How My Girlfriend Broke Me

How My Girlfriend Broke Me

Here’s a sort of unintended follow-up to the story I posted the other day. I hadn’t planned to re-use the suggested concept, but then I saw the picture included below and it got me thinking. 2,000 words this time.

I never used to have any issues with my bladder control. Or with my confidence, for that matter. It was that confidence that helped me land a girlfriend who was – if I’m being honest – out of my league. Unfortunately, the line between confidence and cockiness can be quite thin and I stepped over it one too many times. That was what got me into trouble with my girlfriend. That was why she finally broke me.

I used to tease her about how frequently she needed to go to the bathroom. And even though she never actually had any close calls as far as I knew, I would still try to embarrass her sometimes by asking if her panties were staying dry. But she was always quick witted and would usually put me in my place with a retort like, “Only as long as I’ve been dating you.”

I should have realized right away that she wasn’t one to let a man walk over her, but the longer the relationship went on, the more secure I felt and the cockier I became. I would lord it over her every time I had to open a jar for her, or kill a spider. They were things that most guys wouldn’t have given a second thought to, but I played them up as hallmarks of my value and masculinity.

The manlier I felt, the more I tried to make her fit a stereotypical feminine mold, expecting her to cook our meals and see that my clothing was always washed and neatly put away. She put up with it for a little while, but also used it as leverage when we argued or when there were chores for me to do and I was dragging my heels. Eventually, she stopped bargaining one task for another, got more aggressive, and began mocking me for becoming so dependent on her.

She warned that I would regret it if I kept acting like I commanded ultimate authority in the household, but I didn’t take her seriously because she was a weak little girl and I was a big strong man. I kept on teasing her with that in mind, but she started chipping away at my confidence in our power dynamic by pushing back in ways that straddled the line between playfulness and hostility.

Nevertheless, I still didn’t take her seriously when the vague threat of consequences turned into more explicit threats of violence. In my defense, I was sure she never meant for them to be taken seriously, though in retrospect I realize it’s better to just say she didn’t mean for them to be taken literally. She really was trying to make me improve my behavior, but I didn’t do so because I knew she wasn’t actually going to poison my coffee, or dump my body in the woods and find herself another man. These are the sorts of over-the-top declarations that a woman can make when she feels persistently frustrated, which no one would mistake for genuine.

There was only one solitary moment when I believed she was both willing and able to hurt me, and it was the moment that changed our relationship forever.

I was sitting on the couch playing video games, and she was keeping busy in the kitchen, cleaning and then prepping meals for the following day. She periodically called into the living room, first requesting and then demanding that I call it quits and do something productive like putting away my clean laundry. But I was completely transfixed. I hadn’t even paused to go to the bathroom; I wasn’t about to stop just for some boring chore.

I could hear her sighing in exasperation as I brushed off her recommendations. That might have been her only expression of displeasure, had I not gotten cocky again and called over my shoulder to ask her if she knew where my favorite tie was. As I soon realized, ignoring my own responsibilities was one thing, but adding to hers was a step too far.

“You can get off your ass and find it yourself,” she responded while slicing vegetables. “I think it’s one of the things you need to put away.”

“Come on,” I said, unsatisfied with mere verbal assistance. “I need it for tomorrow.”

After a moment’s silence, I heard a knife slam down on the kitchen counter and footsteps pad in the direction of the laundry room. My girlfriend’s voice trailed off, muttering, “I know you’re gonna fucking need it, and now you’re gonna get it too…”

As I continued mashing the buttons of the game controller, I heard her footsteps re-emerge from the laundry room and approach me from behind. I didn’t take my eyes off the screen, but raised my chin before asking, “Did you find it?”

“Yeah, it’s right here,” she answered quickly, and in a flash I saw the familiar color of my tie pass before my eyes, then felt the dichotomous sensation of soft fabric being forcefully pulled against my neck. I dropped the controller in surprise but was too shocked to do anything else with my hands. For a moment they just lingered in open air while I registered the fact that none of that air was getting to my lungs. Meanwhile, my girlfriend’s hands crossed each other and came to rest beside each of my ears. The nape of my neck settled into the V-shape created by her forearms, and she pulled my head back just enough to bring her smiling face into view of one bulging eye.

“What a nice tie,” she whispered in my ear. “Is this what you’d like to be buried in?”

Looking back on it, I know this was just the same sort of dark humor I’d grown accustomed to. But with the added physical threat, however fleeting, I finally took her seriously. For the briefest of moments, I believed I saw fatal intent behind her eyes, and something deeply buried in my psyche convinced me that she was really going to kill me. All my well-practiced confidence and composure suddenly became meaningless. My body just… reacted.

