Becoming a woman is my chance to let go of being a doormat forever

I am on a retreat, and I would normally not write any blog posts when I am on a retreat, but spelunking through the gunk of my own shadows has brought so much to the surface I can’t help it.

The discovery some months ago that I am a doormat came slowly and humorously.  It should have been obvious.  Every domme I have ever served or played with called me a people pleaser.  I recognised myself in the term with pride.  I didn’t even think of it is a negative.  I thought it was kind of nice.  And it was in line with my submissive nature.  Or at least I thought so.

But I am reading this book now on the “disease to please” and will share more about it when I have finished.  It was prescribed to me by my lead therapist (my “favourite” therapist has been falling by the wayside as she is engulfed by a weight of her own personal problems).  It is a tough slog.  Not because it is hard reading, or complex, but rather because it hits home with too much accuracy.  I see myself in every paragraph.  And it hurts to think of it but hurts more to think about how much work it will take to let go of it.  I’m not sure I can do it.  I’m scared.

You can never change if you don’t want to.  But sometimes you might want to, in theory, but not really, because of how used you are to the behaviour.  I like being “nice”.  It is hard to imagine a life not being nice, when being nice has defined me.

I have written so much about this.  About how my friends have been supportive of my transition because I was never an ass—read that as nice.  About being submissive, too many times to remember.  And by this I don’t mean being easy—the submissive part.  Probably not the doormat part either.

I was felled by the end of the first chapter in this book.  First, knowing that being a people pleaser is the same thing as being a doormat.  And what is closer to the actual meaning?  Doormat.  There is nothing positive about that.  Second, knowing that this is something which has been there from such an early age…Third, that it is a self-destructive pattern.  We seek to please to ensure people like us.  We are nice because of this.  Instead of pushing back on someone who mistreats us, we seek to please them more, to be nicer.  How awful.

It should also have been obvious, but was not to me, that my wife is a bully.  As a partner to a doormat we fit hand in glove.  A kind of sick co-dependence.  Our time together was quite literally predicated (there were other conditions of course, but this one, given the blog title and what I am doing in life right now, is the big one) on me burying my female side, on burying my kinky nature.  And worst of all, her disgust became mine.  I joined in by self-criticising.  Thank goodness I found the clarity of mind to break the pattern through therapy and judicious beatings, and found a partner who was able to create a container for that for the time it took to escape, but I didn’t see the root cause.

I wish to dissociate being a doormat from being a submissive.  They are not the same thing.  Being a submissive takes strength.  The real kind.  Not many people really want a doormat.  A genuine submissive might not be understood by those who don’t want one, but it is a highly cherished and valued trait by those who look for it, whereas I think only sickos want doormats.

This book that my therapist asked me to read is hard because I so want to change, because I don’t want to be a doormat anymore, but also because it is so hard to imagine.  How on earth do you begin unpicking an approach to the world which is about being nice which has been there since childhood?  Especially when it is hard to not like being nice, of feeling you have been nice, of being appreciated for being nice?  And what do you replace it with?  Or how do you redirect it.

I have written at how bad I am at protecting my boundaries.  My response to mean people or boundary violators was either to run away or to try and give more, only sublimating myself further.  Sooner or later the pressure builds, and it comes out in some unhealthy form.

Being a narcissist would be preferable to this (except being a nice person makes it hard to get one’s head around the idea).  And there are some parallels.  The people pleaser tries to please someone in a way which is inherently manipulative (as is anything you do to obtain an intended outcome) so that they will be liked.  A narcissist, on the other hand, manipulates so that you will do, act, behave in a certain way.  There are parallels, superficial similarities, but they are polar opposites.  Both are toxic.  

Narcissism is toxic for others; people pleasing is toxic for the self.

Fresh from therapy, this was on my mind.  It didn’t take long on the retreat for this to come bubbling up through the body work we are doing.  The therapist asked, “you just swallowed hard, I am wondering if you know what that meant,” we had not spoken other than that I had mentioned my life was a little overwhelming at the moment.

