cowering, afraid, or moaning with pain. Equally, people frequently ask ‘how could you love someone that hurts you like that?’

For me, the answer is that love is not just seeing and wanting the good parts of your partner, and ignoring the rest. It’s not saying ‘most of you is great, and most of me is great – let’s just focus on those things, and when all the other parts of us appear, we’ll go and scroll on our phones in separate rooms’. For me, love is seeing all of each other, and wanting all of each other – the good emotions and the bad, the highest moments and the lowest. For me, love is time, energy, acceptance, asking questions and listening to the answers, getting it wrong so that next time we can get it right. And most of all, it is knowing someone, inside out, upside down, and wanting to be with them, always. That is what I give to my partner, and what he gives to me.

My partner hurts me, and scares me, and makes me do things that I hate. He loves me, and holds me, and keeps me safe. He does each of those things deliberately, and carefully, because he is the opposite of careless.