I hope I don’t sound absurd, but I want to know if I am becoming a sadist.

I am sure that my wife is a true masochist, but she never uses that word, insisting that she just likes to be tied up and tormented. Early in our marriage, five years ago, she kidded me into tying her up one night and using a paddle; we have long since graduated to rougher stuff.

She is twenty-eight now (I’m thirty) and she flatly refuses to have sex unless it is accompanied by, or follows, bondage and discipline. In my saner moments I know this is not the way marriage should be, and I try to discuss the topic with her, but she puts me off. Then, when she asks me to put her in bondage, my resolve melts away and I follow her suggestions.

Perhaps you’ll realize the extent of her obsession if I describe two of her favorite games. We both work, but Judy has Thursday afternoon off. I come home for lunch. Before I leave at 1:00PM, I tie her naked to a kitchen chair, gag her mouth, and attach a spring clothespin to the tip of each nipple. I carefully lock the house and leave.

When I return at five-thirty there are tears on her cheeks and she moans from her sore nipples. But no, she doesn’t want to be released. I caress her body, pinch her breasts, and jerk the clothespin back on. Then I make my supper and eat it before her. Then I manipulate the pins again. About 9:00PM, I release her, and we have immediate and rather violent sex right there on the floor. To say she is a turned-on tiger is an understatement.

In her other favorite game, she is stretched out spread-eagle, face down and nude on the bed, held motionless by ropes running from the wrist and ankle. Again, she is gagged. I spend hours working a large, ribbed dildo in and out of her anus, pinching her vagina, and cracking her buttocks with a leather strap. She often says I don’t leave her there long enough, and once she asked me to leave her bound all night, which I did.

Do I enjoy doing this? I admit that I do, once we have begun at her instigation. But in between, I regret abusing her like this. I try to get her to talk about it, but she only says she loves being tormented. She even tries to get me to think up new things to subject her to. So far, I haven’t.

Obviously my feelings are ambivalent.

I’m afraid I will be drawn more and more into issuing discipline and we will move into things that might harm her permanently.