What surfaced over the next 30 minutes was a variety of things related to this central theme.  This one came well into the session but was the resurfacing of a memory of attending nursery school in Japan.  I was four.  At the end of class once a week we were given a lollipop for being good.  They were delicious, dark blue, plum-flavoured lollipops.  I looked forward to them immensely.  They were so big to my child mouth that sucking on one felt a bit like choking.  They were a real treat.  There was a larger boy in our class.  He had very short hair, a crew cut.  Most days he would get up at the end of lessons, walk across the room, and strangle me until I gave him my lollipop.  The teachers and other students looked on with passive serenity.  I complained to the teacher about it one day, and she did nothing, said nothing.  Told me to sit down.  I was the only white boy in a sea of Japanese children.  The outsider feeling of that moment was very keen to me, my sense of not being protected, or feeling injustice…and this landed with me in much the same way as a lifetime of being trans has.  Hidden to protect me, but still there.

I still have issues with hands on my neck.  I was deeply troubled by some dangerous “breath play” by a Mistress I saw.  New Mistress loves breath play, but we don’t do it because I am scared of it…though if there is anyone I would do it with it is her, because there is trust.

I don’t really like thinking or writing about things which make me feel pathetic or show me in a pathetic light.  Why not fight back?  Eventually one does.

In high school, I was bullied by a kid who was one of the only minorities in my class of almost all white privilege.  He probably recognised in me that I was more vulnerable than him.  The school actively facilitated his bullying and paired us up in a school wrestling tourney.  What a ghastly sport.  I had no chance.  He was a national champion and I had never wrestled before in my life.  I was pinned with force and within seconds.  It was humiliating and I cried in that little boy way where you try to hide it, but in front of the whole school, tucking your face, squeezing your stomach muscles, and shrinking in on yourself.

His bullying continued for a year until one day I body slammed him into the lockers.  It’s amazing that it worked, and he never bothered me again.  Many years later he apologized to me.  But I don’t forgive.  I don’t know what to do about that.  I wish I could, but once something has gone that far, once someone has revealed what I think of as their true character, they get written off forever.  It doesn’t really matter to them in most cases.  But surely this is a toxic legacy that sits inside of me?  Ugh.

And as I lay there on the massage table receiving the body work, this trickle of heavy thoughts came out.

“I’m a doormat.  I don’t want to be a doormat.  I’m sick of being nice so that people will like me.  That was okay as a male, but I don’t want to be a female doormat.  So many women are doormats.  Maybe that’s a part of the reason I have been.  I don’t know, but I don’t want to grow into my femininity and take that with me.”

Several women came up to me after and relayed their own lives as doormats.  Beautiful, successful women.  How many people out there live their lives this way?  It’s awful.  It has to stop.

“One step at a time,” she cautioned, “the first is to just recognise it.”

I’ve explained where submission to a woman came for me from this place of shame of belonging to the tribe of men, not feeling like them, not wanting to be like them—it was a way of dissociating from the self, the physical self.  Part of my gender dysphoria required me to eschew manhood.  There are an awful lot of men who love being “sissified”.  I would have hated that.  I don’t want to be judgemental, but I can’t let go of the feeling that it is disrespectful to women.  I’ve felt the same way about drag, and generally about getting off on wearing women’s clothes as a man, in part because it is symbolic of everything I hate about the gender binary…why should it matter?  Why should clothes be so charged with power and the erotic?  Why should adopting or mimicking the female through her attire and exaggerated gestures, be something degrading.

When I think of what it means to become a woman, I feel like I am being upgraded.  That I have somehow done the work and earned a place at a nicer table.  That’s why it is so important to me to wrestle with my demons, and to show them the door.

But what do you replace with?  And why does nice have to be different than strong?  Is it just about being firm?  Boundaried?  Two more things I need to learn.

And one last one.  When someone is arguing with me, I hate it so much that I end up twisting my own views and thoughts around to see how I can accommodate them.  I was no match for my wife.  Pretty much anyone.  It amazes me that I was successful.  How does one become a serial CEO by being so much of people pleaser, a conflict avoider?  I have to figure this out because it can’t all be toxic.