Heartbreak Nymphomania » J

Review: Sportsheets Under the Bed Restraint System

Wilhelmina Wang — Wed, 19 May 2010 07:16:08 +0000

The Under the Bed Restraint System’s selling point is that it’s quick and easy to set up, and you don’t need a bed with a headboard to secure stuff to. You just need a mattress, and a bedframe. I’ve read so many glowing reviews of the Sportsheets Under the Bed Restraint System, and have been wanting to trying it out for almost a year. I finally got my chance… perfect timing, too, since me and J are living like hoboz right now. We don’t even have a bedframe, let alone a headboard.

First: specifics. The Restraint System is made up of four 60″ nylon straps, a nylon connector strap, and four cuffs. All these straps are adjustable, like backpack straps. The cuffs are made of nylon with neoprene backing and Velcro closures, and are all 15″ long. The straps, which you secure the cuffs to, end in O-rings. The cuffs come with O-rings and metal snaps. You could easily wash all of the pieces by hand. I feel like throwing everything in the wash wouldn’t be good because of the metal pieces. You can also use different cuffs with the straps, if you wish.

You set up the Restraint System by lifting the mattress, and throwing the system underneath. Then you can adjust the straps to the desired lengths. As you can see vaguely in the picture, the packaging suggests that you either put the straps at the top and bottom of the bed, or have them at the sides of the bed. There are probably many other configurations you can try. I think the straps are all long enough that you could use it with a futon or something. The entire system is so light and easy to put away that I can see it being very easy to travel with – you know, for trysts in hotel rooms and such. The straps are also easy to put away: simply stow them under the mattress once you’re done. Instant hiding place.

Me and J set up the system and I had him secure me to it. We ended up positioning the straps at the top and bottom of the bed, which gave me a bit more room to move around (I was able to turn myself onto my side, for example). He tightened the straps until they were taut and I couldn’t move at all. I pulled and struggled against the cuffs to no avail. The cuffs, besides being completely secure, were fuzzy and very comfortable as well.

J teasingly told me he was going to leave me there tied up, and then proceeded to use my belly as a tabletop for his notebook. For a while, he wrote down notes, and read certain excerpts to me. J isn’t kinky at all, so I didn’t slide into subspace entirely. Despite that, I felt the same pleasant, secure, Zen feeling at being restrained by these cuffs, as I did when I was first tied up with rope. After a while, J put his notebook away, started nuzzling and snuggling with me… which clearly lead to other things. He re-secured the straps my ankles were attached to, so that they were on either side of the bed and my legs were spread. Being fucked while restrained? Really liked it. And would definitely repeat it.

The system set up on me and J's bed. Please try to ignore the cardboard-box "nightstand"...

As much as I love this system, and as much as I agree with many of the glowing reviews I’ve read, I can find some places for improvement. For one thing, the cuffs are all the same size. For some reason, I expect most people have thicker ankles than wrists. Or maybe that’s just me? I also have very thin wrists. When the cuffs were secured around my wrists, only an inch or so of Velcro was actually touching. These cuffs are long enough that larger people could wear them comforably; but maybe Sportsheets could similarly consider people with skinny wrists? In any case, I still couldn’t pull myself loose from the cuffs, so I suppose the size of the cuffs doesn’t actually matter.

Besides that, I would have liked it if the snaps were detachable from the cuffs, so they could be used for other things, though their permanent attachment to the cuffs makes them less easy to lose. I’d also like it if the set came with some sort of pouch unit I could store it in. And, while I couldn’t get out of the cuffs by pulling against them, with my hands close together I could reach the adjustment point of the strap and loosen it. I could also easily pull the Velcro. If my hands had been spread-eagled, that wouldn’t have been the case, but then the straps could have been designed with the adjustment points at the other ends. Except then I guess the plastic pieces would create a “bump” in the mattress. J didn’t see this as a flaw, since it gives the bottom an “out.”

In short: I like the Under the Bed Restraint System a lot. It is awesome in its versatility.

Price @ Babeland.com: $55

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Oasis

Wilhelmina Wang — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:46:50 +0000

[Press Play]

So, me and J broke up.

