Sovereignty

I was young.
I attended Uni.
I attended him to avoid attending hospital again.

He invaded
without sex,
without asking,
without permission.

He took with brutality,
with my labia cold,
without lubrication.

He hurt me
with my vaginal walls tearing,
with my throat screaming,
with my fingernails slicing my palms.

He impregnated me,
then made me empty my womb.

My body decided: Stand guard.
My system learned: Be armed.

Hyper-vigilance ran my life.
It scanned.
It locked.
It punished.
It revenged.
It controlled everything.

It robbed me of myself.
He robbed me of me.

Causeway Bay

Years later I was living with the man who would become my husband and father to my daughters.

We were crossing a busy street in Causeway Bay near Times Square.
An old woman pushed a makeshift cart stacked with bundles of old magazines toward a recycling station.

I saw collision.
I pulled him back.
He recoiled.
He resisted.
He snapped.

“I can’t take care of myself?”

It landed like a slap.
Not on my cheek.
On my vigilance.

I was protecting.
He was resisting.
He saw my reach as an insult, a diminishment.

I saw his resistance as proof:
He will dominate.
I cannot trust him.

That moment stayed with me.
For twenty years I brought it back.

"I am trying to help you. You resist.
I save your shins. You resist.
I save you. You snap at me."

Twenty years of buffering

He buffered my vigilance.
He took the blows.
The corrections.
The nitpicking.
The rage.
The jabs.

He carried the weight beside me.
He endured a marriage where sex thinned to nothing.
Stress ravaged my body and health.

I blamed him.
Not the him who installed this in me.
The him beside me now.

There is no sentence.
No therapy.
No clever reframing.
Nothing that convinces the body it was him, not him.

The shift

The change didn’t come with flowers or speeches.
It came while still half asleep.
It came unannounced.
It came as a question.
It came as surprise.

"Wife I am full, may I have your permission to masturbate"
and again
"Wife, I am full, I am holding what belongs to you. Will you let me come"
and again
"Wife, I am full, do you accept ownership? Do I obey"

Each time he asked,
Each time I permitted,
Each time he stroked for me,
Each time I commanded:

"Come for me. Now!"

I asked him once,
“What kind of games are these?”

He answered:

“No games. I am restoring you to your rightful mammalian place.
In nature, the males orbit the female, waiting for her signal.”

I did not understand,
I did not argue,

I gave him permission to empty.
I cupped my palms.
I said: "Come now!"

And when he placed his semen in my hands on my command,
I felt the rush.

Power.
Freedom.
Belonging.

My hips softened.
My jaw unclenched.
My body softened.
My guard softened.
My body obeyed before my mind caught up.

Joy returned.
Lightness returned.

His was obedience, but not submission.
This was biological re-wiring.

From safety to sovereignty

For years my system had only known control:
scan, lock, punish, protect.

Now he was teaching my body something else.
It learned:

• The safety of being obeyed.
• The safety of having power.
• The safety of having a say.
• The safety of being sovereign.

Each time he asked, my body unclenched.
Each time he asked nothing, my guard relaxed.
Each time he burned and waited, my nervous system learned: It is different now.

At first, my body read his holding as proof of safety.
He stayed full, he did not trespass.
My system scanned, and found no threat.
That was survival.

Over time, the meaning shifted.
His holding was not just absence of harm.
It was obedience.
It was power placed in my hands.
It was sovereignty.

The same act my body once read as safety,
my body now reads as command.
What first quieted the alarms now feeds my authority.

This was not a cognitive shift.
This was the body itself remembering how to release.
How to soften.
How to open.

The shift was not sudden.
It was a slow dissolving.
A daily re-wiring through his consistency,
through his refusal to trespass,
through his willingness to hold full for me,
and wait for me to place him.

Joy returned.
Lightness returned.

His obedience to my direction told
my body,
my system,
my protection:

I’m safe.
This man holds me.
This man keeps me safe.
This man is mine, not the men who took me from me.
This man restored me.
This man restored my sovereignty.

Sovereignty

The less he asked, the more I gave.
The less he reached, the more I moved toward him.
The less he demanded, the more I served.

Not out of duty,
but because safety had finally landed in my body.
Because serving him serves the system that serves mine.

Our daughters

We raised our daughters fearless, courageous, unconstrained.
Still, they orbit their father.

First bra shopping?
“Dad, please take me.”
Of course. I stayed home.

Birds and bees?
They went to him.

Maybe it’s because they see how he serves me.
Now he serves them too,
with patience,
with presence,
with wisdom.

He is

He is the kind of man who puts his woman first.
The kind of man who takes a woman broken by another and makes her his.
The kind of man who restores her when she cannot heal herself.
The kind of man who returns what was stolen.

Footnotes

• In mammalian mating systems, females control timing and context of reproduction; males compete or wait (Clutton-Brock, 2016).
• Neurobiology confirms: sexual receptivity cues in females trigger dopamine and bonding circuits in males (Pfaus, 2009).
• Trauma recovery literature notes: nervous system safety is established first through body signals, not cognitive reframing (van der Kolk, 2014).