Thank you so much for this powerful story, Mary.
You don’t have to continue to carry this burden of guilt, not any longer. Each of us does the best we can in the situation we’re in, and you certainly did your best.
Phillip harmed you doubly. First by inflicting an absolutely nonconsensual punishment on you. We can talk about how he rationalized what he did, but that falls far short of justification or explanation for how someone who cared about you could do such a thing.
Second, his suicide—if it was that—erased his pain and ensured that your pain over his death, and your inability to find closure over the punishment he gave you, would be perpetual.
If Phillip committed suicide—and we don’t know that—the disastrous spanking may have been part of the motivation—again, we don’t know that either. But honesty compels us to admit, yes, that spanking may have triggered something that caused him to take his own life.
Perhaps he was simply despondent over losing you. You are a thoughtful, caring person, you had good times (spanking and otherwise) with him, and he was clearly heartbroken when his spanking experiment misfired and you rejected him.
It’s more likely that he killed himself because the spanking-gone-wrong confirmed something that he had believed for a long time: that his desire to spank, to hurt, stamped him as bad. Between sadist and masochist, in the end the sadist is more vulnerable. Sadism evokes more potent shame and guilt, for the sadist’s desires are not only unacceptable, they are seen as harming others. When they actually do harm someone else, as happened with you, the pain can be unbearable.
But you are wrong to blame yourself. Phillip missed several opportunities to avoid the pain that caused him to take his life.
He could have respected your clear request not to use the hairbrush and paddle on you.
He could have talked with you about it, told you that, perhaps, he felt it would do you good to experience these implements, or to be made to cry. That if you let him force you to undergo this kind of punishment, that you would be glad. If that was his theory, then he needed to inform you of it and give you the opportunity to consent or refuse.
Moving forward with his plan, whatever the underlying theory, on a night when he was drinking was a huge mistake.
Not listening to you—not hearing the sincerity of your pleas, not realizing that what you said was more important than what he hoped—was fatal.
And once it was all done, once he had driven you home and tried to make amends and you had rebuffed him, he had a final choice. He could have lived with his own pain, he could have sought redemption, not from you, but in his own suffering.
I know the guilt and shame that came when I spanked someone in a way that was seen as abusive, as I describe in My Delurk. It’s partly because I know that pain that I work so hard to spank in a way that works for the women I spank, even when they want severe punishments.
Phillip was hurting. Sometimes the only path to growth, to understanding, is through suffering. Suicide releases that pain, but if you force yourself to carry on you can become a better person.
Mary, thank you for sharing your story. It’s poignant, it’s tragic, and it’s illuminating.
To my readers: Make wise choices. Be careful about drinking when you play. Listen to your partners—before, during, and after you share spankings.
And please—be careful.
Doc