Most of my friends (online and offline) and family have reacted with surprise, and for good reason: this all seems very sudden, but in fact it has been a slow build-up that started from the moment we got together.

I had my doubts. As did J, but about slightly different things. I was graduating in June, and the likelihood of any relationship lasting beyond that, via long distance, was low. The relationship would have to be pretty fucking solid. I didn’t really expect to suddenly find someone like that during the last few months of my college career, so I wasn’t planning for the long-term. Any relationship I was going to have would automatically have an expiration date, unless something drastic happened to change my mind.

Concerning J specifically, our relationship had its own issues. I wasn’t passionately in love with him, and we had a few glaring incompatibilities (and some glaring similarities) that would probably cause dissatisfaction in the future, and we were both going to be unsettled for the next few years. Despite all that, he made me happy, and I grew to like him so much that I really, really wanted things to work.

We had numerous conversations about these things, but ended up deciding to wait until June to decide whether or not to stay together beyond that. We probably weren’t going to, but thought that spending a few months together would be enjoyable and good for the both of us.

He’d asked me to move in with him in a moment of impulse and passion, and I said yes. Ironically, after I moved in, it became apparent that things weren’t playing out how I hoped they would. We ended up treating each other more like good friends than a couple, and he told me he’d come to feel as much towards me. He told me that part of the problem too was that he hadn’t fallen in love with me, and didn’t think he would. And to make things even more complicated, two of his exes are still on campus, with whom he still has somewhat confusing relationships. He’d tell me how pressured and troubled he was by his relationships with them, and I’d want very much to be supportive, but would feel too jealous and angry. I distinctly felt like I had already lost him as a significant other. Because he didn’t “want” me and because his romantic feelings weren’t focused on me, I felt like everything was already over. I was lonely. I came home once or twice and just lay in bed and cried for hours.

And yet we were still dating.

We finally broke up when I told him how upset I felt by feeling as if I’d lost him but not being able to deal with it because we were still “together.”

So now I guess we’re good friends who also live together, are emotionally/physically intimate, and have sex. We’ve agreed that if one of us hooks up with or goes on a date with somebody else, we’ll let the other know.

Personally, I think us living together is working out fine. Things might be difficult once one of us gets together with somebody else. It’s not like one of us will get into another serious relationship, but something casual is definitely a possibility. I’m interested in a couple people, but I don’t know if I even want to bother trying to initiate anything with them. The most I can hope for is casual sex, and right now that sounds pretty pointless.

On the plus side, we’re still there for each other. And now that I’m not dating him, I feel less ire at his exes. I’m starting to feel nonchalant when he talks about them. Or sympathy towards him. I hope he works things out with them, because it’s obvious that there are still some feelings there.

If nothing awful happens, we’ll stay good friends after we both leave here, since we both still like & care about each other a lot. I’m glad that I got to know J, and I’m glad I’ve gained his friendship, though I lost him as a partner.

In the end, I came to see our relationship as an oasis. Both of us had had many hurtful past experiences, but we then we met each other, and we were good to each other. I can’t speak for him, but my time with him healed me.

“There is a storm in the distance / The wind breathing warning of its imminence / There is a lighthouse five hundred yards down / You and I will be safe there / Love, you are foolish, you’re tired / Your sleeplessness makes you a liar / The city is burning / The ocean is turning / Our only chance is the lighthouse” - Lighthouse by The Hush Sound

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Compartments

Wilhelmina Wang — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:45:56 +0000

Before I started dating J, I went “hunting” a lot. Often, I didn’t begin the night with that as my intention; it’s not like I went out and planned to spend my night looking for someone to bang. That’s just what I ended up doing. (Well, along with socializing and drinking and all that other stuff one does at a party.) I noticed as much after I started going out with J, and thus had a consistent sexual partner, and thus didn’t need to go looking for people to have sex with anymore. The first week or so after we started going out, I’d be at my frat, or at a party, beginning to scope people out, and then remembering – wait, I don’t actually need to do this anymore. I can just hang out with people normally. What a relief!

