One of the most unexpected things about having gotten onto tumblr and following so many other submissive women is discovering that I am far from alone in this feeling that I am “too much.”
What is too much? I don’t know exactly. Too much is thinking that everything about you ought to be tamed, taken down a notch, contained. It’s believing that my emotions are always too big - I’m either too excited about small things and I realize belatedly that I’m being foolish and childish, or I respond with too much sadness over equally small things, and realize belatedly that I’m being “dramatic.” Too much is also talking too loud sometimes, singing too enthusiastically, being the first person on the dance floor at every wedding and begging everyone to GET UP - while everyone pats you on the head for being goofy.
Too much is also about my body - too much tummy, too much rear end, too much boobs. Just … too much, no matter how often you go for a jog or how many times you lay on the floor of your bedroom doing more sit ups.
Too much is also, and always has been for me, about my sexuality. I learned the lesson early on that my VOLUME of desire was TOO MUCH for a woman. That men should want sex more than me, and that they should try to convince me to have sex. I should be mostly disinterested and need to be persuaded. I have sat through countless conversations with female friends where everyone is bemoaning how often their partners “bother” them for sex. I chuckle, and nod, but I rarely say anything - except maybe to my very closest and best friends in rare intimate conversations - and inside I’m tallying all the ways I don’t fit the role I’m supposed to.
Volume aside, I was also too much in the “what and how” … my fantasies were all over the place, intense things, “bad” things. I mostly pretended that they didn’t exist. I can even recall having conversations with friends where I fully said that X or Y was not something I was interested in - even though I was routinely fantasizing about those things.
But above all, “too much” is believing that my needs are heavy and tiresome and probably even boring to a partner. Too much is learning early on how to take care of yourself - not saying things when you need to say them, or asking for what you need when you need it - because you’ve already decided that the request might be the straw on the too-much camel’s back.
I think most of us who feel like this do so because we’ve been told it - either indirectly through our culture, or directly from a partner. For me, it’s both. And that sounds awful doesn’t it - like what kind of a jerk tells you that you’re too much? In my case, not a jerk at all, but a kind, wonderful, exciting partner who told me every day how he felt about me … and one day, in a heated conversation about other things, after a trying time related to all sorts of challenges outside our relationship, suddenly said: you’re just … too much … you just need too much.
This from someone who had, for the entirety of our time together, encouraged me to give everything, to share everything, to not hold back. (Of course, I had held back, had kept big parts of me in reserve, because … I knew … I was too much.)
He didn’t mean he wanted anything to change … he had no intentions of ending our relationship. He loved me, told me so every day. It was just a frustration, that came out of his mouth before he’d thought it through. He’d have carried on indefinitely, even though we both knew we were floundering for all sorts of reasons.
But that was it for me, inside. We talked about other things and at the end of the conversation, I said I needed a week … and when I came back a week later, I said it was time for me to go, for good. There were lots of reasons, there were other challenges and issues, but deep down it was being told - at last - that I was exactly what I had feared all along: just plain too much.
I think most submissive women have had similar experiences because we DO have bigger needs than other people. We absorb and feel emotions more than other people. We crave things the average person can’t give you and wouldn’t even know how to begin. We go in circles in our head about our wants and needs, realizing that they’re different, somehow. We feel strange, keeping our masks on for the world and knowing it’s not quite what we are inside.
We’ve absorbed this lesson so well, that we’ve internalized it as OUR responsibility to not burden anyone else with our “too-much-ness.”
DD tells me all the time I’m not too much - “not even close” he has said a time or two, or ten. I believe him. Mostly. Ok, I believe him somewhat, on good days lol. I still keep bits in reserve, just in case. I open my windows and doors and secret pathways slowly, and carefully, considering the risk: what if THIS is the room inside of me that he finally sees how much work I am.
He doesn’t seem to think I’m work - or at least, it’s work that he’s happy to do, because it goes along with the entirety of “me”.
So I keep working at it, inside. When I tell myself I’m too much, I pause and ask “for who? in what way? why does it matter?”
Because ultimately, I’m not too much for ME. I am just right for ME.
