Ella Jacobs – author

It’s been years since I crashed into a severe subdrop—so long I almost forgot just how bad it can be even though I’ve been writing about it a lot.

But then it happened.

I fell, and I fell hard and long. For several days, I was depleted. Not just tired. It felt like all the energy had been sucked straight out of me and refused to return. I couldn’t do much else but get the bare minimum of my day job done and lie on the couch the rest of the day.

New depths
I thought I was getting sick, but the fatigue never went further. No sore throat or runny nose. It was purely the aftereffects of an intense scene.

I’d never tried anything like it.

When I started seeing my Dom seven years ago, I would go into subdrop quite often. It would hit me like a strike of lightning—usually after I’d come home in the afternoons, luckily. Suddenly, I’d feel depressed and sad for no apparent reason. I’d often cry too, feeling completely gutted. But it usually went away within a few hours. So this time, when it just kept dragging me down for days, I must say I was a bit worried.

Back when I started seeing my Dom, the circumstances were such that we couldn’t be together after a scene. He’d drive me home at night, and then we’d stay in touch through texts. This separation was really hard on me, and when I dropped and he asked me what I needed, I badly wanted to say you. I needed to feel him, to be held, and have the man who tore through my defenses build them back up.

But I didn’t want to be a burden, seem needy, or ask for things I wasn’t sure I was supposed to want. So I never expressed my most urgent need.

Luckily, this situation didn’t last long. Circumstance changed, and within months, I was living with my Dom most of the time. This meant more aftercare, nights spent together after intense scenes, and bye bye subdrop.

There has been small drops of course, but nothing as severe as those gutted, lonely hours I experienced during our first months together.

So why now?
At first, I thought it was because the scene leading up to it was really intense. And it was. But then someone told me it was also because what had happened during the scene was new and very big, and things suddenly added up.

The scene was something I had dreamt of for years—my Dom sharing me with another man. But it was also something that really pushed my boundaries, and I was incredibly nervous several days before. So it was all very new, exciting, and nerve-racking.

When I started seeing my Dom, everything was new too. Him, of course, but also the way we played. It was much more intense and real than anything I’d tried before. He was the first true dominant I was with. Not just a sadist or someone who experimented with BDSM for my sake. No, he wanted to take my submission as much as I wanted to give it, and that was huge for me.

So comparing the situation back then with the one now, it makes a lot of sense that the whole newness of the scene was part of the reason I dropped so hard.

But even though my Dom gave me plenty of aftercare in the days following the scene, I felt afloat, unable to find my footing.

Something was missing.

Asking for what I needed
As the days passed and the uneasy feeling intensified, it became more and more clear that it was the need for aftercare from the other man who’d dominated me. Aftercare wasn’t just aftercare. I needed it from both men who had pushed me far out of my comfort zone and taken something very personal—my submission.

But I had a really hard time telling my Dom this. Not because I was afraid he’d feel bad about me needing another man to help me out of subdrop, but because I didn’t want to be a burden—again, something that ties back to the early days of our relationship.

Usually I can tell my Dom everything, but this time it took a lot of rumination and a long talk with a girlfriend for me to gather the nerve to tell my Dom what I truly needed. And I’m so glad I did.

My Dom called the other man, who came the next evening and gave me the aftercare I badly needed. The man my Dom had shared me with also reassured me that it was quite normal to feel the way I did and that he liked giving me aftercare.

It didn’t magically fix me, but I think it made all the difference. It was like a burden off my chest, and I felt a lot better the next day, and my energy slowly started to return.