… Or maybe not a relief. I began thinking a little more about the relationship between my sexuality and how I interact with people. If you’re a long time reader, you’ll remember my discussing how sex is never “just” sex to me. While I don’t always attribute love to it, I do attribute many other things to it; may it be emotional connection, or attention, or a self-esteem boost. Conversely, many things lead me to think of sex; perhaps uncommon things. I must have reached a certain point where sex became just another way of getting to know someone. There have definitely been times where I’ve been getting to know someone new, socially or at work or anything, and I was enjoying getting to know them, and I’d randomly wonder what it would be like to have sex with them. Just a passing curiosity, you understand, I might not really want to have sex with them or even be attracted to them. I’d just wonder because maybe it would tell me something more about them.

J has remarked before that it sounds like I mix up sex and intimacy a lot, when sometimes they’re actually mutually exclusive. Some close friends have also remarked that I mix up friendship and love, or friendship and sex. Friendship, romance, and sex are all kind of blurry to me. I see moving from one to another just like shifting gears, or viewing the same thing through a different lens. They’re all the same matter, but just have different forms. I mean, it’s not like I think that I could love or want sex with all of my friends. Sometimes the possibility just isn’t there. But when it is, moving from one to another isn’t really very difficult for me. I never found much of a problem with it. Many people I know have clear boundaries between each thing (friend, fuckbuddy, significant other) but I didn’t really ever set those boundaries in place. So what happened was everything just kind of… spilled into each other. And so I ended up having sex with many of my closest friends; having undefined sexual/romantic relationships; hooking up with someone and then becoming friends with them; or breaking up with a boyfriend but continuing to sleep with him for a while after that.

I think that blurry view is changing now.

Click on “continue reading” on the bottom right to read more.

(Notice that I’m not addressing love or falling in love here. That’s too big for this conversation, I think. I’m merely referring to the nature of different kinds of relationships.)

Anyway, this never used to worry me, but it does now because I think I used sex to relate to people, when I’d have been better off doing something else. Honestly? There have been times when I felt more comfortable making out with someone I was just getting to know, compared to trying to approach someone at a party. I remember when I was first getting to know the Professional, I invited him to a rope bondage workshop with me. Doing that put a clear sexual overtone to whatever was going to happen between us, while, at the time, I didn’t even know if I was interested in him yet. Inviting him to a rope bondage event just felt more natural to me than… something else.

There could be many reasons for that, and they’re probably all correct: I’m fairly comfortable with my sexuality, whereas I’m socially anxious and don’t like interacting in large group situations; if I’m “offering” sex then the person has more incentive to hang out with me (yeah, for a long while my self-esteem was just that low). I can’t keep using sex as a social lubricant though, and not just because I’m dating J. It just isn’t very sustainable.

My lack of boundaries also worries me because… well, let me put it this way. Having multiple friends-with-benefits and fuck-buddies, when that’s all I had, didn’t matter. It’s quite different once you’re committed to someone and you have a past life that’s full of friends-with-benefits and fuck-buddies. Many of the people I slept with were also close friends of mine. They’re all over the US now, but I still keep in touch with them and they’re still a part of my life to some extent. It’s a little awkward when I want to tell J about them or when I want to tell them about J. In a way, they’re not just my close friends, they’re also my “exes,” even though we were never in a relationship. We were sleeping together for a sustained period of time, and there was some kind of interest expressed by both parties… that’s basically enough.

So every time I mention one of those friends to J, there’s a little tension there. Not too much to be unhealthy, but it’s still a little awkward. I think J is mature enough not to let those things get in the way, and that I have good enough judgement to not harp on my past sexual relationships constantly for no reason (hmm. I hope). I introduced J to the Rationalist, and he reacted with the same tenseness and shiftiness at first, but after they ran into each other more often and had more conversations, they got along pretty well, which is nice.

And, of course, my “exes” have their own reactions to when I talk about J, ranging from happiness on my behalf, to defensiveness/protectiveness, to suspicion, to silence.

As J said, it’s the elephant in the room: “we both fucked this girl at some point in time.” With my friends who I didn’t have a sexual relationship with, that tension is not there. J is friends with his ex-girlfriends as well, and I don’t have a problem with that or feel jealous, but I do think of them differently than the rest of his friends.

