Shibari and Vulnerability

It was hell on Earth! My husband had been in Afghanistan for six months. Then, one day, I received a message that almost killed me: he had been captured by the enemy. That’s when my own, personal hell began. And it lasted for four months. Until one day, an army officer came to see me. “Your husband is free now. He’s in quarantine now, but you’ll see him soon.” I didn’t know that would lead us to understand the relation between Shibari and vulnerability.

Soon meant another month, during which I almost went mad. The thought that he was tortured, the idea that he could have died, felt like nails in my chest. And I could barely stand not seeing him.

Finally, he came back, but he wasn’t completely here. Let me explain. His body was at home, but his mind was absent. He was so stressed that he barely talked, barely slept, barely ate. He went to therapy, as part of his recovery, but it barely seemed to have any effect. Actually, he kept quiet, gloomy, absent.

I tried to recover our intimacy. My body missed him. Besides, I thought that I could succeed where the doctors had failed. Before he left, our sex life had been very intense. We were kinky, actually. But now I would settle for the most vanilla intercourse. I believed that would make him happy, and it might begin to push the ghosts away.

When I told him I wanted us to be together, he turned his head to stare at me, and said: “I want to try Shibari”. Now, that sounded like the worst idea to me, because bondage, no matter how artistic and sexy, could remind him of the torture he had to endure. But he insisted, so I agreed.

I tied him, for he was still too weak to play top. I could see how uncomfortable he felt with the ropes around his body. So, I asked him if he wanted us to stop, but he said we ought to continue. And so I did. 

Then, when he was completely tied, he began to cry. First, he just sobbed, but after a few minutes, he was crying his heart out. “Save me!”, he told me. And I untied him as fast as I could. Once I pulled the last rope away, he embraced me and said: “Thank you!”. That was the way he took advantage of Shibari and vulnerability.

At that moment, I understood everything. Only the hope of seeing me again had kept him alive. And now, he had relived his torture, and I had saved him. We will be together from now on. Always.

This is our Shibari story.