First of all, Happy New Year to you and yours! A question, going back a while in my personal spanking experience. I had a Top who used to love hitting hard enough to bruise (I mean big, raised bruises that hurt like hell). I thought he was experienced, but looking back now, I think he was a bit of a menace. I never got enough confidence to discuss anything with him and he just gushed about my 'submission'. I guess my question is, is this kind of thing 'OK' because you've consented to play?
Consenting to play doesn’t mean you’re consenting to let your Top do whatever they want to you (unless you explicitly state that, which isn’t really a safe idea). If you were in a situation where you didn’t feel comfortable talking about what you did and didn’t feel good about in scenes then that’s not really good, and I’m sorry it happened to you.
Does it mean that the top is inherently dangerous? I don’t have enough information here to know that. Consent can be coerced, it can be given without a full understanding of what you’re consenting to. Just because you said yes to play doesn’t mean you lose your right to control what happens to your body.
And, even if you gave your enthusiastic consent and had the ability to revoke it throughout the scene, it’s still ok for you to feel bad about a scene or dynamic after the fact. In this case it’s important to acknowledge that the top didn’t actually do anything wrong, but you don’t have to feel good about everything you did just because you consented to it. Sometimes scenes leave you feeling bad and you can’t say why.
Feel free to ask me more if I didn’t quite answer the question here!
As someone who tends toward the "very hard" end of the spectrum - please, fellow humans, check in during spankings. Trust me, there are ways to do it that won't affect headspace. And, on that note... Don't learn how to spank just from watching videos. These are often professionals. It takes practice to get that good. I've been doing this for more than 20 years and I am still learning.