I don’t regret anything I did in the past. I did what I did, and I’m dealing with the ramifications now, and they’re not awful or all that difficult to deal with. I didn’t write this post because I’m stressing. These things are just probably good things to know for future use. I think I need to re-evaluate how I approach boundaries.

All part of growing up, I guess.

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A Journey

Wilhelmina Wang — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:56:16 +0000

We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness’.”

- Shall We Dance (seriously the only part of the movie that was worth watching)

The point where a relationship transitions into being a serious one is when you ask your significant other, and yourself, if you want to share each others’ lives. Like, “hey, do you want to experience my journey with me? Do you want me to experience your journey with you?” You take two wandering paths out of millions and millions in the world and have them become one and the same.

It’s been a while since I’ve shared my life with anyone. I began to think I had lost the capacity to, but I know that that’s not true. I guess the question now is: will it work for us to have our paths converge?

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A Guiding Hand

Wilhelmina Wang — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 09:28:00 +0000

Hey, so, Merry Christmas (if you celebrate it) and happy holidays and such. I’ve been spending a lot of time hanging out with family and friends and such and oddly haven’t been in the mood for blogging, until now. Being apart for a month can do that to you, I guess.

I’m quite aware that this post is about topping from the bottom. But you can’t exactly get a person to start hitting you. You have to start somewhere. I wonder when I’ll work up the nerve to ask that first question? We’ve both very sexual people, but I have a feeling that sex means so many more things to me than it ever will to him.

[via jkrabbit]

Would you like to try pulling my hair?

No, don’t pull the tips; everyone does that, and it doesn’t feel good. Put your hand here, close to my scalp, and grab a big handful. Feel free to yank; it’s okay. Yes, just like that. Hold me against the wall; bite my neck, my shoulders. Can you feel them – my muscles, my pulse – under your teeth? You could be gentle, or bite down hard enough to draw blood – neat, red pinpricks – like this. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you if it hurts too much.

Hold me up against the wall. Kiss down my body; hold, grab, squeeze my tits; pinch and twist my nipples between your fingers, until I can’t keep quiet. My arms are folded behind my back. You didn’t ask me to put them there; but it feels right. I’ll keep still if you want me to. You’re so good to me, so patient with my nonsense; I want to do something for you now; I want to make you feel good. You never ask for much, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want. I’m learning you more and more as time passes; I notice the hitches in your breathing and the way your voice gets soft and husky with desire, even if the words you say are few.

What would you like me to do for you? Please, tell me. Tell me how you want me. I’ll suck your cock, lave you all over with my tongue, soft and slow and not leaving a single part of you untouched. I’ll bend over, good and obedient, ass high in the air for you to use; a warm hole for you to come into. I won’t move. I won’t touch myself. Not unless you want me to. Or you could shove my face into my pillows; hold me down and leisurely touch and tease and explore me until my entire body is thrumming like a wire highly charged with electricity.

We could do all of these things, and more. But, for now, we’ll begin with you yanking my hair.

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Wait, what? Really?

Wilhelmina Wang — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:12:51 +0000

Apologies in advance to twitter friends and other friends who I’ve been talking about this incessantly to, already. You’re probably fed up of hearing about it ^^; This will probably be the last I’ll be saying about this for now.

via Sarai Woah Photography

So… I have an announcement to make. Of sorts.

I am currently a taken woman.

Yep. That’s right. The Heartbreak Nympho is off the market (!)

Nobody could be more surprised than me, I think. It’s ironic because I had pretty much written off my senior year as a bust. I’d given up looking for anyone I could possibly date, I’d already exhausted the Zeta Mu pool, and I’m graduating this year anyway so I basically resigned myself to being single until graduation. It hasn’t been to bad – I flirted online, hooked up now and again, but with no one new, made out with people on dance floors, got sexually frustrated and lonely now and again, got jealous when the Professional would hook up with other people (seriously, he is the very definition of “slut”. His face should be under the word in the dictionary. Which is fine and all, but not when I’m one of the people fucking him, with me being as possessive as I am). Basically, I was comfortably accustomed to, and happy with, being a single woman.