She saw it before I felt it. I instinctively closed my eyes in relief when she let the tie go slack around my throat. The sound of my sharp intake of breath mingled with the sound of her much sharper laughter. I leaned into my gasp and opened my eyes. A new kind of shock registered on my face as I resumed awareness of the rest of my body and noticed a warm, wet sensation in my groin.

Begrudgingly, I looked down to see what my girlfriend was laughing at. By then, a softball-sized wet patch had formed in my lap, and it was still growing. My fingers dug into the couch as I tensed my entire body in an effort to stop my bladder from emptying, but in the wake of what I’d convinced myself was a near death experience, it was almost as if I had to quickly re-learn how to work my muscles. By the time I regained control, there was already a soaking wet imprint of my entire ass on the couch cushion. I wasn’t even sure whether my willpower had finally won out or my bladder had just emptied enough that it no longer took any effort to hold the rest.

My girlfriend continued laughing the whole time I sat surveying the scene. Her first giggle burst out of her with unprecedented force, demonstrating a purer glee than I think I’d ever seen in her before. It helped me to realize just how ridiculous the whole thing was. Her act of “strangling” me had lasted less than ten seconds. It had been abrupt, maybe aggressive, but not hostile. Some people would have considered it foreplay. It certainly wasn’t anything to piss my pants over. In time I realized that the only reason I’d done so was because I’d underestimated my girlfriend for so long. When I pushed her into vividly demonstrating her strength of both mind and body, it flipped a switch that I haven’t found a way to switch back ever since.

It’s fair to say that I’m scared of my girlfriend now. Not in any way that’s rational or even conscious, but on a deep psychological level. If I’m thinking clearly and making an effort to live with the confidence that I used to consider second nature, I can almost see her in the same light I did when our relationship was still young. But if she startles me or makes any effort to intimidate me, that goes out the window right away.

In those moments, I don’t necessarily see her as a threat to my wellbeing, but I do see her as a threat to my masculinity. And that’s bad enough. I don’t have to expect her to hurt me in order to be irrepressibly aware of the fact that she could if she wanted to. And if I let my guard down long enough for her to remind me of that fact… my body just reacts.

It’s actually made our relationship better. If my former cockiness ever starts to rear its head, all she has to do is catch my eye with her intense gaze and draw attention to my neck or hers, and within ten seconds, I’m sure to start pissing my pants.

I slip up with her at home sometimes. If I don’t spring into action when she tells me to get started on the laundry, then there’s a good chance I’ll end up adding the clothing I’m wearing to the first load. If it seems like I’m expecting sex too much or too often, she’ll suggest autoerotic asphyxiation and I’ll end up jerking off in the shower after I rinse the urine off my legs. But I can handle all that. I’m used to it. The times when I really have to watch my behavior are when we’re out in public.

I think she loves having this power over me, and although she never wields it just for fun, she’s definitely vigilant in looking for reasons to bring out her ultimate party trick. If I accidentally offend one of her friends, then I get to make it up to them by letting them laugh at me while I stare at my girlfriend like a frightened little boy and piddle on myself. If we’re at a party and she’s ready to leave before I am, she only needs to retrieve her coat and draw her scarf tightly around her neck in order to convince me that it’s time to take her home.

The new dynamic has really challenged my former notions of what confidence is. It’s comparatively easy to stay self-assured in situations where your dignity doesn’t depend on anyone else. But now I know that when I’m somewhere with my girlfriend, I’m usually just one stern gesture away from running out of the room to escape a chorus of laughter or disbelieving gasps. I have to be confident in myself to not misbehave, and also confident in my girlfriend not to get bored and decide she wants to make me wet myself just for the entertainment value.

The troubling thing is that she’s probably got the confidence to do it. For all that I used to tease her about having to go to the bathroom all the time, I think I would have been mortified if she had ever pissed her pants when I was with her in public. Now I’ve done it with her a dozen times, and she remains completely un-phased. She’ll happily send me out to wait in the car, soaked, while she lingers at a social gathering to explain that her boyfriend sometimes has accidents when he gets a sudden fright and that she has to take him home now to get changed.

Any confidence I used to think I had is dwarfed by the fact that she’s still willing to be seen in the same crowd with me after telling them I’ve turned into a pants-wetter. Sometimes she doesn’t even wait until I’ve done it. Sometimes she’ll tease me in public the way I used to tease her in private, asking in a loud voice whether I’ve gone to the bathroom, telling me that the movie we’re about to see might be scary enough to make me pee, or that I should be careful with my nervous bladder around the girls at our latest social gathering.

I don’t know why she feels the need to make things up to embarrass me even more, though. Nothing else – certainly no other women – have scared me into pissing my pants… so far.