Clearly, this is when life decides to throw a relationship right into my lap.

I first met J when I was a freshman, in passing, but I met him again this term at somebody’s room party, since he was there with someone I knew. We said hi, we started talking, and pretty much instantly hit it off. A few days later he sent me this very cute, kind of awkward email asking if I wanted to get coffee. So we did. And then he asked if I wanted to get dinner. So we did. Throughout all of this, it’s pretty obvious to me that he has a crush on me, but my feelings are still ambivalent, or rather I’m not expecting very much to come of it, so I just let things flow.

But I began warming up to him. It was pretty difficult not to And then we were in my room watching Old Boy one night (fucking awesome movie, btw. Not really date material, it was my choice though, oopsie, but it’s still a great movie) and… things all went downhill from there

I know this sounds like a really, really typical story. Boy meets girl, they go out on a few dates, they solidify the relationship… but you have to believe me, it is such a relief, such a refreshing change, from what I’ve been experiencing up until now. People don’t go on dates at my college. They don’t. Me and my friends have bitched to no end about how people are perfectly fine with getting wasted and making out with each other in a frat basement, but if you even so much as attempt to ask someone you like to – gasp! – get dinner with you, suddenly it’s super awkward. And, while I’ve enjoyed the lovers I’ve had over the past couple years, I really was looking for a “proper” relationship, and instead I experienced all manner of bizarre sexual set-ups. It just gets a bit tiring after a while.

So… basically, me and J are dating now. And I don’t think I deserve him on so many levels. He’s super intelligent. When we’re hanging out and talking the hours whip by. He’s one of the nicest, most gentle and considerate guys I’ve met, and he has been nothing but good to me. (I mean, he cooked for me, for goodness’ sake! o.O)

Of course, there is a spanner in the works. (There always is.) Turns out that J is an extremely monogamous person. If you’re at all familiar with my blog or tweets at all, it should be pretty obvious to you that I’m… well… not. Right now, my ideal relationship structure would be a deep, intense, committed relationship, but it would be open, with us being free to have casual sex with other people, so long as we communicated everything to each other. I already know that’s not going to happen here. I knew this would happen eventually – that I would get into a relationship with someone and I would have to try and reconcile the crazy, exciting sexual journey I’ve been on with the new relationship: discovering my kinky side, discovering that I’m pretty much polyamorous and could “do” a poly relationship, if I wasn’t as insecure and possessive as I currently am. Besides the monogamy question, I have no idea what he thinks about BDSM. I also haven’t told him about this blog yet.

How typical that a nice boy like J would end up with a raging pervert like me.

I’d be lying if I said I was super into being monogamous. Just because I’m dating J doesn’t mean I don’t desire other people. I still do. I’m not one to want to hook up with every random, hot person who crosses my path, but there are at least 1-2 people here who intrigue me and who I would love to sleep with if given the chance. (And it would probably pain me to get that chance now and know that I couldn’t take it.) And I still think about trysting with my old lovers, like Girl, and the Optimist, who I might be visiting at some point. (Or not, if I wouldn’t be able to control myself…) And giving up my sexual connections with them is a big deal for me.

On the other hand, though, with some of my other lovers, knowing that I can’t sleep with them anymore actually lifts pressure off of my shoulders. It’s kind of nice to just interact with the Professional and the Scientist, knowing that we’re just friends and that I don’t have to care whether they hook up with other people or not (as they obviously would. The Scientist is as big of a slut as the Professional is). It’s nice socializing with people as friends without my using sex as some kind of social lubricant (ha ha) or way of bonding with them. (More on this later.)

Basically, I don’t want to insist on sleeping around when I know it’s going to make J upset, or if he isn’t going to put up with it. Maybe in the future things will shift more to my liking, but I’m not holding my breath. And for now, I’m going to do things the way he wants to do them. Giving up sexual connections with other people for this, for something I’ve been wanting for such a long time now, seems like a small price to pay.

This is a big change in my life. But it’s a change that I’m very happy with

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